“Como duas mentes podem conhecer uma única coisa” é um dos textos que Wil-liam James (1842-1910) pretendia reunir sob o nome de Ensaios sobre empirismo radi-cal, embora nunca tenha chegado a ver o projeto concluído. Trata-se da obra tardia do autor, quando este passou a desenvolver algumas das ideias que já se encontravam, em muitos casos de forma embrionária, no monumental Princípios de psicologia. “Como duas mentes podem conhecer uma única coisa” é um dos textos mais importantes desse esforço, uma vez que explica, de forma clara e elegante, um dos pilares do empirismo radical. Como o título já diz, James pretende mostrar como algo pode ser conhecido por duas mentes sem que haja aí uma duplicação, ou um recurso à noção de representação como duplicação de um objeto físico. James postula o conceito de experiência pura e indivisa que se desenvolve em estados de experiências momentâneas sucessivas. A experiência pura acrescenta a consciência à percepção de objetos. Nessa experiência indivisível ocorrem “apropriações” conscientes — que se dão de forma retroativa — das sensações dos objetos pelos sentidos. A consciência conquistada nessa apropriação marca a subjetivação e se dá a partir da inserção do algo sensível, resultante da relação com um objeto físico, na experiência individual. No instante da experiência pura, o objeto é ao mesmo tempo objetivo e subjetivo, não ocorrendo uma duplicação ontológica. Aí reside a resposta à pergunta posta no título: é possível sentir objetos sem duplicá-los.

The main purpose of this paper is to show how the thesis of the inscrutability of reference fits in Willard Van Orman Quine’s semantic and to establish how it is logically related to some other important theses from Quine. I sustain that this thesis is a philosophical one, but not the kind of a naturalized philosophy, but of a philosophy that goes beyond empirical science. It is exactly the philosophical dimension of it that allows Quine to put it as the ground for his philosophy of language, to explain many syntactic and semantic aspects of the constitution of linguistic systems, and to show how the relation between experience and theories is established and sustained. Key words: empiricism, holism, Quine, semantics, reference.

This paper examines the problem of the construction of objects in natural sciences through the analysis of texts by Hans Reichenbach and Willard Quine. Particularly, it intends to show that scientific objects are not the result of an accurate representation of reality, but of theoretical reasoning based on experience. Although 20th century empiricism does not concede to rationalism the existence of a priori structures of knowledge, it does admit, from an apparently conventionalist point of view, the empirical underdetermination of theories and the diversity of possible interpretations of experience. The analysis of Quine’s view of ontological commitments and of Reichenbach’s view of quantum mechanics leads to considerations about de problem of ontology in natural sciences. Finally, the paper discusses to what extent this ontology can be described from an empiricist point of view. Key words: empiricism, ontology, Hans Reichenbach, Willard Quine, quantum mechanics.

In Linguistic Bodies, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo, Elena Clare Cuffari and Hanne De Jaegher (2018) propose a dialectic method to explain organism’s movements and exchanges, i.e., life inter-actions and evolution, that can also explain the evolution from life to cultural relations, that include linguistic interactions. One of the main questions Linguistic Bodies wants to answer is how to explain human life and culture without a reductive scientific thought. If one defies radical reductionism, one of the central risks is to dissociate physical inquiries from biological investigations. In the book, the authors oppose the analytical mode of thinking present in many natural sciences to a dialectical mode of thinking that would explain living beings’ interactions. It is relevant to question if they succeeded in defending the dialectical model they profess to be the best suited to explain human social phenomena. Following this line of rationale, in this paper, I will, first, show that dialectical methods are over-ambitious and, second, inquire into the anti-reductionist attitude present in the dialectical model advocated in Linguistic Bodies.Key-words: Linguistic bodies, radical reductionism, dialectical model.

