¿Cómo puede la lógica representar expresiones indéxicas como “yo”, “aquí” y “ahora”? ¿Cómo no debe representarlas? Examino estas dos preguntas a partir de la Lógica de los Demostrativos (LD) de Kaplan y su impopular prohibición de operadores monstruosos. A pesar de algunos defectos de formulación, sostengo que dicha prohibición está guiada por una poderosa visión de las relaciones lógicas de validez entre oraciones con indéxicos que desafía la concepción tradicional de consecuencia lógica como preservación de la verdad y resalta el (...) papel fundamental de la información semántica en la construcción de sistemas formales concebidos como modelos de las lenguas naturales. (shrink)

Barrero, Tomás Andrés. “Aserción, expresión y acción. Una lectura de J. L. Austin.” Dianoia 60.74 (2015): 81-107.

Academics are confronted with multiple and conflicting narratives as to what it is to be an academic. Their identities, however, are not entirely of their own making. Through a qualitative study, and deploying a social realist perspective, this paper analyses academic identities in Chile and attempts to locate the patterns of identity in the context of a marketised higher education system. The data were collected in both a state and a private university. The results suggest that distinct kinds of fragilities (...) may be emerging among Chilean academics (ontological and contractual fragilities). These two fragilities can be traced to the attendant structures of the university system at an institutional level (reputational fragility in the public sector and a branding fragility in the private sector). The paper concludes by observing that, although the power of the structures is considerable, there are still spaces for agentic responses. (shrink)

La arqueología ha revelado recientemente la existencia de una importante revitalización urbana en Córdoba durante el Califato Almohade, apenas tratada hasta ahora por la historiografía, centrada principalmente en su pasado omeya. Por un lado, se ha observado una importante inversión del poder almohade en elementos defensivos y palatinos, acaso por tratarse en estas fechas de un centro fundamental en la conceptualización histórica de al-Andalus y en la lucha contra los reinos cristianos; por otro, se ha documentado un importante crecimiento orgánico (...) y privado extramuros. Todo ello coincidió con su elección como capital andalusí en 557/1162 por ‘Abd al-Mu’min, lo que suponía un hito fundamental para la legitimación de su nuevo califato. Tras su muerte pocos meses después, Abū Ya‘qūb Yūsuf hizo regresar la corte a Sevilla, creando un importante cambio de rumbo en la política almohade que no afectó al resurgir urbano de la antigua sede omeya. En realidad, Córdoba seguiría muy presente en la mentalidad colectiva andalusí durante el gobierno almohade, manteniéndose como referente principal del esplendor pasado y como núcleo esencial de la tradición mālikī. (shrink)

Se analiza la apuesta ontológica de Arturo Escobar a partir de dos formas en las que esta se expresa, para vislumbrar los alcances y limitaciones de esta concepción ontológica. La primera concepción radica en lo que el autor denomina ontología relacional y la segunda versa en la llamada ontología política. El texto está dividido en cuatro apartados, el primero introduce al lector a lo que representa la pregunta por el ser, haciendo hincapié en Martin Heidegger. El segundo expone brevemente el (...) contexto que se puede evidenciar en la apuesta académica del antropólogo colombiano a través del giro ontológico, desarrollado desde la antropología, en el que se destaca una crítica al paradigma occidental dualista naturaleza/cultura y, a su vez, de la teoría decolonial que denuncia a la Modernidad y la vigencia de la colonialidad de ser, para así poder comprender la propuesta de la ontología relacional de Escobar. El tercer apartado expresa desde las categorías de territorio y pluriverso una premisa fundamental: pensar lo político presupone una ontología, es decir, una visión de mundo sobre lo que es y está, de esta manera se articula el proyecto de la ontología desde la relacionalidad con luchas que reivindican los mundos y los derechos de las comunidades; en el cuarto y último apartado se exponen los alcances y límites de la ontología de Escobar, así como caminos posibles para considerar en investigaciones futuras. (shrink)

