In some important papers, and especially in his 'The Problem of the Essential Indexical', John Perry has argued that we should draw a clear distinction between two aspects of belief: its causal role in action, on the one hand, and its semantic content (the proposition that is believed), on the other. According to Perry, beliefs with the same semantic content (with the same truth conditions) may have a very different causal influence on the subject¿s action. In this paper, we show (...) that Perry's arguments in favor of this thesis are not sound and defend, against him, the common sense intuition according to which what leads us to act as we do is what we believe (the semantic content of our belief), or, in other words, that there is no schism between the semantic content and the causal role of our beliefs. (shrink)

This paper is a presentation and critical introduction to the monographic section “Knowledge, Memory and Perception”. Three of the papers included in this section deal with questions concerning the sources and forms of empirical knowledge. Two of them (Olga Fernández, Jordi Fernández) focus on the problem of the intentional content of perception and of episodic memory, respectively. Manuel Liz, in turn, intends to develop a stable version of direct realism about perception. Murali Ramachandran, in contrast, looks for a definition of (...) knowledge that is immune to Gettier-style counterexamples. Against Williamson, he holds this is a genuine and important problem. These contributions to the monographic section are exposed, commented, and criticized in detail. (shrink)

In his 2000 paper, Hookway intends to argue that Fumerton’s Principle of Inferential Justification does not have the sceptical consequences that Fumerton sees into it. We think Hookway is right in holding this. However, after commenting on his main considerations for this thesis, we shall develop an independent line of argument which reinforces the same conclusion.

The paper questions the common assumption that rational individuals believe all propositions which they know to be logical consequences of their other beliefs: although we must acknowledge the truth of a proposition which is a deductive consequence of our beliefs, we may not genuinely believe it. This conclusion is defended by arguing that some familiar counterexamples to the claim that knowledge is justified true belief fail because they involve propositions which are not really believed. Beliefs guide conduct or issue in (...) assertion by answering questions which arise in the course of deliberation and conversation, but the troublesome cases present propositions which do not present the agent's answer to any question. The paper concludes by sketching the conditions under which the deductive consequences of our beliefs can be believed.1. (shrink)

Anil Gupta’s book Empiricism and Experience (2006) is a rich and complex piece of work, whose main aim is to elucidate the rational contribution of experience to knowledge. A minimally complete acc...

Este artículo trata de profundizar en nuestra comprensión de la naturaleza de la creenciaen tanto que actitud proposicional. Tras contextualizar la cuestión, discutimos y rechazamosdiversas caracterizaciones de la creencia —como apuesta y como alta probabilidad subjetiva—, para acabar defendiendo que creer que p consiste meramente en atribuiruna mayor probabilidad subjetiva a p que a no-p —entendiendo no-p como cualquiera delas alternativas a p y a todas en su conjunto. Propondremos además que la pregunta a la quetrata de responder una creencia (...) es fundamental para determinar el grado de creencia y lasrazones que cuentan a su favor. (shrink)

In this paper I offer an interpretation of those paragraphs of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus in which Wittgenstein talks about negative facts. In my opinion we cannot conclude that Wittgenstein held that negative facts have actual existence, as RusselI, for example, did.By means of a kind of journey through several possible interpretations, I arrive to the conclusion that negative facts are nothing but non-effective possibilities; they are in the logical space, in the field of possible worlds, but they have no actual existence, (...) they are not inhabitants of the world. Finally, it is suggested that, insofar as pictures are facts, the only negative facts were, for Wittgenstein, the negative pictures and not what those pictures depict. (shrink)

En 'La Naturalizacion de la Filosofia' se exploran diversos aspectos de la pretensión naturalista en diferentes campos filosóficos, con sus aciertos y sus limitaciones.

Según la Regla de Atención que formula David Lewis, la mera consideración de una posibilidad que supondría que la proposición que creemos fuera falsa, basta, si no la podemos descartar y por muy improbable que ésta sea, para hacer desaparecer nuestro conocimiento de tal proposición. El propósito de este artículo es combatir tal regla y sustituirla por una versión mucho más moderada. Si la consideración de la posibilidad no descartada no afecta a nuestro grado de certeza previo, tal posibilidad no (...) puede hacer desaparecer nuestro conocimiento.According to David Lewis’s Rule of Attention, the mere fact of attending to a possibility,that we cannot discard, in which the proposition believed would be false, is sufficient, to make our knowledge of that proposition disappear, no matter how far-fetched that possibility may be. The aim of this paper is to criticize such a rule and to offer a much more moderate version of it. If attending to the non-ignored possibility does not affect our prior degree of certainty, such a possibility cannot make our knowledge disappear. (shrink)

In this paper, we distinguish two ways in which someone can be said to believe a proposition. In the light of this distinction, we question the widely held equivalence between considering a proposition true and believing that proposition. In some cases, someone can consider a proposition true and not properly believe it. This leads to a distinction between the conventional meaning of the sentence by which a subject expresses a belief and the content of this belief. We also question some (...) principles of belief ascription, suggest a solution to a famous puzzle about belief and defend the unity of the semantic and causalaspects of beliefs. (shrink)