2 Encontro Nacional de Filosofia Analtica

2nd National Meeting for Analytic Philosophy

Sob os auspcios da Sociedade Europeia de Filosofia Analtica (SEFA)
Under the auspices of the European Society for Analytical Philosophy (ESAP)

Porto, October 7-9 2004

Livro de Resumos/ Book of Abstracts

Comisso Cientfica / Scientific Commitee

Joo Branquinho, FLUL
Joo Sgua, FCSH-UNL
Henrique Jales Ribeiro, FLUC
Sofia Miguens, FLUP
Jos Manuel Curado, UM

Comisso Organizadora / Organizing Commitee

Sofia Miguens, FLUP
Joo Alberto Pinto, FLUP
Carlos E.E. Mauro, FLUP

Realizado em / Held at
Faculdade de Letras Universidade do Porto
Via Panormica s/n
4150-564 PORTO
PORTUGAL

Patrocinado por / Sponsored by

Universidade do Porto
Departamento de Filosofia (FLUP) e
Gabinete de Filosofia Moderna e Contempornea do
Instituto de Filosofia (Unidade I&D 502 FCT)
ndice

Invited Speakers
So Lus Castro - 3
Fernando Ferreira - 3
Diego Marconi - 3
Peter Simons - 4
______________

Andr Barata - 5
Christopher Bartel - 6
Michael Bloome-Tillman - 7
Alfredo Dinis - 9
MJ Encinas - 10
Joo Fonseca - 12
Michael Frauchiger - 13
Pedro Galvo - 14
Marcin Gokieli - 15
Jorge Gonalves - 16
Adriana Silva Graa - 16
Tim Heysse - 19
Wolfram Hinzer - 19
Andrea Iacona - 21
Andreas Lind - 21
Antnio Lopes - 22
Pedro Madeira - 24
Antnio Marques - 25
Teresa Marques - 26
Dina Mendona - 27
Sofia Miguens - 28
Ins Morais 30
Vtor Moura - 31
Daniele Moyal-Sharrock - 31
Desidrio Murcho - 32
Christian Onof - 33
Elisa Paganini - 34
Charles Pelling - 36
Philip Percival - 36
Christian Piller - 38
Manuel de Pinedo - 39
Lus Rodrigues - 41
Gil Santos - 42
Pedro Santos - 43
Ricardo Santos - 44
Daniele Sgaravati - 45
Lusa Couto Soares - 47
Clia Teixeira - 48
Joo de Fernandes Teixeira - 48
Alberto Voltolini - 49
Gregory Wheeler & Lus Moniz Pereira - 50
Harry Witzthum - 52
Andrew Woodfield - 53
____________

Lista de Contatos 56

2
 Invited Speakers

Explicit vs. Implicit Phonological Awareness: A Case for Embodied Cognition?

So Lus Castro
FPCE Universidade do Porto
slcastro@psi.up.pt

Phonological awareness allows the listener to divide the speech chain into
segments. What is the relationship of these segments to the units presumably involved
in the processing of spoken language? Can we define specific formats for the processing
units of spoken language? Moreover, is the idea of processing unit a necessary, or useful
notion? Cognitive psychologists addressing issues such as this are bound to use the well
known divide-to-conquer strategy. This allows them to treat problems experimentally,
and to provide tentative answers that are backed up by empirical evidence. Here, as a
case study of the general problem of what is the link between knowledge and
representation, I will examine experimental and theoretical work on phonological
awareness, and will discuss how it leads us into the view of cognition as a task-
dependent activity of the mind-brain system.

Circumscribing the natural numbers

Fernando Ferreira
Faculdade de Cincias da Universidade de Lisboa
ferferr@cii.fc.ul.pt

In the last pages of a paper published in 1931, Rudolf Carnap takes up the problem of
the seeming circularity of impredicative definitions. He reacts against Frank Ramsey's proposed
solution because of the "conceptual absolutism" (platonism) underlying it. Carnap's own
solution hinges on a distinction between two kinds of generality: generality in the sense of
"every single one" and generality in the sense of logical validity through proof. Only in the
latter sense of generality are impredicative definitions legitimized without falling into Ramsey's
absolutism. We discuss Carnap's solution and draw three conclusions. First, that on Carnap's
view of generality, second-order sentences are apt for justification only. This view brings about
a change of the logic, squarely on account of impredicativity. Second, that in the specialized
arena of first-order arithmetic, with the notion of natural number envisaged through the Frege-
Dedekind definition, classical logic nonetheless prevails. Third, that Carnap's position is, in the
end, not able to vindicate its stated purpose, viz. classical second-order arithmetic.

True in a World
Diego Marconi
Univ de Turim, Itlia
marconi@cisi.unito.it

Richard Rorty claimed that in a world without minds there would be no truths. This can
be taken as the seemingly trivial contention that, if truth bearers are mind-dependent entities
such as statements or beliefs, then in a world without minds there would be no true truth
bearers (for there would be no truth bearers whatever). Even this, however, could turn out to
have controversial implications: it could be incompatible with the necessary truth of
(Den) p if and only if it is true that p.

3
 For in a world without minds there might be (e.g.) stars: thus there would be stars in
such a world, though it would not be true that there are stars, contrary to (Den). However, this
follows only if A is true in world w entails A exists in w. But the phrase true in a world w
may be given two readings. In the first reading (a), a truth bearer A is true in w is w is such that
A, i.e. if As truth condition is satisfied by the way things are in w. Let us say that, if such is the
case, A is true of w. In the second reading (b), A is true in w if A exists in w and is true of w.
The bothersome implication only follows if A is true in w is taken in the (a) reading. On the
other hand, if A is true in w is taken in the (b) reading, there could be truths in a non-minded
world even if the truth bearers are mind-dependent entities. For example, my belief that there
are stars might be true in such a world (in the (b) reading). Failure to distinguish between the
two readings breeds confusion: the platitudinous thesis that no true statements would be made
or true beliefs entertained in a non-minded world may be taken to imply that in such a world it
would not be true that (e.g.) there are stars. Indeed, Rorty presents his thesis as an antirealistic
objection. However, the thesis counts as an objection against realism only in the (b) reading,
but in that reading it appears to be clearly false. Notice that, on the (b) reading, the thesis is
incompatible with the necessary truth of (Den).
Martin Heidegger held a closely related thesis: before there were minds, there were no
truths. For example, Newtons laws were not true, even though the objects they are about
existed and behaved according to the laws. Like Rorty, Heidegger has trouble with the
necessitation of (Den). Rortys trouble is worse, however, for, unlike Heidegger, he is
committed to the necessary truth of (Den) by way of his endorsement of Davidsons
programme.

A Room with Two Views retrying an old mind-body solution

Peter Simons
Univ de Leeds, UK
p.m.simons@leeds.ac.uk

Whereas early analytic philosophy was centred mainly on problems of logic and
language, in recent decades the emphasis has shifted to mind and metaphysics. Most of my own
work has been on general metaphysics and the relation between logic and ontology, but in this
talk I shall focus on the metaphysics of mind. There is, I believe, no mind/body dualism of
different substances or properties. Where there are not two kinds of things, mental things on the
one hand and material things on the other, there is no problem about how the two kinds are
related. Hence, as a metaphysical monist, I recognize no metaphysical mind-body problem. The
problem for a monist then is how there can appear to be a problem, and here I think we do need
some explanation and some theory. But not much. Firstly, I accept, with reservations,
Brentano's characterization of mentality as entailing intentionality or directedness to an object.
I use this to mention four distinctions. Let us call a creature endowed with mental
characteristics a subject. The first and certainly vague distinction is between subjects and non-
subjects. I shall not speculate about this ontological duality but simply assume it exists.
Secondly we have the distinction between a subject and a subject's mental or intentional act.
This is a metaphysical distinction, between a substance and one of the processes or events
happening in it. Thirdly we have the distinction between a mental act and what that mental act
intends. This is an epistemic distinction and the proper subject of the theory of intentionality.
Finally we have the distinction between being a mental act enjoyed by a subject and being a
mental act intended by that subject. This is a special case of the third distinction, where the
object is a mental act. Armed with these minimal distinctions, I shall show how metaphysical
monism is compatible with and indeed leads to epistemic dualism. The result is a simple dual
aspect theory. There are some residual puzzles about mentality, some of them perhaps deep, but
no metaphysical or epistemological mind-bodyproblem.

4
 A natureza da necessidade nas verdades necessrias a posteriori
Andr Barata
Universidade da Beira Interior
andre-barata@sapo.pt

Admitindo que nem todas as proposies necessrias so conhecidas a priori, havendo tambm
as conhecveis a posteriori, procurarei cumprir dois objectivos:
A. Mostrar que nestas ltimas a necessidade no de natureza metafsica.
B. Dar conta, apesar de A., da relevncia epistmica destas necessidades.

Sendo as necessidades conhecidas a posteriori ou identidades ou predicaes, tratarei cada um

destes casos separadamente.

O caso das identidades:

I-1. Logicamente, todas as identidades so identidades necessrias. Assim, no o caso que

seja fisicamente possvel verificar-se uma identidade contingente. Significa isto que nem
nenhum aspecto da natureza das coisas o que faz com que as identidades sejam necessrias,
nem nenhum aspecto da natureza das coisas o que nos poderia fazer concluir que uma
identidade no necessria. Ora, se a natureza das coisas, o seu escrutnio emprico, em
nada contribui para a afirmao/negao do carcter necessrio de uma identidade, ento
no claro em que sentido a afirmao da necessidade de uma identidade pudesse
acrescentar algum conhecimento ao nosso conhecimento do mundo.

I-2. Mas apresento um argumento mais forte. A montante de I.1, o problema coloca-se logo no
facto de no haver realmente identidades no mundo emprico. O que h so identidades
entre referentes semnticos. Donde, eu qualificar estas identidades como semnticas. De
facto, no existem um Vspero e um Fsforo no mundo real; a afirmao, semntica, da sua
identidade equivale justamente negao de que existam realmente duas entidades
idnticas no mundo. Logo, se a identidade meramente semntica, ento a necessidade da
identidade assim afirmada no poder, obviamente, ser uma necessidade realmente
atribuvel ao mundo emprico, muito menos valer como uma necessidade metafsica.

I-3. Contudo, a afirmao de que Vspero Fsforo consiste numa descoberta de inegvel
valia. No significa isto afirmar uma identidade? O meu ponto este: o que est
verdadeiramente em causa com essa descoberta no , de pronto, a identificao de
Vspero com Fsforo, mas a verificao de que Vspero e Fsforo satisfazem ambos uma
certa descrio definida, pelo que por definio de descrio definida tenhamos, como
consequente da condicional ( x)( y) [(Px & Py) x=y], que Vspero=Fsforo. Por
outras palavras, apenas se afirma a identidade porque os dois astros satisfazem um
predicado unissatisfazvel. Neste sentido, parece-me legtimo discernir dois
comportamentos semnticos distintos para ambos os termos Vspero e Fsforo:
designam rigidamente os seus referentes sempre que entendermos estes qua entidades
exclusivamente semnticas, mas valem como descries definidas abreviadas (tal qual
Russell propunha) sempre que entendermos os seus referentes qua entidades semnticas
epistemicamente comprometidas. E esta uma forma de renovar o interesse pelo
descritivismo.

O caso das predicaes:

P-1. Defenderei que se deixam subsumir a pelo menos dois subcasos: i) Ou so necessitadas por
um conjunto de enunciados tericos de leis fsicas, sendo, porm, problemtico o seu valor
de verdade; ii) Ou o seu valor de verdade claramente determinvel, sucedendo, porm, a
natureza da sua necessidade ser meramente analtica. Um exemplo do primeiro caso ser a

5
 proposio Necessariamente, nada se desloca a velocidade superior da luz; um exemplo
do segundo caso ser a proposio Scrates necessariamente humano. O valor de
verdade em i) problemtico porque os enunciados tericos universais, enquanto
dependerem de condies empricas, no tm nunca inteiramente garantidas as condies
da sua verdade. A necessidade de ii) analtica porque no compromete nenhum contedo
emprico: num qualquer mundo possvel com leis fsicas diferentes das do mundo actual,
Scrates continuaria a ser humano, ainda que Scrates e ser humano fossem a muito
diferentes do que so no mundo actual.

P-2. Ao caso das verdades necessrias a posteriori como Scrates necessariamente humano
tem-se feito corresponder (Cf. Kripke, Murcho) uma necessidade metafsica. O Modus
Ponens modal, por si s, no capaz de sustentar esta posio pois, para tal, seria
necessrio comear por qualificar a necessidade da condicional Se Scrates humano,
ento Scrates necessariamente humano como sendo metafsica, que precisamente o
que est em questo. Uma outra razo que sustentaria esta posio reside na expectativa de
que Scrates humano mesmo em mundos possveis com leis fsicas diferentes das do
mundo actual. Assim, no sendo a necessidade de natureza fsica nem, obviamente, lgica,
presume-se uma necessidade intermdia, metafsica. Contudo, a isto replico que a mesma
expectativa de que h uma necessidade mais forte do que a necessidade infervel dos nossos
enunciados tericos de leis fsicas, mas no to forte quanto a necessidade lgica, pode
ainda ser pensada como uma necessidade fsica. Aponto uma razo a favor desta rplica: Se
admitirmos que h progresso no conhecimento cientfico e, alm disso, que esse progresso
se deixa atestar pelo facto de as teorias fsicas precedentes, com os seus enunciados de leis,
poderem ser deduzidas, como casos particulares, das subsequentes, e seus enunciados de
leis, ento h um patrimnio de conhecimento cientfico preservvel apesar da contingncia
da histria das teorias fsicas.

P-3. Mas, admitindo P-2, posso, ainda assim, afirmar que as verdades necessrias a posteriori
apenas so dotadas de uma necessidade analtica? O que defenderei que a Fsica
analitiza necessidades que se seguem, em dado momento, de um dado conjunto de
enunciados tericos de forma a preserv-las da contingncia histrica a que este conjunto
de enunciados est submetido. Resultam assim duas proposies: uma propriamente fsica,
outra analitizada. Por exemplo, sustento que ao enunciado A matria possui massa
corresponde, por um lado, uma verdade necessria que se segue da fsica einsteiniana, mas
em que por massa de um corpo se entende uma medida que varia com as variaes de
energia do corpo, e, por outro, uma verdade analiticamente necessria que no est
dependente do que sejam realmente matria e massa, mantendo o seu valor de verdade
estejamos a falar da fsica einsteiniana ou da newtoniana (para a qual massa a quantidade,
constante, de matria de um corpo). No caso da proposio analitizada, a posse de massa
ser, pois, um atributo de facto essencial matria, mas apenas por definio, ainda que
informada empiricamente.

Conceptual content and aesthetic perception

Christopher Bartel
Kings College, Londres
christopher.bartel@kcl.ac.uk

A problem that has received much recent attention in the philosophy of mind is the
issue of whether the content of perceptual experience is best understood as being wholy
conceptual or, at least in part, nonconceptual. In what way and to what extent are our mental
representations of perceptual experience contrained by the perceiving subjects conceptual
abilities? Though this debate has received wide attention from many philosophers, this paper
will center on the debate between Evans, Peacocke, and McDowell. Restricting my paper to
only these three unfortunately forces me to leave out a great many interesting discussions on

6
subject by others (Bermudez, Tye, Crane, Dretske), however I feel that the Evans-Peacocke-
McDowell debate most clearly brings out what is at stake. This debate centers on whether
subjects doxastic perceptual states must be described using only concepts that the subject
possesses, and if not, whether those nonconceptual doxastic states are consciously open to the
subject.
This problem becomes most acute when applied to aesthetic perception. Making only
passing references to the representational content of aesthetic perception, this problem becomes
mired in presupposition and a too limited understanding of aesthetics. The purpose of this paper
will be first to shed light on the complexity of the problem of aesthetics, and second to voice
my doubt over the handling of this problem by Evans and Peacocke.
I will begin with a very brief account of a question central to the
conceptual/nonconceptual debate, that of the fineness of grain of perceptual experience.
Beginning with Evans remark that we are capable of making distinctions and colour perception
finer than our linguistic ability to referentially distinguish colours; McDowell attempts to
resolve this problem by employing his notion of demonstrative concepts; which Peacocke
rejects in favour of his protopropositional content. When aesthetics is mentioned, it is taken (by
Evans and Peacocke) as being an obvious and clear case of nonconceptual content: as Kant
argued in his Third Critique, judgements of beauty are not grounded in concepts. It is to me,
however, neither obvious nor clear that Kant is not being misunderstood on this point: it is not
so much the case that Kant viewed judgements of beauty as perceptual states lacking in any
conceptual framework, but rather that judgements of beauty were not bound to rules specifiable
in advance of the subjects perceptual experience. If this is an acceptable reading of Kant, then
it seems that we are open to explaind judgements of beauty using McDowells demonstrative
concepts. Beauty is not a rule-guided concept, but a demonstrative one.
Aesthetics is a field that has suffered from much ambiguity, and the motivations that
drive a nonconceptualist in aesthetics are no less ambiguous and in need of clarification. The
remainder of my paper will enumerate these motivations and elucidate some of the
nonconceptualists arguments for these notions of ineffability, inexhaustibility, fineness of
grain, and the seeming ease with which aesthetic reasons may be given without a subjects
familiarity with aesthetic theory. After examining these motivations, I will conclude by
considering whether a conceptualist position such as McDowells is indeed blocked irreparably
from offering an explanation of aesthetic perception.

Frege on Sentences and proper names

Michael Blome-Tillmann
Queens College, Oxford
Michael.Blome@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

The paper examines Freges views on the semantics of sentences and proper names and
argues against the view common among interpreters that Freges philosophical logic contains
only a partial and relatively harmless assimilation of sentences to names.
In the first section of the paper I situate Freges view that sentences are proper names
within the context of his philosophical logic. I briefly explicate Freges analysis of the logical
structure of sentences in terms of function and argument in Concept Script and his extension of
the functional analysis to the realm of Bedeutung in Function and Concept. On the basis of
Freges Compositionality Principle of Bedeutung I then show why Frege took the view that
sentences have truth-values as their Bedeutung (sometimes referred to as the Slingshot
Argument). The importance of Freges views about the Bedeutung of sentences with regard to
his project of giving a systematic account of how a sentences truth-value depends on the
semantic features of its parts will be emphasised. Baring in mind that the overall motivation for
Freges philosophical logic is his logicist project of reducing the Peano Axioms to the laws of
logic, Freges view that sentences have truth-values as Bedeutung will be shown to be well
motivated.

7
 The second section of the paper then analyses two core problems of Freges view:
firstly, from a syntactical point of view, sentences and names belong to different categories, for
their intersubstitution doesnt preserve grammaticality. Secondly, sentences and names belong
to different pragmatic categories: names cannot be used to make genuine moves in language
games (assertions, questions, commands) and sentences cannot be used to refer to truth-values.
These considerations prompt us to split Freges view into the following six theses:

(a) Sentences have Bedeutung.

(b) The Bedeutung of a sentence is its truth-value.
(c) The Bedeutung of a sentence is an object.
(d) Sentences are of the same semantic type as proper names.
(e) Sentences are of the same pragmatic type as proper names.
(f) Sentences are of the same syntactic type as proper names.

The remainder of the paper argues that Frege accepted (a) (d) while rejecting (e) and
(f). Frege only partially assimilated sentences to names.

To yield support for this view I take a closer look at Freges notion of Bedeutung in the
third section. I argue with Dummett that Freges notion of Bedeutung is of an entirely
programmatic nature, the Compositionality Principle and the Substitution Principle playing a
crucial role determining its content. I thus come to the conclusion that Fregean Bedeutung is
semantic value. Moreover, I argue that once we yield this interpretation of Bedeutung, (a) (d)
are prima facie uncontroversial.

Section four then points out that an interpretation according to which Frege held (a)
(d) while rejecting (e) (f) has two serious downsides. Firstly, Frege frequently characterises
proper names as devices to refer to objects, thus specifying the pragmatic type of proper names.
According to the interpretation under consideration, Frege thus conceived of genuine singular
terms as of a subspecies of proper names, which is fairly implausible. Secondly, the relevant
interpretation ascribes Frege an incoherent view, for it is a violation of the Substitution
Principle: if the singular term the True and the sentence 2 + 3 = 5 had the same Bedeutung,
they would be intersubstitutable salva veritate. However, intersubstitution of singular terms
and sentences doesnt preserve grammaticality, and, as a consequence, it also doesnt preserve
meaningfulness and Bedeutung: we cannot separate an expressions syntactic type from its
semantic type.

In the last section of the paper I resolve the problem by arguing that Frege doesnt
regard expressions such as 3 + 5 = 8 as sentences. Quite to the contrary, in Basic Laws such
expressions are explicitly regarded as singular terms designating truth-values. To be precise,
when introducing the judgement stroke | in 5 of Basic Laws, Frege explicitly notes that
expressions such as 2 + 3 = 5, i.e. expressions counting as sentences in natural language,
arent sentences in his formal system, but proper names of truth-values. However, if such
expressions are conjoined with both Freges horizontal stroke and the judgement stroke
|, then we yield an assertoric sentence in the formal language of Basic Laws. Freges formal
languages are thus languages that contain only one predicate: the predicate is a fact (Concept
Script). Thus, when Frege claims that 22 = 4 and 3 > 2 are proper names of the True, this
doesnt involve an assimilation of sentences to proper names, it rather merely means that
expressions that are sentences in English are proper names in the formal language of Basic
Laws (clausal terms designating truth-values). Moreover, since Frege has it that the symbol |
doesnt have Bedeutung, he claims that the Bedeutung of the sentence |22 = 4 is the
same as the Bedeutung of the proper name 22 = 4.

