Dan López de Sa

Consider a cat on a mat. On the one hand, there seems to be just one cat, but on the other there seem to be many things with as good a claim as anything in the vicinity to being a cat. Hence, the problem of the many. In his ‘Many, but Almost One,’ David Lewis offered two solutions. According to the first, only one of the many is indeed a cat, although it is indeterminate exactly which one. According to the second, the many are all cats, but they are almost identical to each other, and hence they are almost one. For Lewis, the two solutions do not compete with each other but are mutually complementary, as each one can assist the other. This paper has two aims: to give some reasons against the first of these two solutions, but then to defend the second as a self-standing solution from Lewis’s considerations to the contrary.

We say that each social group is identical to its members. The group just is them; they just are the group. This view of groups as pluralities has tended to be swiftly rejected by social metaphysicians, if considered at all, mainly on the basis of two objections. First, it is argued that groups can change in membership, while pluralities cannot. Second, it is argued that different groups can have exactly the same members, while different pluralities cannot. We rebut these objections, and argue that our plural view is superior to alternative reductive proposals which would identify social groups with the sets or fusions of their members. Finally we deal with some further potential challenges for the view of groups as pluralities. Thus we aim to establish it as a serious contender in the metaphysics of groups.

This chapter defends a version of the indexical contextualist form of moderate relativism: the attempt to endorse appearances of faultless disagreement within the framework in which a sentence at a context at the index of the context determines its appropriate truth-value. Many object that any such an indexical proposal would fail to account for intuitions of (genuine) disagreement as revealed in ordinary disputes in the domain. The defence from this objection exploits presuppositions of commonality to the effect that the addressee is relevantly like the speaker of the context.

Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (2006) argues against attempts to preserve the entailment principle (or a restriction of it) while avoiding the explosion of truthmakers for necessities and truthmaker triviality. In doing so, he both defends the disjunction thesis--if something makes true a disjunctive truth, then it makes true one of its disjuncts--, and rejects the conjunction thesis--if something makes tue a conjunctive truth, then it makes true each of its conjuncts. In my discussion, I provide plausible counterexamples to the disjunction thesis, and contend that Rodriguez-Pereyra's general defence of it fails. Then I defend the conjunction thesis from Rodriguez-Pereyra's case against it.

According to Jackson, Pettit & Smith , “restricted particularism” is not affected by their supervenience-based consideration against particularism but, they claim, suffer from a different difficulty, roughly that it would violate the platitude about moral argument that, in debating controversial moral issues, a central role is played by various similarity claims. I present a defense of “restricted particularism” from this objection, which accommodates the platitudinous character of the claim that ordinary participants in conversations concerning the evaluative are committed to descriptive similarities and differences being relevant in the way described by Jackson, Pettit and Smith, to moral similarities and differences. My defense exploits a presuppositional component congenial to response-dependent proposals such as Lewis’s

In the recent literature on contextualism and relativism, one often finds disputes as to which kind of consideration would be relevant for positing a feature of a context as a parameter in the ‘‘circumstance of evaluation’: via the presence of an operator in the language which shifts that feature (Stanley) or by being a feature of a context with respect to which the truth of ‘‘propositions’’ expressed in the context is relative (McFarlane). This kind of dispute arises from two different independent roles that elements in ‘‘circumstances of evaluation’’ are sometimes assumed to have. I distinguish indices from points of evaluation, and motivate its significance in the debate.

There are certain metaphysically interesting arguments ‘from vagueness’, for unrestricted mereological composition and for four-dimensionalism, which involve a claim to the effect that idioms for unrestricted quantification are precise. An elaboration of Lewis’ argument for this claim, which assumes the view of vagueness as semantic indecision, is presented. It is argued that the argument also works according to other views on the nature of vagueness, which also require for an expression to be vague that there are different admissible alternatives of the relevant sort, such as epistemicism, as defended by Williamson. Recent attempts to resist the argument are discussed and rejected.

Reclamation is usually taken to be the phenomenon wherein in-groups employ a slur to express pride, foster camaraderie, or subvert discriminatory structures. We provide data showing that, under some special circumstances, out-groups successfully reclaim slurs too. Thus, the mainstream restriction to in-groups is merely an approximation of the correct extension of the phenomenon – of who does actually reclaim slurs. Removing any such stipulative restriction opens a path towards further theorizing into the nature of reclamation.