The Cooperative Extension System serves as the conduit through which scientific knowledge generated by the 130 land-grant colleges and universities in the United States is translated and delivered directly to its constituents. Since its inception over 100 years ago, Extension has been integral in developing, delivering, and applying cutting-edge knowledge in agriculture and natural resources, youth development, family and consumer sciences, and community and rural development. Today, more than ever, Extension will need to lead the way in building and maintaining (...) sustainable partnerships across disciplines and with organizations at the local, state, and national levels to tackle complex issues considering diminishing resources. Bringing together leading and emerging scholars, this volume discusses how Extension is addressing issues and opportunities relevant to children, youth, families, and communities across the country both now and in the future. Topics include Extension's role in supporting childcare, social media use, entrepreneurship, rural communities, and underserved audiences. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to present a formalization of the language, semantics and axiomatization of justification logic in Coq. We present proofs in a natural deduction style derived from the axiomatic approach of justification logic. Additionally, we present possible world semantics in Coq based on Fitting models to formalize the semantic satisfaction of formulas. As an important result, with this implementation, it is possible to give a proof of soundness for $\mathsf{L}\mathsf{P}$ with respect to Fitting models.

This paper argues that epistemic errors rooted in group- or identity- based biases, especially those pertaining to disability, are undertheorized in the literature on medical error. After sketching dominant taxonomies of medical error, we turn to the field of social epistemology to understand the role that epistemic schemas play in contributing to medical errors that disproportionately affect patients from marginalized social groups. We examine the effects of this unequal distribution through a detailed case study of ableism. There are four primary (...) mechanisms through which the epistemic schema of ableism distorts communication between nondisabled physicians and disabled patients: testimonial injustice, epistemic overconfidence, epistemic erasure, and epistemic derailing. Measures against epistemic injustices in general and against schema-based medical errors in particular are ultimately issues of justice that must be better addressed at all levels of health care practice. (shrink)

El presente texto versa sobre la reflexión teórica del ser de la mujer latinoamericana desde una perspectiva dusseliana, de manera que el objetivo del artículo radica en la comprensión filosófica de lo que significa ser y estar como mujer latinoamericana, además de concebir los aportes y retos que nutren dicha reflexión. Por tal motivo se encontrará: primero una justificación de la pertinencia de esta reflexión mediante una breve contextualización de la situación actual de la mujer en América Latina; segundo, una (...) síntesis del aporte de Enrique Dussel que, sin duda alguna, es un análisis que nace del método analéctico ; tercero, dado que el reto está en dilucidar la afirmación del ser que ha sido negado para llegar a comprenderlo, propongo tres postulados que retroalimentan el problema de investigación. (shrink)

Este artículo presenta una reflexión política acerca del VIH-sida, estructurada en cuatro momentos: primero, una aproximación a las políticas de la vida donde se devela el actuar de la necropolítica, el biopoder, la biopolítica y biolegitimidad en relación con el VIH-sida; segundo, se aborda una antropología política del cuerpo, la cual advierte las distintas formas de poder, violencia y verdad que experimentan las personas que viven con VIH-sida; tercero, un acercamiento al modo en que se reproduce una economía moral del (...) castigo, donde se articulan elementos normativos, médico-sanitarios, de la vida, el cuerpo y la sociedad; cuarto, se propone repolitizar el VIH-sida, a fin de brindar insumos que permitan construir un orden social diferente para las personas que viven con dicha realidad. (shrink)

Practically almost all the basic matters that make up the political and social agenda of this decade are related to two basic categories: citizenship and multiculturalism. The way in which the connection between these two basic pillars is managed constitutes the principal factor in the social, political and cultural transformation of our epoch. This work has two aims: on one hand, and in relation to the general subject of this monograph it is argued that the question of immigration is part (...) of a wider dynamic of discussions on the basic foundations of our modern era, resulting from the double process of State-building and Nation-building; on the other hand it underlines that the first victim of this process of contextual change is precisly the product of this double historical movement: the traditional notion of citizenship, which has difficulties in finding resources to administer the new phenomena tied to multiculturalism. In this framework, we propose the basic question: in what sense does multiculturalism pose problems to the tradition of citizenship? We start from the following situation: what happens when the traditional notion of citizenship is used in multicultural contexts? I structure my argumentation in five sections. In the first section, I set out the conceptual framework within which present-day arguments are situated, composed of three basic elements: the State, the Nation and Citizenship. In the second section, we enter into the discussion on the traditional concept of citizenship, focusing on its normative and empirical basis from a comparative perspective. In the third section, we are concerned with the concept of multiculturalism. In the fourth section I deal with what I have called the contexts of multiculturalism., that is, the different dimensions that call into question the indivisible (and sacred) character of the State, the Nation and Citizenship. We introduce, in succesion, the pluralism of cultural identities, the pluralism of national identities, immigration, the political construction of the European Union and, finally globalisation. In the fifth and last section we draw up a final balance giving a historical sense to our arguments. (shrink)

