Nominalismo, lenguaje trascendental y crítica de la experiencia cognoscitiva en Wittgenstein.

Este trabajo se ocupa de tres aspectos principales de la filosofía del lenguaje de Wittgenstein: la teoría de la forma lógica, la teoría de los objetos del Tractatus y la crítica la teoría de los sense-data. Las tesis de Wittgenstein se compararán con el pensamiento de Leonardo Polo y, especialmente, con algunas afirmaciones de Polo en torno al nominalismo, la constitución de un lenguaje trascendental y el concepto de conocimiento en Wittgenstein

Widening the extended mind theory: the mind as a capacity

This a theoretical poster. Its explores the way for a comprehensive understanding of the human mind. Philosophers and neuroscientists often reject the claim that their theory of the mind and of the mental phenomena is in any way ‘reductive’. This adjective typically involves the crucial negligence of essential features of the subjective and a too narrow scientific outlook. I show here that by adequately connecting the theory of the extended mind (EM) with the philosophical theory of capacities or abilities, which is attributed to Aristotle (IV b. C.), such negligence can be avoided. A more precise, integrative and open-ended view of the mind emerges then, a view which I will only sketch here

Biological functions are causes, not effects: A critique of selected effects theories

The theory of Selected Effects (SE) is currently the most widely accepted etiological account of function in biology. It argues that the function of any trait is the effect that past traits of that type produced that contributed to its current existence. Its proper or etiological function is whatever effect was favoured by natural selection irrespective of the trait’s current effects. By defining function with respect to the effects of natural selection, the theory claims to eschew the problem of backwards causality and to ground functional normativity on differential reproduction or differential persistence. Traditionally, many have criticised the theory for its inability to envisage any function talk outside selective reproduction, for failing to account for the introduction of new functions, and for treating function as epiphenomenal. This article unveils four additional critiques of the SE theory that highlight the source of its critical problems. These critiques follow from the fact that natural selection is not a form of work, but a passive filter that merely blocks or permits prior functioning traits to be reproduced. Natural selection necessarily assumes the causal efficacy of prior organism work to produce the excess functional traits and offspring from which only the best fitted will be preserved. This leads to four new incapacities of the SE theory, which will be here analysed: (i) it provides no criterion for determining what distinguishes a proper from an incidental function; (ii) it cannot distinguish between neutral, incidental, and malfunctioning traits, thus treating organism benefit as irrelevant; (iii) it fails to account for the physical work that makes persistence and reproduction possible, and (iv) in so doing, it falls into a vicious regress. We conclude by suggesting that, inspired by Mills and Beatty’s propensity interpretation, the aporia of backward causation implicit in anticipatory accounts of function can also be avoided by a dispositional approach that defines function in terms of work that synchronously counters the ubiquitous tendency for organism entropy to increase in the context of far-fromequilibrium thermodynamics

La Metafísica de la mente de A. Kenny: 25 años después

Coincidiendo con el 25 aniversario de la publicación de la Metafísica de la mente de A. Kenny, este artículo trata algunos de los principales puntos del libro. Concretamente, el dualismo de Descartes, la noción aristotélica de alma o psychê, el lenguaje humano y el animal, la acción voluntaria, la relación mente-cerebro, el pensamiento y la intencionalidad, y el determinismo y la libertad. El autor sostiene que, aunque el libro de Kenny contiene argumentos válidos inspirados en Wittgenstein y la tradición aristotélica, no siempre aprecia toda la profundidad de esta tradición en conceptos básicos como el de psychê o la inmaterialidad del entendimiento humano. A pesar de eso, el libro de Kenny es uno de los mejores esfuerzos hasta el presente por romper con Descartes y el empirismo británico, y por incorporar la tradición aristotélica a la filosofía de la mente contemporánea.To mark the 25th anniversary of A. Kenny’s The Metaphysics of Mind, this ar- ticle discusses some of the central arguments of this book, in particular, it discusses Descartes’ dualism, the notion of soul or Aristotle’s psychê, human and animal language, voluntary action, the self, the mind-brain relation, thinking and intentionality, and determinism and free will. The author holds that, although Kenny’s book offers valid and substantial arguments inspired in Wittgenstein’s thought and the Aristotelian tradition, he occasionally fails to appreciate the depth of basic concepts in the Aristotelian tradition such as that of psychê and the immateriality of the human intellect. Despite this, the book constitutes one of the best efforts to break off with Descartes’ and the empiricists’ ideas, and to incorporate the Aristotelian tradition to the contemporary philosophy of mind