ABSTRACTS
Relational Properties and Genuine Properties
François Clémentz
University of Provence
Relational changes are often said to be "mere Cambridge changes" (in
Peter Geach's now classic words), so that relational properties themselves
should not be counted as "genuine" properties. My aim, in the
paper, is to
inquire about the justifications of this claim, and my answer is that it
might well be true, though not (basically) for the reasons usually given.
In sections I and II, I examine several different sorts of connections
between some traditional distinctions (intrinsic/extrinsic changes,
genuine/ non genuine properties, internal/external relations), and I
compare the views of the Scholastics with those of several analytic
philosophers as J. Kim, D. Armstrong and K. Campbell on these issues.
Section III explores a more radical line of thought, according to which we
simply do not NEED relational properties. Either relations are tropes, and
then we do not need relational properties in addition to particularized
relations; or relations are universals, and there is no need for
relational
properties in addition to relational states of affairs. In other words :
relations, yes ! relational properties, no !
Conceptualism about properties: A defense
Jérôme Dokic
In this paper, I explore a form of anti-realism about properties I call
"linguistic conceptualism". According to that view, properties are not part
of the non-conceptual fabric of the world, but are linguistic fictions. They
are essentially conceived as the semantic values of incomplete predicates.
Correspondingly, the metaphysical interpretation of incompleteness, mainly
due to Greg Currie, is rejected. The present version of conceptualism
differs from previous ones in that I argue that its possibility requires
that we be robustly realist about objects and facts. Once objects and facts
are acknowledged as genuine entities, there is no need to add properties in
your ontology. Pace David Armstrong, properties should not be considered as
separate or even non-detachable constituents of facts.
Do natural languages exist?
Manuel Hernández-Iglesias
University of Murcia, Spain
(mhi@um.es)
In his essay 'A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs', Davidson defends the highly controversial thesis that 'there is not such a thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed' and that 'we should give up the attempt to illuminate how we communicate by appeal to conventions'.
It falls beyond the scope of this paper to evaluate Davidson's arguments for this thesis. Its point will be to defend the plausibility of its conclusion against the widely held view that the rejection of languages is clearly false, or even absurd. It will focus in what the two reasons why most philosophers tend to find the usual notion of language indispensable. The first is that only if we accept that there are such things as languages we can account for the normativity of meaning (sections 1, 2 and 3). The second is that the rejection of languages would force us to declare meaningless much of our everyday talk on languages (section 4).
The paper argues that both worries are unjustified by trying to show that:
(1) It is possible to talk of linguistic mistakes without accepting the existence of languages in the usual sense.
(2) The rejection of natural languages in the usual sense does not entail the possibility of private languages.
(3) The rejection of natural languages in the usual sense does not entail that we cannot speak about conventionalized languages, but only that the existence of conventionalized languages is not a possibility condition of successful linguistic communication.
It is concluded that, carefully scrutinized, Davidson's controversial thesis is not as strange as it is usually taken to be. Davidson has written that, "as so often in philosophy, it is hard to improve intelligibility while retaining the excitement". This holds, as I believe he would be happy to accept, for his own assertion that "there is no such a thing as a language".
Scepticism and Meaning
Plínio Junqueira Smith
(Paraná, Brasil)
Some philosophers have been talking about a new form of scepticism,
'meaning scepticism' or 'semantic scepticism'. It seems, however, that there
are two different kinds of semantic scepticism: a scientifical one that
questions only the notion of meaning and reference, and a philosophical one that
develops a sceptical paradox to undermine the idea that language itself is meaningful
and proposes a sceptical solution to this paradox. This second kind of semantic
scepticism emphasizes the idea that language is a rule governed activity.
First, some problems will be raised concerning the first kind of semantic
scepticism, without discussing them in full. Then, a careful reconstruction of the
sceptical paradox about following a rule will be proposed. If this reconstruction is
right, then some objections to it can be answered. Finally, it will be
argued that the conception of rule employed in the sceptical paradox is not
acceptable.
Words as traces
An aconceptual and acontentual account of how a word connects with a thing
Paolo Leonardi
Università degli Studi di Bologna
How does a word connect with a thing? To this classical question I'll here give a (moderately) new answer. I'll shift the focus of attention from meaning to cognitive aspects, and I'll account for those in a non-epistemic way, that is without assuming that the individual using a word is in principle either self-aware of or warranted concerning what the word connects with. More substantially, my answer to that classical question will move from presenting words as perceptual objects and illustrating their workings at the perceptual and the attentive level (and at the memory level). Then, I'll add something on words and thought.