(Este artigo faz parte de um projeto da Trans/Form/Ação: revista de filosofia da Unesp. Trata-se do Dossiê Filosofia Autoral, a ser publicado em 2022.) Neste artigo argumento em favor de uma posição acerca da natureza da mente humana que não é um fisicalismo reducionista e nem tampouco qualquer tipo de dualismo, seja de substância ou de propriedade. Sustento o perspectivismo neutro, inspirado no monismo neutro, de teor cientificista e materialista, que permite incluir experiências fenomênicas conscientes como parte de cadeias causais de processos perceptivos, emocionais, cognitivos e deliberativos. Embora não existam ainda teorias, leis e dados que permitam uma decisão final sobre qual o papel das experiências fenomênicas conscientes em processos físico-químicos do corpo, evidências coletadas nas últimas décadas não apenas fortalecem nossa crença na correlação entre eventos físico-químicos e experiências qualitativas conscientes como também aumentam o número de razões em favor da tese de que essas experiências realmente têm um papel funcional importante nos processos de coleta e uso de informações pelo organismo.

To walk between extremes is a subtle art, whose grace and delicateness can be easily misunderstood by those who love extremes. Those who love art, however, might to think they love it because of the extremes in it, and not because of the subtle harmony and balance the artist found among them. For us, one of the most appealing notes of Susan Haack’s philosophy has always been its search for equilibrium. A way to seal between Scylla and Charybdis in every theme she laid her keen mind over. An ability to be a moderate even among moderates. In this tribute we would like to address two of those themes which are tightly interwoven and represents well the beautiful effort to balance and put down to earth, through a pragmatic instinct, excesses metaphysicians are prone to commit. The two themes are naturalism and realism. As for naturalism, there seems to be something odd about being a philosopher and a naturalist, since if science can give an account of every aspect of the world, then what is the point of doing philosophy? Moreover, if philosophy is not concerned with giving an account of the world, what is the point of being a naturalist in philosophy? The formulation is paradoxical enough to make us suspect that it means more than it conveys at first glance. Nevertheless, because each of its conditionals points to something generally accepted, its astonishing effect remains. Indeed, on the one hand, science has become the sole oracle for questions concerning the world and its furnishings. While of course not compulsory, this view entails a kind of naturalism which professes that everything in existence exists within the realm of nature and that beyond nature there is nothing. This thesis is the core of ontological naturalism. Furthermore, since science and its methods, laws, and descriptions provide our only access to nature— this is the core idea of methodological naturalism—no investigation could give an acceptable account of the physical world, or of life, human nature and suchlike beyond that of science. Accordingly, if philosophy were capable of delivering any useful answers to meaningful questions concerning the world, then it would have to be understood as a science, and, as such, to be committed to ontological as well as to methodological naturalism. On the other hand, it is not unusual to take philosophy as a kind of discourse that is irreducible to a description of what there is. A discourse about discourses; a metadiscourse to which even science, and perhaps especially science, has to be subjected. In this sense, philosophy is not prima facie about the world but is about our knowledge of the world, which does not place philosophy outside of nature, but does Naturalism, Innocent

The use of new paradigms of false belief tasks (FBT) allowed to reduce the age of children who pass the test from the previous 4 years in the standard version to only 15 months or even a striking 6 months in the nonverbal modification. These results are often taken as evidence that infants already possess an-at least implicit-theory of mind (ToM). We criticize this inferential leap on the grounds that inferring a ToM from the predictive success on a false belief task requires to assume as premise that a belief reasoning is a necessary condition for correct action prediction. It is argued that the FBT does not satisfactorily constrain the predictive means, leaving room for the use of belief-independent inferences (that can rely on the attribution of non-representational mental states or the consideration of behavioral patterns that dispense any reference to other minds). These heuristics, when applied to the FBT, can achieve the same predictive success of a belief-based inference because information provided by the test stimulus allows the recognition of particular situations that can be subsumed by their 'laws'. Instead of solving this issue by designing a single experimentum crucis that would render unfeasible the use of non-representational inferences, we suggest the application of a set of tests in which, although individually they can support inferences dissociated from a ToM, only an inference that makes use of false beliefs is able to correctly predict all the outcomes.

