Agustin Vicente

Many pragmaticians have distinguished three levels of meaning involved in the comprehension of utterances, and there is an ongoing debate about how to characterize the intermediate level. Recanati has called it the level of ‘what is said’ and has opposed the idea that it can be determined semantically — a position that he labels ‘pragmatic minimalism’. To this end he has offered two chief arguments: semantic underdeterminacy and the Availability Principle. This paper exposes a tension between both arguments, relating this discussion with Carruthers’s cognitive view of language, according to which some thoughts are, literally, sentences of our natural language. First we explain how this view entails minimalism, and we construct an argument based on semantic underdeterminacy that shows that natural language sentences do not have the compositional properties required to constitute thoughts. Then we analyze the example of a subject’s overhearing a sentence without an interpretive context, arguing that in the light of the Availability Principle the corresponding thought can be regarded as a natural language sentence. Thus, semantic underdeterminacy and availability pull in different directions, and we claim that there is no characterization of the latter that can relieve this tension. We contend that Recanati’s availability shares with Carruthers’s introspectivism an overreliance on intuitions about what appears consciously in one’s mind. We conclude, therefore, that the Availability Principle ought to be abandoned.

Different languages carve the world in different categories. They also encode events in differ­ent ways, conventionalize different metaphorical mappings, and differ in their rule-based metonymies and patterns of meaning extensions. A long-standing, and controversial, ques­tion is whether this variability in the languages generates a corresponding variability in the conceptual structure of the speakers of those languages. Here we will present and discuss three interesting general proposals by focusing on representative authors of such proposals. The proposals are the following: first, that the effect of language in conceptualization is general and deep; second, that the effect is local, transient, shallow and easily revisable; and third, that there is no proper effect of language on conceptualization, although there is surely some cognitive impact of language: many conceptual tasks engage language one way or another.

The problem this paper deals with is the problem of how dispositional properties can have causal relevance. In particular, the paper is focused on the question of how dispositions can have causal relevance given that the categorial bases that realise them seem to be sufficient to bring about the effects that dispositions explain. I show first that this problem of exclusion has no general solution. Then, I discuss some particular cases in which dispositions are causally relevant, despite of this exclusion problem. My claim is that dispositions have causal relevance in selection or recruitment processes, when they are converted into teleological functions.

Phil Dowe has argued persuasively for a reductivist theory of causality. Drawing on Wesley Salmon's mark transmission theory and David Fair's transferencetheory, Dowe proposes to reduce causality to the exchange of conserved quantities. Dowe's account has the virtue of being simple and offering a definite "visible" idea of causation. According to Dowe and Salmon, it is also virtuous in being localist. That a theory of causation is localist means that it does not need the aid of counterfactuals and/or laws to work. Moreover, it can become the means by which we explain counterfactuals and laws. In this paper, I will argue that the theory is not localist (and hence, that it is less simple than it seems). As far as I can see, the theory needs the aid of laws.

Cabe argumentar en favor del fisicismo a partir de consideraciones metodológicas o epistémicas, o desde un punto de vista ontológico. En los últimos años se ha venido presentando un potente argumento ontológico que hace un uso esencial de lo que se ha dado en llamar el "principio del cierre causal del mundo físico". En este artículo examino si es posible que sea la propia física quien fundamente este principio. Propongo que, con la ayuda de las contemporáneas teorías reductivas de la causalidad a intercambio o transferencia de cantidades conservadas, las leyes de conservación pueden proporcionar tal fundamento. También evalúo qué fuerza modal puede tener este principio del cierre. /// It is possible to argue for physicalism from methodological or epistemic considerations or from an ontological position. In the last years one can find a powerful ontological argument for physicalism which makes essential use of what has been labeled "the principle of the causal closure of the physical world". In this paper I examine whether this principle can be grounded in physics itself. I propose that, with the aid of contemporary reductive transference or exchange theories of causation, conservation laws can provide such a basis to the principle of the causal closure. I also consider what modal force the principle may have.

