It is widely assumed that the possibility of faultless disagreement is to be explained by the peculiar semantics and/or pragmatics of special kinds of linguistic construction. For instance, if A asserts “o is F” and B asserts this sentence’s denial, A and B can disagree faultlessly only if they employ the right kind of predicate as their “F”. In this paper, I present an argument against this assumption. Focusing on the special case when the expression of interest is a predicate, I present a series of examples in which the same pairs of sentences are employed, but in different contexts. In some cases, we get an impression of faultless disagreement and in some cases we don’t. I identify a pattern across these contexts and conclude that faultless disagreement is made possible, not by a special kind of predicate, but instead by a special kind of context.
This paper is a critical appraisal of the most recent attempt from cognitive science in general, developmental and evolutionary biology in particular, to understand the nature and mechanisms underlying consciousness as proposed by Anton J.M. Dijker. The proposal, briefly stated, is to view consciousness as a neural capacity for objec- tivity. What makes the problem of consciousness philosophically and scientifically challenging may be stated as follows: If consciousness has a first-person ontology and our best scientific theories have a third-person ontology, how can we come up with a satisfactory theory? Moreover, if the reduction of one to the other is impossible, what are we supposed to do? By neglecting what Chalmers calls the ''hard problem'' of consciousness, Dijker’s proposal seems unable to respond to the foregoing questions, and these questions, I maintain, are the very motivations that most of us have when we inquire about consciousness., Tento článek je kritickým posouzením posledního pokusu o kognitivní vědu obecně, zejména vývojové a evoluční biologie, pochopit podstatu a mechanismy, které jsou základem vědomí, jak navrhl Anton JM Dijker. Návrh, stručně řečeno, je vnímat vědomí jako neurální schopnost objektivity. Co dělá problém vědomí filozoficky a vědecky náročný, lze říci následovně: Pokud má vědomí první ontologii člověka a naše nejlepší vědecké teorie mají ontologii třetí osoby, jak můžeme přijít s uspokojivou teorií? Pokud je navíc redukce jednoho na druhého nemožná, co máme dělat? Zanedbáním toho, co Chalmers nazývá ,,tvrdým problémem'' vědomí, se zdá, že Dijkerův návrh nedokáže odpovědět na výše uvedené otázky, and John Ian K. Boongaling