Antonio Ramos-Díaz

This article advances a categorial challenge to physicalistic versions of naturalized epistemology as an account of logico-mathematical knowledge and practice. It argues that, qua physically constituted, any putative rule-governed system is logico-mathematically indeterminate: physical facts are systematically insufficient to fix a unique logico-mathematical (L–M) profile to the exclusion of incompossible alternatives. Building on a Kripkean line of thought concerning the truthmakers of rule attributions and rule applications, the paper develops the point through a Stabler-style mechanism allegedly computing a function f over the natural numbers, and argues that the same finite physical profile equally supports an incompossible alternative function g that coincides with f on all physically realizable cases. The result is that the physical facts fail to determine whether the mechanism determinately and objectively implements any unique or definite L–M rule at all. Crucially, the indeterminacy-generating features exploited by the Stabler-style case are structural: they are characteristic of any finite physical mechanism. Attempts to restore determinacy via counterfactual robustness, normal-operation conditions, or supervenience are argued to be question-begging, since they covertly presuppose precisely the rule whose objective implementation is at issue. The upshot is a dilemma: either determinate L–M rule-following is possible, in which case physicalistic NE is false; or physicalistic NE is true, in which case determinate L–M rule-following (and knowledge) is impossible.

The storage problem is the problem of explaining how concepts could be stored in the mind if the mind is something material. David Oderberg has defended the immateriality of the human intellect on the basis of the storage problem. The general idea of the argument is that concepts possess features that make them categorially incapable of being stored in any material locus. Yet, they are stored in the mind. Hence, the mind is immaterial. In this paper I propose that Oderberg’s argument cannot be accepted. First, I argue that on one reading the argument leads to absurdity and is inconsistent with Oderberg’s Thomism. Secondly, I argue that even on another, weaker reading of the argument, Oderberg has no plausible and adequate grounds for accepting it, and the grounds he does provide in favor of the argument seem in tension with Thomism.

El presente estudio trata de las influencias y difusión de la fenomenología en España desde su introducción en 1913 hasta 1929, año en que se hacen explícitas las primeras críticas y comienza a hacerse perceptible la influencia de Heidegger, que a partir de ese momento ocupará el primer plano de la atención filosófica. Aun reconociendo el papel central de Ortega en este episodio, se hace ver la existencia de otros nombres significativos, del mismo modo que Husserl no es el único fenomenólogo relevante