We are really just at the beginning of analysing the connection between ethics, border management and migration policies. In this framework of the debate, I would like to propose a line of analysis centred, not so much what States do in the area of migration policies but rather theorize about the behaviour toward the demand for entry by people from other States. That is, how the States behave rather than what the States do in migration policies. This analysis implies entering (...) into the field of applied ethics and taking a contextual approach. The construction of an ethical framework for the evaluation of decision-making represents a justified task in the current context of migration policies in Europe, and can contribute to the incipient debate on the Ethics of migration.This article follows five sections. In the first section the debate on the Ethics of Migration especially that concerned with the normative debate on the control of borders is introduced. In the second section, the need for using an applied ethic for analysing migration policies is justified, and, in the third section, an "evaluative ethical framework" is finally proposed. In section four, this framework and the policy-maker's information resources are presented, and in section five, the resulting ethical approaches and orientations that follows are defended. Finally, in the concluding section, the article shows the different applications of the proposed framework, viable in both the area of public policy analysis and for empirical research. (shrink)

Global health conditions are marked by inequities due mostly to poverty and lack of access to healthcare services. In a Pandemic setting, Mayan Communities in the Quintana Roo State in Mexico are a good example of how these disparities are exacerbated. First, they may have difficulty in adhering to directives to stay home from work because of the nature of their job, and the necessity to work, their living conditions are marked by crowding and sometimes lack of basic sanitation. Other (...) susceptibilities generally considered are the underlying host factors and medical conditions that may increase the risk of disease or of complications of disease. In general, our native communities experience a high degree of socio-economic marginalization and are at disproportionate risk in public health emergencies, becoming even more vulnerable during this global pandemic, owing to factors such as their lack of access to effective monitoring and early-warning systems, and adequate health and social services. (shrink)

In this paper I asses Davidson’s analysis of action sentences stressing its quantificational structure and its views on prepositions and adverbial modification. Three arguments inspired by Grice’s ideas are deployed against it. First, I point to weird consequences of taking prepositions as defining predicates; second, I show some obstacles for Davidson’s view on adverbs; finally, I raise some doubts about his putative analysis of “negative actions”. From these, I hope that connections among actions, facts and events should be reconsidered in (...) action theory. (shrink)

En este breve comentario discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación de la epistemología de Davidson que sugiere Willian Duica en su reciente libro. Luego de una presentación somera del libro me centro en tres asuntos centrales de la interpretación de Duica. En primer lugar, argumento que su lectura de la crítica de Davidson al dualismo esquema/contenido es muy restrictiva y deja abierta la posibilidad de un realismo directo empirista. En segundo lugar, argumento que en su lectura el propio Duica se (...) compromete inadvertidamente con un empirismo de este tipo y, de este modo, su interpretación entra en tensión con el coherentismo de Davidson. Finalmente, discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación que hace Duica de la tesis davidsoniana de la triangulación. In this short comment I discuss some aspects of William Duica's interpretation of Davidson's epistemology in a recent book. After a brief review of the book, I focus on three central issues of Duica's interpretation. First, I argue that his reading of Davidson's criticism of the scheme/content dualism is too restrictive and leaves open the possibility of an empiricist direct realism. Second, I argue in his reading Duica inadvertently commits himself to an empiricism of this sort and, as a result, his interpretation is in tension with Davidson's own coherentism. Finally, I discuss some aspects of Duica's interpretation of Davidsonian triangulation. (shrink)

¿Cómo puede la lógica representar expresiones indéxicas como “yo”, “aquí” y “ahora”? ¿Cómo no debe representarlas? Examino estas dos preguntas a partir de la Lógica de los Demostrativos (LD) de Kaplan y su impopular prohibición de operadores monstruosos. A pesar de algunos defectos de formulación, sostengo que dicha prohibición está guiada por una poderosa visión de las relaciones lógicas de validez entre oraciones con indéxicos que desafía la concepción tradicional de consecuencia lógica como preservación de la verdad y resalta el (...) papel fundamental de la información semántica en la construcción de sistemas formales concebidos como modelos de las lenguas naturales. (shrink)

