Claudio Costa

For fifty years the philosophy of language has been experiencing a stalemating conflict between the old descriptive and internalist orthodoxy (advocated by philosophers such as Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Strawson, and Searle) and the new causal-referential and externalist orthodoxy (mainly endorsed by Kripke, Putnam, and Kaplan). Although the latter is dominant among specialists, the former retains a discomforting intuitive plausibility. The ultimate goal of this book is to overcome the stalemate by means of a non-naïve return to the old descriptivist-internalist orthodoxy. Concerning proper names, this means introducing second-order description-rules capable of systemizing descriptions of the proper name’s cluster to provide us with the right changeable conditions of satisfaction for its application. Such rules can explain how a proper name can become a rigid designator while remaining descriptive, disarming Kripke's and Donnellan’s main objections. In the last chapter, this new perspective is extended to indexicals in a discussion of David Kaplan’s and John Perry’s views, and of general terms, in a discussion of Hilary Putnam’s externalism.

My aim in this paper is to briefly present the essentials of my reformulation of the old cluster theory of proper names. Essential to this reformulation is the introduction of a meta-descriptivist rule which establishes a cluster’s main descriptions and the manner in which they must be satisfied in order to allow the application of a proper name. Using this rule, we can explain the informative content of proper names, understand why they are rigid, in contrast to descriptions, and give more detailed answers to the counterexamples to descriptivism.

o problema dos universais pode ser posta sob a forma de uma pergunta muito simples: "Existem universaisT' Essa perguuta supOe que tenhamos claro 0 que entendemos por universais. Um bom caminho para se chegara talescJarecimento econcebe-Ios, como PIat40 mesmo 0 fazia, como os objetos a serem designados por termos gerais em sua forma no.l' ,-~ n....&:cados " -' '--"" ...c. •..IA-' • " podemnuna JZuua. .r.~ como ...... UUUI, ...... lUOl;;llUCO a... , tomar a forma de DOmes como "0 bern. ", "0 identico ", 0 que supostamente os evidenciacomo termos designadores de universais. Com isso a pergunta "Existem universaisT' pode ser mais precisamente formulada como: "Existem designata prOprios para as nossas nominaJiza~ de termos gerais r Para essa pergunta podemos ter, a grosso modo, duas respostas: "sim", que ea resposta do realista; "0.10", que ea resposta do nominaJista. Essas respostas definem, nIo importa 0 que se aerescente, as duas altemativas basicas

Este artigo trata do problema da epistemologia do mental. Co-mo é possível nosso conhecimento de nossos conteúdos fenomenais, como é possível nosso conhecimento dos conteúdos fenomenais de ou-tras mentes? A resposta consiste no regresso a velhas idéias, como a do conhecimento de outras mentes por analogia e de nosso conhecimento por introspecção de nossas próprias mentes, embora colocando-os den-tro de um referencial teórico e crítico mais sofisticado.This paper deals with the epistemological problem of the knowledge of the mental. How is it possible our knowledge of the phe-nomenal contents of other minds? The answer is to regress to old ideas, like that of the knowledge of other minds by analogy and our knowledge by introspection concerning our own minds, although setting them within a more sophisticated theoretic and critical background

O trabalho apresenta os três principais pontos de vista éticos que são predominantes, hoje, nas discussões da filosofia moral, a saber, a ética de virtudes, a deontologia e o conseqüencialismo. Ele revela os principais traços de cada teoria apontando os seus pontos positivos e negativos. Posteriormente, ele argumentaem favor de um enfoque conseqüencialista, isto é, por uma forma particular de utilitarismo.The paper presents the three main ethical views, namely virtue ethics, deontology andconsequencialism, which are predominant in moral philosophy nowadays. It sorts out the main features ofeach theory pointing to the main advantages as well as to the main disadvantages of each approach.Afterwards, it argues for a consequentialist account of morals, that is, a particular form of utilitarianism