The traditional use of the expression 'pseudoproblem' is analysed in order to clarify the talk of pseudoproblems and related phenomena. The goal is to produce a philosophically serviceable terminology that stays true to its historical roots. This explicative study is inspired by and makes use of the method of logical reconstruction. Since pseudoproblems are usually expressed by pseudoquestions a formal language of questions is presented as a possible reconstruction language for alleged pseudoproblems. The study yields an informal theory of pseudoproblems (...) whose presuppositions are critically investigated right away. At least one result remains: Claims of pseudoproblemship and their refutations must not be voiced casually - they are to be relativized and need substantial interpretive effort. (shrink)

Extended entities have boundaries of two different sorts: those that do, and those that do not correspond to physical discontinuities. Call the first sort (coastlines, the surface of your nose) bona fide boundaries; and the second (the boundary of Montana, the boundary separating your upper from your lower torso) fiat boundaries. Fiat boundaries are found especially in the geographic realm, but are involved wherever language carves out portions of reality in ways which do not reflect physical discontinuities. These ideas are (...) applied to the treatment of cognitive categorization, of the semantics of vagueness, of Quine’s indeterminacy thesis, and of standard ontological problems such as Tibbles’ tail. (shrink)

In this paper we position ourselves against idealist presuppositions so frequent in the humanities and social sciences, and, particularly, in communication theory. We argue that a realist approach to the study of communication avoiding such implausible assumptions is not only possible, but has already been exemplified in proposals that take communication to be a phenomenon with a biological origin. We argue that this sort of perspective can account for the variety of communicative functions we encounter in human experience, including the (...) ones involving senses. (shrink)