An account of assertion along truth-relativistic lines is offered. The main lines of relativism about truth are laid out and the problematic features that assertion acquires in the presence of relative truth are identified. These features are the possibility of coherently formulating norms of assertion and the possibility of grounding a rational practice of assertion upon relative truth. A solution to these problems is provided by formulating norms for making and assessing assertions that employ a suitably relativized truth predicate and (...) a perspectival notion of correctness. Two potential objections to this proposal are addressed. (shrink)

El presente artículo es la primera traducción española de un artículo del jurista alemán Hermann Heller titulado "¿Liberalismo autoritario?", en el que pretende dar cuenta de una nueva forma de articulación política que se desarrolla al comienzo de los años 30 en Alemania y que combina el autoritarismo político con el liberalismo económico.

Perner and Roessler Causing human action: new perspectives on the causal theory of action, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp 199–228, 2010) hold that children who do not yet have an understanding of subjective perspectives, i.e., mental states, explain actions by appealing to objective facts. In this paper, we criticize this view. We argue that in order to understand objective facts, subjects need to understand perspectives. By analysing basic fact-expressing assertions, we show that subjects cannot refer to facts if they do (...) not understand two types of perspectivity, namely, spatial and doxastic perspectivity. To avoid conceptual confusion regarding different ways of referring to facts, we distinguish between reference to facts de re and de dicto. (shrink)

The work is a philosophical essay that deals with the human condition - "subjugated to unprecedented levels of uncertainty" - and contemporary art as a form of knowledge. Author Ramiro Garavito is an art curator, artist, philosopher and promoter of contemporary art in Bolivia.

Neutral Counterpart Theories of slurs hold that the truth-conditional contribution of a slur is the same as the truth-conditional contribution of its neutral counterpart. In, DiFranco argues that these theories, even if plausible for single-word slurs like ‘kike’ and ‘nigger’, are not suitable for complex slurs such as ‘slanty-eyed’ and ‘curry muncher’, figurative slurs like ‘Jewish American Princess’, or iconic slurring expressions like ‘ching chong’. In this paper, we argue that these expressions do not amount to genuine counterexamples to neutral (...) counterpart theories of slurs. We provide a positive characterization of DiFranco's examples that doesn't deviate from the core of those theories. (shrink)

Horwich (Mind 123(491), 2014) has argued that only someone with inflationary tendencies could feel inclined to endorse truth relativism. In doing so, he argues that deflationism about truth entails the denial of relativism. If sound, Horwich’s argument could entail that truth relativism is incompatible with any conception of our ordinary truth predicate according to which there is some sort of equivalence between a ground-language claim that p and the corresponding claim that p is true. Arguably, any story the relativist might (...) give about our ordinary truth predicate, it should entail some such equivalence. Hence, there is a problem for truth relativism that needs to be addressed. Horwich (Mind 123(491), 2014) has argued that only someone with inflationary tendencies could feel inclined to endorse truth relativism. In doing so, he argues that deflationism about truth entails the denial of relativism. If sound, Horwich’s argument could entail that truth relativism is incompatible with any conception of our ordinary truth predicate according to which there is some sort of equivalence between a ground-language claim that p and the corresponding claim that p is true. Arguably, any story the relativist might give about our ordinary truth predicate, it should entail some such equivalence. Hence, there is a problem for truth relativism that needs to be addressed. (shrink)

Among the philosophical accounts of reference, Quine’s The Roots of Reference stands out in offering an integrated account of the acquisition of linguistic reference and object individuation. Based on a non-referential ability to distinguish bodies, the acquisition of sortals and quantification are crucial steps in learning to refer to objects. In this article, we critically re-assess Quine’s account of reference. Our critique will proceed in three steps with the aim of showing that Quine effectively presupposes what he sets out to (...) explain, namely, reference to objects. We are going to argue that sortals do not individuate, that bodies are already objects, and that the acquisition of variables presupposes a notion of identity. The result is diagnostic of a central desideratum for any theory of reference: an explanation of spatiotemporal object individuation. (shrink)

Introducción al dossier: “A 20 años del 2001: memorias, representaciones, militancias y reverberancias”.

Pensar el 2001, interpelar a las subjetividades de la crisis. Entrevista a Diego Sztulwark.

