Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

Analyses of action-perception matching mechanisms, such as the Mirror Neuron System (MNS), have been prominent in evolutionary accounts of human cognition. Some scholars have interpreted data on the MNS to suggest that the human capacity to acquire and transmit cultural information is a learned product of cultural evolution (the Culture not Biology Account of cultural learning). Others have interpreted results related to the MNS to suggest that cultural learning in humans result from both cultural and biological evolution (the Culture per biology Account of cultural learning). In this paper, we…

In this paper I reconstruct Spencer (2014)’s argument supporting the conclusion that ‘race’, in its current U.S. meaning, is a rigidly designating proper name for a biologically real entity, specifically for the partition at the K = 5 level of human population structure. Then, I object to the argument by contesting three distinct key assertions in it. First, I contest the assumption that if a term t has a logically inconsistent set of identifying conditions but a robust extension, then it is appropriate to identify the meaning of t as…

A hypothetical syllogism with three conditional propositions (hereinafter HSc) is considered invalid according to the ordinary discourse counterexamples in the existing literature. In this paper, I argue that such counterexamples cannot verify the validity of HSc. The conditional propositions in these arguments are questionable, whether that is indicative or counterfactual HSc. The arguments are considered invalid not because HSc is invalid by itself, but because there is a mismatch between the antecedent of one premise and the consequent of another premise (i.e. a violation of the common part of both…

This paper proposes an analysis of some possible implications of aging focusing the effects that aging may have on one’s self-knowledge. The goal of the paper is in fact to connect research on aging with different accounts of self-knowledge and put forward the following hypothesis: (i) in the late stages of our lives we adopt a different way of looking at ourselves, and (ii) there are three main factors likely causing this change: cognitive problems (episodic memory impairment), motivational factors (coherence-seeking), and loss of a forward-looking way of structuring our…

The following seems to be a truism in modern day philosophy: No agent can have had other parents (IDENTITY). IDENTITY shows up in discussions of moral luck, parenting, gene editing, and population ethics. In this paper, I challenge IDENTITY. I do so by showing that the most plausible arguments that can be made in favor of IDENTITY do not withstand critical scrutiny. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I document the prevalence of IDENTITY. In the second, I examine a defense of IDENTITY on the basis…

The debate on internalism/externalism both in semantics and in epistemology concerns the core relations between the mind and the world. I will use this dichotomy to assess whether and how optimal coordination can be worked out between the different parts of Quine’s philosophy: semantics and epistemology in his earlier development. Since Quine has emphasized that his examination of translation is epistemological and since his epistemological project is an internalist one, it should be logical to assume that his semantics proceeded in the same way. But in Word and Object it…

This paper explores the Persistence Question about cities, that is, what is necessary and sufficient for two cities existing at different times to be numerically identical. We first show that we can possibly put an end to the existence of a city in a number of ways other than by physically destroying it, which reveals the metaphysics of cities to be partly different from that of ordinary objects. Then we focus in particular on the commonly perceived vulnerability of cities to imaginary relocation; and we make the hypothesis that cities…

This paper discusses the possibility of altruism based on the linguistic, and then practical notion of charity, to distinguish it from psychological and ethical selfishness. My starting hypothesis is, as Thomas Nagel argued, that altruism could be interpreted as a rational requirement for action. This hypothesis arises from a specific approach in analytical philosophy to the problem of explaining action, which combines the concepts of charity and altruism in a single interpretative framework about others. My aim is to present a common thread linking the thought of Willard Van Orman…

Tyler Burge (2010) provided a scathing critique of all programs for naturalizing concepts of representation, especially teleological naturalizing programs. He intended to demonstrate that “representational content” is a concept that cannot be reduced to more fundamental biological or physical ideas. According to him, since the 1970s, the concept of representational content has been firmly established in cognitive psychology as a mature science and utilized in adequate explanations. Since Dretske’s program is Burge’s primary objective, this paper concentrates on Dretske’s perspective. Following Burge’s criticisms, I concur that Dretske’s naturalizing program trivializes…

In this paper I face the issue of eliminativism about race. I suggest that a partial as opposed to a blank eliminativism is the epistemically correct philosophical position, by remarking that there are different concepts of “race” and for each of them different philosophical and scientific considerations apply. I first introduce the eliminativist position and show that different forms of eliminativism exist; I then examine how distinct kinds of eliminativism apply to the concept of “bio-genomic” and “social race”, respectively, across different scientific fields. I conclude that while the concept…