In this paper I try to fix the price that a non-epiphenomenal dualism demands. To begin with, the defender of non-epiphenomenal dualism cannot hold that mental events cause physical events, since the physical world is causally closed. Hence, she must say that mental events cause events that are not physical, or at least, events that are not affected by the principle of the causal closure of the physical world. However, this is not all: the events mental causes bring about must fulfill certain further conditions, which I spell out. When properly analyzed, it will be seen that these conditions make the dual explanandum strategy highly demanding. /// En este artículo trato de fijar el precio que un dualismo no epifenomènico tiene que pagar. Para empezar, el defensor del dualismo no epifenomenico no puede mantener que los eventos mentales causan cambios en el mundo fisico, ya que èste está causalmente cerrado. Por lo tanto, ha de decir que los eventos mentales causan eventos que no son fisicos, o, al menos, que no están sometidos al principio del cierre causal del mundo fisico. Sin embargo, esto no es todo: los eventos que son efectos de las causas mentales tienen que cumplir ciertas condiciones ulteriores, condiciones que detallo. Cuando èstas se analizan propiamente, se ve que vuelven muy exigente la estrategia del doble explanandum.

  In this paper I discuss a famous argument for physicalism – which some authors indeed regard as the only argument for it – the overdetermination argument. In fact it is an argument that does not establish that all the entities in the world are physical, but that all those events that enter into causal transactions with the physical world are physical. As mental events seem to cause changes in the physical world, the mind is one of those things that fall within the scope of the argument. Here I analyze one response to the overdetermination argument that has acquired some popularity lately, and which consists in saying that what mental events cause are not physical effects. I try to show that recent attempts to develop this response are not successful, but that there may be a coherent way of doing so. I also try to show that there seems to be a philosophical niche in which this way might fit

This article deals with the relationship between language and thought, focusing on the question of whether language can be a vehicle of thought, as, for example, Peter Carruthers has claimed. We develop and examine a powerful argument—the "argument from explicitness"—against this cognitive role of language. The premises of the argument are just two: (1) the vehicle of thought has to be explicit, and (2) natural languages are not explicit. We explain what these simple premises mean and why we should believe they are true. Finally, we argue that even though the argument from explicitness shows that natural language cannot be a vehicle of thought, there is a cognitive function for language.

For many years, it has been common-ground in semantics and in philosophy of language that semantics is in the business of providing a full explanation about how propositional meanings are obtained. This orthodox picture seems to be in trouble these days, as an increasing number of authors now hold that semantics does not deal with thought-contents. Some of these authors have embraced a “thin meanings” view, according to which lexical meanings are too schematic to enter propositional contents. I will suggest that it is plausible to adopt thin semantics for a class of words. However, I’ll also hold that some classes of words, like kind terms, plausibly have richer lexical meanings, and so that an adequate theory of word meaning may have to combine thin and rich semantics.

Polysemy seems to be a relatively neglected phenomenon within philosophy of language as well as in many quarters in linguistic semantics. Not all variations in a word’s contribution to truth-conditional contents are to be thought as expressions of the phenomenon of polysemy, but it can be argued that many are. Polysemous terms are said to contribute senses or aspects to truth-conditional contents. In this paper, I will make use of the notion of aspect to argue that some apparently wild variations in an utterance’s truth conditions are instead quite systematic. In particular, I will focus on Travis’ much debated green leaves case and explain it in terms of the polysemy of the noun; and in particular, in terms of the as-it-is and the as-it-looks aspects associated with kind words

The by now famous exclusion problem for mental causation admits only one possible solution, as far as I can see, namely: that mental and physical properties are linked by a vertical relation. In this paper, starting from what I take to be sensible premises about properties, I will be visiting some general relations between them, in order to see whether, first, it is true that some vertical relation, other than identity, makes different sorts of causation compatible and second, whether physical and mental properties can be pairs of such relation.

