•  1293
    The claim that knowledge is grounded on a basic, non-inferentially grasped set of principles, which seems to be Aristotle’s view, in contemporary epistemology can be seen as part of a wider foundationalist account. Foundationalists assume that there must be some premise-beliefs at the basis of every felicitous reasoning which cannot be themselves in need of justification and may not be challenged. They provide justification for truths based on these premises, which Aristotle unusually call princ…Read more
  •  310
    In recent decades, several theories have claimed to explain the teleological causality of organisms as a function of self-organising and self-producing processes. The most widely cited theories of this sort are variations of autopoiesis, originally introduced by Maturana and Varela. More recent modifications of autopoietic theory have focused on system organisation, closure of constraints and autonomy to account for organism teleology. This article argues that the treatment of teleology in autop…Read more
  •  63
    Do Expectations Have Time Span?
    Axiomathes 23 (4): 665-681. 2013.
    If it is possible to think that human life is temporal as a whole, and we can make sense of Wittgenstein’s claim that the psychological phenomena called ‘dispositions’ do not have genuine temporal duration on the basis of a distinction between dispositions and other mental processes, we need a compelling account of how time applies to these dispositions. I undertake this here by examining the concept of expectation, a disposition with a clear nexus to time by the temporal point at which the expe…Read more
  •  57
    Psychology and Mind in Aquinas
    History of Psychiatry 16 (3): 291-310. 2005.
    This article stresses the main lines of Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy on the nature of the body-soul union. Following Aristotle, Aquinas sees the soul as a ‘principle of life’ which is intimately bound to a body. Together they form a noncontingent composition. In addition, the distinctive feature of the human soul is rationality, which implies that a human needs a mind to be what it is. However, this is not to say, as Descartes proposes, that the reason that I am a human is that I am fully self-co…Read more
  •  51
    ‘I Can’ vs. ‘I Want’: What’s Missing from Gallagher’s Picture of Non-reductive Cognitive Science
    with Javier Sánchez-Cañizares and Nathaniel F. Barrett
    Australasian Philosophical Review 2 (2): 209-213. 2018.
    We support the development of non-reductive cognitive science and the naturalization of phenomenology for this purpose, and we agree that the ‘relational turn’ defended by Gallagher is a necessary step in this direction. However, we believe that certain aspects of his relational concept of nature need clarification. In particular, Gallagher does not say whether or how teleology, affect, and other value-related properties of life and mind can be naturalized within this framework. In this paper, w…Read more
  •  43
    Conocimiento y verdad
    Diccionario Interdisciplinar Austral. 2017.
    El término “conocimiento” y la disciplina filosófica que lo estudia —la teoría del conocimiento— han experimentado notables cambios hasta el presente. La teoría clásica concibe el conocimiento en íntima unión con la verdad, como una captación intelectual de realidades necesarias e inmutables. Con la llegada de la modernidad, la difusión de un clima escéptico puso en duda esta pretensión, cuestionando la aptitud misma del conocimiento para la verdad. Esta duda ha presidido toda la modernidad hast…Read more
  •  41
    Givens and Foundations in Aristotle’s Epistemology
    Studia Neoaristotelica 11 (2): 205-231. 2014.
    Aristotle’s epistemology has sometimes been associated with foundationalism, the theory according to which a small set of premise-beliefs that are deductively valid or inductively strong provide justification for many other truths. In contemporary terms, Aristotle’s foundationalism could be compared with what is sometimes called “classical foundationalism”. However, as I will show, the equivalent to basic beliefs in Aristotle’s epistemology are the so-called first principles or “axiómata”. These…Read more
  •  35
    Wittgenstein’s concept of intentionality is strongly connected with his views on language and thinking. Although his views progressively developed over time, Wittgenstein came to realise that intentionality is a property of thought that can only be accounted for in the context of ordinary language. On this basis, the view of intentionality that regards it as a natural property, or as a scientifically examinable property that can be found in the natural world is hostage to a number of paradoxes, …Read more
  •  32
    Biology and Subjectivity Philosophical Contributions to Non-reductive Neuroscience (edited book)
    with José Ignacio Murillo and Nathaniel F. Barrett
    Springer Verlag. 2016.