Em Filosofia da Mente, as propostas mais conhecidas são a dualista e a monista, que, em geral, respectivamente, concebem que ou existem duas substâncias no mundo, uma mental e uma material, ou que só existe um tipo de substância, ideal ou material. A proposta denominada dualismo de substância é conhecida atualmente mais como objeto de crítica, sendo que prevalecem no momento diferentes versões da proposta monista, versões ou materialistas ou neutras, como o dualismo de propriedades. Nesse texto, o objetivo é interpretar e contextualizar nesses debates a teoria da totalidade indivisa de David Bohm, que chamaremos de holista. Para tanto, explicaremos inicialmente as características principais da perspectiva bohmiana. Em um segundo momento, mostraremos por que ela não pode ser considerada nem monista e nem dualista. Para num terceiro momento, defender que as características da perspectiva bohmiana se assemelham mais a um tipo de proposta holista.

“Theory of Mind” (ToM) means the ability to attribute representational mental states to others, such as beliefs and desires, and to explain/predict behaviors taking into account how these mental states commonly interact. “Moral Cognition” (CM), in a broad sense, refers to the way people make moral judgments, evaluating behaviors in the light of a system of norms. ToM and CM, skills that are part of human social cognition, although being distinct in computational terms (i.e. about their functional roles—domain of input processed and types of outputs produced) and neural embodiment, are processes that interact in various forms, with cognitive tasks that require them jointly. It is intended in this paper to analyze types of cognitive tasks in which ToM and CM interact (ToM taking as input an output of CM and CM taking as input an output of ToM), and in which ToM and CM are recruited separately. Due to the existence of clinical groups (e.g. individuals in the autism spectrum) having anomalous performance in certain cognitive tasks that recruit ToM and CM together (e.g. judging the behavior of an agent who, wanting to accomplish something good, caused an accidental injury to another person), it is necessary to investigate the exact role of each process in the production of these complex outputs to clarify the origin of the errors. Without taking into account experimental results that recruit ToM and CM alone it is not possible to determine whether the poor performance on a task that depends on the collective use of the two processes is the result of an impairment in ToM, CM or both.

Neste artigo, quero explorar a possibilidade de ver as experiências fenomênicas privadas, na linha do que pensava Russell, como detentoras de objetividade, o que possibilitaria vê-las como objetos de investigações científicas. Ou, dito de outro modo, perguntar se seria possível falar cientificamente sobre eventos mentais que chamamos ordinariamente de impressões. Apesar desse problema ser ainda considerado imperscrutável por uma certa filosofia, minha hipótese é a de que, como sustentava Sellars, podemos estar sendo apenas impedidos por erros ou limitações no uso de nosso vocabulário a encontrar uma solução consoante com ao que ambicionava Russell.

In this paper I analyze recent neo-pragmatic views that have followed Wittgenstein’s anti-representationalist perspective on meaning. One can find a bifurcation in recent literature on the question of how human understanding and communication actually take place in society. Some are convinced that natural science can explain all our communicative capacities. Others still believe that there is something special about meaning. On both sides we find representationalists and anti-representationalists. I present here the main features of this bifurcation so as to argue in favor of a neural-pragmatic semantic, that still has a Wittgensteinian flavor, but that incorporates lessons received from embodied cognition theories and from biosemantics

In this paper I analyze recent neo-pragmatic views that have followed Wittgenstein’s anti-representationalist perspective on meaning. One can find a bifurcation in recent literature on the question of how human understanding and communication actually take place in society. Some are convinced that natural science can explain all our communicative capacities. Others still believe that there is something special about meaning. On both sides we find representation a lists and anti-representationalists. I present here the main features of this bifurcation so as to argue in favor of a neural-pragmatic semantic, that still has a Wittgensteinian flavor, but that incorporates lessons received from embodied cognition theories and frombiosemantics.

O presente artigo disserta sobre duas características centrais ao holismo epistemológico de Willard Quine: a sustentação de critérios empíricos de avaliação por meio das sentenças observacionais e a defesa de que a ontologia fisicalista é decisiva para a avaliação de teorias.