Laura Duhau Girola

In this paper I discuss Heck’s (2007) new argument for content dualism. This argument is based on the claim that conceptual states, but not perceptual states, meet Evans’s Generality Constraint. Heck argues that this claim, together with the idea that the kind of content we should attribute to a mental state depends on which generalizations the state satisfies, implies that conceptual states and perceptual states have different kinds of contents. I argue, however, that it is unlikely that there is a plausible reading of the Generality Constraint under which it is non-trivially true both that conceptual states meet it and that perceptual states do not. Therefore, the soundness of Heck’s argument is dubious.

In this paper I argue, against recent claims by Bermúdez and Toribio, that within the debate about whether perceptual experiences are nonconceptual, ‘state nonconceptualism’ can be a coherent and plausible position. In particular, I explain that state nonconceptualism and content nonconceptualism, when understood in their most plausible and motivated form, presuppose different notions of content. I argue that state nonconceptualism can present a plausible way of unpacking the claim that perceptual experiences are nonconceptual once the notion of content it should presuppose is taken into account; and once this notion of content is clearly distinguished from the one usually presupposed by content nonconceptualism, the criticisms that Bermúdez and Toribio place against state nonconceptualism become ineffective.

Dentro de las posturas que consideran que los animales tienen estatus moral, hay dos tipos de posturas: las que consideran que los animales tienen el mismo estatus moral que los humanos, y las que consideran que los animales tienen menos estatus moral que los humanos. En este artículo argumento que ambos tipos de posturas son práctica y teóricamente equivalentes. En primer lugar, argumentaré que dichas posturas no hacen ninguna diferencia práctica, en tanto desde ellas pueden justificarse los mismos juicios morales. En segundo lugar, argumentaré que, aunque superficialmente pareciera que los mismos juicios morales se justifican de distinta manera desde cada tipo de postura, haciendo un análisis más profundo puede verse que esto no es el caso. De este modo, tampoco hay una diferencia teórica sustancial entre los dos tipos de posturas. Por lo tanto, estos dos tipos de posturas no constituyen diferentes opciones en la defensa de los derechos de los animales.

Since its introduction by Evans, the generality constraint has been invoked by various philosophers for different purposes. Our purpose here is, first, to clarify what precisely the GC states by way of an interpretive framework, the GC Schema, and second, to demonstrate in terms of this framework some problems that arise if one invokes the GC without clearly specifying an appropriate interpretation. By utilizing the GC Schema these sorts of problems can be avoided, and we thus propose it as a tool to facilitate argumentation that appeals to the GC.