A partir de uma revisão crítica da literatura, estuda-se um desafio do anarquismo filosófico à teoria da autoridade jurídica de J. Raz: seguir uma ordem de que se discorda seria irracional, pois equivaleria a agir contra o que se considera mais justificado. Utilizando referências atinentes à teoria da decisão e à epistemologia, além de exemplos sobre ferramentas de auxílio à tomada de decisão do cotidiano (como experts e programas), esboçamos duas possíveis respostas, que correspondem a duas concepções instrumentais distintas de (...) autoridade: numa, é justificável para o agente colocar-se numa situação que o leve a agir de forma inconsistente com suas crenças – a ideia de “submeter-se à autoridade”, afim a uma “confiança cega”; noutra, utilizando a teoria dos “pontos-cegos”, delineiam-se restrições que uma teoria da racionalidade impõe à teoria da autoridade. (shrink)

El objetivo a perseguir por el presente artículo, es analizar tres de las principales teorías humanístico-filosóficas, respecto a la concepción del ciclo vital de que han sido participes diversas comunidades humanas a lo largo de la historia. Con base en tres propuestas de periodización histórica, se expondrán los enfoques temporales sobre los procesos y el fin de la historia teorizados por los filósofos e historiadores Giambatista Vico, Oswald Spengler y Arnold Joseph Toynbee.

El texto intenta mostrar los rasgos que señalan la vinculación de la obra cosmológica de Bruno con el acontecimiento histórico cultural denominado Revolución Copernicana, y se centra en una primera fase que documenta las relaciones entre infinitismo y astronomía copemicana. El horizonte de la argumentación lo constituye la intención de situar el pensamiento de Bruno entre las primeras aportaciones teóricas a la modernidad.

This paper aims to provide a philosophical and theoretical account of biological communication grounded in the notion of organisation. The organisational approach characterises living systems as organised in such a way that they are capable to self-produce and self-maintain while in constant interaction with the environment. To apply this theoretical framework to the study of biological communication, we focus on a specific approach, based on the notion of influence, according to which communication takes place when a signal emitted by a (...) sender triggers a change in the behaviour of the receiver that is functional for the sender itself. We critically analyse the current formulations of this account, that interpret what is functional for the sender in terms of evolutionary adaptations. Specifically, the adoption of this etiological functional framework may lead to the exclusion of several phenomena usually studied as instances of communication, and possibly even of entire fields of investigation such as synthetic biology. As an alternative, we reframe the influence approach in organisational terms, characterising functions in terms of contributions to the current organisation of a biological system. We develop a theoretical account of biological communication in which communicative functions are distinguished from other types of biological functions described by the organisational account (e.g. metabolic, ecological, etc.). The resulting organisational-influence approach allows to carry out causal analyses of current instances of phenomena of communication, without the need to provide etiological explanations. In such a way it makes it possible to understand in terms of communication those phenomena which realise interactive patterns typical of signalling interactions – and are usually studied as such in scientific practice – despite not being the result of evolutionary adaptations. Moreover, this approach provides operational tools to design and study communicative interactions in experimental fields such as synthetic biology. (shrink)

In 'An undermining diagnosis of relativism about truth', Horwich claims that the notion of relative truth is either explanatorily sterile or explanatorily superfluous. In the present paper, I argue that Horwich's explanatory demands set the bar unwarrantedly high: given the philosophical import of the theorems of a truth-theoretic semantic theory, Horwich's proposed explananda, what he calls acceptance facts, are too indirect for us to expect a complete explanation of them in terms of the deliverances of a theory of meaning based (...) on the notion of relative truth. And, to the extent that there might be such an explanation in certain cases, there is no reason to expect relative truth to play an essential, ineliminable role, nor to endorse the claim that it should play such a role in order to be a theoretically useful notion. (shrink)

O presente artigo se propõe a uma análise das possibilidades de se alcançar a justiça no mundo pós-moderno, apresentando um estudo que dá suas noções iniciais, reflete sobre o itinerário a ser seguido para tal e alguns dos dilemas que impedem sua concretização.

Despite the availability of safe vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, some people will remain vulnerable because they will not be vaccinated. Who are these non-vaccinated people? We can distinguish two groups: (i) persons who cannot be vaccinated for clinical reasons and who, despite having been vaccinated, have not achieved immunity; (ii) persons who voluntarily refuse to get vaccinated. These groups have in common an immune system that will make them vulnerable to COVID-19. The reasons for their vulnerability and the ethical judgment they (...) deserve are different; the solutions offered to them are also different. In the case of those who voluntarily avoid vaccination, States are not compromised to introduce new protective policies. In the case of people who remain involuntarily vulnerable, instead, the response should be articulated on the same rules and principles that inform the social model of disability because they will live with an organic disability. (shrink)