On the basis of these considerations it is plausible that Frege didnt intend to construe
sentences as a species of singular terms, i.e. as expressions designating truth-values. The paper
finally achieves a more charitable interpretation of Frege: he rejected (e) and (f) while

8
nevertheless holding (d). The incoherence arising from this position if combined with (SUB)
Frege intended to circumvent by the special status of the symbol |, which, even though
having no semantic value, has syntactic impact, its function being, among others, to turn proper
names of truth-values into sentences.

Contrary to standard interpretations, the languages of Concept Script and Basic Laws
involve neither a syntactic nor a pragmatic assimilation of sentences to names.

Neuroethics: no need for normative language in moral philosophy

(on the Churchlands neurobehaviorism)
Alfredo Dinis
Universidade Catlica, Braga
adinis@facfil.ucp.pt

The extraordinary development of the neurosciences especially over the last two
decades has been interpreted by both Paul and Patricia as a confirmation of their theses
about the practical character of ethics, which excludes any kind of normative argument.
Moral behavior is not acquired either by learning or by discussing how to follow rules,
but by acquiring a set of prototypes which are formed in the brain as neural networks
that correspond to a know-how to be activated and applied in specific social situations. It
seems that everything may be summarized this way: Dont ask why. Just do it. One
just needs an ethical know-how, not an ethical know why. The Churchlands have been
puting forward their views especially since Patricias Neurophilosophy. Toward a
unified science of the mind-brain (1986) and Pauls A Neurocomputational
Perspective. The Nature of the Mind and the Structure of Science (1989). In 1995 Paul
developed his views in The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical
Journey into the Brain and in 1998 he published Toward a cognitive neurobiology of
the moral virtues . This is a rather puzzling text since he seems to held some
contradictory views:
First: What we are contemplating here is no imperialistic takeover of the moral by
the neural. Rather, we should anticipate a mutual flowering of both our high-level
conceptions in the domain of moral knowledge and our lower-level conceptions in the
domain of normal and pathological neurology. For each level has much to teach the
other (1998/ republished in Joo Branquinho 2001, 77). But then he seems to say
quite the opposite:
Second: we are about to contemplate a systematic and unified account sketched in
neural-network terms, of the following phenomena: moral knowledge, moral learning,
moral perception, moral ambiguity, moral conflict, moral argument, moral virtues,
moral character, moral pathology, moral correction, moral diversity, moral progress,
moral realism and moral unification (1998/2001, 78).
Churchlands critics have been arguing that prototypes, whatever their neural
basis may be, do not contradict the existence of moral argumentation in general and of
moral rules in particular. Prototypes are often linguistically expressed as moral rules,
and these may indeed lead to changes in moral prototypes. As James Sterba argues:
Why should we have to choose between thinking about moral problems in terms of
either recognizing the appropriate prototypes or applying the appropriate rules? Why
couldnt it be both?(1996, 252). This is also the essence of a recent debate between
Churchland and Clark. I want to show that The Churchlands views are a sort of
neurobehaviorism that has little or no support whatsoever in real life, and that moral
argumentation is at the very core of moral philosophy.

9
 References

Branquinho, J. 2001. The Foundations of Cognitive Science, Oxford: Oxford

University Press.
Campbell, R. & Hunter, B. 2000. Moral Epistemology Naturalized. Calgary:
University of Galgary Press.
Chuchland, P. 1989. A Neurocomputational Perspective, Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Churchland, P. 1995. The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul. Cambridge: MIT
Press.
Churchland, P.1996. The Neural Representation of the Social World. In Minds and
Morals. Ed. L. May, M. Friedman and A. Clark. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Churchland, P. 2000. Rules, Know-How and the Future of Moral Cognition. In
Moral Epistemology Naturalized. Ed. R. Campbell & B. Hunter. Calgary: University
of Galgary Press.
Churchland, P. S., 1986. Neurophilosophy. Toward a unified science of the mind-
brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Clark, A. 1996a. Connectionism, Moral Cognition and Collaborative Problem
Solving. In Minds and Morals. Ed. L. May, M. Friedman and A. Clark. Cambridge:
MIT Press.
Clark, A. 1996b. Dealing in futures: Folk psychology and the role of representations
in cognitive science in Robert N. McCauley (ed.), 1996.The Churchlands and their
Critics. Oxford: Blackwell.

That there are necessary a posteriori truths means

that there are analytic truths
MJ Encinas
Universidad de Granada
encinas@ugr.es

It is my general view, a view that I shall not defend here, that: to argue that there
are no analytic truths because meaning changes, or because words change in meaning
(from time to time, or from language to language), is as spurious as to argue that there
are no a priori truths because children must learn everything they can know, or because
there are no innate ideas, or because mathematics can be taught. I believe that there can
be analytic truths. But I will not argue for this thesis. Rather, I would like to defend a
conditional one: the thesis that if there are necessary a posteriori truths then, there are
analytic truths.
So, to accept that there are necessary a posteriori truths is to accept that there are
analytic truths. My view is that thesis can be read in Kripkes works or, at least, this is
part of what I would like to show here. I will take the following passage, among others,
as a general point in favour of what I am saying:
All cases of the necessary a posteriori advocated (...) have the special character
attributed to mathematical statements: Philosophical analysis tells us that they cannot be
contingently true, so any empirical knowledge of their truth is automatically empirical
knowledge that they are necessary. (Kripke, S. 1980, p. 159.)

10
Kripke is saying here that every empirically, a posteriori, necessary statement should be
sanctioned by a priori philosophical analysis. We know a priori, by pure reasoning
alone, that mathematical truths are necessary. So whenever they are proved, they are
proved as necessarily true. A posteriori necessity and, in general, every necessary truth
should be sanctioned by a priori analytic reasoning. This is true in the case of
mathematics, but it also true of any identity statement holding between rigid designators
(i.e., proper names or rigid designators for physical phenomena), and of any true
statement concerning the material origin of material bodies or things.
Moreover, I would like to argue that the idea of a posteriori analytic truths
makes no sense, and that what seems to be Putnams view on the contrary has to be
wrong, or based on an indefensible view on analyticity. In doing so, I will not offer a
closed definition of analyticity, nor I will thus argue against the famous Quinean
argument against its possibility. However, in the course of the discussion I will use an
idea of analyticity that, I believe, makes justice to the Gricean-Strawsonian complaint
against Quine.
In a way, and if I am successful, these ideas amount to the view that knowable
possibility finally rests on conceivability and definition. An this is to say that accessible
possibility is finally backed up by analyticity: the case of definitional truths, if any,
would be a clear case of analyticity; and conceivability directly depends on how much
we allow ourselves to stretch a given concept. This, I will try to argue, is what thought
experiments show.
Now, the idea that modal truths are based on analytic truths should not be
understood in the traditional way in which whatever is conceivable is possible because
otherwise it could be refuted by pure, demonstrative or analytic, reasoning alone. On the
other side, it is also clearly true that we can conceive the impossible. That is, I do not
wish to maintain that the modal realm is restricted by thought and rationality. Rather, I
do wish to maintain that, in the end, they are our only route to the necessary.
As a warning point, I would also say that the view I shall defend is not related to
the latter two-dimensionalist account. Quite the contrary, the discussion does not
concern the problem of reference fixing, but: (i) the idea that analytic truths are
necessary premises in any argument that aims to show that a given statement (that is a
particular case of the analytic corresponding truth) is necessarily the case, and (ii) the
idea that the conclusion statement is not reducible nor fully explained in terms of the
analytic corresponding one. Thesis (i) would explain why there is no knowable necessity
that is not based upon analyticity. Thesis (ii) opens the door to a thought independent
realm of the necessary, and its proper defence should also explain why we can conceive
the impossible.

Uma abordagem anti-realista em favor da reduo psico-neural

Joo Fonseca
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
jfonseca.ifl@fcsh.unl.pt

11
 A discusso acerca da reduo psico-neural tem-se mantido margem da querela
metafsica realismo/anti-realismo. No entanto, tal alheamento parece-nos ser
prejudicial para a prpria compreenso e esclarecimento da problemtica em questo
(i.e., o reducionismo psico-neural).
Defende-se que a abordagem clssica ao problema do reducionismo mente-
crebro labora sobre uma base realista assente conjuntamente em dois pontos: 1)
Existem duas teorias verdadeiras: uma acerca da mente (uma teoria psicolgica) e outra
acerca do crebro, e 2) Existe uma relao (positiva ou negativa) de reduo entre as
duas teorias (note-se que o realismo aqui invocado corresponde a um realismo cientfico
e no a um putativo realismo metafsico segundo o qual tanto as teorias como a relao
de reduo podem transcender as nossas capacidades cognitivas). Aceitando esta matriz
realista podem-se elaborar argumentos acerca da natureza de 2) ou seja, se a relao de
reduo positiva (tese da identidade) ou negativa (eg., o fisicalismo no reducionista
mediante a mobilizao do argumento da realizao mltipla).
A presente comunicao pretende colocar em questo a base realista sobre a qual
assenta a discusso clssica acerca do reducionismo. Particularmente em questo estar
a sustentabilidade da afirmao 2) ou seja, contesta-se a possibilidade de se determinar o
modo como se estabelece a relao de reduo entre duas teorias. Esta contestao parte
do escrutnio crtico ao projecto reducionista New-wave proposto por John Bickle
(1998) com o qual se tenta contornar esta questo. Afirma-se, ento, a impossibilidade
de estabelecer (de um modo realista) uma relao redutiva entre duas teorias.
A soluo para este problema consiste em adoptar uma perspectiva anti-realista
relativamente relao de reduo apelando ao modo como essa relao estabelecida
no seio da prpria actividade cientfica. Uma alternativa poder ser a Teoria Heurstica
da Identidade (THI) proposta por Bechtel e McCauley (1999). Segundo estes autores,
Drawing its inspiration from scientific practice, heuristic identity theory construes
identity claims as hypotheses that guide subsequent inquiry, not as conclusions of the
research (1999). Este pragmatismo anti-realista aplicado a 2) arrasta consigo a
considerao realista 1) uma vez que o que se compara em termos redutivos no so
duas teorias concludas ou desenvolvidas, em vez disso introduzida uma dinmica
co-evolutiva em que as duas teorias se desenvolvem em funo uma da outra.
Assim, a reduo psico-neural assegurada no interior da prpria actividade
cientfica tendo em considerao certos preceitos pragmticos. Esta abordagem anti-
realista do problema da reduo psico-neural difere consideravelmente da formulao
clssica. A partir desta nova abordagem argumentos anti-reducionistas como o da
realizao mltipla ficam sem efeito e, no obstante defender-se um certo tipo de
reducionismo, ele completamente distinto do reducionismo clssico. Por outro lado,
esta perspectiva quando aplicada questo mais geral da relao mente-corpo pode-nos
forar a adoptar uma posio semelhante quela proposta por Bickle (2003) que apela
distino carnapiana entre questes internas e externas.

Referncias

Bechtel, W. & McCuley, R.(1999); Heuristic Identity Theory (or Back to the Future):
The Mind-Body Problem Against the Background of Research Strategies in Cognitive
Neuroscience, Proceedings of the 21st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science
Society, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Bickle, J. (1998); Psychoneural Reduction: the New-Wave, MIT press, Cambridge

Mass.

12
Bickle, J. (2003); Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly reductive Account,
Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands

Individualism and psychologism in epistemology:

making out a case against bayesianism
Michael Frauchiger
Open University, UK & Lauener Foundation for Analytical Philosophy, Sua
michael.frauchiger@bluewin.ch

Bayesian approaches to epistemology are often charged with being unacceptably

subjective. Taking account of relevant Bayesian counter-arguments against the charge of
individualistic subjectivism, the psychologistic basic conception of Bayesian epistemology is
highlighted and objections are raised to it.
Its a fundamental principle of Bayesian epistemology that there are gradations of belief
and that the degrees of belief of rational scientists conform to the mathematical principles of
probability theory. Hence, assuming the discovery of some new evidence, the degree of belief
in a hypothesis which predicts this evidence becomes greater than the unconditional belief in
the hypothesis. That is, according to Bayes theorem, the posterior probability of the hypothesis
on the new evidence depends on its prior, initial subjective probability.
The criterion of confirmation in terms of increase of probability thus becomes
relativized to a particular individuals credence function. For that reason, Bayesian approaches
to epistemology are continually charged with being unacceptably subjective, with a notoriously
individualistic cast to them. In order to comprehend this anti-subjectivist criticism, we need to
recall that prior probabilities are largely indefinite factors so that it can justly be said that the
initial probability measures the subjective degree of a particular rational scientists belief in the
respective hypothesis. This way personal partial beliefs are included in the epistemological
theory of confirmation.
I take account of relevant Bayesian counter-arguments against this charge of
subjectivism. For instance, objective Bayesians propose further principles, which are expected
to determine the priors uniquely in appropriate cases. Their suggestions, however, suffer from
ambiguity among other things. A more important Bayesian strategy for blocking the charge of
subjectivism is the introduction of an abstract Bayesian individual by means of belief
aggregation. Against this strategy I argue that group degrees of belief can only be arrived at
through the analysis of the individual beliefs of group members.
I admit that, as far as the subject of cognition is construed as an abstract Bayesian
individual, Bayesianism cant be charged of subjectivism. Nevertheless, Bayesian epistemology
is bound to methodological individualism.
Furthermore, in addition to its individualistic procedure, Bayesian epistemology has a
descriptive orientation. Notwithstanding that Bayesianism is often regarded as a normative
theory of rational behaviour in science, I argue that the core parts of contemporary Bayesian
epistemology turn out to be descriptive, endeavouring to enhance our understanding of the
psychological facts of the behaviour of scientists. The combination of the individualistic and
descriptive aspects of the core Bayesian strategies results in a psychological naturalization of
epistemology, which blurs the boundary between epistemology and cognitive psychology.
I thus claim to elucidate the systematical commitment of Bayesian epistemology to
psychologism. What is more, I advocate the thesis that this psychologistic foundation
constitutes a severe weakness of Bayesianism when it is faced with certain key epistemological
issues concerning confirmation and theoretical meaning. I clarify this thesis further with regard
to central methodological issues such as the one over the kind of background information
assumed in the process of confirmation and the one over the assessment of the impact of
particular evidence on specific hypotheses.
I doubt that there is any feasible individualistic procedure to explain the alleged
transition from personal beliefs of different scientists to fully integrated intersubjective systems

13
of knowledge. I conclude that it is difficult to see how Bayesians can plausibly make up for the
lack of a role for fully-integrated conceptual systems in their account of background knowledge
and prior belief, for only such consistent conceptual networks could impose certain equivalence
classes on the domain of application of the hypotheses that are to be confirmed.
I object to Bayesianism that epistemology cannot be a mere prolongation of cognitive
psychology as it deals not with passive human objects of investigation, but with active members
of academic communities, who create these very scientific theories. From this external point of
view, the psychologistic fundamental conception of Bayesianism does not enable any plausible
solution to central epistemological problems. I presume that such problems can only be
resolved with the help of a moderately holistic and normative (and therefore anti-
psychologistic) approach, according to which its not the explanation of the processes of
evolution, reinforcement and change of the beliefs of representative competent scientists that
matters in epistemology. Instead this alternative approach focuses on the pragmatic justification
of general feasible conditions of the logico-semantical conception, stabilization and empirical
interpretation of entire theoretical systems in accordance with the deliberated and
intersubjectively agreed on explanatory goals and norms of the respective entire academic
community.

O Consequencialismo das regras reconsiderado

Pedro Galvo
Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa
galv@sapo.pt

A comunicao consistir numa discusso da teoria consequencialista proposta

recentemente por Brad Hooker em Ideal Code, Real World (2000, Clarendon Press).
Durante algumas dcadas, prevaleceu a ideia de que o consequencialismo das regras
enfrentava um dilema fatal: ou esta teoria normativa no era coerentemente consequencialista
ou colapsava no consequencialismo dos actos em virtude de lhe ser extensionalmente
equivalente e, por isso, no proporcionava uma alternativa atraente. A proposta de Hooker
uma tentativa de mostrar que o consequencialismo das regras no refutado por este dilema. A
sua verso de consequencialismo das regras diz-nos que um acto moralmente errado se
proibido pelo cdigo moral ideal. O cdigo moral ideal aquele cuja interiorizao pela
esmagadora maioria de todos os agentes em cada gerao tem o mximo valor esperado em
termos de bem-estar (atribuindo-se alguma prioridade queles que vivem pior).
Para avaliar um cdigo moral, preciso atender aos custos da sua inculcao em cada
nova gerao. Dadas as limitaes cognitivas humanas, isto significa que as regras morais que
constituem o cdigo ideal no podem ter um enorme grau de especificidade. Deste modo, evita-
se o colapso no consequencialismo dos actos: ser moralmente acertado seguir as regras
razoavelmente simples do cdigo ideal mesmo nos casos particulares em que a observncia
dessas regras no maximizar o bem. objeco de que esta posio incoerente com um
compromisso bsico com a maximizao do bem e de que, portanto, implica a rejeio do
consequencialismo, Hooker responde alegando que o melhor argumento a favor do
consequencialismo das regras no parte do reconhecimento desse compromisso, mas da
capacidade que a teoria tem para acomodar apropriadamente as nossas intuies morais mais
fortes. Hooker sustenta, mais precisamente, que o tipo de escrutnio baseado no mtodo do
equilbrio recproco torna manifesta a superioridade do consequencialismo das regras em
relao ao utilitarismo dos actos.
A adequao intuitiva do consequencialismo das regras avanado por Hooker ser
questionada de trs maneiras.
(1) Hooker defende que o consequencialismo das regras, contrariamente ao
consequencialismo dos actos, no impe aos agentes exigncias morais excessivas. Porm, em
algumas circunstncias possveis (por exemplo, numa situao em que existe um grande
nmero de pobres e um nfimo nmero de ricos) o consequencialismo das regras tambm

14
pode tornar-se intoleravelmente exigente, e noutros casos (por exemplo, numa situao em que
existe um nmero nfimo de pobres e um grande nmero de ricos) colide com as intuies
morais comuns por ser insuficientemente exigente.
(2) Hooker define o cdigo ideal em termos do mximo valor esperado da sua
aceitao, acrescentando que, se dois cdigos morais tiverem o mesmo valor esperado, dever
ser preferido aquele que estiver mais prximo da moralidade comum. Dado que extremamente
difcil determinar o valor esperado de um cdigo moral, na prtica o consequencialismo das
regras pode limitar-se a sancionar a moralidade comum. Porm, este conservadorismo radical
fortemente contra-intuitivo.
(3) Segundo Hooker, o cdigo moral ideal aquele que maximizaria o valor numa
situao de aceitao (e no observncia) das regras que o constituem -- e o que importa no a
sua aceitao total, mas a sua aceitao pela grande maioria dos agentes. Algo arbitrariamente,
Hooker sugere que pensemos num nvel de aceitao de 90%. Porm, esta arbitrariedade no
inofensiva, j que nveis de aceitao ligeiramente diferentes podem conduzir aprovao de
regras morais incompatveis. No entanto, contra-intuitivo que diferenas mnimas no nvel de
aceitao estipulado sejam moralmente significativas.

Rigid designation, modality and atomism

Marcin Gokieli
Warsaw University
marcingokieli@tlen.pl

I will present two problems for Kripkes theory of modal properties

I) part whole problem
I will evaluate a problem for Krikes theory, raised by A. Zabludowski
(unpublished). He discussed such expressions, as first 50 years of Johns life
(let it be called J*). If we accept that those are rigid designators, then we shall
say, that if John (or J) lived 50 years, then J is necessarily identical to J. The
fact that John lived for 50 years seems then to be an essential property of John.
This is contrary to plausible intuitions that he could have lived longer.
I argue that expressions like J* are not rigid designators. The way the objects
disappear (for example the temperature in which they solute) is determining
for the substances, so it should be treated as essential. Js end is caused by
natural facts, when J*s end is determined semantically. So J* refers in some
possible worlds to objects, that have different essential properties. As J* is not
rigid, N(J=J*) is not implied by J=J*, even if we still have J(N=)J*. So Kripke
can Kripke can refute Zabludowski along the lines of his refutation of Quines
9 and number of planets famous example
II) Atomicity and essence
I assume it is natural to think that two object can differ in contingent properties
only. I show, that two objects cannot differ in contingent properties only as
long as they meet the requirement of atomicity. I reconstruct this postulate in
such a form:
a) Fxy {[POS(Fx) POS(Fy)] POS(Fx Fy)}
(where POS stands for possible)
Accepting a) leads to a conclusion that if two object differ in contingent
properties only, then there must be a world where they share all properties.
Which is contrary to Kripkes central thesis of necessity of identities.
To avoid that consequence, I propose to stipulate, that for every object o, o must have a
property P, that only one object of the class of objects that share all of os necessary properties
has. So I stipulate as a law that there must be properties that are contingent, but cannot be
shared by objects that share essential properties. Spatiotemporal properties meet this condition.