En este breve comentario discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación de la epistemología de Davidson que sugiere Willian Duica en su reciente libro. Luego de una presentación somera del libro me centro en tres asuntos centrales de la interpretación de Duica. En primer lugar, argumento que su lectura de la crítica de Davidson al dualismo esquema/contenido es muy restrictiva y deja abierta la posibilidad de un realismo directo empirista. En segundo lugar, argumento que en su lectura el propio Duica se (...) compromete inadvertidamente con un empirismo de este tipo y, de este modo, su interpretación entra en tensión con el coherentismo de Davidson. Finalmente, discuto algunos aspectos de la interpretación que hace Duica de la tesis davidsoniana de la triangulación. In this short comment I discuss some aspects of William Duica's interpretation of Davidson's epistemology in a recent book. After a brief review of the book, I focus on three central issues of Duica's interpretation. First, I argue that his reading of Davidson's criticism of the scheme/content dualism is too restrictive and leaves open the possibility of an empiricist direct realism. Second, I argue in his reading Duica inadvertently commits himself to an empiricism of this sort and, as a result, his interpretation is in tension with Davidson's own coherentism. Finally, I discuss some aspects of Duica's interpretation of Davidsonian triangulation. (shrink)

La investigación aborda el dilema que implica la relación entre economía y ética, el cual se deriva de la separación entre filosofía moral y economía positiva. Analizarlo a través de la teoría del bienestar permite acercarse a los preceptos de un cognitivismo ético o de psicología moral, mediante una propuesta distinta de individuo representativo. La finalidad es ofrecer algunos elementos para observar a la economía desde otra perspectiva, al estrechar los lazos teóricos con la ética.

Este trabajo analiza los patrones de desambiguación de presuposiciones que se pueden considerar anafóricas y son generadas por partículas indexicales. En contraste con teorías recientes sobre la presuposición que privilegian la información lexical proponemos un análisis perspectivo de la presuposición según el cual la inferencia por defecto sobre este tipo de información hace uso de la perspectiva de los hablantes. En dos estudios exploramos el patrón de desambiguación de oraciones que contienen la palabra ‘también’ en contextos donde se usa el (...) indéxico ‘yo’. Los resultados confirman nuestra hipótesis y se discuten a la luz las principales ideas sobre presuposición y anáfora. A partir de estos resultados sugerimos algunas direcciones futuras de investigación. (shrink)

Situados en un progresivo traspaso de responsabilidades en la ejecución de los servicios sociales desde el Estado hacia actores no gubernamentales, aparece una demanda hacia el mismo Estado, el cual en lugar de simplemente declinar su labor, debiera de hecho expandir su regulación de modo de asegurar que la oferta social sea eficiente en satisfacer al ciudadano usuario en aquellos servicios prometidos por las políticas y programas sociales. Así mismo, la institucionalidad pública debiera reconocer las demandas del mundo privado para (...) actuar articuladamente hacia fines comunes, que finalmente conduzcan a un horizonte de desarrollo de una sociedad más igualitaria. Este estudio da cuenta de las tensiones, reveladas por autoridades de servicios públicos que atienden personas vulnerables, en su relación de colaboración con OSFL (Organizaciones Sin Fines de Lucro), para alcanzar tal horizonte. (shrink)

A spellbinding look at the philosophical and moral implications of animal dreaming Are humans the only dreamers on Earth? What goes on in the minds of animals when they sleep? When Animals Dream brings together behavioral and neuroscientific research on animal sleep with philosophical theories of dreaming. It shows that dreams provide an invaluable window into the cognitive and emotional lives of nonhuman animals, giving us access to a seemingly inaccessible realm of animal experience. David Peña-Guzmán uncovers evidence of animal (...) dreaming throughout the scientific literature, suggesting that many animals run “reality simulations” while asleep, with a dream-ego moving through a dynamic and coherent dreamscape. He builds a convincing case for animals as conscious beings and examines the thorny scientific, philosophical, and ethical questions it raises. Once we accept that animals dream, we incur a host of moral obligations and have no choice but to rethink our views about who animals are and the interior lives they lead. A mesmerizing journey into the otherworldly domain of nonhuman consciousness, When Animals Dream carries profound implications for contemporary debates about animal cognition, animal ethics, and animal rights, challenging us to regard animals as beings who matter, and for whom things matter. (shrink)

By considering Davidson’s analysis of prepositions as defining individual events predicates, I argue against his semantics for action sentences and stress some logico-linguistic puzzles concerning both the interpretive pretension and the referential indifference of this proposal. Inspired by Evans as well as by Grice, I advance another interpretive semantics for those cases which does not take as assumption the individual character of events and argue for a constructivist approach to events in action discourse.