Jaegwon Kim ha actualizado y resumido el problema cartesiano de la causación mental en tres ideas en conflicto: el principio deI cierre causal deI mundo fisico, la eficacia causal de la mente, y el principio de exclusión causal-explicativa (PEE). Este último principio nos dice que no puede haber dos causas/explicaciones causales que sean ambas completas e independientes para un evento determinado, salvo en casos de sobredeterminación. Aunque la forma habitual de afrontar este problema de exclusión es buscar una relación de dependencia entre las propiedades físicas y las mentales, algunosfilósofos mantienen que puede tratarse de un caso de sobredeterminación. En este artículo, analizo la posibilidad de que esto sea así.Jaegwon Kim has very nicely updated and summed up Descartes’ problem of mental causation in three conflicting ideas: the principle of the causal closure of the physical, the causal efficacy of the mental, and the principle of the causal-explanatory exclusion (PEE). This last principle tells us that there cannot be two causes/causal explanations that are both complete and independent for one event, excpt in eases of overdetermination. Though the usual way to this exclusion problem is look for a dependency relation between mental and physical properties, some philosophers hold it can be a case of overdetermination. In this paper, I analyze the chances that this could be so

According to an increasing number of authors, the best, if not the only, argument in favour of physicalism is the so-called 'overdetermination argument'. This argument, if sound, establishes that all the entities that enter into causal interactions with the physical world are physical. One key premise in the overdetermination argument is the principle of the causal closure of the physical world, said to be supported by contemporary physics. In this paper, I examine various ways in which physics may support the principle, either as a methodological guide or as depending on some other laws and principles of physics

The renewed interest in concepts and their role in psychological theorizing is partially motivated by Machery’s claim that concepts are so heterogeneous that they have no explanatory role. Against this, pluralism argues that there is multiplicity of different concepts for any given category, while hybridism argues that a concept is constituted by a rich common representation. This article aims to advance the understanding of the hybrid view of concepts. First, we examine the main arguments against hybrid concepts and conclude that, even if not successful, they challenge hybridism to find a robust criterion for concept individuation and to show an explanatory advantage for hybrid concepts. Then we propose such a criterion of individuation, which we will call ‘functional stable coactivation’. Finally, we examine the prospects of hybridism to understand what is involved in recent approaches to categorization and meaning extraction. 1 The Heterogeneity of Conceptual Representations2 Two Challenges for Hybrid Concepts: Individuation and Explanation2.1 The coordination criterion2.2 Concepts as constituents of thoughts3 Individuating Hybrids: Functional Stable Coactivation4 The Explanatory Power of Hybrid Concepts4.1 Categorization4.2 Meaning extraction4.2.1 Linguistic comprehension and rich lexical entries4.2.2 Polysemy and hybrid concepts5 Conclusion.

Jaegwon Kim ha actualizado y resumido el problema cartesiano de la causación mental en tres ideas en conflicto: el principio deI cierre causal deI mundo fisico, la eficacia causal de la mente, y el principio de exclusión causal-explicativa. Este último principio nos dice que no puede haber dos causas/explicaciones causales que sean ambas completas e independientes para un evento determinado, salvo en casos de sobredeterminación. Aunque la forma habitual de afrontar este problema de exclusión es buscar una relación de dependencia entre las propiedades físicas y las mentales, algunosfilósofos mantienen que puede tratarse de un caso de sobredeterminación. En este artículo, analizo la posibilidad de que esto sea así.Jaegwon Kim has very nicely updated and summed up Descartes’ problem of mental causation in three conflicting ideas: the principle of the causal closure of the physical, the causal efficacy of the mental, and the principle of the causal-explanatory exclusion. This last principle tells us that there cannot be two causes/causal explanations that are both complete and independent for one event, excpt in eases of overdetermination. Though the usual way to this exclusion problem is look for a dependency relation between mental and physical properties, some philosophers hold it can be a case of overdetermination. In this paper, I analyze the chances that this could be so.

