Una crítica al realismo desde la teoría del significado.

Sin resume

Normativity: the Hard Problem

My goal in the present paper is to use Haugeland’s treatment as a springboard to explore a key problem for biological accounts of semantic properties, namely, how to capture the distinction between malfunction and misrepresentation. While Haugeland generates a complex taxonomy of species and subspecies of rules to support his arguments against the risks of identifying social propriety and objective correctness, he is rather more austere in his analysis of the naturalistic problem. I shall sketch a somewhat richer landscape, in which the space of error- by-misrepresentation (as opposed to malfunction) is itself split into tw

Implicit Bias: from social structure to representational format

In this paper, I argue against the view that the representational structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for implicitly biased behaviour is propositional—as opposed to associationist. The proposal under criticism moves from the claim that implicit biased behaviour can occasionally be modulated by logical and evidential considerations to the view that the structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for such biased behaviour is propositional. I argue, in particular, against the truth of this conditional. Sensitivity to logical and evidential considerations, I contend, proves to be an inadequate criterion for establishing the true representational structure of implicit attitudes. Considerations of a different kind, which emphasize the challenges posed by the structural social injustice that implicit attitudes reflect, offer, I conclude, better support for deciding this issue in favour of an associationist view

Implicit Bias: from social structure to representational format

En este artículo cuestiono la tesis de que la estructura representacional de las actitudes implícitas responsables del comportamiento implícitamente sesgado es proposicional—en lugar de asociacionista. De acuerdo con la propuesta criticada, si la conducta implícita sesgada puede ocasionalmente ser modulada por consideraciones lógicas y evidenciales, entonces la estructura de las actitudes implícitas responsables de esa conducta es proposicional. Cuestiono, en particular, la verdad de este condicional. Sostengo que la sensibilidad de las actitudes implícitas a consideraciones lógicas y evidenciales resulta ser un criterio inadecuado para establecer su verdadera estructura representacional. Consideraciones de otro tipo, que enfatizan los desafíos planteados por la injusticia social estructural que las actitudes implícitas reflejan, ofrecen, concluyo, un mejor apoyo para decidir esta cuestión a favor de una visión asociacionista.; In this paper, I argue against the view that the representational structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for implicitly biased behaviour is propositional—as opposed to associationist. The proposal under criticism moves from the claim that implicit biased behaviour can occasionally be modulated by logical and evidential considerations to the view that the structure of the implicit attitudes responsible for such biased behaviour is propositional. I argue, in particular, against the truth of this conditional. Sensitivity to logical and evidential considerations, I contend, proves to be an inadequate criterion for establishing the true representational structure of implicit attitudes. Considerations of a different kind, which emphasize the challenges posed by the structural social injustice that implicit attitudes reflect, offer, I conclude, better support for deciding this issue in favour of an associationist view

Positing a space mirror mechanism: intentional understanding without action?

Recent evidence regarding a novel functionality of the mirror neuron system (MNS), a so-called 'space mirror mechanism', seems to reinforce the central role of the MNS in social cognition. According to the space mirror hypothesis, neural mirroring accounts for understanding not just what an observed agent is doing, but also the range of potential actions that a suitably located object affords an observed agent in the absence of any motor behaviour. This paper aims to show that the advocate of this space mirror hypothesis faces a crippling dilemma. Either what observed agents can do remains underdetermined by space mirror representations, and no proper understanding of action potentiality is gained; or, if it is just understanding of potential motor acts that is achieved through the sensorimotor representations generated by shared object-related affordances, the very explanatory role of space mirroring is compromised

Los problemas del eclecticismo en teoría del significado : digresión sobre el programa antirealista de M. Dummett

