This project has five main objectives:
(i) To continue the compatibilist approach to the supposed conflict between externalism and self-knowledge that started in the previous project (“Discriminability: Representation, Belief, and Skepticism”). This task includes a reply to Boghossian’s incompatibilist arguments grounded on the fact that we know a priori whether a given reasoning is logically valid or not.
(ii) To apply the characterization of the concept of begging the question (and assuming compatibilism between externalism and self-knowledge) to an epistemological issue which is relevant for the realism/antirealism debate: it will be advanced an interpretation and defence of Putnam’s argument for the thesis that we are not brains in a vat.
(iii). Analysis of the conditions for the reference of proper names and de re beliefs. Such an analysis will include: (a) to work out a theoretical model of understanding assertions about singular objects not dependent of acquaintance with the object; (b) to develop a descriptivist semantics for names of fictional entities, and to examine which modal ontology fits with that semantics.
(iv). Study of intentional action in connection with the options that are open for an agent, with the further aim of determining which conception of counterfactual possibility is better to identify those options.
(v). Analysis of the ontology of time from the perspective of the contrast between two corresponding forms of the realism/antirealism debate. This includes: (a) a study of the connections between presentism and tense-realism; (b) an analysis of the notion of temporal perspective, and its explanatory import in semantics and metaphysics; (c) to support the tenet that tense anti-realism and eternalism are explanatorily satisfying and ontologically acceptable positions.
