Some remarks on the MIll-Frege theory of names

In a recent paper García-Carpintero (2017) argues that proper names possess, in addition to their standard referential truth conditional content, metalinguistic descriptive senses which take part in semantic presuppositions. The aim of this article is twofold. In the first part I present an argument against García-Carpintero’s presuppositional view, which I call the collapse argument. In short, I argue that the view has the unwelcome consequence of making contexts of use and felicitous contexts of use collapse. If this is correct, a presuppositional account of the metalinguistic descriptions allegedly associated with proper names proves incorrect. In the second part I sketch an alternative Millian strategy which is able to account for the evidence which allegedly supports the presuppositional view.Fil: Lo Guercio, Nicolás Francisco. Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas - Sadaf; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Mental files and metafictive utterances

Metafictive utterances raise a kind of intuitions (intuitions of truthfulness) that pose a problem for a view that combines a referentialist approach to proper names with an antirealist stance on fictional characters. In this article I attempt to provide a solution to this problem within the framework of mental files. According to my position, metafictive utterances literally express an incomplete proposition while pragmatically conveying a complete one, which accounts for the intuitions of truthfulness. The proposition pragmatically conveyed is 'metarepresentational', I'll argue, in the sense that it is about a mental representation or mental file.As emissões metafictivas despertam intuições de verdade, as quais representam um problema para uma teoria que combine uma posição referencialista quanto aos nomes próprios com um compromisso antirrealista quanto às personagens de ficção. O objetivo deste artigo é proporcionar uma solução para este problema no âmbito da teoria de arquivos mentais. De acordo com a posição desenvolvida, enquanto as emissões metafictivas expressam literalmente uma proposição incompleta, comunicam pragmaticamente uma proposição completa, a qual explica as intuições de verdade. A proposição pragmaticamente comunicada, argumentarei, é “metarrepresentacional”, no sentido de que é sobre uma representação mental ou arquivo mental.Fil: Lo Guercio, Nicolás Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras. Instituto de Filosofía "Dr. Alejandro Korn"; Argentin

Infinitism and Doxastic Justification

El infinitismo es la posición según la cual una creencia está justificada para un sujeto solo si este posee una cadena infinita de razones disponibles en favor de la misma. En su versión más reciente y más sofisticada el infinitismo promete escapar a los problemas de sus principales contrincantes,el fundacionismo y el coherentismo, a la vez que evitar las objeciones tradicionalmente formuladas en su contra. En este trabajo se argumenta que el infinitismo enfrenta una dificultad apremiante, a saber, es incapaz de articular justificación proposicional y justificación doxástica de un modo apropiadoThe article discusses infinitism, the view that a belief is justified for a subject only if she possesses an infinite chain of available reasons for that belief. In its most recent and sophisticated version, the view allegedly escapes the problems that trouble its main competitors, foundationalism and coherentism, while avoiding the traditional objections which relegated it to a marginal place. The article argues that despite these improvements, sophisticated versions of infinitism face a pressing problem, viz. they are unable to appropriately articulate propositional and doxastic justification.Fil: Lo Guercio, Nicolás Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Philosophical Peer disagreement

It has been widely discussed, in recent years, which is the rational doxastic reaction in the face of peer disagreement. But not much has been said about aninteresting instance of that debate: philosophical peer disagreement. That is precisely what I will be concerned with in this paper. First, I will offer a definition ofphilosophical peer that introduces the idea of an epistemic perspective. The proposed definition allows for a doublé distinction: between Strong and Weak Peers, and between Strong and Weak Disagreements. Based on these distinctions, I will defend that different doxastic reactions are required depending on the type of disagreement at issue. On the one hand, in the face of Weak Disagreement, we should be conciliatory. Cases of Strong disagreement, in turn, shouldn’t motívate a doxastic revision. In order to argue for that, some refinements into the notion of Rational Uniqueness will be needed.Fil: Lo Guercio, Nicolás Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas. - Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico. Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas; Argentin

An account of overt intentional dogwhistling

Political communication in modern democratic societies often requires the speaker to address multiple audiences with heterogeneous values, interests and agendas. This creates an incentive for communication strategies that allow politicians to send, along with the explicit content of their speech, concealed messages that seek to secure the approval of certain groups without alienating the rest of the electorate. These strategies have been labeled dogwhistling in recent literature. In this article, we provide an analysis of overt intentional dogwhistling (OID). We recognize two main stages within the OIDs’ way of conveying a concealed message: the expression of a perspective together with the transmission of an accompanying positioning message vis-à-vis the OID targeted sub-audience, and the inferential extraction (by the target audience) of a set of cognitive and non-cognitive contents inferred on the basis of the former stage. Furthermore, we identify three linguistic mechanisms whereby these contents may be transmitted: conventional meaning, conversational implicature and perlocutionary inferencing. Hence, on our view OIDs are not a uniform category, as they may differ as to what extent the concealed content is speaker-meant, and thus actually communicated by the speaker.Fil: Lo Guercio, Nicolás Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas. - Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico. Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas; ArgentinaFil: Caso, Ramiro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas. - Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Filosófico. Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin

Infinitismo y justificación doxástica

The article discusses infinitism, the view that a belief is justified for a subject only if she possesses an infinite chain of available reasons for that belief. In its most recent and sophisticated version, the view allegedly escapes the problems that trouble its main competitors, foundationalism and coherentism, while avoiding the traditional objections which relegated it to a marginal place. The article argues that despite these improvements, sophisticated versions of infinitism face a pressing problem, viz. they are unable to appropriately articulate propositional and doxastic justification.El infinitismo es la posición según la cual una creencia está justificada para un sujeto solo si este posee una cadena infinita de razones disponibles en favor de la misma. En su versión más reciente y más sofisticada el infinitismo promete escapar a los problemas de sus principales contrincantes, el fundacionismo y el coherentismo, a la vez que evitar las objeciones tradicionalmente formuladas en su contra. En este trabajo se argumenta que el infinitismo enfrenta una dificultad apremiante, a saber, es incapaz de articular justificación proposicional y justificación doxástica de un modo apropiado

