Alexandre Fonseca

I present a mechanistic explanation consistent with reduction-ism in economics. I claim that pure individualist explanations are, prima facie, a type of mechanistic reduction in economics or the social sciences. Economists may acknowledge the reality of other entities embedded in their explanations since the external stimuli that impinge on agents’ minds are correlated and, therefore, understandable in terms of agents’ interpretation. Positive reductive explanations enable a unified causal principle shared amongst dissimilar agents to explain macro phenomena and can be applied to theoretical and/or empirical models.

In this article, I contest Brian Epstein’s argument (2014) against the applicability of global supervenience to relate micro and macroeconomic properties. Epstein rejects supervenience via a causal-chain relation inside the macroeconomic set in his criticism. Accordingly, the rise of the macro set is fixed by a weather event without any mediation from the realm of microeconomics. As it stands, this idea would demonstrate the autonomy of macroeconomics from microeconomics. However, as I intend to argue, in Epstein’s weather-cases scenarios, the corresponding macroeconomic sets are fixed by their micro bases that codify weather events and thereby fix the macro. This is so because the microeconomic base must include institutional facts; they are as much necessary as the facts about people’s conditions. In so doing, we re-establish bottom–top determination from the micro to the macro, rescuing the applicability of global supervenience.

Alguns autores têm afirmado que o externalismo semântico de Putnam implica em um tipo de essencialismo que não descreve adequadamente a prática científica, já que as referências dos termos que designam espécies naturais seriam determinadas por características essenciais dos exemplares que compõem cada uma daquelas espécies. Essas essências seriam as verdadeiras responsáveis pela identidade das espécies naturais. Uma vez conhecidas tais essências, estaríamos aptos a identificar tais espécies em qualquer mundo possível, visto que suas essências permaneceriam estáveis mesmo diante de mudanças nas descrições de outros de seus atributos. Logo, o externalismo semântico parece inadequado para explicar o desenvolvimento da ciência. Ademais, os critérios de identificação de espécies químicas e biológicas não são fixados da maneira proposta por Putnam. Este artigo apresenta essas objeções ao externalismo semântico de Putnam e formula uma resposta, afirmando que Putnam não postulou uma tese própria sobre critérios de identidade para espécies naturais. Sustenta-se que as menções de Putnam a postulados científicos são melhor compreendidas se interpretadas como elementos adicionais para a determinação das referências de termos que designam espécies naturais.Abstract:Some authors have argued that Putnam’s semantic externalism entails a kind of essentialism which does not describe scientific practice adequately, since the references of the terms that designate natural kinds would be determined by essential traits of the specimens which make up those natural kinds. Those essences would account for the identity of natural kinds. Once such essences are known, we would be able to identify natural kinds in anypossible world, since such essences would remain stable even in the face of abrupt changes in the descriptions of other kinds’ attributes. Therefore, semantic externalism seems inadequate for accounting the development of science. Furthermore, the identification criteria for chemical and biological species are not determined in the mannerproposed by Putnam. This paper presents those criticisms to Putnam’s semantic externalism and formulates a reply, stating that Putnam did not posit a thesis on identity criteria for natural kinds. His Putnam’ references to scientific postulates are better understood when interpreted as additional elements for the determination of thereferences of natural kind terms.Keywords: Essentialism; Reference; Necessity; Natural kinds; Meaning; Hilary Putnam.

Near the end of the last century, some legal philosophers adapted the so called causal theories of reference to solve internal problems in legal theory. Among those philosophers, Nicos Stavropoulos adjusted Hilary Putnam’s semantic externalism claiming it as a better philosophical view than legal positivism defended by Herbert Hart. According to him, what determines the correct application of a legal rule must be determined by the objects themselves. In that case, what determines the reference of legal terms is an issue to be solved by the best theory developed. However, this is not the case necessarily: Hart’s model can reach to the same conclusions as an externalist adjustment of law. Furthermore, the epistemic criteria required by Putnam to deal with value judgements are also acceptable in a positivist model. This paper presents the central thesis of Putnam’s semantic externalism, with Stavropoulos adaptations to law, and defends that Hart’s approach to deal with legal rules and Putnam’s approach to deal with language rules can converge.