Sobre la base de las teorías de la causalidad de Salmon y Dowe es posible construir un argumento sencillo para un fisicismo fuerte. Pariendo del "dictum de Alexander", "ser es tener poderes causales" se puede concluir que, en lo tocante a propiedades, no puede haber en el mundo más que magnitudes físicas, pues sólo ellas entran en relaciones causales. Este argumento, sin embargo, es demasiado simple; en este artículo analizo una manera mas sutil y convincente de apoyar un fisicismo fuerte (...) con las teoría de Cantidades Conservadas (QC) de Salmon y Dowe. (shrink)

En la literatura filosófica de las últimas décadas, existen numerosos argumentos orientados a demostrar que las propiedades fenoménicas, los qualia, no son integrables en el mundo natural. En este trabajo se sugiere que una gran familia de ellos, los basados en una simple distinción no especificada entre las propiedades naturales y las propiedades fenoménicas, carece de la fuerza necesaria para apoyar las intuiciones dualistas.

The by now famous exclusion problem for mental causation admits only one possible solution, as far as I can see, namely: that mental and physical properties are linked by a vertical relation. In this paper, starting from what I take to be sensible premises about properties, I will be visiting some general relations between them, in order to see whether, first, it is true that some vertical relationship, other than identity, makes different sorts of causation compatible and second, whether physical (...) and mental properties can be pairs of such relationship. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: According to a model defended by some authors, dispositional predicates, or concepts, can be legiti- mately used in causal explanations, but such a use is not necessary. For every explanation couched in dispo- sitional terms, there is always a better, and complete, explanation that makes use of a different vocabulary, that of categorial bases. In what follows, I will develop this view, and then argue that there is a kind of use of dispositions in explanations that does not fall (...) within this model. That is, I will argue that we would miss some explanations if we were to forsake dispositional concepts and dispositional explanations. (shrink)

Many pragmaticians have distinguished three levels of meaning involved in the comprehension of utterances, and there is an ongoing debate about how to characterize the intermediate level. Recanati has called it the level of 'what is said' and has opposed the idea that it can be determined semantically - a position that he labels 'pragmatic minimalism lo this end he has offered two chief arguments: semantic underdeterminacy and the Availability Principle. This paper exposes a tension between both arguments, relating this (...) discussion with Carruthers's cognitive view of language, according to which some thoughts are, literally, sentences of our natural language. First we explain how this view entails minimalism, and we construct an argument based on semantic underdeterminacy that shows that natural language sentences do not have the compositional properties required to constitute thoughts. Then we analyze the example of a subject's overhearing a sentence without an interpretive context, arguing that in the light of the Availability Principle the corresponding thought can be regarded as a natural language sentence. Thus, semantic underdeterminacy and availability pull in different directions, and we claim that there is no characterization of the latter that can relieve this tension. We contend that Recanati's availability shares with Carruthers's introspectivism an overreliance on intuitions about what appears consciously in one's mmd. We conclude, therefore, that the Availability Principle ought to be abandoned. (shrink)