conceptual

  Entre las muchas metáforas desafortunadas que plagan la escritura de Ludwig Wittgenstein, tal vez una de las peores sea la de “límite”, como en “los límites de mi lenguaje son los límites de mi mundo” y pasajes similares. Wittgenstein usa la palabra “límite” para hablar de lo que, en otros contextos teóricos llamaríamos las condiciones de posibilidad o presupuestos de algo, es decir, aquello que define un espacio desde afuera. Por ejemplo, de qué tipo de objeto hablemos delimita qué podemos decir de él. De un objeto abstracto, por ejemplo, no podemos preguntarnos de qué color es. Así dicho, el término “límite” parece ser muy adecuado.   Desfortunadamente, la noción de límite tiene también la connotación, muy notoria, de establecer una frontera entre dos espacios que, de otra manera, serían uniformes. En otras palabras, lo que está mas allá del límite  suele ser un espacio del mismo tipo que aquel que se está delimitando. Por ejemplo, mas allá de las fronteras de nuest...

Let's call theories of grounding according to which (i) grounding necessitation is false and (ii)   “grounds aren't the only facts that might be difference-makers” (Muñoz 2020)  disjuctivist  theories of grounding. In (2015) I defended a disjunctivist account of truth-making as a defeasible relation and Muñoz (2020) recognizes this work as an antecedent to his own disjunctivism. Another important form of disjunctivism is conditional grounding theories like those of Badder or  Van Oordt Faller. The main difference between conditional theories and accounts like Muñoz or mine is that while   Badder and Van Oordt Faller recognize that besides grounds, there are also enabling conditions, Muñoz and I recognize also/instead disabling or defeating conditions. Disjunctivist accounts have recently been criticized by the likes of  Fatema  Amijee, who writes:   “The best candidate for such a view – and the onl...

  I. Introduction Before he reached his mature metaphysical view of being as gradual in the  Republic   (Allen 1961) , Plato claims that neither can negative facts explain positive facts, nor vice versa  ( Phaedo  103b) (this is very likely a corollary of  his principle of opposites  according to which if  A  and  B  are of opposite ontological categories,  A  cannot explain  B  ( González-Varela and Barceló  2 023 ). Paulo Sergio Méndoza just informed me (on January 2024) that Kant held a similar ontological principle in his A  New  Explanation  of the  First  Principles of Metaphysical Knowledge   (September 27, 1755). Yet, it seems obvious that we explain positive facts by appealing to negative facts and vice versa, all the time. We say things like " Pat must be sick, because she would not have missed the party otherwise", "The Plant died because we forgot to water it", " The...