This paper offers a new interpretation of John Austin’s views both on assertion and on adverbs, as result of which an expressivist thesis concerning the semantics for action sentences is advanced. First, Austin’s analysis of assertion based on various, specific assertive forces and his remarks on adverbs are systematically connected in order to obtain assertive schemata for action sentences. Finally, those schemata are put to work as the expression of inferential commitments implicit in argumentative practices of different sorts (exculpatory, justificatory (...) and illustrative) in the deployment of which, both logical contrariety and contradiction are exploited. (shrink)

Motivated by H. Curry’s well-known objection and by a proposal of L. Henkin, this article introduces the positive tableaux, a form of tableau calculus without refutation based upon the idea of implicational triviality. The completeness of the method is proven, which establishes a new decision procedure for the (classical) positive propositional logic. We also introduce the concept of paratriviality in order to contribute to the question of paradoxes and limitations imposed by the behavior of classical implication.

This article highlights the mathematical structure of Henri Bergson’s method. While Bergson has been historically interpreted as an anti-scientific and irrationalist philosopher, he modeled his philosophical methodology on the infinitesimal calculus developed by Leibniz and Newton in the seventeenth century. His philosophy, then, rests on the science of number, at least from a methodological standpoint. By looking at how he conscripted key mathematical concepts into his philosophy, this article invites us to re-imagine Bergson’s place in the history of Western philosophy.

Many people believe that only humans have the cognitive and behavioral capacities needed for suicidal behavior, such as reflexive subjectivity, free will, intentionality, or awareness of death. Three counterarguments — based on (i) negative emotions and psychopathologies among nonhuman animals, (ii) the nature of self-destructive behavior, and (iii) the problem of model fidelity in suicide research — suggest that self-destructive and self-injurious behaviors among human and nonhuman animals vary along a continuum.

This paper develops some of Austin’s ideas on excuses, stressing their “dimensional” character and relating it to Searle’s distinction between intention-in-action and previous intention, in order to show that the original speech-act shaped distinction between weakness of the will and moral weakness can be embedded in a quite different theoretical framework such as Davidson’s, while Austin’s dimensional classification of actions cannot. Finally, the article analyzes how Grice’s critique of Davidson’s views on akrasia is more faithful to Austin and more radical (...) in its conclusions concerning the justificatory aspect of reasons and the rational features of action. (shrink)

El presente artículo ofrece una interpretación original del trabajo de Austin sobre la aserción y los adverbios y deriva de ella una semántica expresivista para las oraciones de acción. En primer lugar, el análisis austiniano de la aserción con su idea de fuerzas asertivas específicas se conecta sistemáticamente con sus observaciones sobre la modificación adverbial para obtener esquemas de aserción para oraciones de acción. En segundo lugar, se interpretan esos esquemas en términos de la expresión de los compromisos inferenciales propios (...) de prácticas argumentativas exculpatorias, justificativas y ejemplarizantes en las que se explota la contrariedad lógica a la par de la contradicción. This paper offers a new interpretation of John Austin's views both on assertion and on adverbs, as result of which an expressivist thesis concerning the semantics for action sentences is advanced. First, Austin's analysis of assertion based on various, specific assertive forces and his remarks on adverbs are systematically connected in order to obtain assertive schemata for action sentences. Finally, those schemata are put to work as the expression of inferential commitments implicit in argumentative practices of different sorts in the deployment of which both logical contrariety and contradiction are exploited. (shrink)