According to the view that Peacocke elaborates in A Study of Concepts (1992), a concept can be individuated by providing the conditions a thinker must satisfy in order to possess that concept. Hence possessions conditions for concepts should be specifiable in a way that respects a non-circularity constraint. In a more recent paper “Implicit Conceptions, Understanding and Rationality” (1998a) Peacocke argues against his former view, in the light of the phenomenon of rationally accepting principles which do not follow from what the thinker antecedently accepts. In this paper I defend the view of the book from his more recent criticisms, claiming that the noncircularity constraint should be respected, and that Peacocke's more recent insights could be accommodated in the framework of his former theory of concepts

This paper is in five sections. In the first one, I summarize some views on truthmaking I will be presupposing, emphasizing however the various controversies on which I will remain neutral. In section two and three, I present the characterization of a response-dependent property. In section four, I present two ways in which a property can be response-dependent, in the characterized sense. In final section five, I present how these correspond to different versions of moderate relativism, namely indexical and nonindexical contextualism. Thus the view presented here contrasts not only with pluralism about truth, but also with radical relativism about truth, as recently defended by John MacFarlane.

In recent discussions on contextualism and relativism, some have suggested that audience-sensitivity motivates a content relativist version of radical relativism, according to which a sentence as said at a context can have different contents with respect to the different perspectives from where it is assessed. The first aim of this note is to illustrate how this is not so. According to Egan himself, the phenomenon motivates at least refinement of the characteristic moderate contention that features of a single context determine the appropriate truth-value of the sentence. The second aim of this note is to explore how this may not be so.

What are things like the Supreme Court? Gabriel Uzquiano has defended that they are groups, entities which are somehow composed of members (at certain times) but which, unlike sets (or pluralities), allow for fluctuation in membership. The main alternative holds that 'the Supreme Court' refers (at any time) to the set (or plurality) of their members (at the time). Uzquiano motivates his view by posing a metaphysical puzzle for this reductive alternative. I argue that a parallel reasoning would also find a corresponding 'puzzle' in the case of singular terms like 'The Chief Supreme Court Justice'.

Th e simple proposal about rigidity for predicates can be stated thus: a predicate is rigid if its canonical nominalization signifi es the same property across the different possible worlds. I have tried elsewhere to defend such a proposal from the trivialization problem, according to which any predicate whatsoever would turn out to be rigid. Benjamin Schnieder (2005) aims fi rst to rebut my argument that some canonical nominalizations can be fl exible, then to provide fi ve arguments to the eff ect that they are all rigid, and fi nally to propose a general explanation of why they are all rigid. I show fi rst why my argument has not been rebutted, then why Schnieder’s fi ve arguments for their rigidity all fail, and fi nally why the alleged “explanation” cannot be such, as the facts alluded to are neutral with respect to the rigidity or fl exibility of the nominalizations.

According to the simple proposal about rigidity for predicates, a predicate is rigid (roughly) if it signifies the same property across the relevant worlds. Recent critics claim that this suffers from a trivialization problem: any predicate whatsoever would turn out to be trivially rigid, according to the proposal. In this paper a corresponding "problem" for ordinary singular terms is considered. A natural solution is provided by intuitions concerning the actual truth-value of identity statements involving them. The simple proposal for predicates is then defended, by exploiting corresponding intuitions concerning statements involving their nominalizations, in an analogous manner.

Some philosophers seem to think that borderline cases provide further cases of apparent faultless disagreement. My aim here is to argue against such a suggestion. I claim that with respect to borderline cases, people typically do not respond by taking a view—unlike what is the case in genuine cases of apparent faultless disagreement. I argue that my claim is indeed respected and actually accounted for by paradigm cases of semantic and epistemic views on the nature of vagueness. And I also argue that my claim turns out to be, initial appearances notwithstanding, compatible with other claims in the literature—to the effect that, in appropriate circumstances, there are indeed, or there might well be, “macho,” admissible, forced, and hesitant responses to borderline cases.

The paper proposes and defends the following characterization of response dependent property: a property is response-dependent iff there is a response-dependence biconditional for a concept signifying it which holds in virtue of the nature of the property. Finding out whether a property is such is to a large extent a posteriori matter. Finally, colors are response dependent: they are essentially tied to issuing the relevant experiences, so that having those experiences does give access to their, dispositional, nature. Finally, some important contrary views are critically discussed in the paper.

