Hilan Bensusan

John McDowell has defended a position called minimal empiricism, that aims to avoid the oscillation between traditional empiricism’s commitment to a set of contents working as external justifiers for our system of beliefs and a coherentist position where our thought receives no constraint from the world. We share McDowell’s dissatisfaction with both options, but find his minimal empiricism committed to the idea of a tribunal of experience where isolated contents are infused into our network of inferences. This commitment is prone to sceptical attacks and waters down McDowell’s holism. We propose to retain McDowell’s partial re-enchantment of nature—without appealing to McDowell’s Kantian conception of experience—, and argue that it is sufficient to avoid the oscillation and to make sense of the objectivity of thought.

Kim recomenda uma forma de fisicalismo que seria, segundo ele, a única alternativa fisicalista para evitar o epifenomenalismo. Neste trabalho, mostro que esta alternativa não é viável: o fisicalismo de Kim também não consegue lidar de maneira satisfatória com o problema da causação mental. Considerando algumas características da simulação de estados mentais e a motivação para entendermos as propriedades mentais como separáveis das físicas, esboço uma maneira de pensar nos estados mentais que evita tanto o fisicalismo quanto o epifenomenalismo

Neste texto eu exploro alguns aspectos de um não-conformismo com respeitoà cognição. Começo analisando a inserção dos pensamentos em um ambientede subjetividades e a natureza pronominal do pensamento––é sempre alguémque pensa. Considero algumas relações políticas entre vozes e como elasatuam sobre os empreendimentos cognitivos; neste contexto menciono algumasformas de silenciamento sistemático de vozes. Termino recomendando umaforma de polifonia cognitiva.In this paper I explore some aspects of a cognitive nonconformism. I startout taking on board how thought is always embedded in an environment ofsubjectivities and further the pronominal nature of thought––a thought isalways someone’s thought. I consider some political relations betweendifferent voices and how they shape cognitive endeavours; in this context, Imention some strategies to systematically silence some voices. I concludewith a recommendation of a cognitive poliphony

Holism about thought content – especially coupled with a measure of semantic externalism – can provide us with an attractive account of how thinking relates to the world. It can help us to tell a neat story that starts out with the inseparable entanglement of truth and intelligibility: in order to understand thought, to confront it to the world and to give verdicts about that confrontation, we need to grasp a considerable amount of truths. A variety of positions that emerge under the influence of Davidson’s arguments (see, for instance, his 1974) deny the possibility of severing the connection between thought and facts of the world. However, this holisticunderstanding of thought seems less attractive when it is forced to account for our capacities to engage with singularities. A (roughly) Davidsonian conception of thought faces serious problems when it tries to answer questions regarding singular thoughts, de re attitudes and beliefs, and the nature of items of the world that cannot be described or referred to without the aid of demonstratives. This tension between thought and singularity is a well-known one and shows up in different traditions of philosophy. We aim at easing the tension without giving up the intuitions behind holism.

Richard Moran has argued, convincingly, in favour of the idea that there must be more than one path to access our own mental contents. The existence of those routes, one first-personal—through avowal—the other third-personal—no different to the one used to ascribe mental states to other people and to interpret their actions—is intimately connected to our capacity to respond to norms. Moran’s account allows for conflicts between first personal and third personal authorities over my own beliefs; this enable some instances of Moore-paradoxical cases to be meaningful. In this paper we reflect on the consequences of this view for the acquisition of beliefs, and argue that, as in the moral case, excessive concentration on a thirdpersonal understanding of thought undermines the very idea of being directed to the world and of being capable to fully own our own beliefs. We suggest that maybe too much attention to epistemic virtues or tojustification is misdirected and could produce beliefs that are themself not first-personal enough.

Este texto considera algumas maneiras alternativas de pensar na verdade e no que queremos com ela. Analisa também os problemas com a concepção da verdade como correspondência e procura um diagnóstico do tipo de frustração que esses problemas trazem. Considera em seguida as alternativas deflacionistas e seus problemas em oferecer aquilo que comumente queremos de um predicado de verdade. Avalia então as vantagens e falhas das concepções da verdade como indefinível e da concepção de verdade como identidade