How many notions of cause are there? The causality literature is witnessing a flourishing of pluralist positions. Here I focus on a recent debate on whether interpreting causality in terms of inferential relations commits one to semantic pluralism (Reiss 2011) or not (Williamson 2006). I argue that inferentialism is compatible with a ‘weak’ form of monism, where causality is envisaged as one, vague cluster concept. I offer two arguments for this, one for vagueness, one for uniqueness. Finally, I qualify in (...) what sense the resulting form of monism is ‘weak’.¿Cuántas nociones de causa hay? Hay un resurgir de posiciones pluralistas en la bibliografía sobre causalidad. Me ocuparé aquí de un debate reciente sobre si la interpretación de la causalidad en términos de relaciones inferenciales nos compromete con el pluralismo semántico (Reiss 2011) o no (Williamson 2006). Defiendo que el inferencialismo es compatible con una forma ’debil’ de monismo, donde la causalidad se presenta como un único concepto vago y de agrupación (cluster). Ofrezco para ello dos argumentos, uno sobre vaguedad y otro sobre unicidad. Finalmente, matizaré en qué sentido esta forma demonismo es ’débil’. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that the prevalence of moral dissent poses a problem for the moral cognitivist, forcing her to diagnose either a lot of misunderstanding, or a lot of unexplained observational error. Since mere misunderstanding can be ruled out in most cases of moral dissent, and since the diagnosis of widespread unexplained error is interpretively unstable, prevalent dissent has pushed many philosophers towards non-cognitivism. In this essay, I argue that once a diachronic, pragmatist theory of language along the lines (...) of the latest Wittgenstein is employed, a third interpretive option becomes available to the cognitivist. Besides the diagnostic options of misunderstanding and factual disagreement, she can argue that a given case of moral dissent is an instance of grammatical tension. This interpretation not only saves moral cognitivism, it also has some attractive theoretical implications. Among other things, it yields an elegant way of solving the current debate around moral particularism. (shrink)

This article examines the meta-philosophical rift which runs through the Pittsburgh School of contemporary philosophy. The rift is a disagreement about the appropriateness and likelihood of success of the kind of attempt at philosophical explanation in which implicitly mastered conceptual practices are reconstructed by way of combining simple and easily surveyable practical rules. While for Robert Brandom, such explanations can yield a genuinely better understanding of the target practice or vocabulary, and are thus an appropriate instrument for analytical philosophy, John (...) McDowell considers them symptomatic of a wholly mistaken view of discursive practice, and takes their failure to be inevitable. According to McDowell, the futility of (“linear”) philosophical reconstructions is due to the holistic structure of linguistic competence and hence intentionality itself: distinct concrete conceptual practices presuppose each other in holistic (and hence circular) ways. This article defends Brandom’s thesis of the compatibility of the holism cited by McDowell on the one hand, and the possibility of philosophical explanation on the other, using a concrete example of a successful reconstruction which could be described as “linear” in McDowell’s sense. Finally, two possible answers in support of McDowell’s scepticism are discussed with a view to establishing room for a continuation of the debate. (shrink)