In recent years, some people have held that a radical relativist position is defensible in some philosophically interesting cases, including future contingents, predicates of personal taste, evaluative predicates in general, epistemic modals, and knowledge attributions. The position is frequently characterized as denying that utterance-truth is absolute. I argue that this characterization is inappropriate, as it requires a metaphysical substantive contention with which moderate views as such need not be committed. Before this, I also offer a more basic, admittedly less exciting alternative characterization of the position, in terms of departing from the Kaplan–Lewis–Stalnaker two-dimensional framework.

To assess—from a qualitative perspective—the perceptions and attitudes of Spanish rehabilitation professionals (e.g. rehabilitation doctors, speech therapists, physical therapists) about Brain–Computer Interface (BCI) technology. A qualitative, exploratory and descriptive study was carried out by means of interviews and analysis of textual content with mixed generation of categories and segmentation into frequency of topics. We present the results of three in-depth interviews that were conducted with Spanish speaking individuals who had previously completed a survey as part of a larger, 3-country/language, survey on BCI perceptions. 11 out of 15 of these Spanish respondents (survey) either strongly or somewhat accept the use of BCI in rehabilitation therapy. However, the results of our three in-depth interviews show how, due to a strong inertia of attitudes and perceptions about BCI technology, most professionals feel reluctant to use BCI technology in their daily practice (interview).

In this article I propose to analyze the link between two unlike authors both in the method and in the object of his investigations. The above mentioned link centres that both approach the problem of the administration of the life, in such a way that I will emphasize that both in arendt and in Foucault there is implicit the “political discovery of the life”. To account for this, this reflection is structured in three stages: I first outline the problem of “biopolitics” within modernity also propose the main arguments in arendt and Foucault lead to «political discovery of the life»; after I expose, without pretending to exhaust them, some affinities between both authors face the issue of “biopolitics”; finally, and thirdly, pointed strategies that French thinker like German-Jewish thinker display face increasing life management: «the aesthetics of existence» and «political singling».

Este artículo tiene por propósito analizar el poder en Michel Foucault, entendiendo por este un concepto operativo, esto es no temático, irreductible a una mera teoría. Propongo leer el poder en términos de un caleidoscopio que en el autor francés es un dispositivo móvil en el que el cuerpo y la ley, la vida y la muerte, entran en una oscilación o pendularidad incesante. Por lo tanto, cuando se afirma que el poder es un «caleidoscopio magnífico» no es en tanto forma de representación, pues ello supondría una concepción sustancialista del mismo, sino en su “funcionamiento real”. Para llevar esto a buen puerto, establezco dos momentos: en el primero, presento las concepciones tradicionales del poder a las que el filósofo francés asesta un fuerte golpe. En el segundo, planteo, al hilo de entender el poder como caleidoscopio, cinco notas características de éste.

I reconstruct Lukács’s immanent critique of German Idealism, found within his essay ‘Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat’, in order to foreground his philosophical reflection on the concepts of mediation, logic, genesis and praxis. I situate this reflection within his philosophy of praxis as a whole before highlighting the dialectical development of these terms within it. They are posited initially as abstract, methodological demands and are subsequently concretised and enriched, via Lukács’s critical evaluation of the antinomies he discovers in Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. My reconstruction is both exegetical and critical. I demonstrate that Lukács’s concept of praxis is explicitly intended to both bear the weight of Hegel’s Absolute and overcome it. On this basis, I propose a novel immanent critique of Lukács’s philosophy of praxis, suggesting that while Lukács wishes his concept of praxis to express a living, present and ontologically novel truth, his insight is won – in the fashion of Hegelian philosophy – after the historical event upon which it is built, as a philosophical reflection. Lukács’s self-contradiction is that while he regards his philosophy of praxis as having overcome speculative, Hegelian philosophy, in fact, the position he generates remains firmly but unconsciously within it. Consequently, Lukács’s philosophy of praxis possesses a theological dimension and must be regarded as an example of the kind of ‘conceptual mythology’ he sought to overcome.

According to Jackson, Pettit & Smith, “restricted particularism” is not affected by their supervenience-based consideration against particularism but, they claim, suffer from a different difficulty, roughly that it would violate the platitude about moral argument that, in debating controversial moral issues, a central role is played by various similarity claims. I present a defense of “restricted particularism” from this objection, which accommodates the platitudinous character of the claim that ordinary participants in conversations concerning the evaluative are committed to descriptive similarities and differences being relevant in the way described by Jackson, Pettit and Smith, to moral similarities and differences. My defense exploits a presuppositional component congenial to response-dependent proposals such as Lewis’s