Political communication in modern democratic societies often requires the speaker to address multiple audiences with heterogeneous values, interests and agendas. This creates an incentive for communication strategies that allow politicians to send, along with the explicit content of their speech, concealed messages that seek to secure the approval of certain groups without alienating the rest of the electorate. These strategies have been labeled dogwhistling in recent literature. In this article, we provide an analysis of overt intentional dogwhistling. We recognize two (...) main stages within the OIDs’ way of conveying a concealed message: the expression of a perspective together with the transmission of an accompanying positioning message vis-à-vis the OID targeted sub-audience, and the inferential extraction of a set of cognitive and non-cognitive contents inferred on the basis of the former stage. Furthermore, we identify three linguistic mechanisms whereby these contents may be transmitted: conventional meaning, conversational implicature and perlocutionary inferencing. Hence, on our view OIDs are not a uniform category, as they may differ as to what extent the concealed content is speaker-meant, and thus actually communicated by the speaker. (shrink)

Kant emphatically denied the people’s right to resist legally established authority. Nevertheless, this posture leads to critical difficulties on his conception of politics. This paper encompasses such issue, attempting to show the tensions resulting from such denial, compared to other ideas focused on his political philosophy and to the value he assigns to modern revolutions. Moreover, some relevant interpretations of these discussions are critically analyzed and a way to appropriately understand the sense and scope of Kant’s point of viewis proposed.

Translation into Portuguese of SEP entries on Philosophy of Economics.

El objetivo a perseguir por el presente artículo, es analizar tres de las principales teorías humanístico-filosóficas, respecto a la concepción del ciclo vital de que han sido participes diversas comunidades humanas a lo largo de la historia. Con base en tres propuestas de periodización histórica, se expondrán los enfoques temporales sobre los procesos y el fin de la historia teorizados por los filósofos e historiadores Giambatista Vico, Oswald Spengler y Arnold Joseph Toynbee.

Marques (Philosophia, 49(3), 1109–1125 2021) argues that Hom’s Combinatorial Externalism (CE) faces a hitherto unknown problem when coupled with a standard Kratzerian account of deontic modality: CE plus Kratzerian modality would entail the negation of a thesis central to Hom’s analysis of slurs, the null extensionality thesis (i.e., the thesis that slurs have empty extensions). Since modality is an integral part of Hom’s take on slurs, and Kratzer’s account of modality has the status of the standard take on modality, this (...) would be bad news for CE. In this paper, I argue that, pace Marques, CE and a Kratzerian account of deontic modals do not clash with the null extensionality claim. Marques’ discussion, however, helps us expose substantive, non-semantic assumptions concerning practical philosophy that seem to be implicitly built into CE’s semantic analysis of slurs. (shrink)

e presenta el debate entre reduccionismo y no reduccionismo respecto de la probabilidad objetiva y se identifican las cargas dialécticas adquiridas por cada posición: el problema de la motivación y el problema de la explicación. Se argumenta que, mientras que el problema de la motivación no presenta ningún desafío para los no reduccionistas, los reduccionistas no son capaces de responderlo exitosamente. Contrariamente a lo que se ha sugerido, ambos lados comparten el problema de la explicación. Se argumenta que los no (...) reduccionistas pueden responderlo exitosamente, mientras que los reduccionistas no son capaces de hacerlo. Por lo tanto, el lado no reduccionista tiene una ventaja dialéctica importante. (shrink)

Presento una extensión del marco de Stalnaker para modelar los efectos conversacionales de la aserción, de modo que este pueda aplicarse a la aserción de proposiciones cuya verdad es relativa a parámetros adicionales respecto de un mundo posible. Desarrollo dos maneras de aplicar este marco a la aserción de proposiciones evaluativas, según la apreciación de las emisiones evaluativas mismas refleje una concepción relativista moderada de sus condiciones de corrección o una concepción radical. Argumento que, en virtud de la diferencia que (...) existe a la hora de concebir la aserción, el relativismo radical tiene una ventaja por sobre el relativismo moderado, dado que el relativismo moderado tiene inconvenientes a la hora de interpretar los desacuerdos evaluativos. I present an extension of Stalnaker's framework for modeling the conversational effects of assertion, so that it may be applied to the assertion of propositions whose truth is relative to parameters beyond a possible world. I develop two ways in which the new framework may be applied to the assertion of evaluative propositions, depending on whether the assessment of evaluative utterances reflects a moderate or a radical conception of their correctness conditions. I argue that, in virtue of this difference in the conceptualization of assertion, radical relativism has an advantage over moderate relativism, for moderate relativism faces problems with respect to the interpretation of evaluative disagreement. (shrink)

Como han puesto de relieve Evans y García-Carpintero, uno de los problemas más importantes respecto de la aserción en el marco de una concepción relativista radical de los discursos evaluativos es dar un tratamiento coherente de los compromisos y de las responsabilidades que la aserción misma genera cuando sus condiciones de corrección son inestables. Construyendo sobre la base de un trabajo de Losada, el presente trabajo busca ofrecer dicho tratamiento.