Prácticamente casi todos los temas básicos que conforman la agenda política y social de esta década están relacionados con dos categorías básicas: la ciudadanía y la multiculturalidad. La forma en cómo se gestiona el vínculo de estos dos pilares básicos constituye el principal factor de transformación social, política y cultural de nuestra época. El objetivo de este capítulo es doble: por un lado, y en relación al tema general de este monográfico, argumentar que el tema de la inmigración forma parte (...) de una dinámica más amplia de discusiones sobre los fundamentos básicos de nuestra época moderna, resultado del doble proceso de State-Building y de Nation-building; por otro lado, subrayar que la primera "víctima" de este proceso de cambio contextual es precisamente el producto de este doble movimiento histórico: la noción tradicional de ciudadanía, que tiene dificultades de encontrar recursos para gestionar los nuevos fenómenos ligados con la multiculturalidad. En este marco, nos plantearemos como pregunta básica: ¿en qué sentido el multiculturalismo plantea problemas a la tradición de la ciudadanía? Partiremos de la situación siguiente: ¿qué ocurre cuando se usa la noción tradicional de la ciudadanía en contextos de multiculturalidad?. Estructuré mi argumentación en cinco secciones. En la primera sección, introduciré el marco conceptual dentro del cual se ubican las discusiones actuales, compuesto de tres elementos básicos: el Estado, la Nación y la Ciudadanía. En la segunda sección, entraremos en la discusión sobre el concepto tradicional de la ciudadanía, centrándonos en su base normativa y empírica desde una perspectiva comparativa. En la tercera sección, nos ocuparemos del concepto de multiculturalismo. En la cuarta sección me ocuparé de lo que he titulado como los "contextos de la multiculturalidad", esto es, las diferentes dimensiones que ponen en entredicho el carácter indivisible (y sagrado) del Estado, la Nación y la Ciudadanía. Introduciremos, sucesivamente, el pluralismo de identidades culturales, el pluralismo de identidades nacionales, la inmigración, la construcción política de la Unión Europea y, por último, la globalización. Finalmente, en una quinta y última sección, haremos un balance final dando un sentido histórico a nuestros razonamientos. (shrink)

This work studies some problems connected to the role of negation in logic, treating the positive fragments of propositional calculus in order to deal with two main questions: the proof of the completeness theorems in systems lacking negation, and the puzzle raised by positive paradoxes like the well-known argument of Haskel Curry. We study the constructive com- pleteness method proposed by Leon Henkin for classical fragments endowed with implication, and advance some reasons explaining what makes difficult to extend this constructive (...) method to non-classical fragments equipped with weaker implications (that avoid Curry's objection). This is the case, for example, of Jan Lukasiewicz's n-valued logics and Wilhelm Ackermann's logic of restricted implication. Besides such problems, both Henkin's method and the triviality phenomenon enable us to propose a new positive tableau proof system which uses only positive meta-linguistic resources, and to mo- tivate a new discussion concerning the role of negation in logic proposing the concept of paratriviality. In this way, some relations between positive reasoning and infinity, the possibilities to obtain a ¯first-order positive logic as well as the philosophical connection between truth and meaning are dis- cussed from a conceptual point of view. (shrink)

A partir de una discusión de la gramática lógica de Davidson para oraciones de acción, propongo una caracterización funcional de la predicación y la referencia como estructuras semánticas. En contradicción con Davidson y apoyado por sugerencias de Strawson, Evans y Chomsky sostendré que la distinción entre oraciones de acción y otras oraciones no reside en la introducción de un nuevo tipo de objetos de referencia que permitan la aplicación de predicados especiales. Dichas oraciones, sostendré, son casos paradigmáticos de una nueva (...) clase de predicación aplicada a los objetos a los que nos referimos cotidianamente. De acuerdo con esta nueva concepción, los fenómenos de referencia y predicación están indisolublemente asociados con patrones de inferencia y no con valores semánticos obtenidos por aplicación de secuencias de satisfacción. (shrink)

In this work I argue for the thesis that Grice’s intentional-cooperative analysis of assertion works at three levels: the logical, the epistemological and the normative. I use “conventional implicature” as example. First part shows that other approaches to assertion can’t give an accurate description of semantic content. I point to a general, twofold conclusion: the truth-conditional approach fails by neglecting intentional acts to be the meaning blocks; the rule-oriented approach misses its target by disregarding that all communicative acts are intentional, (...) but many are not conventional. Assertion includes some features of intentional action, the main theme in second part. As rational justification is the basis of intention, the solution of some remaining problems connected to assertion may rest in the justificatory structures underlying intention. Judgment, the epistemic variety of rational acceptability, determines, on one hand, the infelicity in conventional implicature cancellation and, on the other, shows why convention is just a minor component in the theory of meaning. Justification deems a special methodology in which causal explanations of meaning and representation can be replaced by justifications, teleological in character. The rationalist background of Grice’s proposal is thus stressed, as well as his conception of rationality as the body of capacities in charge of identifying and attributing value. Following this interpretation, other problems on meaning and communication, for example the relations between the Cooperative Principle and the conversational maxims, can be dealt with. (shrink)