Una de las mayores dificultades del paradigma explicativo que arranca del último Wittgenstein es la ausencia de una estructuración sistemática de sus principios. Cuando se trata de construir ese marco arquitectónico parece necesario acudir, sin embargo, a posiciones moleculares de origen claramente fregeano, El programa anti-realista del filósofo inglés M. Dummett constituye sin duda uno de los intentos más interesantes de conjugar estos dos tipos de ideas: si, por una parte, parece clara la influencia de Wittgenstein en los presupuestos básicos sobre los que Dummett construye las líneas que ha de seguir una teoría del significado, por otra, no parece estar dispuesto a admitir que tal explicación pueda agotarse completamente en una especificación de los diferentes usos lingüísticos, porque eso supondría acabar con la noción misma de un significado objetivo y, por tanto, nos llevaría a tener que admitir la imposibilidad de una teoría sistemática del funcionamiento del lenguaje. Los problemas que plantea su propuesta constituyen el objeto de discusión de este artículo.The lack of a systematic structuring of its principles is one of the greatest difficulties of the explanatory paradigm that stems from the late developments of Wittgenstein's thought. When we try to build that architectural frame, however, we need to have recourse to "molecular" positions which have an obvious fregean origin. The anti-realistic programme of the English philosopher M. Dummett is without any doubt one of the most interesting attempts of conciliating both types of ideas: Wittgenstein's influence on the basic assumptions on which Dummett builds the guidelines that a theory of meaning has to follow seems clear. But, at the same time, he does not seem to be willing accept that explanation can interpreted restrictively as a specification of the different linguistic "uses", as this would be equal to putting an end to the notion of an objective meaning and would lead us to admitting the impossibility of a systematic theory of language performance. The problems that arise form his proposal are the topic we discus in this paper

Nonconceptualism and the Cognitive Impenetrability of Early Vision

This paper examines the relationship between cognitive impenetrability and perceptual nonconceptualism. I argue against the view, recently defended by Raftopoulos, that the (alleged) cognitive impenetrability of early vision is a necessary and sufficient condition for states of early vision and their content to be nonconceptual. I show that that view, here dubbed 'the mutually entailing thesis', admits two different standard interpretations depending on how we understand the property of being nonconceptual corresponding to the distinction between the state and the content views of perceptual nonconceptualism. I first argue for the falsity of the state-nonconceptualist reading of the mutually entailing thesis, on the grounds that it mistakenly takes being nonconceptual to be a causal instead of a constitutive relationship. The content-nonconceptualist understanding of the thesis, I then argue, is disproved by plausible views regarding the content of experience. The mutually entailing thesis could only be true, I conclude, on a non-standard, causal interpretation of the notion of nonconceptual content. Yet, on that reading, the thesis would either be trivially true or would entirely fail to engage with the contemporary literature on perceptual nonconceptualism

Compositionality, Iconicity, and Perceptual Nonconceptualism

This paper concerns the role of the structural properties of representations in determining the nature of their content. I take as a starting point Fodor's (2007) and Heck's (2007) recent arguments making the iconic structure of perceptual representations essential in establishing their content as content of a different (nonconceptual) kind. I argue that the prima facie state / content error this strategy seems to display is nothing but a case of 'state/content error error', i.e., the mistake of considering that the properties that characterize the type of content certain representations have are indeed independent of their structural properties. I also consider another objection to the general strategy, namely that it falls short of showing that the nonconceptual content of perceptual experiences thus established is the kind of content that figures in true explanations of intentional behavior. I concede this point in respect of Fodor's version of the strategy, while denying that it has any bearing on Heck's approach. The success of this objection in Heck's case ultimately depends, I argue, upon an unjustified commitment to a certain empirically suspect model of perception

Social vision: Breaking a philosophical impasse?

I argue that findings in support of Adams and Kveraga's functional forecast model of emotion expression processing help settle the debate between rich and sparse views of the content of perceptual experience. In particular, I argue that these results in social vision suggest that the distinctive phenomenal character of experiences involving high-level properties such as emotions and social traits is best explained by their being visually experienced as opposed to being brought about by perceptual judgments