    In the middle of the twentieth century, Wittgenstein warned that “the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws…leads…into complete darkness” (1958, p. 18). At the time, few philosophers and even fewer scientists were prepared to heed his warning. A half-century later, however, the reductive method of science—the method famously defined by Descartes, brilliantly exemplified by Newtonian physics, and long upheld as the gold s…Read more
  •  27
    La Metafísica de la mente de A. Kenny: 25 años después
    Scientia et Fides 2 (2): 93-128. 2014.
    A. Kenny’s Metaphysics of Mind: 25 years later: To mark the 25th anniversary of A. Kenny’s The Metaphysics of Mind, this article discusses some of the central arguments of this book, in particular, it discusses Descartes’ dualism, the notion of soul or Aristotle’s psychê, human and animal language, voluntary action, the self, the mind-brain relation, thinking and intentionality, and determinism and free will. The author holds that, although Kenny’s book offers valid and substantial arguments ins…Read more
  •  18
    This paper deals with three main issues of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language: the theory of logical forms, the theory of objects in the Tractatus and his criticisms of the sense-data theory. Wittgenstein’s theses are here compared with those of Leo-nardo Polo’s philosophy, and especially, with some Polo’s remarks on the making of a transcendental language, nominalism and the concept of knowledge in Wittgen-stein’s thought.
  •  18
    Some philosophers have argued that Wittgenstein’s hinges, the centrepiece of his book On Certainty, are the “ungrounded ground” on which knowledge rests. It is usually understood by this that hinges provide a foundation for knowledge without being themselves epistemically warranted. In fact, Wittgenstein articulates that hinges lack any truth-value and are neither justified nor unjustified. This inevitably places them wholly outside the categorial framework of JTB epistemology. What I call the “…Read more
  •  15
    Does Autogenic Semiosis Underpin Minimal Cognition?
    Biosemiotics 14 (3): 617-624. 2021.
    Minimal cognition is an emerging field of research in the context of the life-mind continuity thesis. It stems from the idea that life and mind are strongly continuous, involving the same basic set of organisational principles. Minimal cognition has been sometimes regarded as the analysis of the minimum requirements for the emergence of cognitive phenomena. In the target article, Deacon describes the emergence of the autogenic system as an interpreting system that displays the simplest form of i…Read more
  •  14
  •  13
    Prudence, Rules, and Regulative Epistemology
    Philosophies 8 (5): 91. 2023.
    Following Ballantyne, we can distinguish between descriptive and regulative epistemology. Whereas descriptive epistemology analyzes epistemic categories such as knowledge, justified belief, or evidence, regulative epistemology attempts to guide our thinking. In this paper, we argue that regulative epistemologists should focus their attention on what we call epistemic prudence. Our argument proceeds as follows: First, we lay out an objection to virtue-based regulative epistemology that is analogo…Read more
  •  10
    Some philosophers have argued that Wittgenstein’s hinges, the centrepiece of his book On Certainty, are the “ungrounded ground” on which knowledge rests. It is usually understood by this that hinges provide a foundation for knowledge without being themselves epistemically warranted. In fact, Wittgenstein articulates that hinges lack any truth-value and are neither justified nor unjustified. This inevitably places them wholly outside the categorial framework of JTB epistemology. What I call the “…Read more
  •  9
    Relación de obras publicadas e inéditos de Leonardo Polo
    with Salvador Piá
    Anuario Filosófico 323-331. 1996.
  •  5
  •  4
    In memoriam Ángel Luis González (1948-2016)
    Anuario Filosófico 423-433. 2016.
  •  4
    Book Z of the Metaphysics of Aristotle focuses on the idea of the subject, which is one of the senses in which the term “substance” is used. Z is an important book, because it establishes how substance relates to change and matter. One school of interpretation of Z considers one sense of form to be prior to and more important than matter, and has proposed a different reading of the book. I will call this the “formalistic” approach to substance. Supporters of this school hold that the form compri…Read more
  •  3
    La plenitud de identidad real
    Anuario Filosófico 615-625. 1996.
    The purpose of this paper is to study Leonardo Polo's conception of the principle of identity. This identity is also called Origin; however, an adequate understanding of that expression requires a careful study of the way man comes to be aware of it.