Infinitismo y justificación doxástica

The article discusses infinitism, the view that a belief is justified for a subject only if she possesses an infinite chain of available reasons for that belief. In its most recent and sophisticated version, the view allegedly escapes the problems that trouble its main competitors, foundationalism and coherentism, while avoiding the traditional objections which relegated it to a marginal place. The article argues that despite these improvements, sophisticated versions of infinitism face a pressing problem, viz. they are unable to appropriately articulate propositional and doxastic justification.El infinitismo es la posición según la cual una creencia está justificada para un sujeto solo si este posee una cadena infinita de razones disponibles en favor de la misma. En su versión más reciente y más sofisticada el infinitismo promete escapar a los problemas de sus principales contrincantes, el fundacionismo y el coherentismo, a la vez que evitar las objeciones tradicionalmente formuladas en su contra. En este trabajo se argumenta que el infinitismo enfrenta una dificultad apremiante, a saber, es incapaz de articular justificación proposicional y justificación doxástica de un modo apropiado

Disagreement between epistemic peers and epistemic dependence

El debate en torno a la epistemología del desacuerdo está signadopor el desacuerdo entre conciliadores y obstinados. Sin embargo, ambosbandos coinciden acerca de la siguiente tesis: el desacuerdo con un parepistémico cuya creencia es epistémicamente dependiente de una instan-cia de desacuerdo que ya ha sido tenida en cuenta no requiere una nueva revisión doxástica. En otras palabras, cuando existe dependencia epistémi-ca, el número de desacuerdos no importa. En este artículo se examina la cuestión. En primer lugar se presenta una teoría general acerca de los desacuerdos reconocidos entre pares epistémicos, según la cual debemos distinguir entre desacuerdos fuertes y desacuerdos débiles. En segundo lugar, se argumenta que los desacuerdos fuertes no motivan en ningún casouna revisión doxástica, sin importar el número de discordantes involucra-dos, ni si sus creencias son o no epistémicamente dependientes. En tercer lugar, se desarrolla una noción de dependencia epistémica. Finalmente se argumenta, en relación con los desacuerdos débiles, que ante el descubri-miento de un nuevo desacuerdo, si este es completamente independiente de otros desacuerdos ya tenidos en cuenta, es necesaria una nueva revisión doxástica.The debate over the epistemology of desagreement is full of disagreements. However, both conciliationists and steadfasts agree on the following thesis: once I have taken into account the disagreement with an epistemic peer P1, that is, once I have revised my belief in light of my knowledge of such disagreement, finding a new disagreement with another peer, P2, does not require that I revise my belief again if P2 is epistemically dependent on P1. In short: the number of disagreements doesn't matter when there is epistemic dependence. This article addresses the problem from a new perspective. First, I will briefly present my view concerning peer disagreement, which distinguishes between weak peer disagreements and strong peer disagreements. Then, I will argue that strong peer disagreements do not call for a doxastic revision, whether the new disagreeing peers are epistemically dependent or not. Second, I develop the idea of epistemic dependence. Finally, I contend that in the case of weak peer disagreements, when they are epistemically independent the discovery of disagreements with new epistemic peers calls for a doxastic revision.Fil: Lo Guercio, Nicolás Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin

A Reply to Palmira

In “Philosophical Peer Disagreement” I argued that in order to properly account for the phenomenon of philosophical peer disagreement it is necessary to drop the ‘same evidence’ condition from the definition of epistemic peerage. The reason is the following: different philosophical perspectives might come with different commitments concerning the evidential role of the same piece of data, and it would be wrong to deny the status of epistemic peer to someone that is acquainted with the same data, even if he does not consider it plays an evidential role. However, on “On the Necessity of the Evidential Equality Condition For Epistemic Peerage,” Michele Palmira has developed some criticisms to these ideas. Here I defend my view from Palmira’s objections.Fil: Lo Guercio, Nicolás Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentin

Moral Testimony and Epistemology of Testimony

El objetivo del trabajo es poner de manifiesto la relevancia de las categorías presentes en el debate epistemológico sobre el testimonio para el problema del testimonio moral. Notablemente, ambos debates se desarrollan actualmente de manera aislada. Consideramos, sin embargo, que la comunicación entre ambos puede redundar en un beneficio mutuo. Para eso mostraremos, por un lado, la importancia de la epistemología del testimonio a la hora de analizar ciertas sospechas pesimistas respecto del testimonio moral y, por el otro, su relevancia para evaluar el éxito de argumentos concretos, en particular, el de una línea argumentativa en favor del optimismo que opera bajo una presunta analogía entre el testimonio y el consejo.The purpose of this article is to bring out the importance of the epistemology of testimony for the problem of moral testimony. Notably, both issues remain separated nowadays in the literature. However, we consider that both fields of research could benefit from each other. In order to attain this goal we will show, on the one hand, that the epistemology of testimony is relevant for assessing some pessimists suspicions regarding moral testimony, and on the other, that the success of some concrete arguments depends on the stand one takes concerning the epistemology of testimony; in particular, we will assess an argument in favor of optimism that operates under an analogy between moral testimony and moral advice.Fil: Lo Guercio, Nicolás Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentin