A well-established tradition has argued that it is not legitimate to attribute to Parmenides a Fregean semantics, i.e. the distinction between ‘naming’ and ‘meaning’. Nonetheless, Parmenides claims more than once (B 8.53, B 9.1) that mortalsdo namereality, although incorrectly. As many scholars have emphasised, because it is fair neither to conclude that mortals’ names are ‘empty names’ nor dismiss Opinion's account (i.e., broadly speaking, the mortals’ account of reality) itself as meaningless, it seems that Parmenides is suggesting that some kind (...) of distinction between what names refer to and what names mean must be drawn. In view of this, what is Parmenides’ account of names?My suggestion is that in order to explain the Eleatic philosophy of language (and the Eleatic account of names) a step back is required. More specifically, Parmenides’ epistemology has to be taken into account. Indeed, if we assume that Parmenides is arguing for an ‘epistemological disjunctivism’ – such that the veridical and truthful state and the erroneous and deceptive state are essentially different – it will be clear that he is further arguing for what could be defined as a ‘semantic disjunctivism’, so that true speech and false speech are essentially different as well. (shrink)

No cabe duda que el realismo es un problema, no es exagerado afirmar que el realismo se caracteriza de una manera diferente, dependiendo del autor que hable de él, y esto es todo un desafío para quien quiera aprender lo que es. La cuestión, pues, del realismo o del anti-realismo es una cuestión tan controvertida que un breve relato nunca va a satisfacer la discusión entre estos mismos realistas o anti-realistas. Para resolver este dilema el constructivismo propone como aspecto fundamental (...) del conocimiento su funcionalidad. El conocimiento no se corresponde con la realidad, más bien encaja con ella o no. El realista metafísico busca el conocimiento que corresponde con la realidad, mientras que el constructivista busca encajar su teoría con lo que sabemos del mundo. El encaje describe la capacidad de la teoría, pero no del mundo. Cuando decimos de algo que “encaja” ese encaja describe una capacidad de la llave y no dice nada de la cerradura. (shrink)