Charles Travis has been forcefully arguing that meaning does not determine truth-conditions for more than two decades now. To this end, he has devised ingenious examples whereby different utterances of the same prima facie non-ambiguous and non-indexical expression type have different truth-conditions depending on the occasion on which they are delivered. However, Travis does not argue that meaning varies with circumstances; only that truth-conditions do. He assumes that meaning is a stable feature of both words and sentences. After surveying some of the explanations that semanticists and pragmaticians have produced in order to account for Travis cases, I propose a view which differs substantially from all of them. I argue that the variability in the truth-conditions that an utterance type can have is due to meaning facts alone. To support my argument, I suggest that we think about the meanings of words (in particular, the meanings of nouns) as rich conceptual structures; so rich that the way in which a property concept applies to an object concept is not determined

Recently, many philosophers and psychologists have claimed that the explanation that grounds both passivity phenomena in the cognitive domain and passivity phenomena that occur with respect to overt actions is, along broad lines, the same. Furthermore, they claim that the best account we have of such phenomena in both scenarios is the “comparator” account. However, there are reasons to doubt whether the comparator model can be exported from the realm of overt actions to the cognitive domain in general. There is a lingering worry concerning such explanations of thought insertion: the "What is compared to what?" problem. Here I examine two ways to tackle this problem. First: thought insertion consists of the misattribution of strings of inner speech which are not attenuated (thought insertion is thus another name for auditory verbal hallucinations). Second: thought insertion is misattributed inner speech which exhibits the same phenomenological characteristics as normal inner speech. After explaining the types of problem that each of these potential solutions faces, I conclude with a set of open questions that the comparator theorist has to tackle

David Wong has introduced the notion of moral ambivalence in the philosophical debate. In this paper, we focus on the nature of moral ambivalence and on its interpretation. We hold that moral ambivalence is not a phenomenon that provides evidence for relativism, as Wong claims, and as relativism is usually understood. Rather, ambivalence denotes a pluralist attitude, an attitude characterized by the thought that two different, even incompatible, courses of action can both be permissible when considered from a single perspective. We distinguish pluralism from relativism and argue that it is more appropriate to consider Wong’s position as an objectivist pluralism. We also highlight the similarity between Wong and Hume’s accounts.

According to the thesis of semantic underdetermination, most sentences of a natural language lack a definite semantic interpretation. This thesis supports an argument against the use of natural language as an instrument of thought, based on the premise that cognition requires a semantically precise and compositional instrument. In this paper we examine several ways to construe this argument, as well as possible ways out for the cognitive view of natural language in the introspectivist version defended by Carruthers. Finally, we sketch a view of the role of language in thought as a specialized tool, showing how it avoids the consequences of semantic underdetermination.

We very often discover ourselves engaged in inner speech. It seems that this kind of silent, private, speech fulfils some role in our cognition, most probably related to conscious thinking. Yet, the study of inner speech has been neglected by philosophy and psychology alike for many years. However, things seem to have changed in the last two decades. Here we review some of the most influential accounts about the phenomenology and the functions of inner speech, as well as the methodological problems that affect its study.

Physicalism is the claim that that there is nothing in the world but the physical. Philosophers who defend physicalism have to confront a well-known dilemma, known as Hempel’s dilemma, concerning the definition of ‘the physical’: if ‘the physical’ is whatever current physics says there is, then physicalism is most probably false; but if ‘the physical’ is whatever the true theory of physics would say that there is, we have that physicalism is vacuous and runs the risk of becoming trivial. This article has two parts. The first, negative, part is devoted to developing a criticism of the so-called via negativa response to Hempel’s dilemma. In the second, more substantial, part, I propose to take the first horn of Hempel’s dilemma. However, I argue for a broad construal of ‘current physics’ and characterize ‘the physical’ accordingly. The virtues of the broad characterization of ‘the physical’ are: first, it makes physicalism less likely to be false; and second, it ties our understanding of ‘the physical’ to the reasons we have for believing in physicalism. That is, it fulfills the desideratum of construing our theses according to the reasons we have to believe in them