15
 O conceito de conscincia
Jorge Gonalves
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
gja@fcsh.unl.pt

A conscincia tem sido um tema muito estudado na Filosofia da Mente nos ltimos
anos. O problema mais focado tem sido o de como enquadrar a conscincia dentro de uma viso
naturalista e cientfica do mundo. Como relacionar a conscincia com o resto da Natureza?
Este problema entretanto conduziu a um interesse pelo definio do prprio
conceito de conscincia, pois os investigadores nem sempre concordam entre si sobre
aquilo que necessrio explicar. Se no se sabe o que se quer explicar como avaliar o
resultado? Claro que a cincia muitas vezes avana para a investigao sem ter o seu
objecto definido (a linguagem, a vida), mas no caso da conscincia o problema mais
grave, porque de acordo com o conceito do investigador assim dada a explicao.
Nesta comunicao sigo a linha dos que como Ned Block, David Chalmers,
Joseph Levine e outros pensam que o que verdadeiramente problemtico a
conscincia fenomenal, que se distingue de outros sentidos como acesso informao,
auto-conscincia, introspeco, auto-controle. Oponho-me assim a autores que como
Dennett negam a utilidade do conceito de conscincia fenomenal ou como Searle que
no distingue esse conceito dos outros conceitos de conscincia.
O que pretendo assim isolar o conceito de conscincia fenomenal quer
comparando-o com outros modos de encarar a mente, quer definindo positivamente as
suas caractersticas. Estas podem ser captadas usando a heurstica o que ser eu
agora?, no seguimento do conhecido What is it to be like? de Thomas Nagel. Esta
dimenso de como que eu sinto o mundo num dado momento no pode ser captada
pelos mtodos objectivistas, da terceira pessoa, mas pode ser correlacionada com os
dados recolhidos por estes mtodos. Pode ser assim elaborada uma cincia da
conscincia fenomenal nos seres humanos, pois temos compreenso do que ser
humano. No caso dos animais ser mais difcil, pois possivelmente nunca saberemos
o que ser um morcego.

Referential descriptions revisited

Adriana Silva Graa
Universidade de Lisboa
adrianasg@netcabo.pt

In this paper I want to provide an argument to the effect that Donnellanss distinction
between attributive and referential, in his seminal paper Reference and Definite
Descriptions (1966), is a distinction between two different uses of definite descriptions and
that it is not to be seen as a distinction between two different meanings those phrases may have.
I think that Kripke showed in Speakers Reference and Semantic Reference (1979) that Paul
Grices distinction between the proposition semantically expressed by a certain utterance of a
certain sentence and the proposition that the speaker wants to convey by that very same
utterance, which is pragmatically implied by him, is enough to account for Donnellans cases.
Therefore, Donnellans primary distinction is between two uses and not between two meanings
concerning phrases of the form the F in sentences of the form The F is G.
My argument goes against recent attempts to support the thesis according to which,
besides two different uses, there are two different meanings involved in Donnellans cases. In
his paper The Case for Referential Descriptions (2003), Devitt provides a powerful set of

16
arguments for that thesis. If what I think is correct, then something must be wrong with Devitts
perspective. I try to state precisely what is wrong with it.
The core of the point made by Devitt is the following. There exists a convention
according to which the F is used in a sentence of the form the F is G to express a singular
thought, namely to express a thought about a particular object the speaker has in mind, even
though the F actually misdescribes the object. As it is a result of a convention, and as it
determines the truth-value of what the speaker wants to communicate, the relation between the
speaker and the object he has in mind when he uses the F in the F is G is to be seen as a
semantic relation. Therefore, definite descriptions have two meanings: the referential one,
involved in such cases, and the attributive one, long ago characterised by Bertrand Russell
(1905). Then it is provided an account of the semantic nature of this convention based on an
analogy between referential tokens of the F and tokens of complex demonstratives like that
F. It is alleged that if, for the demonstrative case, the convention to express a singular thought
by a particular use of that F is G is a semantic one, so the convention to express a singular
thought must also be a semantic one for the definite description case (given the fact that the F
and that F may be substituted for each other without a cost in the goal of communicating a
singular thought).
Against Devitt I will develop two arguments that establish my main point: Donnellans
distinction is relative to two uses, not two meanings, of definite descriptions.
Argument (1): If Devitts argument were correct, then all that Grice said about the
difference between what is literally said and what the speaker wants to communicate would be
wrong. This distinction is traditionally seen as a distinction between one proposition being
semantically expressed and another proposition being pragmatically implied by a particular
token of a sentence. According to Devitt, it is a semantic not pragmatic fact that a certain
description token refers to the person the speaker has in mind (footnote 5). Then, applying this
criterion for semanticity to the cases discussed by Grice we end up concluding that not only
him but also all the tradition in the Philosophy of Language is wrong in classifying those
phenomena as pragmatic ones. But it does not seem at all to be the case that Grice is wrong in
that point.
Argument (2): It is possible to develop Devitts own argument based on the analogy
between complex demonstratives and definite descriptions used referentially to identify its
main problem. Having in mind Kaplans well know distinction between the character and the
content of a demonstrative, and applying this distinction to the case of definite descriptions, it
gets clear what the main problem is: not distinguishing the content of what is said by a
particular token of a sentence containing a definite description token and what sort of
mechanism enables us to fix the reference of that token. This is enough to show that Devitts
argument is not sound, since it has a false premise, namely, the one which says that the
convention for using the F to express a singular thought is as semantic as the one about that
F; therefore, the argument does also not succeed in proving the truth of its conclusion, namely,
that there are two meanings for definite descriptions. I think this point illuminates the
discussion that has been going on since 1966. In this paper I want to provide an argument to the
effect that Donnellanss distinction between attributive and referential, in his seminal paper
Reference and Definite Descriptions (1966), is a distinction between two different uses of
definite descriptions and that it is not to be seen as a distinction between two different
meanings those phrases may have. I think that Kripke showed in Speakers Reference and
Semantic Reference (1979) that Paul Grices distinction between the proposition semantically
expressed by a certain utterance of a certain sentence and the proposition that the speaker
wants to convey by that very same utterance, which is pragmatically implied by him, is enough
to account for Donnellans cases. Therefore, Donnellans primary distinction is between two
uses and not between two meanings concerning phrases of the form the F in sentences of the
form The F is G.
My argument goes against recent attempts to support the thesis according to which,
besides two different uses, there are two different meanings involved in Donnellans cases. In
his paper The Case for Referential Descriptions (2003), Devitt provides a powerful set of
arguments for that thesis. If what I think is correct, then something must be wrong with Devitts
perspective. I try to state precisely what is wrong with it.

17
 The core of the point made by Devitt is the following. There exists a convention
according to which the F is used in a sentence of the form the F is G to express a singular
thought, namely to express a thought about a particular object the speaker has in mind, even
though the F actually misdescribes the object. As it is a result of a convention, and as it
determines the truth-value of what the speaker wants to communicate, the relation between the
speaker and the object he has in mind when he uses the F in the F is G is to be seen as a
semantic relation. Therefore, definite descriptions have two meanings: the referential one,
involved in such cases, and the attributive one, long ago characterised by Bertrand Russell
(1905). Then it is provided an account of the semantic nature of this convention based on an
analogy between referential tokens of the F and tokens of complex demonstratives like that
F. It is alleged that if, for the demonstrative case, the convention to express a singular thought
by a particular use of that F is G is a semantic one, so the convention to express a singular
thought must also be a semantic one for the definite description case (given the fact that the F
and that F may be substituted for each other without a cost in the goal of communicating a
singular thought).
Against Devitt I will develop two arguments that establish my main point: Donnellans
distinction is relative to two uses, not two meanings, of definite descriptions.
Argument (1): If Devitts argument were correct, then all that Grice said about the
difference between what is literally said and what the speaker wants to communicate would be
wrong. This distinction is traditionally seen as a distinction between one proposition being
semantically expressed and another proposition being pragmatically implied by a particular
token of a sentence. According to Devitt, it is a semantic not pragmatic fact that a certain
description token refers to the person the speaker has in mind (footnote 5). Then, applying this
criterion for semanticity to the cases discussed by Grice we end up concluding that not only
him but also all the tradition in the Philosophy of Language is wrong in classifying those
phenomena as pragmatic ones. But it does not seem at all to be the case that Grice is wrong in
that point.
Argument (2): It is possible to develop Devitts own argument based on the analogy
between complex demonstratives and definite descriptions used referentially to identify its
main problem. Having in mind Kaplans well know distinction between the character and the
content of a demonstrative, and applying this distinction to the case of definite descriptions, it
gets clear what the main problem is: not distinguishing the content of what is said by a
particular token of a sentence containing a definite description token and what sort of
mechanism enables us to fix the reference of that token. This is enough to show that Devitts
argument is not sound, since it has a false premise, namely, the one which says that the
convention for using the F to express a singular thought is as semantic as the one about that
F; therefore, the argument does also not succeed in proving the truth of its conclusion, namely,
that there are two meanings for definite descriptions. I think this point illuminates the
discussion that has been going on since 1966.

Pluralism, objectivity and history in ethics:

a study of Bernard Williams relativism
Tim Heysse
Katholieke Universiteit, Bruxelas
Tim.Heysse@kubrussel.ac.be

The aim of this paper is to examine the attitude we should adopt towards the historical
processes that have shaped our ethical ideas by studying Bernard Williamss relativism of
distance. This relativism, applied to the history of ethics, can be understood as saying that, in
confrontations with ethical outlooks of the past, the language of appraisal is inappropriate and

18
no real judgments are made. For such appraisals are nothing but a gratuitous way of affirming
our own outlook and rejecting theirs. I will argue that this relativism of distance is inconsistent
with Williamss general meta-ethical position.
The paper has three parts. In a first part I will set forth Williamss meta-ethics. What
makes this meta-ethics interesting is the fact that it acknowledges the plurality not only of
ethical outlooks that were in fact accepted in the course of history but also of outlooks that are
(and were) reasonably acceptable. By doing so it stresses the contingency of our own outlook,
while at the same time recognizing the authority which our ethical ideas demand.
In the second part, I will show that Williamss relativism of distance rest on an implicit
and implausible view of the hermeneutics of history. More in particular, it rests on the premise
that we should set aside our ethical convictions while studying history (even while studying the
history of ethics) and on a too static conception of language. The fact of the matter is that we
cannot avoid to judge the past while studying and interpreting history. Since appraisal of the
past is unavoidable, it cannot be denounced as an inappropriate way of affirming our own
ethical ideas.
In the concluding section, I will examine what attitude towards the ethical outlooks of
the past follows from all this. Since this analysis is purged of Williamss implausible view of
the hermeneutics of history, it is actually more in line with his meta-ethics than his own
relativism of distance is. By carefully distinguishing the demands of ethics and of historical
interpretation, we succeed in reconciling the recognition of the authority of our ethical ideas
with the acknowledgment of ethical pluralism in history and the contingency of our outlook.

Internalism and Truth

Wolfram Hinzer
University of Amsterdam
w.hinzen@uva.nl

An account of some aspect of an organism is internalist (Chomsky 2000) if it does not make
reference to the embedding of the organism in an external environment. Internalism in this
biological sense contrasts with externalism, say the attempt to rationalize the mind in terms of
its functioning in the external world (Godfrey-Smith 1998).
In semantic theory, internalism about reference seems entirely improper, in that to
account for the reference of a name or noun, it would seem that the external object referred to
must come into the picture essentially. On many current accounts, all there is to the meaning of
a word is derived from the way it relates to the world (causally, teleologically, etc.). But even to
address the question of internalism about truth may seem rather bizarre. Truth is the prime
realist notion, and although realism is not the same thing as externalism and (I argue) not even
connected to it, it would seem that from Aristotle to Barwise, truth has been thought of as an
essentially relational notion. But what relation exactly are we talking about?
Suppose that relation is representation. Then the idea is that a sentence or proposition
represents the world as being in a certain way, and if the world is that way, the sentence or
proposition is true. Now, representation is a relation between a (possibly mental) symbol and
something represented. In the case of a name, the symbol is Caesar, say, and the thing is
Caesar. In the case of a sentence, Caesar was the greatest emperor, say, the symbol is the
expression just quoted, and the thing is what? Maybe a state of affairs, maybe a fact, maybe
Caesars being the greatest emperor. What we notice here is that in the logic of this proposal,
the relation we are after turns out to be basically the same in the two cases, the case of the
name, and the case of the sentence.
Objects Facts

Representation Representation

Names Sentences

19
Why does the problem of the sameness of the relation in the case of names and sentences
matter to the issue of the nature of truth? Well, the difference between names and sentences (or
propositions, a difference orthogonal to my concerns here), to put it simply, is precisely the
difference between something that is truth-evaluable and something that is not. Now, we started
from the assumption that truth is a relation, or relational. Then, if truth exclusively applies to
sentences, and truth is relational, then the difference between names and sentences should
matter. But the above representational model ignores it.
The same problem would have arisen if we had talked, not of representation as the
relation in question, but reference, for reference, to the extent that there is a truth/reference
distinction at all, is a notion paradigmatically suited to Noun Phrases (NPs), not sentences, the
things that are true or false. Paradigmatically, we refer to things with NPs like this great
emperor, but not with sentences. Also grammatically, (only) NPs are the locus of referentiality,
and I know of no linguistic evidence for referentiality in the case of sentences. In short, if we
keep up the idea that truth is relational, we had better come up with an interesting idea of what
the relation in the case of truth is, and how it differs from the relation that we have in the case
of names (or, more generally, NPs). Whatever the relation X is that we are after in the case of
the truth of sentences, it cant be representation, for representation is a notion that is as such
neutral as to the difference between the way in which names (or noun phrases, NPs) refer, and
in which sentences (are supposed to) refer.
In the paper, I explore candidates for X, and do not find any good ones. The reasons
relate to Fodors (2003, 91-2) recent reminder that a sequence of ideas (each with a referential
content) doesnt constitute a complex idea. But there are complex ideas, over and above simple
ones. Therefore thinking a complex idea (such as a sentence) is not thinking a sequence of
ideas. What makes a sentence a sentence (rather than a list) is not another substantive or
referential constituent in it, which we might identify externalistically. We cannot hang on to the
model of reference when spelling out the alleged relational character of sentences.
But why in fact should anyone think that truth has anything to do with representation?
Suppose a person tells you: Abortion is a perfectly unproblematic device at any stage of the
pregnancy. You would, I suppose, at least be tempted to think that what this person says is
plainly false. The point of such examples is that it is more than questionable that any of these
judgements refer to facts out there, as the relational theorist of truth seeking to instantiate X
would want us to believe. Even if such facts existed, I argue they would not help for our moral
judgement, and possibly quite irrelevant to it.
This throws up the issue of whether there is ethical truth, but I argue that in ordinary
human practices there is, and the whole meta-ethical dispute on truth in ethics presupposes this
empirical fact. In sum, if judgements like the above are truth judgements, and representation of
fact is not what is at stake here, then making a truth judgement in such cases is not a matter of
representing some fact (of the sort that exists prior to and independently of your truth
judgement, and which the truth judgement then merely depicts or represents).
I also briefly argue that truth in science, is not a matter of representation, but of
interference, theoretical abstraction and experiment, which are quite different matters (Hacking
1983).

References

Chomsky, N. (2000), New Horizons in the Study of Language and Mind, CUP.

Fodor, J. (2003), Hume Variations, Oxford.

Godfrey-Smith, P. (1998), Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature, CUP.

Hacking, I. (1983), Representing and Intervening, CUP.

20
 Enlightened indexicalism
Andrea Iacona
Universit del Piemonte Orientale
andreai@lett.unipmn.it

Indexicalism is the view according to which the determination of the truth condition of a
sentence as it is uttered in a certain context depends entirely on some assignment of reference,
relative to that context, to elements of its syntactic structure or logical form. This amounts to
saying that context-dependency may be described in terms of indexicality, where indexicality is
understood in a broad sense. In the narrow sense of indexicality, an indexical is a context-
dependent expression that shares the characteristics of words such as I, here and now.
Indexicals in the narrow sense, together with demonstratives (words such as this or that) and
pronouns (words such as he or she) are overt context-dependent expressions. Instead, on a
broad construal an indexical is any expression, including covert variables, whose reference is
supplied entirely by context, with or without the help of a definite linguistic rule. The claim
that context-dependency may be described in terms of indexicality is often regarded with
suspicion, mostly because of the degree of complexity it imposes on syntactic structure.
Accordingly, a common way of arguing against it is to provide cases in which postulating a
syntactic structure of the prescribed complexity is assumed to be implausible. The aim of the
paper is to show that, at least for some cases, this assumption of implausibility rests on
confusion. Its main point is that it is not essential to indexicalism to assume that, in order to
understand a sentence and to use it correctly and successfully in communication, it is necessary
that speakers assign definite values to all the variables in its syntactic structure. This means that
that there are important differences between indexicals in the narrow sense and indexicals in
the broad sense.

Two Forms of Consequentialism or

What should we expect from a normative theory
Andreas Lind
Lund University, Sucia
andreas.lind@fil.lu.se

Contemporary act-consequentialism is divided on the question of how the criterion of

rightness for an act or a course of action should be interpreted. According to objective
consequentialism (OC), the criterion of rightness for an act is whether that act in fact would
most promote the good among those acts that are available to the agent. This version has been
defended by H. Sidgwick and G.E. Moore and in the contemporary discussion by, e.g., Peter
Railton. According to the decision-theoretical account of consequentialism (DTC) the criterion
of rightness for an act is whether that act is the act with the highest expected (consequentialist)
value according to the agents probability function at the time of action. This version has been
defended by, e.g., Frank Jackson.
I argue that the choice between OCs and DTCs criteria of rightness is a function of
several prior choices, among them choices with regard to the following issues: (a) What sense
of ought do we believe to be the primary business of an ethical theory? (b) To what extent are
normative theories supposed to be action-guiding? (c) Should our focus primarily be on the
epistemic status of the agent or should it be on the objective features of the act?
In the first part of the paper I discuss the merits and drawbacks of both versions view
with respect to these factors, together with additional features that allegedly support either
versions criterion of rightness. I argue that these theoretical disagreements within
contemporary consequentialism have their origin in a much wider disagreement about moral
philosophy and that they can only be settled if we take a stand on that wider issue. I thus argue
that it is fruitful and perhaps necessary to regard problems within contemporary

21
consequentialism as problems about moral philosophy in a wider sense. More precisely, it is a
question about what role we believe a normative ethical theory can or should play in practice.
In the second part of the paper I thus turn to this wider issue. Pursuing the wider
question in relation to (a)-(c) above (together with various other important factors) is called for,
since the criterion of rightness is only an end product based on the approach taken to them. We
will see that the respective positions OC and DTC take towards these factors result from prior,
and often implicit, considerations about what tasks a normative ethical theory should fulfil. The
need for meta-ethical questions and justification is therefore crucial for taking a stand on the
intra-theoretical issue as to whether OC or DTC is the best version of consequentialism.
I end the paper by claiming that we have some (though certainly not conclusive) reasons
to prefer the decision-theoretical approach to consequentialism. The main reasons being that it
does not impose excessively high standards on right action and that its criterion of rightness has
a plausible case for being actually, and not only ideally, action-guiding.

Music Lessons - What the philosophy of music can teach us about nominalism
Antnio Lopes
Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa
antoniojesuslopes@clix.pt

The aim of the paper will be to show how current philosophical discussion within the analytic
tradition about the nature of musical works can help dissipate some notions that, although
apparently opposite, are, surprisingly, sometimes both taken for granted or obvious in the
philosophy of art in ontologic matters. These are Nelson Goodmans view of the musical work,
and what I will call the historico-musicological view of music in general (not necessarily of
works as such).
An important caveat must be introduced from the start, that being the circumscribing
of music under discussion to the so-called western classic tradition from the Middle-Ages until
today.
In the first part of the paper, I discuss Goodmans definition of a work of music in his
Languages of Art, as the class of all performances compliant with the score as written by the
composer of that work. I elaborate on the nominalist inspiration of the definition, and present a
number of arguments showing its shortcomings and clashes with the reality of the current
understanding of what a musical work is, by specialists and non-specialists alike.
I point out that there is a certain amount of ambiguity about the formulation of
Goodmans definition as to whether or not it includes all possible performances of the work,
pointing out the unwanted drifts from strict nominalism that the affirmative, which is the most
plausible, would generate.
The arguments proper are mostly of the reductio kind. The first group concerns the
impediments that such a definition would cause on consensually true predications about works
of music, such as having been written in 1889 in Wiesbaden or has been very popular since
its premire, and remains one of the most performed works in the repertoire, or has never
been performed, which would imply, respectively, that a class of (at least some actual)
performances of a work could be created at a certain time and place, contemporarily with the
work itself, that the work (a class) would be getting bigger and bigger as time went by, and
even, that all work that have never been performed simply dont exist, or are all one and the
same work, since the class they would all exemplify would be the null class.
Other arguments concern the dissimilarities between performances of the same work,
which might present a violation of Leibnizs Law under Goodmans definition (Nicholas
Wolterstorff). Also, the salva veritate substitutability would not be observed, I propose, in
cases like Mozart is the author of Cos fan Tutte, where substitution by the Goodmanian
equivalent phrase would involve ignoring the efforts of singers, players, directors and staff
responsible for the multiple performances of the opera in favour of Wolfgang. In my view, the
strategy that would claim this to be a referentially opaque contexts would be unfounded.