To articulate my answer I'll have no recourse to concepts. Firstly, because perception and attention will do, and they do not require concepts, though they are enhanced by them. Secondly, because concepts emerge, I think, in a way analogous to how words do. Nor will I have recourse to contents. Contents, as the name suggests, are inside entities, if they exist at all (inside an experience - perceptual, linguistic, etc.), and I just do not have a use here for inside entities. Besides, concept and content are notions, which, if they are not accounted as emergent, act, I believe, as dei ex machina.
Offering a perceptual understanding of words and a word-like (or a symbolic) understanding of concepts, two basic problems with concepts can be dealt with at once, precisely the creativity of thought and how it connects with things.
Truthmaking and Ontological Commitment
Joan Pagès
Universitat de Girona
e-mail: joan.pages@udg.es
In this paper I give grounds for an analysis of
truthmaking which
holds that truthmakers are necessitated necessitators. Truthmakers are
entities whose existence entails the truth of the sentence they
make true and
whose existence is entailed by the truth of the sentence. This
view, however,
is qualified by an appeal to a Tarskian theory of truth in order
to deal with
necessary existents and reciprocal necessitators.
Folk Psychology and Eliminativism
Diana I. Pérez
Universidad de Buenos Aires - CONICET
In this paper I present a view about the nature of Folk Psychology that allows us to answer the mind-body problem following the spirit of the old-fashioned identity theories of the mind, without entailing an eliminativist position about the mental. The plan of the paper is as follows. In the first place I present three of the main arguments for eliminativism developed in the ´80: Churchland´s, Stich´s and Dennett´s, in order to polish the eliminativist thesis and to show the relation between eliminativism and the discussions about the nature of FP. I make explicit the relation between FP, scientific theories and some philosophical concepts that are presupposed in these arguments. In the second part, I present my view about the nature of folk psychology, according to which FP is the network of interconnected ordinary mental concepts that every normal adult human speaker of a natural language posseses. The hypothesis I want to consider is that these mental concepts are natural kind concepts: they are constituted by an indexical element and also by an stereotypical element. Finally, in the third part, I present some philosophical consequences that follow from the consideration of our ordinary mental concepts as natural kind concepts, especially with regard to the eliminativist position.
Conditionals: Against the Apartheid view
Pedro Santos
(University of Algarve)
According to a significant number of philosophers and linguists, counterfactual conditionals deserve a different semantic treatment from non-counterfactuals. For those who believe that all conditionals have truth conditions, this point of view (which I call the Apartheid view) boils down to the claim that the two varieties have distinct kinds of truth conditions. The version of the Apartheid view I will be discussing is the one resulting from Jackson´s Sly Pete argument, to the effect that whereas two counterfactuals of the form If A then B/If A then not-B are mutually inconsistent, their non-counterfactual versions are mutually consistent. I take advantage of E. J. Lowe´s discussion of the argument and endorse his claim that it is fallacious: in fact, it makes use of an ill-defined notion of co-assertibility, thereby ignoring the crucial role of context (i.e. the speaker´s available information and the point he/she intends to make) in the interpretation of any conditional. In the last section I go a step further and exploit Lowe´s remark about context-dependence, arguing that besides being unable to establish Apartheid, Sly Pete-like pairs effectively expose it, at best, as too unattractive as far as theoretical elegance is concerned.
Tracking Oneself in Reasoning
Gianfranco Soldati
It is sometimes argued that we do not track ourselves as subjects. Being
aware of oneself as a subject, it is said, does not involve any tracking
ability comparable to the ability involved in our awareness of perceptual
objects.
In this contribution I approach the issue by looking at a special case of
reasoning, reasoning in the first person, which appears to presuppose our
capacity to track ourselves over time. I discuss and reject some arguments
against the need of such a presupposition and try to determine
more exactly what sort of tracking of oneself as a subject might be involved in
reasoning.
Perry and Evans on Indexicals
Massimiliano Vignolo
University of Vercelli and Genoa
maxi@nous.unige.it
Evans's theory about indexical thoughts has been developed by Neorussellians like Perry to criticize the Fregean theory of propositional contents. Neorussellians claim that there must be propositional contents that contain references instead of senses as their constituent parts because we do not know what the senses expressed in terms of indexicals could be.
I want to defend the idea that Evans's theory can be given an interpretation that allows us to maintain the core of the Fregean theory. My aim is twofold: firstly I will individuate a kind of senses expressed in terms of indexicals; for the sake of exposition I will focus on the indexical "I" only. Secondly I will move for a criticism of the Neorussellian notion of propositional content. The line of my attack is that such a notion does not meet the requirements to provide the objects of propositional attitudes if we want propositional attitudes to play behavioral explanatory roles.