22
 A final line of criticism focuses on problems of individuation, in particular, the
criterion under which a given set of performances can be said to be of this particular work.
Following Richard Wollheim, I find Goodmans strategy of explaining away classes via the
concept of resemblance unsatisfactory, and possibly viciously circular, besides being counter-
intuitive as regards the common explanation of this identification between performances and
the works they are performances of, made by reference to a previously, independently existent
work, capable of being repeatedly performed at different times and places and in various ways.
The second part of my paper tries to gather a diffuse set of views on the ontology of
musical works common among scholars working at the intersection of musicology, the
psychology of music and philosophical aesthetics, and focuses on the general claim, which can
be loosely associated with the work of Lydia Goehr, of the structural contingency of the very
concept of a work of music, which would be a historical-sociological phenomenon that came
into being at the start of the XIX century (mainly with the ideology connected with Beethoven,
the creative genius). Along these lines, several authors mount an attack on the allegedly
ahistorical and formalist point of view of analytic ontology, and on the whole discussion of the
concept of musical work, which wouldnt historically apply, for instance, to the works of Bach
as conceived by himself or any other composer working before the Romantic paradigm.
After clarifying the tenets and motivations of this influential cluster of views, I try to
show an unexpected allegiance between it and musical nominalism, mainly in sharing the belief
that works directly depend, for their existence, on actual or foreseeable performance, and have
an abstract existence outside the production of the required sounds (the score) which can
only have the status of an heuristic to help us talk about very general (and technical) features of
the music.
Against such a position, I claim that leads to a nominalist denial of the abstract
existence of musical works; that it involves a confusion between work of music and music,
and an uncalled-for incompatibility between an ontology of objects and an ontology of events;
I refute the historical-musicological examples given in the literature in support of the tenet that
only performances really exist, mostly involving the indeterminacy of older musical
notations, and present a defence of a natural ontology of works of music, these being present
at all times (possibly even before the temporal limits mentioned at the beginning), of a
somewhat realist/Platonist inspiration (along the lines of what Peter Kivy calls a proto-
ontology for the period before modern notation). I illustrate this point by resorting to simple
analysis of the performance practices that regulate those and all examples.
In conclusion, I hope to show the inadequacy of Goodmans proposal, to cast some
serious doubts about concepts that often pass for common-sense in talking about philosophy of
music, and also to call the listeners attention, and comments, to this particular area of it, a
flowering field in the contemporary Philosophy of Art which also has some unexpected but
interesting bearing upon issues of general ontology.

Poder o cognitivismo dar conta do poder motivador dos nossos juzos morais?
Pedro Madeira
Kings College, Londres
pedro.madeira@kcl.ac.uk

Um dos argumentos mais comuns usados contra o cognitivismo o seguinte. O

cognitivismo, o internalismo motivacional e o modelo crena-desejo so juntamente
inconsistentes. H boas razes disponveis para pensar que o internalismo motivacional e o
modelo crena-desejo so verdadeiros. Logo, o cognitivismo falso.
Em maior detalhe, o argumento o seguinte. A diferena entre cognitivismo e
expressivismo comea logo com a resposta que cada um d a seguinte questo: o que fazemos
quando emitimos um juzo moral? O cognitivismo diz que estamos a expressar uma crena ("Eu

23
acredito que fazer X errado.") O expressivismo diz que estamos a expressar uma pr-atitude
("Eu no gosto que se faa X."). De acordo com o modelo crena-desejo, a funo prtica das
crenas a de nos dizer qual a melhor maneira de satisfazermos os nossos desejos. A funo
das crenas no a de nos motivar para agir; essa a tarefa dos desejos. Logo, se os juzos
morais fossem crenas, ento o internalismo motivacional seria falso porque no haveria
qualquer ligao entre acreditar que fazer X era certo e estar motivado para fazer X.
As pr-atitudes, por outro lado, tm uma relao muito mais estreita com a motivao
para a aco. Sentir que fazer X certo , entre outras coisas, estar motivado para fazer X.
Logo, se os juzos morais fossem pr-atitudes, ento o internalismo motivacional seria
verdadeiro porque seria impossvel emitir sinceramente um juzo moral sem nos sentirmos
motivados para agir de acordo com ele.
A estrutura geral do argumento , por isso, a seguinte. O internalismo motivacional no
pode ser verdadeiro a no ser que os juzos morais expressem pr-atitudes (sendo que nesse
caso o cognitivismo falso), ou que as crenas possam motivar (sendo que nesse caso o modelo
crena-desejo falso). As crenas no podem motivar. Logo, os juzos morais expressam pr-
atitudes e, consequentemente, o cognitivismo falso.

Agora temos quatro alternativas disponveis. Podemos (i) rejeitar o cognitivismo, (ii)
rejeitar o internalismo motivacional, (iii) rejeitar o modelo crena-desejo, ou (iv) negar que as
trs teses sejam verdadeiramente inconsistentes.
Creio que devemos optar por (iv). A nica razo pela qual as trs teses podem parecer
inconsistentes a de que est na mesa uma verso pouco plausvel do modelo crena-desejo.
O modelo crena-desejo composto basicamente por duas ideias. Em primeiro lugar,
de modo a explicarmos qualquer aco temos de mencionar sempre pelo menos uma crena e
pelo menos um desejo do agente em questo. As crenas tem uma direco de correspondncia
mente-mundo, os desejos uma direco de correspondncia mundo-mente. Precisamos de
ambos para fazer sentido das aces de qualquer pessoa. Em segundo lugar, crena e desejo so
estados mentais distintos. No h estados mentais com direco de correspondncia mente-
mundo e mundo-mente.
Tal como o apresentei, o modelo crena-desejo no implica (pelo menos trivialmente)
a tese de que as crenas so causalmente inertes. A inconsistncia entre o internalismo
motivacional, o cognitivismo e o modelo crena-desejo s gerada caso partamos do princpio
de que o modelo crena-desejo implica esta tese o que, a ser verdade, est longe de ser bvio.
Quem acredita nessa implicao deve-nos um argumento, mas esse argumento nunca
fornecido. A implicao assumida tacitamente.
Parece-me que o problema reside na ambiguidade do termo motivar. Quando algum
diz que as crenas no podem motivar, pode estar a querer dizer uma de duas coisas: ou que as
crenas no podem causar desejos, ou que as crenas no podem tomar o papel de desejos
(levando-nos a agir sem a mediao destes). A segunda afirmao parece-me trivialmente falsa;
a primeira, por outro lado, parece-me interessante e no trivialmente falsa nem trivialmente
verdadeira.
de notar que este tipo de confuso no surge noutros contextos. Quando eu digo: Ele
motivou-me para eu continuar o trabalho que estava a desenvolver, estou a dizer que ele gerou
em mim um desejo para continuar com o dito trabalho. No estou, evidentemente, a dizer que
ele tomou o lugar de um desejo na minha cabea. Nunca algum pensaria que eu estava a dizer
tal coisa. lamentvel, por isso, que esta confuso surja no caso das crenas.
H boas razes empricas para pensar que as crenas podem motivar ou seja, que as
crenas podem causar desejos. Para exemplificar, tomemos dois casos de converso: o da
converso de Santo Agostinho, e o da converso de So Paulo. A converso de Santo
Agostinho faz sentido mesmo que achemos que as crenas so causalmente inertes. Embora ele
tivesse uma vida devassa quando novo, j nessa altura ele se sentia algo culpado por isso. O
desejo de, como ele diz nas Confisses, ser casto e continente por fim triunfou, e ele converteu-
se ao Cristianismo. Tomemos agora o caso de So Paulo. So Paulo, como sabido, perseguia
os Cristos. No entanto, ele eventualmente viu a luz e tornou-se, tambm ele, Cristo. O
modo mais natural de explicar (descrever) a converso dele seria dizer que uma mudana
radical no seu sistema de crenas causou uma mudana radical no seu conjunto de motivaes.

24
 De acordo com as pessoas que acreditam que as crenas no podem causar desejos, o
nico modo de descobrir a razo pela qual So Paulo se converteu ao Cristianismo seria andar a
vasculhar nos seus desejos prvios e procurar estabelecer porque que ele passou a ver a
possibilidade de converso sob uma luz favorvel. Esta posio simplesmente implausvel
porque implica que quase todos os nossos desejos so inatos ou derivaram (por caminhos mais
transparentes, ou por caminhos mais tortuosos) de desejos inatos. De facto, s em casos
anormais que poderamos ter um desejo que nem era inato nem havia derivado de um desejo
inato. Se temos o desejo de comer bacalhau Brs, muito embora no tenhamos j nascido j
com esse desejo, nem ele tenha tido origem num desejo inato, ento algo de muito estranho se
passou. Se calhar bateram-nos na cabea com um martelo e vimo-nos, subitamente, com o
desejo de comer bacalhau Brs.
Concluindo: quem acredita na inrcia causal das crenas est forado a acreditar que,
salvo rarssimas (e conturbadas) excepes, todas as pessoas que passaram por um processo de
converso nas suas vidas tinham j em si, desde a nascena, a semente da sua mudana. Isto
implausvel porque um verdadeiro processo de converso aquele em que, por assim dizer,
plantada uma nova semente, no simplesmente aquele em que passa mais uma etapa na vida de
uma planta.
Logo, a tese da inrcia causal das crenas , ela prpria, implausvel.
Dado que o internalismo motivacional, o cognitivismo e o modelo crena-desejo s so
inconsistentes caso acreditemos na tese da inrcia causal das crenas, uma vez abandonada esta
tese, desaparece tambm a inconsistncia.

Sobre o livre arbtrio: o contrafactual de Moore e seu sentido positivo

Antnio Marques
Faculdade de Cincias Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
aj.marques@fcsh.unl.pt

O problema do livre arbtrio foi reconsiderado e actualizado por vrios autores ao

longo do sculo XX, os quais debateram sob vrias formas a questo de saber se h aces
voluntrias e se estas podem ser consideradas boas ou ms em funo da existncia de um livre
arbtrio. G. E. Moore assumiu que sempre que uma aco boa ou m, o agente podia num
certo sentido fazer algo diferente. Para Moore o sentido em que um agente pode fazer algo
diferente traduz-se na frmula: um agente podia ter feito algo, se tivesse escolhido faz-lo.
Ser pois mediante a anlise deste contrafactual que se pode r esclarecer a existncia ou
inexistncia de algo como uma vontade livre. Passaremos em revista os comentrios de J. L.
Austin e Donald Davidson s posies de Moore, comentrios que nos levam discusso das
condies em que aquela proposio contrafactual verdadeira, isto em que condies que
verdadeiro dizer que eu podia ter feito x , se tivesse escolhido fazer x. Em particular a
anlise do verbo escolher determinante neste contexto e em grande medida foi Austin quem
realizou tal trabalho, em Ifs and Cans (Philosophical Papers).
Mostraremos que a anlise das condies de contrafctuais exprimindo o livre arbtrio
devem satisfazer algumas condies entra as quais: 1. a suposio que algum na 1 pessoa
exprime (ou exprimiu) uma inteno de faze r algo, 2. que o agente no conhea qualquer
previso que outro faa a respeito das suas aces presentes ou futuras, 3 que o agente possa
avaliar as possibilidades de sucesso das prprias aces.
Conclui-se existe um livre arbtrio, entendido negativamente: o agente opta
indiferentemente por alternativas, assim como existe um livre arbtrio entendido positivamente:
o agente escolhe fazer algo que podia no ter feito, segundo as condies acima referidas do
contrafactual de Moore.

25
 How you should not deny bivalence
Teresa Marques
Centro de Filosofia, Universidade de Lisboa
teresamiguel@mail.telepac.pt

The principle of bivalence says that every item of a certain kind every truth-bearer is
either true or false. A counterexample to bivalence should be a truth-bearer that is neither. Call
such counterexamples to bivalence, if existing, genuine truth-value gaps. Timothy Williamson
argues in his Vagueness (1994: pp. 188-9) that the supposition of genuine cases of truth-value
gaps is incoherent. Williamsons argument relies fundamentally on disquotational (or
equivalence) schemas for truth and falsehood, and explores the inconsistency between holding
the correctness of the schemas for truth and falsehood and supposing that there are genuine
truth-value gaps. This inconsistency is a problem for deflationists not inclined to endorse
bivalence: how can the meaning of the truth predicate be fully given in instances of a
disquotational or equivalence schema, if some of such apparently legitimate instances entail
contradictions? But if Williamsons argument stands strong, then there cannot be genuine truth-
value gaps.
Some recent proposals purport to avoid the inconsistency that results from the supposition
of truth-value gaps. Thus, JC Beall (2002) proposes that deflationism is compatible with the
existence of gaps, as long as we recognize the difference between two senses of negation:
strong and weak. A slightly distinct proposal has been put forward by Mark Richard (2000),
who argues that the supposition of truth-value gaps need not lead to contradictions, if we
recognize the distinction between denying a sentence and asserting its negation. These
proposals have in common the following idea: when we say that it is neither true nor false that
P, we obviously do not mean to say it is not true, in the sense that we can infer that P is not the
case, and we do not mean to say it is not false, in the sense that we can infer that not P is not
the case if we did, we would arrive at contradictions. Perhaps we hold instead a neutral
attitude towards particular problematic instances; we could express such an attitude by
appealing to some form of weak negation, or by denying some sentence or proposition, but not
asserting its negation.
I shall argue that these kinds of proposal are misguided. On the one hand, the introduction
of different senses of negation is ad hoc, offering a localized solution with no independent
motivation other than avoiding the derivation of contradictions, and the same goes for the
distinction between denying something and asserting its negation. Moreover, it is questionable
whether disquotational schemas can be made compatible with gaps merely by distinguishing
between different readings of negation. So, I argue, adopting any of these strategies is not how
you should deny bivalence. Finally, I suggest that there is a plausible sense of negation that can
be appealed to, namely metalinguistic negation. The problem is that metalinguistic negation
does not eliminate the deflationists problem: metalinguistic negation can only be helpful to
avoid the derivation of contradictions if it also prevents any disquotation, including in the
statement of truth-conditions. Hence, Williamsons argument stands the supposition of
genuine cases of truth-value gaps is incoherent.

References:

Beall, JC. (2002). Deflationism and Gaps: untying 'not's in the debate. Analysis 62: 299-304.

Horn, L. (1989). A Natural History of Negation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Richard, M. (2000). On an argument of Williamson's. Analysis 60: 213-217.

Williamson, T. (1994). Vagueness. London and New York: Routledge.

26
 Pattern of Emotion and Emotional Growth
Dina Mendona
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
md@fcsh.unl.pt

This paper constructs a pattern of emotion by thinking of emotions in terms of activity and
explores the notion of emotional maturity in light of such a pattern.
The first part of the paper presents the pattern of emotional activity. Such a pattern of
emotion aims to capture the dynamic nature of emotional life providing a vocabulary to focus
our attention in the lively activities of mind instead of its results. The design of the pattern of
emotional activity is made in analogy to the Deweyan pattern of inquiry, given the startling
conclusion that under Deweys description emotions behave like ideas. After an explanation of
the pattern of emotional activity, it will be shown how the pattern of emotion allows us to
explain some of the mysterious aspects of emotional life (e.g. some of the ambiguities of
emotion-words). In addition, the paper argues that such a pattern may provide a unifying tool of
research among the different philosophical investigation about emotion, such that this pattern
may open the possibility for a Unified Theory of Emotion.
The second part explores how thinking of emotions in terms of activity provides a
fruitful way to understand the process of emotional maturity. Building upon the pattern of
emotional activity, the paper argues that the reasons why stories help us to grow emotionally
lies in the fact that they embody a deliberate search of paradigm situations (De Sousa 1987). I
will argue for such perspective claiming first, that this analysis provides the ground to conceive
a different answer to the paradox of fiction and paradox of tragedy in aesthetic theory in what
concerns the impact of emotions in fine arts creation and appreciation. And secondly, that it
provides an ideal background to consider the contribution of language to emotional activity
(Cavell 1993). Showing that language impact on emotion illustrates the evaluative processes
that underlies emotional activity, this part ends by showing why thinking in term of a pattern of
emotion helps us understand more clearly what it means to be emotionally mature.
I conclude by pointing out some of the things that have been left open and unanswered
about the pattern of emotional activity, and finish the paper with some comments of the
consequences of such a pattern for the application of philosophy of language to the philosophy
of emotions.

Bibliography:

Cavell, Martha. The Subject of Emotion in The Psychoanalytic Mind. From Freud to
Philosophy, pp.137-158, Cambridge, Mass. And London, England: Harvard University
Press, 1993

Cunningham, Suzanne. Dewey on Emotion: Recent Experimental Evidence in

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Fall, 1995, Vol. XXXI, No. 4: 865-874.

De Sousa, Ronaldo. The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987.

Dewey, John The Theory of Emotions in The Early Works, 1882-1898, vol. 4: 1893-
1894. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville/ London and Amsterdam:
Southern Illinois University Press/ Feffer & Simons, Inc., 1971.

What are states of mind? in The Middle Works, 1899-1924, vol. 7: 1912-1914.
Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press,
1985.

27
 . Experience and Nature in The Later Works, 1925-1953, vol. 1: 1925. Ed. Jo Ann
Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.

. Affective Thought in The Later Works , 1925-1953, Vol. 2:1925-1927. Edited by

Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. 1988.

. Appreciation and Cultivation in John Dewey: The later Works, 1925-1953, vol.
6: 1931-1932Essays, Reviews and Miscellany. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and
Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.

. How We Think in The Later Works, 1925-1953, Vol.8: 1933, ed. Jo Ann
Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.

. Art as Experience in The Later Works, 1025-1953, Vol.10: 1934, ed. Jo Ann
Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.

. Logic: The Theory of Inquiry in The Later Works, 1025-1953, Vol.12: 1938. Ed.
Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990.

Gordon, Robert. The Structure of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987

Gunther, York H. The Phenomenology and Intensionality of Emotion In Philosophical

Studies, vol. 117, n1-2, 2004.

James, William. What is an Emotion? in Mind, 1984, 19: 188-204.

Nussbaum, Martha. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Why there cant be a science of rationality D. Davidson and cognitive science

Sofia Miguens
Universidade do Porto
smiguens@letras.up.pt

This paper aims at assessing the impact on cognitive science of D. Davidsons claim
that there cannot be a (natural) science of rationality (Davidson 1995). First, I will identify a
methodological assumption commonly made within cognitive science research on rationality.
Then I will introduce the way Davidson conceives of rationality in the context of his Unified
Theory of Thought, Meaning and Action (Davidson 1980). Then I will point out that beneath
the conceptions of rationality dealt with in cognitive science lie specific issues in the theory of
meaning and action, regarding which one must take some decisions. Among other things, these
decisions concern the status of mentalistic ways of thinking about human behaviour

28
(Davidson 1995) and consequently the need for mentalistic idioms in a science of mind and
cognition. The discussion whether or not a science of cognition requires mentalistic idioms has
been at centre stage in philosophy of mind for the last decades. One way to look at it is to
consider that it was prompted by the problematic status for the theory of mind to which Quines
two influential ideas of i) naturalized epistemology and ii) radical translation gave rise. I
believe Davidsons Unified Theory, and the place it gives to rationality, must be seen as a
proposal in that context, one which defies the idea of a naturalized approach to rationality.
The Unified Theory brings together issues formerly dealt with in the theory of action
and in the theory of meaning (involving both truth and interpretation) and aims at
understanding thought, meaning and action taking overt behaviour as its start. It has, according
to Davidson, many of the characteristics of a science (such as describing or defining an abstract
structure, with properties which it is possible to prove, and rendering prediction possible). Still,
it is not meant to be natural science, or to compete with natural science, and has even been
accused by people such as J. Fodor and N. Chomsky of being simply unscientific. The fact is,
the entire theory rests on structures dictated by our concept of rationality (Davidson 1995):
decision theory, a truth theory and assumptions about conditions for holding a proposition true
in face of evidence. They suggested the theory and give it the structure it has. For Davidson,
this theory is what we can have when we aim at explaining behaviour. So, although the
Unified Theory allows us to make sense of overt behaviour, as Quine intended, one should keep
it in mind that it is built on the norms of rationality and it is a theory of knowledge we already
possess.
Hence Davidsons dual answer to the question could there be a science of rationality?:
on the one hand there could be such a science it is the Unified Theory on the other hand
there couldnt, in that the Unified Theory is not natural science and is not in any way in
competition with natural science. This should keep us from looking upon cognitive science
research on rationality as simply constituting a science of rationality.

References

Baron, J, 1988, Thinking and Deciding, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Davidson, Donald, 1980, A Unified Theory of Thought, Meaning and Action, in D. Davidson,
Problems of Rationality, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Davidson, Donald, 1995, Could There Be a Science of Rationality? in D. Davidson, Problems

of Rationality, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.

Evans, J. St. B. T, Newstead, S. & Byrne, R. M. J. 1993, Human Reasoning: The psychology of
deduction. Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Fogelin, Robert, 2004, Aspects of Quines Naturalized Epistemology, in Gibson, R. (ed.) The
Cambridge Companion to Quine, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Gibson, Roger F., 2004, Quines Behaviorism cum Empiricism, in Gibson, R. (ed.) The
Cambridge Companion to Quine, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. & ABC Research Group, 2000, Simple Heuristics that make us smart,
Oxford, Oxford University Press

Quine, W.O, 1985, States of Mind, Journal of Philosophy LXXXII, 5-8

Ryle, Gilbert, 1949, The Concept of Mind, New York, Barnes and Noble.

Samuels, R., Stich, S. & Tremoulet, P, 1999, Rethinking Rationality: from bleak implications to
Darwinian modules, in Lepore E. & Pylyshyn Z, eds, What is Cognitive Science?, Oxford,
Blackwell.

29
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1953, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford, Blackwell.

A interpretao e o interesse da crtica

Ins Morais
Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa
ibmorais@fl.ul.pt

Em filosofia da literatura, uma das questes levantadas pela interpretao de obras

literrias a da relevncia das intenes do autor. O debate ganhou particular importncia, na
tradio analtica, com o famoso ensaio de Wimsatt e Beardsley 'The Intentional Fallacy', onde
so avanados alguns argumentos importantes contra o uso, pelos crticos, de possveis
informaes sobre as intenes de um autor ao escrever determinado poema. Wimsatt e
Beardsley defendem que as discusses crticas no se resolvem 'consultando o orculo', porque
tudo o que h para interpretar dever ser 'manifesto' no poema, sendo por isso apenas
necessrio conhecer as convenes lingusticas e artsticas relevantes para responder
adequadamente ao poema. O problema est em que, entre outras coisas, nem sempre possvel
distinguir entre o que est e o que no est 'manifesto' no poema. Por outro lado, muitas vezes
certas informaes biogrficas acerca do autor condicionam efectivamente a nossa percepo
de certos aspectos de uma obra e, consequentemente, podem afectar a nossa interpretao e
apreciao dessa obra. Nesse caso, faria sentido no t-las em conta, por serem aparentemente
'externas' (nos termos de Wimsatt e Beardsley) obra?
No debate entre os chamados anti-intencionalistas (como Wimsatt e Beardsley) e
intencionalistas est, ainda, em causa saber se a interpretao de obras literrias uma
actividade da mesma natureza que a interpretao de outros produtos de aces humanas
complexas, na qual, de modo no problemtico, os intrpretes tm em conta tudo o que
potencialmente contribua para uma melhor compreenso dessa aco (ou do seu resultado).
Interessantemente, enquanto que a teoria literria tem preferido sistematicamente as ideias anti-
intencionalistas (no apenas de Wimsatt e Beardsley mas tambm as de Roland Barthes e de
Foucault), a filosofia da literatura da tradio analtica tem-se concentrado em respostas
intencionalistas ao problema, sendo que o debate se encontra hoje limitado dicotomia entre o
intencionalismo simples (como o defendido por Nol Carroll, entre outros) e o intencionalismo
hipottico (cuja verso mais difundida a de Jerrold Levinson). Enquanto que o
intencionalismo considera que as intenes do autor histrico so relevantes para a
interpretao, o intencionalismo hipottico defende que os intrpretes no visam colocar
hipteses interpretativas que tenham em conta as intenes do autor histrico, mas do autor que
o leitor mais informado - i.e., mais conhecedor das convenes lingusticas e literrias
relevantes, bem como das informaes histricas publicamente disponveis - poderia postular
como hiptese interpretativa.
No me proponho continuar o debate entre o intencionalismo simples e o
intencionalismo hipottico, mas apenas avanar alguns problemas que cada uma dessas verses
ainda enfrenta. Pretendo ainda mostrar que a distino entre texto e obra, tal como proposta
por Gregory Currie, e a concepo das obras de arte como performances, como avanada
recentemente por David Davies, podem, enquanto propostas relativas ao estatuto ontolgico das
obras de arte, ser iluminadoras neste debate, uma vez que podem contribuir para esclarecer os
limites do objecto que suposto que os crticos literrios interpretem e avaliem. Se as vises de
Currie e Davies sobre o estatuto ontolgico das obras de arte estiverem correctas, ento
interpretar uma obra literria no pressupe apenas a identificao de propriedades textuais de
uma obra, mas inclui necessariamente a considerao das suas condies de produo (e,
portanto, as intenes do autor). Assim, ter em conta essas informaes no implica acrescentar
algo 'externo' quilo que tomamos como objecto de interpretao, mas apenas no excluir o que
argumentavelmente faz parte da obra literria. a extenso desses limites das obras literrias -
e as consequncias que a definio desses limites tem para a interpretao e para a crtica - que
o meu ensaio pretende discutir.

30
 O muthos cinematogrfico
Vtor Moura
Universidade do Minho
vmoura@ilch.uminho.pt

The Greek word muthos names the role of the viewer or the reader in the process of
recognizing a given narrative form or structure. It constitutes an active work of composition,
integration and synthesis of heterogeneous elements and the establishment of a dynamic
identity to the story being presented. It consists also of a sort of "negotiation" between the
expected and the unexpected elements of a narrative, the foreseeable and the unforeseen.
Through it, the reader or spectator is able to sustain and calibrate a level of expectation that
explains for much of the narrative tension and the fruition provided by it. Not everything is
predictable and not everything is unpredictable. The narrative structure provides the viewer or
reader with a number of macro and micro ranges of possibilities and, therefore, with the chance
to discriminate between the congruity and the incongruity of any diegetic sequence (i.e., the
occurrence of events or reactions within those ranges and those which fall outside them).
Film theorists have introduced and developed several surveying devices that help us to
better grasp how this muthos takes place in the case of film viewing as well as to realize the
different levels, both diegetic and perceptual, in which this activity takes place. These devices
are, for instance, the relation between point-glance and point-object focal perspectives, the
relation between music and emotion, erotetic narrative, the narrative enthymeme and the
relation between reading-for-the-story and reading-within-the system.
The objective of this paper is to propose a panoramic and comparative view of these
explanatory devices and to present and assess their common rationale. All of them describe the
way films are basically constructed through complex and juxtaposed sequences consisting on
the instauration of a given range of possibilities and the cropping out or selection of one of
those possibilities. Another common feature lies on the way these devices attribute the viewer
an active role in the extraction, elaboration and development of cinematic meaning. Film
viewing appeals constantly to the memory and activates different common cognitive abilities in
the spectator, namely, our common methods of decision-making.
I shall expand this view by proposing other ways through which movies exert a
controlled appeal to the spectators' cognitive capabilities and to their collaboration in filling in
the gaps. I shall assume the hypothesis that the spectator's more or less conscious awareness of
her active role in film viewing could lead her - as Ernst Gombrich suggested in the case of
painting -"to experience something of the 'thrill of making' " and thus contribute to the
explanation of the power of contemporary movies.

The Good Sense of Nonsense:

a non self-repudiating reading of Wittgensteins Tractatus
Daniele Moyal-Sharrock
Univ of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
moyalsharrock@talk21.com

In this paper, I attempt to clarify Wittgenstein's view of nonsense, and show that it
allows for a consistent and nonself-repudiating reading of the Tractatus. This new reading
rejects the two main, competing, readings of the Tractatus: the so-called Therapeutic (or
resolute) and the Metaphysical (or ineffabilist) readings. I contend that a restricted and
judgmental conception of Wittgensteinian nonsense is responsible for the general failure to
understand the Tractatus. I take particular issue with Peter Hacker's judgmental interpretation
of Wittgensteinian nonsense and go on to delineate my reading of the Tractatus which I call,

31
anachronistically, the grammatical reading. Max Black got it right when he saw Tractarian
propositions as formal propositions, but On Certainty allows us (in retrospect) to situate them
more precisely: precursors of grammatical propositions, not part of the language-game, not
endowed with sense, but enabling it they form a ladder or a scaffolding from which to make
sense. Tractarian propositions do not transgress the bounds of sense, as Hacker believes they
do; they are the bounds of sense. Their being characterised as nonsense by Wittgenstein, far
from precluding their regulatory function, confirms it. I conclude by suggesting that inasmuch
as sayability is internally linked to sense in the Tractatus, it is the grammatical, and therefore
nonsensical, nature of Tractarian sentences that makes them technically unsayable. That
Tractarian sentences cannot technically be said, however, does not mean they cannot be
spoken. Once we distinguish between saying and speaking, the author of the Tractatus can no
longer be taxed with inconsistency in articulating the ineffable.

Reality and the meaning of life

Desidrio Murcho
Kings College, Londres
desiderio.murcho@kcl.ac.uk

In this paper I will argue that reality and truth play central roles in determining whether
a persons life has a meaning. I will show that no life can have a meaning, even if it is full of
pleasures and happiness, if those pleasures and that happiness are illusory. The main
thought is that a life of merely subjective happiness and pleasure e.g. a life under Nozicks
celebrated Pleasure Machine is not a meaningful life. Although there is not much in the way
of a clear-cut argument for this thought, I will explore some intuitions that seem to favour it.
These are intuitions that come to the fore when we consider specific contrasting examples.
Many of those who argue that life has no meaning do so precisely because they believe
all happiness and well-being is somewhat illusory. But can one be an objectivist regarding some
values e.g. ethical values and still be a pessimist regarding the meaning of life? Thomas
Nagel is precisely a philosopher that embraces the two. I will try to show why this is wrong.
The main argument is as follows. Assuming there are objective values, a life that promotes
them plays a central and important role, overall. Putting aside cases where someone else would
have promoted those values, the world becomes a better place objectively better owing to
that persons life. Intuitively, at least, this is enough to give meaning to that life. Nagels
objection is that humans crave for more than merely intersubjective value. But if we believe
there are objective values (and not just intersubjective values), nothing more can be asked to
give life a meaning. If someone believes this kind of meaning a life can have is not enough, the
burden of proof rests with her. An analysis of what this person can have in mind reveals that it
may be an illusion like the wrong thought that an eternal life would be meaningful. Thomas
Nagel and Bernard Williams also argue against this, but I will try to show that this illusion rests
on a wrong notion of the meaning of life a notion that does not consider reality, and tries to
conceive meaningfulness from a purely subjective point of view.

Property dualism about consciousness and epistemic necessity

Christian Onof
Birkbeck College Univ of London

32
 c.onof@imperial.ac.uk

This paper examines the (quasi-)epiphenomenalism implied by Chalmerss (1996)

property dualistic view of consciousness. A thought experiment is constructed to show that the
purported explanatory independence between the properties of access and phenomenal
consciousness is not compatible with certain epistemic requirements. The paper thus questions
property dualism in a sense akin to a range of objections based upon the notion of metaphysical
necessity (Papineau, Loar, ). For it claims that conceptual considerations are not sufficient to
draw ontological conclusions, so that although zombies are logical possible, there are other
grounds for rejecting the possibility of zombies. However, this paper takes a radically different
direction in identifying epistemic normativity as the source of these additional constraints. And
rather than leading to a rejection of property dualism, this points to a link between access
consciousness and phenomenal consciousness that builds a dependence structure upon
Chalmerss dualism of properties.
In The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers develops a multifaceted argument to show
that the phenomenal nature of conscious experience is not reducible to functional properties of
a physical substance. For Chalmers, this conclusion is inevitable if one is to take seriously the
certainty that we are phenomenally conscious. The argument turns, in particular, on the logical
possibility of creatures identical to us but for their lack of phenomenal experience. These
zombies without qualia behave in ways identical to us, which makes phenomenal properties
irrelevant to the explanation of our behaviour.
I take Chalmerss argument to be a valid inference from the hypothesis we are certain
of being phenomenally conscious. But tensions emerge when we consider the nature of this
certainty in relation to logically possible scenarios of temporally altered phenomenal properties.
Thus, consider Mary, Lucy and Suzie identified as follows. As in Jacksons (1982, 1986)
classic papers, Mary is brought up in a black and white world and at time T, enters our
colourful world for the first time and encounters a red rose. Her sister Lucy who also looks at
the rose, has been brought up in our world. But she has a twin sister Suzie living in a possible
world W1 defined as follows: it is identical to ours except that before T, visual qualia are all
black and white. Property dualism tells us that Suzie does not report anything new when
looking at the rose, since her behaviour is identical to Lucys. However, intuitively, Suzies
situation is akin to Marys.
The counter-intuitiveness of this result is no objection to property dualism. But
consider Suzies mental states. Chalmers tells us we have immediate access to our phenomenal
experience (this is essential to the above claim of certainty). So the mental state in which one is
phenomenally conscious of a red rose is available for reporting. Suzies phenomenal experience
during the interval [T-T,T+t] is apparently that of a change in the phenomenal experience
featuring the novelty of the experience of red, but it is not available for reporting. As a result,
Suzies access consciousness appears to be operating differently from Lucys who is able to
report her phenomenal experience during [T-T,T+t]. So there is a mental state which is
access conscious in W, but not in W1. This is not allowed by property dualism.
The only possible response to the above for the property dualist would be to deny that
Suzies mental state is different from Lucys so that she has no mental state the content of
which includes the change of phenomenal properties at T. This would mean that Suzies grip on
her phenomenal experience is rather poor, but the property dualist may argue that all he needs
for his argument is the certainty of being phenomenally conscious, not of getting its nature
right.
Although this does not reflect the grasp we think we have of qualia, we can respond to
this reply by replacing Suzie by Zuzie in the experiment. Zuzie is another twin of Lucys living
in a possible world W2 identical to ours but for the absence of all phenomenal experience
before time T. She is therefore a zombie before T. If the mental state in which Zuzie considers
the experience of the red rose during [T-T,T+t] is identical to Lucys, then Zuzie is not in
touch with the phenomenal experience starting at time T. That is, it is not the nature of the
experience, but its very coming into being which Zuzie has no experience of. The problem is
Zuzies (and Suzies) claim to be certain of being phenomenally conscious after T, as it is now
represented in the framework of property dualism, is not the claim with which we started,

33
namely that which each one of us has of having qualia. For part of that claim is that we know
when phenomenal experiences start and when they change. So even if some minimal notion of
certainty remains (which is arguable), property dualism does not provide an adequate
representation of this epistemic certainty in the cases shown above, thus undermining the
assumption that underpins the argument for it.
Issues about the nature of the access we have to our being phenomenally conscious are
examined to ward off possible objections. The only way forward is then for the property dualist
to provide grounds for rejecting the cases we have considered above, namely the cases of
changing phenomenal properties (dancing qualia) and the possibility of zombies. The grounds
for so doing are epistemic. They can be seen either as the successful functioning of access
consciousness, or equivalently, the correct representation of the certainty of being
phenomenally conscious.
The conclusion is that the dualism which separates phenomenal from access
consciousness properties and which is grounded in the logical possibility of zombies, is now
given a dependence structure on the grounds of epistemic normativity. Namely, invariant
phenomenal properties are required for a proper access to our mental states which translates
into phenomenal judgements that are adequate to these states. The consequence of this result is
further explored for the meaning it gives to phenomenal experience.

Temporal becoming: can we do away with it?

Elisa Paganini
Universit degli Studi di Milano
Elisa.Paganini@unimi.it

I propose to consider the paradox of temporal becoming using conceptual instruments

derived from Lewis definition of the problem of intrinsic change. I will show that there are two
possible solutions to this paradox (not three, as for Lewis problem of intrinsic change), that the
two solutions are ontologically incompatible and that they both solve the paradox at the cost of
getting rid of temporal becoming.
The problem I want to raise is: how we should consider temporal becoming? There are two
possible answers to this question. The first answer is that temporal becoming is unreal: the
paradox of temporal becoming is a demonstration of the impossibility of temporal becoming;
there are, of course, two different and competing models of the nature of time (i.e. the two
solutions of the paradox), but they both exclude the reality of temporal change. I intend to
propose a second answer: temporal becoming is conceptually inaccessible, the paradox
concerns our conceptual abilities and not reality in itself, the two possible answers to the
paradox of time reveal two possible conceptual attitudes to an unattainable reality.

1. The paradox of temporal becoming

There are three properties: being past, being present and being future. These three
properties are both monadic intrinsic (they apply to an object independently of any relation
with other objects, temporal items, etc.) and temporary (they are possessed only for a certain
amount of time, not always).
To be monadic intrinsic and temporary is both conceptually contradictory and extensionally
contradictory. It is conceptually contradictory for a property to be monadic intrinsic (non
relational) and temporary (which means that it is possessed only in relation to certain times): it
means that the property is both relational and non-relational.
The two characterizations give rise also to two incompatible ways of applying the
properties in consideration (i.e. to two contradictory extensions of the predicates corresponding
to the properties). If the three properties are monadic intrinsic, then they are possessed
simpliciter by an object or by an event, independently of any relation. For example, if the
election of the European Parliament has all of them intrinsically, they just apply to it; it follows
that the election of the European Parliament is past and present and future. If e is the election

34
of the European Parliament and P, N and F are the properties being past, being present and
being future, then it follows:
(1) PeNeFe
On the other hand, if the three properties are temporary, they are had only in relation to a
time, and given an event, like the election of the European Parliament, and a time, that event
has only one of the three properties, i.e.:
(2) PeNeFe
(1) and (2) are obviously contradictory.

2. The two solutions to the paradox

There are two well known solutions to the paradox so presented.
The first one, the most popular one, is to assume that being past, being present and being
future are not monadic intrinsic properties, but they are just relations to times (B-theorists
solution). The fact that we consider them monadic intrinsic is a mistake, it depends on a wrong
assumption on the reasons that prevent a tensed sentence from being translated into a tenseless
one.
The second solution is to assume that only one among the properties being past, being
present and being future is intrinsic: only being present is a monadic intrinsic property, being
past and being future are either not properties at all or relational properties (Presentist A-
theorists solution).
The two solutions are ontologically incompatible. In order to see this it is useful to inquire
into the set of the existing things according to the two possible solutions. According to the first
solution, the temporal properties are relations and the objects which stand in those relations are
equally existing: so all objects, events and times in the history of the universe are equally
existing. According to the second solution, the monadic intrinsic property being present is what
characterizes the objects, the events and the time existing: so, only the present objects, events
ant time are existing.
The two solutions get rid of temporal becoming. This is quite uncontroversial for the first
solution, it is a matter of discussion for the second solution. I believe that if we assume that the
second solution saves temporal becoming, then we must say that being present is not just a
monadic intrinsic property, but that it is also a temporary property and the paradox rises again.

3. How to consider temporal becoming

If the two previous solutions of the paradox reject temporal becoming, it could be
believed that the conclusion to draw is that temporal becoming is impossible and that the nature
of time is to be looked for in one of the two opposing solutions to the paradox.
I suppose that another possibility is open: it is possible that the paradox shows our
conceptual inability to grasp change in general and more specifically temporal becoming. I
suppose that it is at least a conceptual possibility that reality does not correspond to our
conceptual abilities. If that is the case, the two solutions to the paradox are not to be considered
as two competing descriptions of the ontological reality, they have to be interpreted as two
conceptual approximations to an unattainable reality. The general idea behind this second
possibility is that we can give only static conceptual representations of a dynamic reality. If this
second solution is viable, the problem is: why the two solutions are incompatible and
competing? I suppose that the answer is to be looked for in the different elements which are
considered as primitive by the two solutions. As I showed, the paradox emerges from the
incompatibility between two characteristics of temporal properties: being monadic intrinsic and
being temporary. One solution adopts the temporary nature as the primitive characteristic of
temporal properties, while the other solution adopts the monadic intrinsic nature as the
primitive characteristic of the only essential temporal property.

Conceptualism and the supposed Non Transitivity of colour indiscriminability

Charles Pelling
Reading University
charlespelling@hotmail.com

35
 In the philosophy of perception, the conceptualist asserts, and the non-conceptualist
denies, that the representational content of experience is exclusively conceptual content. In this
paper, I show that Delia Graffs recent arguments1 for the traditionally unpopular view that
colour indiscriminability is transitive have important implications for the conceptualism versus
non-conceptualism debate.
This is because (1) conceptualism can be true only if we possess context-dependent
demonstrative colour concepts, and (2) only if colour indiscriminability is transitive can we
possess such concepts.
This paper addresses (2). In order to establish its truth, I consider two accounts of
demonstrative colour concept possession, those given by the two most prominent
conceptualists, John McDowell and Bill Brewer. McDowell and Brewer each propose a
condition that a subject must satisfy in order to possess a demonstrative colour concept. In the
bulk of the paper, I am concerned to establish two things: first, that unless colour
indiscriminability is transitive, neither of the conceptualists proposed conditions are
satisfiable; and second, that at least one of these conditions must indeed be satisfied by any
genuine demonstrative colour concept possessor.

Possibly, there are bare possibilia

Philip Percival
Glasgow University, Scotland
p.percival@philosophy.arts.gla.ac.uk

I. Recently, Williamson has argued for an ontology of merely possible people etc., where
"possible" is construed not predicatively, but attributively. Thus construed, possible people are
not people who are possible, but "bare possibilia" i.e. non-concrete objects the non-formal
properties of which are mere "potentialities," such as "(merely) possibly concrete" and
"(merely) possibly human" etc. My aim is to articulate the first step of a very different line of
thought from Williamson's in favour of such an ontology. This is a novel argument for the
claim there are concrete objects which might have been bare possibilia. In symbols:
(T) x[concrete(x) [(concrete(x) yy=x]]

II. (T) follows from the truth of "Clinton might have been a bare possibile," i.e.

(C) [concrete(Clinton) yy=Clinton]

I claim that (C) is true because in certain counterfactual situations in which Clinton is not
concrete, there is a true proposition about him of the form "F(Clinton)" which is necessarily
object-involving in the sense that: Necessarily, [F(Clinton)yy=Clinton]. These situations are
situations in which Clinton is not born, and the relevant truth about him in these situations is
that he might have been born and grown to possess exactly the intrinsic properties he actually
possesses at t (where t, say, is the instant of Clinton's twentieth birthday).
Let "cx" be a predicate that captures exactly the intrinsic properties Clinton actually has
at t. To show that (C) is true in this way, I need to establish two claims:

(C1) [concrete(Clinton) c(Clinton)]

and
(C2) Necessarily [c(Clinton) yy=Clinton]

1
In her Phenomenal Continua and the Sorites. Mind 110, 905-936. In fact, Graffs arguments extend
also to other forms of indiscriminability, but this is not important for my purposes.

36
 (C1) is straightforward. Had a nuclear explosion occurred in the immediate vicinity shortly
before the relevant sperm reached the relevant ovum, Clinton would not have been conceived,
with the result that he would not have been concrete. Equally, however, it would still have been
the case that, even so, he could have been born (and hence concrete), and grown to be exactly
as he actually was intrinsically at t.

III. (C2) is not straightforward, however. Its constituent "c(Clinton)" can be analysed (a)
as expressing the proposition "Clinton has the property c" or (b) as expressing the
proposition "(Clinton has the property )". It will be objected thatn(C2) is only true on
analysis (a), whereas (C1) is only true on analysis (b).
Against this, I argue that (C2) is true even on interpretation (b). The proposition "
(Clinton has the property )" is necessarily object-involving because its being so is a
consequence of the best explanation, with respect to each situation in which it is true, of that in
virtue of which it is true in that situation. That is, I claim that "the "In virtue of what?"
challenge - namely, "had Clinton not been concrete, in virtue of what would it have been the
case that: possibly, c(Clinton)?" - is best met by the suggestion that it would have been the
case in virtue of the existence of an object - Clinton - having the property of being possibly c.
I must show that this challenge needs to be met, and that my way of meeting it is better
than alternatives.

IV. In justifying the challenge, I argue that:

(i) It isn't loaded. It does not presume that the question "In virtue of what?" is to be
answered by specifying an object. Rather, in "There is something in virtue of what ...," the
quantifier is propositional, not first-order.
(ii) The proposition at which the challenge is directed is object-discriminating: whereas c
(Clinton) is true in the counterfactual situation at issue, c(The Eiffel Tower) is impossible.
Any such object-discriminating truth demands an answer to the question "In virtue of what is it
true?", even if it is necessary.
(iii) Once the legitimacy of the question "in virtue of what is it true that ?" with respect
to actual truths is admitted, it becomes obligatory to ask it with respect to what would have
been true counterfactually.

V. In arguing that my proposal best meets the challenge, I defend what I call:
The Principle of Genuine Counterfactuality - Necessarily, nothing that answers a question
"in virtue of what is it the case that s?", but which wouldn't have been, had it been the case that
p, is that in virtue of which, had it been the case that p, it would have been the case that q.
This principle refutes the suggestion that had the explosion occurred, preventing Clinton's
conception, that in virtue of which Clinton might still have been c, would have been (a) that in
virtue of which Clinton is c, or (b) that in virtue of which actually, Clinton is c. (The
principle undermines (a) directly, but (b) indirectly i.e. via the principle that wide-scope
"actually" is redundant, in the sense that that in virtue of which "Actually, Clinton is c" is true
is the same as that in virtue of which "Clinton is c" is true.)
A dilemma undermines the suggestion that had Clinton not been born, that in virtue of
which he might still have been c, would have been the existence of a state of affairs, s, such
that possibly, s might have obtained (i.e. where had s obtained Clinton would have grown to be
intrinsically as he actually is at t). If this state of affairs does not involve Clinton it cannot be
that in virtue of which Clinton would have been possibly c. But if this state of affairs does
involve Clinton, its existence wouId require Clinton's existence.
I invoke Lewis's arguments against ersatzist answers to the challenge, and everyone else'e
arguments against a Lewisian answer to it.
I end by considering the "brute" modalist answer to the challenge - namely, that that in
virtue of which it would have been the case that c(Clinton), had Clinton not been born,
would have been the (brute modal) fact that possibly, Clinton is c. I argue that an ontology of
such facts is more obscure than is an ontology of bare possibilia.

37
 Kinds of reasons
Christian Piller
University of York, UK
cjp7@york.ac.uk

In the first section of this paper I distinguish, on a purely conceptual level, between two
kinds of reasons, which I call attitude-related reasons and content-related reasons.
Think of any attitude we might have towards some proposition p, which, because we
have some attitude towards it, I call the content of this attitude. It might be an epistemic attitude
like belief or doubt, an attitude like desiring, wanting or, intending, or an emotional attitude like
anger or fear or gratefulness. For all these attitudes we can have reasons that speak in favour or
against adopting them. Content-related reasons are such that, if we are aware of them, they
show us p in a certain light. They point to some feature of p, which makes a certain attitude
towards p the appropriate one to have. Attitude-related reasons, by contrast, are such that, if we
are aware of them, they show us our having a certain attitude towards p in a certain light. They
point to some feature of our having this attitude that makes it the appropriate one to have.
Some examples: The propositional content of my belief that p might be entailed by
other things I believe with good reason. This feature of the proposition that p, namely being
entailed by what I reasonably believe, makes it the case that I have a very good reason to
believe that p. Because we are talking about a feature of the proposition that p, the reason
mentioned is a content-related reason. In contrast, believing that p might be beneficial to me in
some way, without p itself having this property. Then, if there were such things, we would have
an attitude-related reason for believing that p, as being beneficial is a property of our having
this attitude. Similarly with emotions: being incapable of doing something most other people
can do, might well be a reason for me to be ashamed of myself. I am ashamed of myself
because I have the property of being incapable of doing something others can do easily. My
reason for feeling shame is content-related. If my being ashamed, in fact, prevents me from
doing what others can do easily, then I have an attitude-related reason against feeling ashamed.
My attitude of feeling ashamed has the property of preventing me from doing something the
doing of which is important to me.
In the second section I argue that even if there couldnt be attitude-related reasons for
beliefs, there would still be attitude-related reasons for preferences. I show that common
arguments denying attitude-related reasons for beliefs cannot be generalized and give examples,
which invite the acceptance of attitude-related reasons. Here is a famous example which comes
from Amartya Sen. Its a story about two boys who find two apples, one large, one small. Boy
A [whom we also might call Nice] tells boy B [whom we also might call Nasty], You choose.
B immediately picks the larger apple. A is upset and permits himself to remark that this was
grossly unfair. Why? asks B. Which one would you have chosen, if you were to choose
rather than me? The smaller one, of course, A replies. B is now triumphant: Then what are
you complaining about? Thats the one youve got! (Sen, Rational Fools, Philosophy and
Public Affairs 1977, 328). A prefers the smaller apple only insofar as preferring the smaller
apple is the polite thing to do. Politeness is a feature of his preferring the small apple, i.e. an
attitude-related reason for preferring it, it is not a feature of the apple, i.e. a content-related
reason for preferring it. Thats why A would happily choose the small apple, but is unhappy
about receiving it. In this second section I also argue against alternative interpretations of this
example due to, e.g. John Broome and Philip Pettit, and I try to counter the general scepticism
towards attitude-related reasons for preferences, which we find in Alan Gibbard and Derek
Parfit.
In the third section I employ the category of attitude related reasons in a discussion of
what Joseph Raz has called exclusionary reasons, which are reasons not to act on certain first-
order reasons (Raz, Practical Reason And Norms 1990). Raz discusses three examples in which
exclusionary reasons play a crucial role: incapacity-based exclusionary reasons, authority-based

38
exclusionary reasons, and commitment-based exclusionary reasons. I will focus on the second
category, though all three admit of the same analysis. Here is Razs example: While serving in
the army Jeremy is ordered by his commanding officer to appropriate and use a van belonging
to a certain tradesman. Therefore he has reason to appropriate the van. His friend urges him to
disobey the order pointing to weighty reasons for doing so. Jeremy does not deny that his friend
may have a case. But, he claims, it does not matter whether he is right or not. Orders are orders
and should be obeyed even if wrong, even if no harm will come from disobeying them. That is
what it means to be a subordinate (Raz 1990, 38).
My analysis of this example goes as follows: Preferring to appropriate the van has a
desirable feature: it is prefering in accordance with what one has been ordered to do. Thus,
Jeremy has an attitude-related reason to prefer appropriating the van, which, in the story told,
outweighs even strong content-related reasons against having this preference.
Raz has a different understanding of the nature of exclusionary reasons. Attitude-
related and content-related reasons can be weighed against each other, whereas Raz would deny
that weighing is possible if exclusionary reasons conflict with what he calls first-order reasons.
I investigate which account provides us with a more plausible analysis of acting on authority
(or acting because of a commitment or an incapacity). I end up defending a principle which Raz
explicitly denies, namely that it is always the case that one ought, all things considered, to do
whatever one ought to do on the balance of reasons.

Reasons, causes and experience: Extending Anomalous Monism

Manuel de Pinedo
Universidad de Granada
pinedo@ugr.es

In this paper I am going to review McDowells criticism of the myth of the given and his
contention that coherentist positions such as Davidsons motivate the acceptance of the myth
rather than the avoidance of it. In epistemology, both fundationalism and coherentism share the
axiom that experience is less than rational, i.e. that our perceptions are somehow separated
from our conceptual, doxastic states. Both positions can be avoided by an understanding of
experience which rejects the possibility of making a principled separation between the worlds
and the persons contributions. I will recommend this approach to experience as a natural
complement to Davidsons anomalous monism. I will hold that anomalous monism cannot be a
thesis about the mind without also being a thesis about experience and the world. This
extension has dramatic consequences for Davidsons philosophy of mind and causation, but
allows to retain with renewed strengh his epistemological theses.
McDowells criticism of the given takes its inspiration from Sellars work: we cannot hold
that the results of an innate capacityour passively receiving inputs from the worldentail
somethingknowledgewhich is itself the output of an acquired facultyrationality, through
language learning. What brings empiricism to this cul de sac is running together a causal story
(which concerns the necessary enabling conditions of knowledge, such as having a brain and
receiving stimuli in our nerve endings) with a rational story (which concerns the conceptual and
normative relationships between mental states). What counts as knowledge partially depends on
the way the world is and on public standards of justification. There is nothing wrong in
studying the causal mechanisms behind reason, which can be characterized in pre-epistemic

39
ways, and related, causally, to epistemic episodes. But we are not going to obtain justifications
for our beliefs from the neural activity which makes them possible: sense impressions, sense
data, non-conceptual content are the mythical Given only if we want them to play an
epistemological role. They are perfectly respectable concepts in Philosophy of Psychology.
A coherentist theory of knowledge is precisely Davidsons alternative to the given. It is a
response to Quines pretence to have it both ways: experience cannot be outside the sphere of
justification and simultaneously work as a tribunal for our beliefs. For Davidson, the duality of
factors that persists in Quine is itself a dogma. This dogma separates between conceptual
scheme, what Quine calls language, and empirical content, what Quine calls empirical
significance. Davidsons attack on this dogma comes from both sides; from the side of the
conceptual scheme by pointing out that mutually unintelligible world-views dont make sense,
and from the side of empirical content by highlighting that experience cannot be a basis for
knowledge from outside the scope of our beliefs.
If we cannot appeal to anything outside the space of reasons to justify a belief, and
experience for Davidson is outside that space, experience cannot offer reasons for holding a
belief. But, if experience, which provides our only contact with the world, cannot play any
justificatory role for our knowledge of that world, what can? Or, to phrase it in a different
manner, if experience only provides brutely causal connections between the empirical world
and our knowledge of it, what guarantees that our knowledge is knowledge of the world? We
have to find a way to restore our confidence on the openness of our knowledge to the world,
without falling on the idea that the world blindly imposses itself on us. McDowell does this by
recommending a different conception of experience, one which isnt merely causal, as it is for
Davidson, but which doesnt sneak in justifications from outside the space of reasons.
Davidson has defended an ontological thesis about the relationship between mind and
world which he calls anomalous monism. Anomalous monism starts with the idea that the
concepts used by our commonsensical interpretation of peoples mental states cannot be
reduced to the concepts used by a scientific, causal description of them. This is so because the
former are normative and, hence, not nomological but anomalous. On the other hand,
psychological states can cause physical states, but all causation is nomological. Therefore each
token of a mental event (if not each type) is also a physical event. However, if we take
Davidsonian interpretationism seriously, and if we allow for the physical base on which mental
events supervene to include the persons environment, we should extend anomalous monism to
experience and the world. I call this position holistic anomalous monism. Two kinds of stories
can be told about the world; in one of them, interpretative, we find people and public objects
and it is normative and anomalous; the other, causal, comes after, and talks about organisms,
atoms, and sensory irritations. The world both causes and justifies our beliefs because the
world can be described both in the vocabulary of natural science and of natural language. But
by tying together the everyday world and the mind with experience, a token-identity theory
looses its attraction, and leads us to wonder whether the priciple of the nomological character
of causation can be argumentatively sustained, or it is just another dogma inherited from the
modern awe at sciences marvels.

H um conjunto fixo de condies necessrias para o conhecimento?

Lus Rodrigues
Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa
lufiro@netcabo.pt

40
 A tradio filosfica ocidental vem sugerindo que h um conjunto fixo de condies
necessrias que devem ser satisfeitas nos casos em que se quer validar que S sabe que P.
Sugere-se, portanto, que h um conjunto fixo de condies cuja satisfao suficiente para que
haja conhecimento proposicional. tambm geralmente aceite que esse conjunto de condies
constitudo - no mnimo - pelas seguintes trs condies necessrias:

1) a condio necessria de S ter a crena que P, i.e, ser o caso de S acreditar (racional e
conscientemente) que P verdadeira;

2) a condio necessria de P ser de facto verdadeira, i.e; de ser o caso daquilo que a
semntica da proposio implica;

3) a condio necessria de S estar justificado em acreditar em P, i.e, de ser o caso de S ter

boas razes para sustentar a sua crena de que P verdadeira.
O propsito desta anlise tripartida do conhecimento proposicional encontrar um critrio
universal de avaliao e validao do prprio conhecimento proposicional. Mas, como a recente
discusso dos exemplos de Gettier (Gettier, 1973) vem demonstrando, difcil, se no mesmo
impossvel, chegar a um consenso quanto forma desse critrio universal, critrio esse que
seria constitudo por um conjunto fixo de condies e que permitiria a avaliao e a validao
do conhecimento proposicional. Ora, o objectivo deste ensaio disputar a ideia de que h um
tal critrio universal, i.e, que h um conjunto fixo de condies cuja satisfao valida
universalmente o conhecimento proposicional, independentemente dos casos em contexto ou do
carcter das proposies envolvidas. Vou sugerir, em alternativa a esta primeira hiptese, uma
segunda hiptese de que ou h um conjunto varivel de condies necessrias (varivel em
quantidade e/ou em qualidade dos seus elementos) ou mltiplos conjuntos de condies
necessrias (a disjuno possivelmente inclusiva) que cumprem a tarefa de validar o
conhecimento proposicional em funo dos contextos e do carcter das proposies. A
argumentao a apresentar em favor desta segunda hiptese ir basear-se em alguns exemplos
que mostram a gradual insuficincia das condies - habitualmente aceites como necessrias e
suficientes para validar o conhecimento proposicional - em funo dos contextos e do carcter
das proposies envolvidas. Vou assim argumentar que a segunda hiptese pode ser uma
hiptese mais econmica e eficaz do que a primeira quando se trata de avaliar e validar o
conhecimento proposicional. Por ltimo, tentarei evitar os possveis efeitos colaterais
originrios da eventual aceitao da segunda hiptese, efeitos como sejam o relativismo e o
cepticismo, apresentando para tal uma soluo de cariz holista e coerentista.

Referncias bibliogrficas:
Geral:
Bonjour, L, Epistemology, Rowman & Littlefield, Maryland & Oxford, 2002

Dancy, J; An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology, Blackwell, Oxford,1985.

Heil, J, Philosophy of Mind, Routledge, New York, 2004

Gettier, E, Is justified true belief knowledge? in Analysis, v. 23.

Subsidiria:
Plato, Mnon, Edies Colibri, Lisboa, 1993.

Plato, Le Sophiste, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1994.

Plato, Teeteto, (No prelo - edio traduzida pelo prof. Jos Gabriel Trindade Santos).

41
 A Filosofia Analtica e a Histria da Filosofia
Um debate a partir da Filosofia Medieval
Gil Santos
FCSH, Univ Nova Lisboa
gilcosan@hotmail.com

A partir de uma controvrsia entre Alain de Libera, Claude Panaccio e Pascal Engel
originada a partir da introduo do estilo analtico na historiografia da filosofia medieval
so examinadas algumas das principais teses debatidas entre as abordagens histrico-filosfica
e analtica em Histria da Filosofia.
Esse debate parece-nos, todavia, insupervel, a no ser que se reconhea que essas
abordagens correspondem, efectivamente, a dois nveis de anlise distintos e no a posies
concorrentes na persecuo do mesmo tipo de tarefas e de objectivos.
Dessa distino de nveis de anlise pode concluir-se que essas abordagens se constituem
como momentos de um processo gradual de abstraco na anlise do mesmo objecto: a histria
da filosofia. Segundo Panaccio, os princpios de fidelidade e de pertinncia so necessrios a
uma legitimao do mtodo analtico em Histria da Filosofia. Procuro mostrar que toda esta
controvrsia, em geral, e que esta tese de Panaccio, em particular, ajudam a esclarecer a real
distino entre os mtodos histrico-filosfico e analtico, bem como o sentido e o alcance do
mtodo de reconstruo terica, acolhido pela filosofia analtica na sua abordagem da
Histria da Filosofia.

Bibliografia:

Engel, P., La philosophie peut-elle chapper lhistoire ?, in J.Boutier e D.Julia (ed.),

Passs Rcomposs, Paris, d. Autrement, 1995, pp. 96-111.

Engel, P., La Dispute: une introduction la philosophie analytique, Paris, Minuit, 1997.

Kretzmann, N., Kenny, A., Pinborg, J. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Later Medieval
Philosophy, Cambridge (G.-B.), Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982.

Libera, A. de, Retour la philosophie mdivale ?, Le Dbat, 72 (1992), M.Gauchet

(ed.), La Philosophie qui vient, pp. 242-260.

Libera, A. de, La Querelle des Universaux: de Platon la fin du Moyen ge, Paris,
Seuil/ Des Travaux, 1996.

Libera, A. de, Le relativisme historique: thorie des complexes questions-rponses et

traabilit, Les tudes philosophiques, 4 (1999), pp. 479-494.

Libera, A. de, La Rfrence vide Thories de la Proposition, Paris, PUF, 2002.

Panaccio, Cl., Les mots, les concepts et les choses. La smantique de Guillaume
dOccam et le nominalisme daujourdhui (Analytiques, 3), Montral-Paris,
Bellarmin-Vrin, 1991.

Panaccio, Cl., De la reconstruction en histoire de la philosophie, in Gilbert Boss (ed.),

La Philosophie et son histoire, Zurich, Editions du Grand Midi, 1994, pp. 173-95.

42
 Condicionais e alguma pragmtica
Pedro Santos
Universidade do Algarve
psantos@ualg.pt

In the literature on conditionals, contrasts like the one ilustrated by (1) and (2) have been
widely discussed:

(1) Butter melts only if it is heated.

(2) If butter melts, then it is heated.

These examples defeat the nave view according to which a conditional of the form If A
then C can always be rephrased as A only if C (assuming tenses are kept fixed). In fact,
whereas (1) seems to be stating that, besides a necessary condition for the melting, the heating
is also a cause for it, (2) seems to be stating that, besides a necessary condition for the melting,
the heating is an effect of it, or at least is supposed to occur after it (this is why (2) sounds
weird, unlike (1)). This reading distinction can even perhaps be construed as a truth-conditional
one, i.e. as distinction concerning the propositions literally expressed by the conditionals.
The distinction, regardless of its truth-contitional import, can arguably be analysed in
terms of Bennetts typology (cf. Bennett (2003)) between conditionals (i) whose antecedent can
be interpreted as refering to the (typically causal) explanation of the state of affairs decribed by
the consequent (I will refer to these as C readings, meaning readings where the consequent acts
as the explanandum) (ii) whose consequent can be interpreted as referring to the (typically
causal) explanation of the state of affairs described by the antecedent (I will refer to these as A
readings, meaning readings where it is the antecedent that acts as explanandum) (iii) whose
consequent, given the hypothesis put forward by the antecedent, can be interpreted as
presenting the best available explanation for the body of evidence supporting the assertion of
the conditional (these I will refer to as E readings, meaning ones where the explanandum is the
contextually determined body of evidence E). A single conditional is often liable to all
three kinds of readings. One vivid example of this is the infamous

(3) If Oswald didnt murder Kennedy, someone else did.

(3) can indeed be understood (i) as stating that in the relevant hypothetical circumstances
where Oswald did not murder Kennedy, someone else (presumably, a fellow conspirator) did
(C reading); (ii) as stating that in the relevant hypothetical circumstances where Oswald did not
not murder Kennedy, someone else managed to do it first, the idea in this case being that
Oswald was not quick enough (A reading) ; (iii) as stating that in the relevant hypothetical
circumstances where Oswald did not murder Kennedy, someone else did do it (E reading). In
this talk, I will claim that Bennetts typology has truth-conditional import, i.e., that it concerns
the truth conditions of conditionals (rather than merely their assertibility conditions). In other
words, I will claim that a conditional like (3) can be used to express (at least) three
propositions, according to the pragmatic idiosyncrasies of the utterance situation.
This hypothesis is clearly committed to an anti-Gricean stance concerning the way the
truth conditions and the literal propositional content of a statement are determined, in the
following way. Whereas someone adopting Grices minimalist view about truth conditions
would claim that the three kinds of reading predicted by Bennetts typology for a conditional
like (3) can best be treated as conversational implicatures, my truth-conditional treatment of
the typology entails that each of them is associated to distinct literally expressed propositions
(and therefore to propositions which are not being conversationally implicated by (3)).
Interestingly, this hypothesis does not entail, on the other hand, that conditionals like (3) are
ambiguous, i.e. that the three kinds of reading are generated by their semantics alone. Rather, it

43
is consistent with the idea that the communicative intentions of, say, the utterers of (3)
determine, on the basis of one and the same semantic input, which kinds of antecedent-states of
affairs are being characterized (in a given context of utterance) as consequent-states of affairs
and therefore which statement is being made.
In other words, if this analysis stands, the communicative intentions of speakers
determine what is literally being said whenever a conditional is uttered. Thus, in the case of (3),
if the speaker intends to assume the conspiracy theory on Kennedys assassination, she is
referring to those (hypothetical) circumstances where the antecedent holds and a conspiracy to
kill Kennedy was on; she is therefore literally saying (rather than implying) that all hypothetical
circunstances where Oswald did not kill Kennedy were ones where, as a consequence of that, a
co-conspirator did (C reading). On the other hand, if she is asserting (3) on the basis of the fact
that Kennedy was murdered, she is referring to circumstances where the antecedent holds and
Kennedy was murdered; she is therefore literally saying that, under the hypothesis that the
murderer was not Oswald, someone other than him must have been the one (E reading).
Such a systematic interference of pragmatic inferences on the determination of the truth
conditions of conditionals (including counterfactuals, for the remarks above apply mutatis
mutandis to that variety of conditional) is in line with the contextualist theses about meaning
championed by, among others, and F. Recanati, R. Carston and the hardliners J. Searle and C.
Travis. In this talk I will argue for the merits of the overall approach (in its non-hardline
version), drawing on my analysis of conditionals.

References

Bennett, J. (2003) A Philosophical Guide to Conditionals, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford.

Recanati, F. (2001) What is said, Synthese 128, 75-91.

Recanati, F. (2003) What is said and the Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction",in Claudia

Bianchi & Carlo Penco (eds.) What is said and the Semantics/Pragmatics Distinction:
Proceedings form WOC 2002, CSLI, Stanford.

Aco e explicao causal

Ricardo Santos
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
rsantos.ifl@fcsh.unl.pt

O modo como hoje explicamos os fenmenos fsicos e biolgicos muito diferente

daquele com que quer Aristteles quer Descartes estavam familiarizados, mas o mesmo no
acontece com a grande maioria das nossas explicaes do comportamento humano. Quer seja
por no termos avanado significativamente nesse domnio, quer seja por a prpria concepo
aristotlica ser j bastante sofisticada, o certo que h uma forma de explicao da aco
humana a sua explicao em termos das crenas, desejos e outros estados mentais
intencionais do agente que podem constituir razes para agir de um certo modo que
permanece invarivel. A presente comunicao ser dedicada discusso da questo de saber
se as explicaes intencionais da aco humana devem ou no devem ser consideradas como
uma forma de explicao causal.
A filosofia tem, desde os gregos, uma longa e respeitvel tradio de respostas
afirmativas a esta questo, segundo a qual as aces voluntrias seriam causadas pelos estados
mentais intencionais que as justificam racionalmente. Todavia, de acordo com a viso humeana
da causalidade, toda a relao causal tem de ser apoiada por uma lei. Ora isso no acontece com
as explicaes intencionais: quando digo que Marta fez isto porque queria aquilo, no estou a
invocar nenhuma lei segundo a qual sempre que algum quer aquilo faz invariavelmente isto. A

44
existncia de leis psicolgicas estritas problemtica, mas, independentemente disso, um
facto incontroverso que as nossas explicaes intencionais particulares no instanciam leis. No
entanto, como Davidson mostrou, no somos forados a concluir daqui que elas no so
explicaes causais. Pois, pelo menos numa certa leitura, tudo o que a anlise humeana exige
que existam descries dos acontecimentos causalmente relacionados sob as quais a sua
conexo seja apenas um caso particular de uma lei. De acordo com a teoria identitativa da
mente, tais descries existem e so fsicas. Esta soluo ser vivel somente se conseguir
afastar a acusao de epifenomenalismo de que alvo.
Mas h ainda uma segunda objeco teoria causal da aco a que este tipo de
fisicalismo parece no responder. Esta objeco de inspirao wittgensteiniana e acusa a
teoria causal de assentar numa concepo cartesiana da mente como conjunto de estados e
processos interiores, conceptualmente distintos do comportamento manifesto e do seu contexto
alargado. Por seu lado, os causalistas argumentam que s a causalidade permite explicar a
diferena entre ela fez isto e queria aquilo e ela fez isto porque queria aquilo. Na base
deste debate entre causalistas e anticartesianos parece estar um desacordo a respeito da
ontologia pressuposta pelas explicaes intencionais. Para que as crenas e os desejos do
agente pudessem ser causas das suas aces, seria preciso que elas fossem entidades do tipo
adequado; em particular, seria preciso que elas fossem entidades estruturalmente anlogas s
aces, ainda que interiores.
Na comunicao, concentrar-me-ei sobretudo neste ltimo argumento, ao qual julgo
que deve ser reconhecida fora. De facto, para estarmos em condies de afirmar que as
crenas e os desejos so causas, deveramos saber mais do que actualmente sabemos sobre o
tipo de coisa que elas so. Porm, o argumento exibe tambm uma considervel fraqueza, ao
pressupor que as aces so o lado manifesto e bem conhecido da relao, parecendo identific-
las de modo simplista com os movimentos corporais. Wittgenstein detectou o carcter
problemtico desta identificao quando perguntou pela diferena entre o meu acto de erguer o
brao e o movimento do meu brao a erguer-se.

Some weaknesses of a priori warrants

Daniele Sgaravati
Universit del Piemonte Orientale, Itlia
daniele_sgaravatti@yahoo.it

The concept of apriority has enjoyed, in later years, a renewed attention in the
philosophical debate, and a sort of re-evaluation, as to the relevance of its role in epistemology
and philosophy generally. At the same time a strong debate developed about how exactly the
concept has to be understood, and it lead to a substantial change in the understanding of the
concept. Most interestingly from an epistemological point of view, the majority of
contemporary theorists agrees that a priori warranted beliefs are 1) Fallible. An a priori
warranted belief can be false. 2) Rationally revisable. You can rationally abandon a belief that
was, or even is, a priori warranted for you. We can call this the weak conception of a priori.
The first aim of this paper is to clarify some aspects of this change, while casting some doubts
on the motivations that have been given for it, and on its theoretical utility.
Traditionally, infallibility and rational unrevisability were held to definitional features
of a priori beliefs. It is an epistemological common-place, but nonetheless true, that the quest
for certainty has been the main concern of epistemology, at least since Descartes to the last
century; and many philosophers hoped a priori beliefs could supply the needed foundation for
this kind of epistemology. It is this role for a priori beliefs that goes lost in the passage to the
weak conception. The reasons that lead to the change, in my opinion, ultimately derive from the
fact that both science (with the discovery and advent of non-Euclidean geometries) and
philosophy (with Quines well known attack) have shown there might not be any infallible and
unrevisable beliefs. That is, under the traditional definitions, there might not be any a priori
beliefs. The weak a priori has the advantage, from a rationalist point of view, of completely

45
bypassing those problems. This move however is successful only if there are independent
motivations for thus weakening the concept, and it has been claimed that there are such
motivations.
We will consider Bonjours counterexamples to the thesis that a priori beliefs are
infallible. He claims to have provided many clear cases of a priori warranted false beliefs.
Those examples, he says, fall under three categories. Firstly there are very general principles of
logics and mathematics that have proved to be false, of which paradigmatic examples are
provided by Euclidean geometry or Freges nave set theory. The second kind of examples is
provided by history of philosophy. The third and last class of examples is nearer to everyday
experience; it consists of errors in calculation, proof and reasoning, errors inevitable, at times,
even for the most competent people. I will argue that in most cases there is no genuine warrant
for the belief considered, and in the remaining cases it is not clear that the belief is false. In so
doing we will exploit some intuitive difference between a priori and empirical warrants. The
latter are immediately and intuitively considered fallible, contrary to the former.
We will then consider the problem of revisability, and some putative examples, by
Casullo and others, of rational revisions of a priori warranted beliefs. We ought to distinguish
here between two kinds of revisability; again the empirical and the a priori. Casullo considers a
weak thesis about unrevisability:
WUT a priori beliefs cannot be rationally revised on empirical grounds.
I agree with Casullo that this thesis can hardly be defended, although not for the same
reasons he thinks so. There is a class of trivial counter-examples to WUT, revisions of true
mathematical and logical beliefs based on the opinions of experts, or the results of calculators. I
think Casullo does not provide essentially different examples. There are different strategies to
rule out examples of this kind, although no one is completely uncontroversial. However better
examples of rational revision of a priori beliefs can be provided by history of science and
philosophy.
It seems to me it would be easier to defend a different weak thesis:
WUT2 a priori beliefs cannot be rationally revised on a priori grounds.
In short, there is a risk of incoherence in postulating a priori warrants that are a priori rationally
revisable. If a belief is warranted independently of experience, and it is revised still
independently of experience, it seems that there must be an error, either in the warrant or in the
revision. But a warrant that contains an error risks not to be a warrant at all, and a rational
revision containing an error is not completely rational.
Finally, conceding that it is coherent (although counterintuitive) to think about a kind
of warrant independent of experience and at the same time fallible and empirically revisable,
one might ask what is the role of this concept for epistemology and philosophy. Such a warrant
does not meet the central requirement of the traditional concept of a priori, which, I submit, is
empirical unrevisability. It was analytically true that a priori beliefs are not empirically
revisable. As Kant put it, when you are outside the sphere of experience, you are sure not to be
refuted by experience.
The fact itself we can trace a coherent distinction does not suffice to show there is an
epistemologically interesting distinction. As Philip Kitcher notices, we can distinguish
knowledge obtained by reason alone from knowledge obtained by the use of perception, and
from knowledge obtained by testimony or memory, but we can also distinguish knowledge
obtained by our visual system from knowledge obtained by the auditory system or by tactile
methods. We cannot presuppose, however, that each categorization has the same
epistemological relevance.

Semntica e pragmtica: consideraes sobre a Sprachkritik de Brentano

Lusa Couto Soares
Faculdade de Cincias Sociais e Humanas, Univ Nova de Lisboa
luisacoutosoares@hotmail.com

46
 1. Um dos desafios que se apresentam epistemologia contempornea o de
reformular uma teoria do juzo e da proposio que reconcilie duas noes que a modernidade
tem pensado de forma disjuntiva a de verdade e de sentido. Esta disjuno pode rever-se na
bipolarizao entre as noes de correspondncia e coerncia que representam duas fortes
alternativas para formular uma teoria da verdade. No entanto, a prpria controvrsia entre
correspondencionalistas e coerentistas, reveladora das aporias que nenhuma das duas noes
logram resolver cabalmente. A lio a tirar talvez a da necessidade de recorrer a uma outra
dimenso prtica, espontnea, reflexiva para sair do impasse. A semntica da verdade
parece ser inseparvel da pragmtica. A concluso que alguns tiram do argumento de infinito
regresso proposto por Frege para mostrar a impossibilidade de definir verdade em termos de
correspondncia, precisamente esta: uma teoria da verdade tem de admitir a espontaneidade
do juzo.
2. Com efeito, autores como Frege, Wittgenstein, Austin, Tugendhat, pensam a
estrutura da enunciao partindo precisamente de um contedo proposicional sobre o qual recai
uma fora assertiva associvel ao assentimento, noes relevantes para a compreenso da
semntica da verdade. Este acento tnico na dimenso pragmtica e reflexiva do acto de julgar
e sua expresso lingustica, encontra-se antecipado na teoria do juzo evidente de Brentano,
entendido como posio e no sntese predicativa e como locus privilegiado da verdade.
Arquitectonicamente fundada nas noes de assentimento, fora assertiva e evidncia, esta
reformulao preludia a actual pragmtica e a explorao do carcter performativo da
linguagem.
3. A Sprachkritik brentaniana acentua precisamente a interveno da prtica lingustica
e do uso dos termos pelo locutor, para a realizao efectiva de qualquer acto judicativo. A
dimenso prtica revela-se na prpria expresso proposicional, que no se limita a significar
algo, mas determina a prpria realidade: a assero um acto de fala e todas as proposies
declarativas tm, nesta perspectiva, um carcter pragmtico, que os signos lingusticos no
podem seno mostrar, exprimir. O juzo como posio excede a prpria materialidade e
factualidade da linguagem, exibindo o carcter intensional.
A Crtica da Linguagem de Brentano permite-lhe elucidar as noes de juzo, assero
(e negao), verdade e evidncia, libertando-as da camisa de foras imposta at ento pela
concepo da linguagem como imagem ou espelho do pensamento. A relevncia desta crtica
imprescindvel para evitar equvocos srios no modo de entender o nosso prprio aparato
conceptual e as nossas categorias lingusticas.
4. Interessar-nos- destacar e caracterizar algumas noes estreita e familiarmente
ligadas ao problema da verdade, que indiciam precisamente uma dimenso, no estritamente
cognitiva, mas antropolgica, na medida em que no convocam apenas o entendimento ou a
razo, mas o sujeito de aco espontnea. Nomeadamente, as noes de assero (negao),
afirmao de existncia, convico, assentimento, crena. As respectivas gramticas,
exploradas atravs de uma analtica aproximada de uma fenomenologia da prtica lingustica,
permitem uma viso panormica (empregando uma expresso wittgensteiniana) da rede de
conexes entre diversos binmios que se entrecruzam linguagem-mundo, linguagem- uso,
mente-aco.

Eliminativist empiricism
Clia Teixeira
Kings College, Londres
celia.teixeira@kcl.ac.uk

There are basically two main reasons that are commonly used by eliminativist
empiricists to reject the a priori, and both can be found in Quines writings:

47
 (I) Nothing is immune from empirical revision.
(II) A priori knowledge is as mysterious as the capacity of rational insight.

My aim is to show that both reasons are bad reasons for rejecting the a priori.
The first reason is supported by Quines epistemic holism. Quines main argument is
roughly the following: (i) all beliefs are empirically revisable; (ii) a priori beliefs are nor
empirically revisable; therefore (iii) there is no a priori. I will argue that even if premise (i)
were true, premise (ii) of Quines argument is false; and thus we have no good reason to accept
the conclusion. My main argument against premise (ii) is basically the following: The
distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge has to do with modes of acquiring
beliefs, not with modes of rejecting them. Premise (ii) is about the latter. Therefore, premise (ii)
is false.
The argument for reason (II) is roughly the following: All the attempts to explain the a
priori were flawed; therefore, it is a mysterious notion. My main objection to this line of
argument is that it is a fallacious move to say that the phenomenon of a priori knowledge or the
capacity of rational intuition are obscure and should be rejected because we are unable to
explain it. There are so many things we cannot yet explain, like the phenomenon of
consciousness or the beginning of the universe. And we obviously dont want to reject their
existence because of our inability to explain them. The same goes for the a priori.
My conclusion is that we should aim at explaining the a priori given that we have no
good reasons to discharge it.

A Filosofia da Mente, a neurocincia e o crebro

Joo de Teixeira Fernandes
Universidade Federal de So Carlos, So Paulo, Brasil
jteixe@terra.com.br

O objetivo desta comunicao examinar o impacto que a neurocincia cognitiva tem

sobre a filosofia da mente contempornea, especialmente no que diz respeito ao problema
central que configura esta ltima, qual seja, as relaes entre mente e crebro. Nosso ponto de
partida que os filsofos da mente, mesmo aqueles mais ambiciosos na defesa da possibilidade
da reduo psiconeural pouco parecem ter se importado com os problemas epistemolgicos ou
metodolgicos que a neurocincia apresenta e como estes poderiam afetar suas posies
filosficas.O exame desta questo constituir, igualmente, o primeiro passo para a constituio
de uma epistemologia da neurocincia, uma tarefa que ainda se encontra em estado incipiente.
Afinal, do que esto falando os filsofos da mente quando se referem ao crebro? Que papel
deve ter a neurocincia na filosofia da mente? A cincia do crebro deve ser concebida como
uma cincia de como ns representamos nosso prprio crebro, ou seja, de como falamos de
uma entidade construda atravs do conhecimento neurocientfico uma entidade
essencialmente terica. Como ento construir essa entidade que chamamos de crebro? Ou
melhor, como comear a construir nosso conhecimento acerca de nosso crebro?
A construo de um conhecimento do crebro comea pela chamada cartografia
cerebral - um problema que exige decises metodolgicas e epistemolgicas. Quando se fala
em mapeamento cerebral (relao entre atividades cognitivas e regies cerebrais) preciso
definir com que tipo de mapa do crebro estamos trabalhando, ou seja, qual o critrio
cartogrfico utilizado para dividir o crebro em suas vrias regies. Uma primeira questo que
podemos formular indagar at que ponto os critrios cartogrficos adotados podem ter uma
influncia sobre as possveis solues para o problema mente-crebro. Uma segunda questo,
igualmente complexa, consiste em saber at que ponto as funes cerebrais dependem de
formas especficas. O principal desdobramento desta segunda questo diz respeito
possibilidade de sustentar o modelo computacional da mente e a doutrina filosfica que o apia,

48
qual seja, o funcionalismo. A estratgia que adotaremos para discutir estas questes consistir
em:
a) um rpido re-exame dos critrios cartogrficos de mapeamento cerebral
utilizados na histria da neurocincia;
b) a re-discusso da tese da mltipla instanciao (multiple realizability) luz
dos critrios de mapeamento cerebral (localizacionismo versus
equipotencialismo;
c) a re-discusso do estatuto da reduo psiconeural (type-type identity versus
token-token identity).

Reference intentionality is an internal relation

Alberto Voltolini
Facolt di Lettere e Filosofia, Universit del Piemonte Orientale
albertov@lett.unipmn.it

In what follows, I will focus on the basic form of intentionality, reference

intentionality, the property an intentional state has of being directed upon a certain object, its
intentional object. I will try to prove that (as Husserl, Wittgenstein and others originally
envisaged) reference intentionality is not only a state - intentional object relation but it also is
an internal, i.e., a necessary, relation between that state and that object: the state would not
exist if its object did not exist either. The strategy of the argument will be the following. First, I
will assume that externaism and internalism are exhaustive conceptions of intentional states.
Second, I will claim that, no matter whether one has an externalist or an internalist conception
of intentional states, one is forced to allow an understanding of reference intentionality as an
internal relation.
To begin with, metaphysical externalism, i.e., the thesis according to which intentional
states are individuated in terms of the outer objects that make up their contents, presupposes
that intentionality is an internal relation. Second, modal externalism, i.e., the weaker doctrine
according to which intentional states depend on the objects they are about, has the same
presupposition. The only form of externalism that fails to have this presupposition is existential
externalism, the doctrine according to which the existence of an intentional state entails the
existence of entities outside of the thinker, is a mere sufficient condition of the existence of
such entities. Existential externalism indeed implies that intentionality is an external, i.e. a
contingent, relation: even if a certain object did not exist, the state which is directed upon it
could still exist. (Both nomological externalism and Davidsonian externalism are forms of
existential externalism.)
So, theoretically speaking one may be an externalist and conceive of intentionality as
an external relation. Yet metaphysical externalism is the best version of externalism, for it is
the only version that can capture the tenet of social externalism, according to which intentional
states are individuated in terms of the meanings the words used by a thinker in order to express
her thoughts have in her linguistic community. As a result, if one really wants to be an
externalist, it is better for him to conceive of intentionality as internal relation.
Moreover, if internalism has a relational nature, it also presupposes that intentionality
is an internal relation. For, by analogy with externalism, the best version of relational
internalism is metaphysical relational internalism, according to which intentional states are
individuated in terms of the inner objects they are about. So, relational internalism takes
intentionality as an internal relation of the intentional state to inner objects.
At this point, it seems that if one wants not to have a relational conception of
intentionality, one is forced to defend monadic internalism, according to which intentional
states are to be conceived only in terms of intrinsic properties of the thinker. Yet it turns out
that monadic internalism cannot have a monadic conception of intentionality, but again it relies
on understanding intentionality as an internal relation. For either it has a crypto-relational

49
conception of it which makes intentionality an internal relation, or, insofar as it is simply
eliminativist about intentionality, is not interested in defending an alternative conception of it.
In the former case, a monadic internalist takes intentionality as the fact that an intentional state
has a certain nonrelational content; yet this is tantamount to making intentionality as an internal
relation of that state to that content. In the latter case, for a monadic internalist whenever an
intentional state is said to have reference intentionality, what it really has is a monadic property
that is completely heterogeneous to that of another intentional state which is said to have
reference intentionality as well. As a result, those monadic properties do not fall under a
common genus. Hence, for that internalist there really is no such a property as reference
intentionality. Yet this makes that internalist raise no objection to the thesis that, if there were
reference intentionality, its nature would be that of an internal relation.

Chisholm, Naturalism and the role of logic in epistemology

Gregory Wheeler & Lus Moniz Pereira
CENTRIA, Centro de Inteligncia Artificial, Faculdade de Cincias e Tecnologia
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
greg@di.fct.unl.pt

Traditionally, the pre-theoretic notion of epistemic justification is thought to involve

two properties: transparency and truth-conduciveness. Epistemic justification is thought to be
transparent in the sense that an agent S who is justified to believe a proposition p is in a
position, even if only in principle, to access the item that justifies pwhether that item be a
precept, memory or other belief. This property is thought necessary to facilitate Ss
demonstration of his reason for holding p, which is one role that the notion of justification
plays. Truth-conduciveness concerns the contribution that justification makes to S holding true
beliefs. We arent interested in possessing epistemic justification to have a just-so story for our
belief that p. Rather, were interested in epistemic justification because we think that a set of
justified beliefs tends to include more true beliefs than sets of unjustified belief. That these two
properties are in tension is the back-story to philosophical theories of epistemic justification.
There is a tendency to view naturalized epistemology as, necessarily, favoring truth-
conduciveness over transparancy. Methodological naturalism in epistemology holds that some
results from natural science are necessary to form an adequate theory of knowledge. Typically,
the arguments advanced in favor of naturalized epistemology appeal to the truthconduciveness
properties of appropriate belief forming processes, and we must turn to the natural sciences if
we are to learn about such processes. In practice, naturalized epistemologies have been
proposed based upon results from cognitive psychology [Quine 1967; Goldman 1969; 1986;
Stich 1983; Carruthers, Stich and Siegal 2002]. The critical discussion of these theories in the
literature has turned upon the meaning of naturalism [Kim 1986] and the merits of
methodological naturalism [Weinberg, forthcoming, Kornblith 2001; Feldman 2002],
particularly in the ability of naturalistic theories of justification to come to terms with the
transparency property.
This paper argues that the preference for truth-conduciveness over transparency among
methodological naturalists holds only if one accepts a particular reading of Roderick
Chisholms view of epistemic properties. Chisholms view is that epistemic properties and
epistemic relations are irreducible, meaning that they are of a kind that simply cannot be
defined by a complex of psychological or familiar logical operations [Chisholm 1966]. If one
looks at the dispute between methdological naturalists and Chisholmians one can see that what
they have been arguing over is the place of cognitive psychology in epistemologyspecifically
whether a detailed causal account of human belief formation is a relevant matter to weigh in
advancing a theory of justification. The point to notice is that this debate has been conducted
with a tacit agreement within the field that Chisholm was at least right about logic offering
traditional epistemologists little theoretical advantage in the analysis of epistemic concepts and,

50
more importantly, epistemic relations. What weve been arguing about for 40 years is Quines
contention that epistemology should be moved from philosophy to cognitive psychology.
We argue that there is another naturalistic position, one that arises from denying the
second condition of Chisholms anti-reductivismnamely, the tacitly held view in
contemporary analytic epistemology that logic offers little analytical advantage to constructing
an adequate theory of knowledge. We then explore the consequences of de-coupling
methodological naturalism from externalist views of epistemic justification, noting in particular
a recent mentalistic argument in defense of internalism advanced by Earl Conee and Richard
Feldman (2004). The paper then proposes a source for mathematical and experimental results
that may be mined to realize this option, namely some scientific and technological results from
logical artificial intelligence.

References

[1] Bonjour, L. and E. Sosa. 2003. Epistemic Justification, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
[2] Carruthers, P., S. Stich and M. Siegal (eds.) 2002. The Cognitive Basis of Science,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Chisholm, R. 1966. Theory of Knowledge, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
[4] Conee, E. 1987. Evident, but Rationally Unacceptable, Australasian Journal
of Philosophy, 65: 316-26.
[5] De Rose, K. and T. Warfield. 1999. Skepticism: A Contemporary Reader, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
[6] Elio, R. [ed.] 2002. Common Sense, Reasoning, and Rationality, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
[7] Feldman, R. and E. Conee. 2004. Evidentialism, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
[8] Feldman, R. 1974. An Alledged Defect in Gettier Counterexamples, Australasian
Journal of Philosophy (52): 68-69.
[9] Ford, K., C. Glymour and P. Hayes, [eds.] 1995. Android Epistemology, Cambridge:
MIT Press.
[10] Foley, R. 1987. The Theory of Epistemic Rationality, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press.
[11] Goldman, A. 1967. A Causal Theory of Knowing, Journal of Philosophy 64:
357-372.
[12] Goldman, A. 1986. Epistemology and Cognition, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press.
[13] Harman, G. 2001. Internal Critique: A Logic is not a Theory of Reasoning
and a Theory of Reasoning is not a Logic, appearing in Studies in Logic and
Practical Reasoning, Vol. 1. Gabbay, D. et. al. [ed.]. London: Elsevier Science.
[14] Kim, J. 1988. What is Naturalized Epistemology ?, Philosophical Perspectives
2, J. Tomberlin [ed.]. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview Publishing, 381-406.
[15] Kornblith, H.(ed.). 2001. Epistemology: Internalism and Externalism, Oxford:
Blackwell.
[16] Mayo, D. 1996. Error and the Growth of Knowledge, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
[17] Prior, J. 2001. Highlights of Recent Epistemology, The British Journal for
the Philosophy of Science 52: 1-30.
[18] Quine, W. V. 1969. Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, New York:
Columbia University Press.
[19] Stich, S. 1983. From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against
Belief, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
[20] Weinburg, J. Can one challenge intuitions without risking skepticism?, unpublished
manuscript, Department of Philosophy, Indiana University.

51
 Interests and the moral statute of animals
Harry Witzthum
Universitt Basel
Harry.Witzthum@unibas.edu

It is widely agreed in ethics that persons deserve moral consideration since each person
has a moral claim on others who can recognise that claim. A morally considerable person is a
being who can be wronged in a morally relevant sense. It is also generally assumed that only
human beings can justifiably make such claims on us. In the past, however, environmental
ethicists have challenged this assumption of exclusive moral standing and have tried to extend
it more widely to non-human beings. The moral standing of non-human animals has thus
become increasingly important among moral philosophers who investigate the ethically right
way of how humans should behave toward nature.
Generally it is thought that having moral standing (or moral rights) is conceptually
related to having interests (Feinberg, 1974; Frey, 1979; McClosky, 1965; Nelson, 1956). If a
being does not have interests, it cannot have a moral standing and we do not have to take it into
our moral consideration. Moreover, a being does have interests if and only if it can be benefited
or harmed in and for itself (and does thereby have a good or sake of its own).
A simple argument for the moral status of animal goes like this: All and only beings
that have interests, have a moral status; nonhuman animals like humans have interests;
therefore nonhuman animals have a moral status. Peter Singer (1976, 1979), for instance,
famously argues that all sentient beings have interests because interests are grounded in the
capacity for suffering and enjoying things. Putting this claim together with his basic moral
principle the interests of every being affected by an action are to be taken into account and
given the same weight as the like interests of any other being he safely deduces that
nonhuman animals have a moral claim on us.
But is it so obvious that nonhuman animals are capable of having interests? Many
philosophers would doubt this. Raymond G. Frey (1979) introduces arguments intending to
show that interests are not only grounded in sentience, but also strongly connected to beliefs. In
a classic Davidsonian (1982) move, Frey then claims that in the absence of language and
linguistic capacities, nonhuman animals cannot possibly possess beliefs. Like Davidson, Frey
claims that to possess beliefs, a being would have to possess the concept of belief. But to
possess the concept of belief, a being would have to be able to draw the distinction between
true and false beliefs and thus would have to possess the concept of objective truth. Finally, a
being possesses the concept of objective truth only if it can master a language. Since nonhuman
animals do not master languages, they cannot possess beliefs. Without beliefs, they cannot have
interests; and without interests, they cannot have moral status.
Freys arguments are important because they highlight the contentious issues in
positions that wish to extend moral status to nonhuman animals. All too often, positions in
favour of the moral standing of nonhuman animals brush these issues aside lightly and claim
that it is patently obvious that nonhuman animals are capable of having interests. A further
advantage of Freys arguments is that they connect issues discussed in the larger field of
philosophy of mind with recent developments in environmental ethics.
I will show in my paper, however, that Freys arguments are not successful in
conclusively showing that nonhuman animals cannot possess beliefs, and thereby interests. The
crucial weakness of Freys (and Davidsons) argument lies in the step leading from (1) having
beliefs to (2) possessing the concept of belief (and thereby making the distinction between true
and false beliefs). While it is true that the possession of beliefs requires cognitive mechanisms
that (a) monitor whether a particular belief has been satisfied and (b) initiate some sort of self-
correcting behaviour that results in the revision of ones false beliefs, it does not evidently
follow that these cognitive mechanisms have to be of a conceptual nature (that finally leads to
linguistic abilities). I will argue that we can make room for cognitive mechanisms that fulfil
functions (1) and (2), but are not of a conceptual nature. If correct, nonhuman animals would be
able to grasp the contrast between true and false beliefs without the need of a conceptually
sophisticated cognitive apparatus that would imply the possession of linguistic abilities.

52
 The result of my paper will therefore show that nonhuman animals are capable of
possessing some forms of beliefs independently of language. If they can have beliefs, it will
follow on Freys position that they also have interests. Since interests are crucial in moral
debates about the moral status of nonhuman animals, the outcome of this paper will have
broader ramifications for this debate too.

References:

Davidson, D. (1982): Rational Animals, Dialectica, 36.

Frey, R.G. (1979): Rights, Interests, Desires and Beliefs, American Philosophical Quarterly,
16, pp. 233-239.

Singer, P. (1976): All Animals are Equal, in: T. Regan and P. Singer (eds.): Animal Rights
and Human Obligation, Englewood Cliffs, pp. 73-86.

Singer, P. (1979): Practical Ethics, Cambridge.

McCloskey, H.J. (1965): Rights, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 59, pp. 115-127.

Nelson, L. (1956): System of Ethics, New Haven.

Feinberg, J. (1974): The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations, in: W.T. Blackstone
(ed): Philosophy and Environmetal Crisis, Athens/Georgia, pp. 140-179.

Must Conceptual Analysts Assume Full Definability?

Andrew Woodfield
University of Bristol, UK
a.woodfield@bristol.ac.uk

Analysing a concept is a project that aims to produce an outcome (an analysis) by a

distinctive method that Jackson (1998) calls the method of intuitions about possible cases.
The analyst /experimenter E describes a possible scenario. A Subject S is invited to judge
whether the targeted concept or linguistic expression applies to a specified thing in the
scenario. Subjects say either that the described entity falls within the extension, or that it does
not, or that the matter is indeterminate, or that they cannot tell. E builds up a picture of where S
places the boundaries. Then E formulates hypotheses about the classificatory rules that S is
following.
In taking Ss responses to be evidence for or against a given hypothesis, E relies on
various assumptions. I shall not try to list them all. Instead I focus upon one alleged
assumption.
Stich (1992), Stich and Laurence (1992), Laurence and Margolis (2003) allege that
anyone who engages in analysis must assume that the analysandum has discrete, independently
identifiable, non-circular satisfaction-conditions that are individually necessary and jointly
sufficient. They point out that past attempts to define interesting philosophical concepts in
terms of necessary and sufficient conditions have mostly ended in failure, and that the evidence
from linguistic semantics suggests that hardly any lexical items are precisely definable (cf.
Fodor 1981, and 1998 chapters 3 and 4). They conclude that the project is doomed.
I do not agree that analysis is doomed. Agreed, full definitions are often unattainable.
But the analytical project is not necessarily committed to the assumption of full definability. Its
aim is to investigate whether and to what extent the analysandum is governed by rules and to
make explicit whatever rules there are.

53
 Outcomes may take various forms. There can be different sorts of partial analyses, as
well as revelations of systematic resistance to analysis. In general, the enterprise reveals
previously buried facts about the meanings of terms, sometimes of whole classes of terms (e.g.
natural kind words).
On what basis do the critics claim that the method is wedded to the false assumption?
The only passage which tries to justify this claim is in Stich (1992). Stich characterises
conceptual analysis as a competitive game in which one participant C proposes a would-be
ideal definition of the target concept, and the other party S tries to produce a counterexample to
the proposed ideal definition, then the first party tries out another would-be ideal definition,
and the second party tries to produce a counterexample to that, and so on. Stich notes that this
philosophical game of definition and counter-example makes little sense unless necessary and
sufficient conditions exist. He presents matters thus: conceptual analysis just is Cs activity
within a game regulated by rules, and producing a true bi-conditional statement of the right sort
is the only outcome that counts as winning.
However, the game that Stich describes is not the same as the task I described above. On my
model, the two role-players S and E are engaged in a cooperative scientific enterprise. E
devises and tests semantic explanatory hypotheses, S provides the data to be explained.
Secondly, I see the labour being divided within a project that has a unifying goal,
though the outcomes may take various forms. The goal is to make explicit whatever general
rules there may be that constrain the extension of the target concept. Such a goal does not
prejudge whether the concept is governed by rules.
Thirdly, I distinguish between the overall project (making semantic rules explicit) and
the method (conducting thought-experiments). The method of intuitions about possible cases is
a heuristic technique for generating data. When evaluating the relevance of a particular result to
a given hypothesis, E may see that it amounts to a counterexample. The rules of logic apply
here just as they do in any other branch of science or in a game. So if Ss response is accepted
as correct, the hypothesis in question must be rejected. But if E does reject it, E has several
options about what to do next. There is no rule of the game that binds him to try to discover a
classical definition.
The activity that I am referring to is alive and well in 21st century metaphysics,
epistemology, philosophy of mind and language, and other areas. Plenty of philosophers who
are sceptical about definability engage in conceptual analyses. This includes Fodor, many of
whose writings from 1984 through 1990 up to 1998 attempt to develop an analytic theory of
representing. It also includes Stich, whose work on content-ascriptions in 1982 contained
thought-experiments designed to probe intuitions about the extensions of intentional predicates.
Its hard not to do meaning-analysis when you argue philosophically.
I end by considering two objections. The first is that the verb to analyse is a success-
verb, so that X analysed proposition P entails X produced a correct analysis of P. The
second is that the meaning of the noun analysis demands that analyses be complete. Ironically,
both objections appeal to meanings that they presume they have correctly identified, and both
fail because they are wrong about the meanings.

References:

J. Fodor (1981) The Present Status of the Innateness Controversy, in Representations, 257-
316. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press.

J. Fodor (1984) Semantics, Wisconsin style, Synthese 59, 1-20

J. Fodor (1990) A Theory of Content, in A Theory of Content and Other Essays, 51-136.
Cambridge Mass: MIT Press.

J. Fodor (1998) Concepts. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

F. Jackson (1998) From Metaphysics to Ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

54
S. Laurence & E. Margolis (2003) Concepts and Conceptual Analysis, Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 67, 2.

S. Stich (1982) On the Ascription of Content, in A. Woodfield (ed) Thought and Object:
Essays on Intentionality, 153-206. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

S. Stich (1992) What is a Theory of Mental Representation? Mind 101, 243-261

S. Stich and S. Laurence (1992) Intentionality and Naturalism, reproduced as ch 5 of Stich

Deconstructing the Mind Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996.

55
 Lista de Contactos

Andr Barata
Universidade da Beira Interior
andre-barata@sapo.pt

Christopher Bartel
Kings College, Londres
christopher.bartel@kcl.ac.uk

Michael Blome-Tillmann
Queens College, Oxford
Michael.Blome@philosophy.ox.ac.uk

Joo Branquinho
FL Universidade de Lisboa
jbranquinho@mail.doc.fl.ul.pt

So Lus Castro
FPCE Universidade do Porto
slcastro@psi.up.pt

Jos Manuel Curado

Universidade do Minho
jmcurado@ilch.uminho.pt

Alfredo Dinis
Universidade Catlica, Braga
adinis@facfil.ucp.pt

MJ Encinas
Universidad de Granada
encinas@ugr.es

Fernando Ferreira
Faculdade de Cincias da Universidade de Lisboa
ferferr@cii.fc.ul.pt

Joo Fonseca
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
jfonseca.ifl@fcsh.unl.pt

Michael Frauchiger
Open University, UK & Lauener Foundation for Analytical Philosophy, Sua
michael.frauchiger@bluewin.ch

Pedro Galvo
Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa
galv@sapo.pt

Marcin Gokieli
Warsaw University
marcingokieli@tlen.pl

56
 Jorge Gonalves
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
gja@fcsh.unl.pt

Adriana Silva Graa

Universidade de Lisboa
adrianasg@netcabo.pt

Tim Heysse
Katholieke Universiteit, Bruxelas
Tim.Heysse@kubrussel.ac.be

Wolfram Hinzer
University of Amsterdam
w.hinzen@uva.nl

Andrea Iacona
Universit del Piemonte Orientale
andreai@lett.unipmn.it

Andreas Lind
Lund University, Sucia
andreas.lind@fil.lu.se

Antnio Lopes
Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa
antoniojesuslopes@clix.pt

Pedro Madeira
Kings College, Londres
pedro.madeira@kcl.ac.uk

Diego Marconi
Univ de Turim, Itlia
marconi@cisi.unito.it

Antnio Marques
Faculdade de Cincias Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
aj.marques@fcsh.unl.pt

Teresa Marques
Centro de Filosofia, Universidade de Lisboa
teresamiguel@mail.telepac.pt

Carlos E.E. Mauro

FL Universidade do Porto
dout03014@letras.up.pt

Dina Mendona
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
md@fcsh.unl.pt

Sofia Miguens
Universidade do Porto
smiguens@letras.up.pt

Ins Morais

57
Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa
ibmorais@fl.ul.pt

Vtor Moura
Universidade do Minho
vmoura@ilch.uminho.pt

Daniele Moyal-Sharrock
Univ of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
moyalsharrock@talk21.com

Desidrio Murcho
Kings College, Londres
desiderio.murcho@kcl.ac.uk

Christian Onof
Birkbeck College Univ of London
c.onof@imperial.ac.uk

Elisa Paganini
Universit degli Studi di Milano
Elisa.Paganini@unimi.it

Charles Pelling
Reading University
charlespelling@hotmail.com

Philip Percival
Glasgow University, Scotland
p.percival@philosophy.arts.gla.ac.uk

Christian Piller
University of York, UK
cjp7@york.ac.uk

Manuel de Pinedo
Universidad de Granada
pinedo@ugr.es

Joo Alberto Pinto

FL Universidade do Porto
joaoalberto@letras.up.pt

Henrique Jales Ribeiro

FL Universidade de Coimbra
jalesribero@ci.uc.pt

Lus Rodrigues
Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa
lufiro@netcabo.pt

Joo Sgua
FCSH Universidade Nova de Lisboa
jsaagua@fcsh.unl.pt
Gil Santos
FCSH, Univ Nova Lisboa

58
 gilcosan@hotmail.com

Pedro Santos
Universidade do Algarve
psantos@ualg.pt

Ricardo Santos
Instituto de Filosofia da Linguagem, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
rsantos.ifl@fcsh.unl.pt

Daniele Sgaravati
Universit del Piemonte Orientale, Itlia
daniele_sgaravatti@yahoo.it

Peter Simons
Univ de Leeds, UK
p.m.simons@leeds.ac.uk

Lusa Couto Soares

Faculdade de Cincias Sociais e Humanas, Univ Nova de Lisboa
luisacoutosoares@hotmail.com

Clia Teixeira
Kings College, Londres
celia.teixeira@kcl.ac.uk

Joo de Teixeira Fernandes

Universidade Federal de So Carlos, So Paulo, Brasil
jteixe@terra.com.br

Alberto Voltolini
Facolt di Lettere e Filosofia, Universit del Piemonte Orientale
albertov@lett.unipmn.it

Gregory Wheeler & Lus Moniz Pereira

CENTRIA, Centro de Inteligncia Artificial, Faculdade de Cincias e Tecnologia
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
greg@di.fct.unl.pt

Harry Witzthum
Universitt Basel
Harry.Witzthum@unibas.edu

Andrew Woodfield
University of Bristol, UK
a.woodfield@bristol.ac.uk

59