Laura Specker Sullivan (2022) makes a fairly compelling case for the value of the perspectives of Buddhist practitioners in neuroethics. In this study, Tibetan Buddhist monks have been asked, among other things, whether consciousness, in brain-injured patients in a minimally conscious state, entails a duty to preserve life. In our view, some of the participants’ responses could be used to inform the bioethical debate on death determination.

Background: Several countries have recently changed their model of consent for organ donation from opt-in to opt-out. We undertook a systematic review to determine public knowledge and attitudes towards these models in Europe. Methods: Six databases were explored between 1 January 2008 and 15 December 2017. We selected empirical studies addressing either knowledge or attitudes towards the systems of consent for deceased organ donation by lay people in Europe, including students. Study selection, data extraction, and quality assessment were conducted by (...) two or more reviewers independently. Findings: Awareness of the consent model was lower in opt-out countries than in opt-in countries. A majority of the public agrees with opt-in, regardless of the law in their own country. There are ambivalent attitudes regarding the opt-out system. The public tend to prefer opt-in and mandatory choice over opt-out when several options are offered. Interpretation: The assumption that people in opt-out countries are aware of the legal requirements to be excluded from the pool of potential donors is not supported by the results of this review. This is a concern, since ignorance hinders people's autonomy regarding organ donation decision-making. Higher awareness of consent model in opt-in countries may reflect greater efforts to inform the public through campaigns to motivate donation. Legal moves towards opt-out are at odds with people's expressed preferences. Main limitations of this review are the lack of data from some countries, study population heterogeneity, and methodological shortcomings. (shrink)

El presente artículo pretende seguir el rastro de la noción de λόγοι σπερματικοί, clave de la explicación física estoica sobre la generación, y su inserción en la corriente neoplatónica, por la que consideramos que llega a Agustín de Hipona, quien la utiliza en su exégesis de los relatos de la creación que aparecen en las Escrituras. La racionalidad seminal es analógica, atraviesa y da sentido a la constitución misma del cosmos, y es ella misma, en su más elevada expresión, el (...) Λόγος que era en el principio, fundamento de lo real. (shrink)

This research evaluates the improvements that the use of Active Teaching and Learning Methodologies entails regarding the acquisition of professional skills of future graduates of the Masters dealing with intervention in Architectural Heritage, including product and resource improvements. The objectives address students’ training, oriented toward professional activity, determining the effectiveness of innovation. The real problems were exposed to be faced at a professional level and were solved through different parts, which were developed in different phases. The results obtained allowed us (...) to conclude that teaching and performing practical tasks related to professional competencies are verified as an advance in the subject. (shrink)

We show that both Rado's Conjecture and strong Chang's Conjecture imply that there are no special ℵ2-Aronszajn trees if the Continuum Hypothesis fails. We give similar result for trees of higher heights and we also investigate the influence of Rado's Conjecture on square sequences.

The classification of preserved hypothalamic activity in brain death and brainstem death as functional or non-functional has become a subject of debate. While proponents of the neurological criterion claim that these activities lack functional significance (Shemie et al. 2014), Nair-Collins and Joffe (2023) argue for their functional physiological role. However, the interpretation of the term "function" within the medico-legal framework, where death is characterized by the irreversible cessation of all brain functions, remains unclear. -/- My intention here is not to (...) engage in a debate over the validity of different viewpoints regarding the functional significance of preserved activities in the hypothalamus or the heart. Rather, I aim to highlight the critical importance of exploring and defining the concept of function in medicine, which currently lacks clarity. My point is that, whatever our position in the brain death debate, reaching a consensus on this conceptual matter would minimize misunderstandings and establish a robust foundation for further insightful analysis. (shrink)

50 years after its introduction, brain death remains controversial among scholars. The debates focus on one question: is brain death a good criterion for determining death? This question has been answered from various perspectives: medical, metaphysical, ethical, and legal or political. Most authors either defend the criterion as it is, propose some minor or major revisions, or advocate abandoning it and finding better solutions to the problems that brain death was intended to solve when it was introduced. Here I plead (...) for a different approach that has been overlooked in the literature: the philosophy of science approach. Some scholars claim that human death is a matter of fact, a biological phenomenon whose occurrence can be determined empirically, based on science. We should take this claim seriously, whether we agree with it or not. The question is: how do we know that human death is a scientific matter of fact? Taking the philosophy of science approach means, among other things, examining how the determination of human death became an object of scientific inquiry, exploring the nature of the brain death criterion itself, and analysing the meaning of its core concepts such as “irreversibility” and “functions”. (shrink)

This study employed a technology surveillance process in the beekeeping sector with the objective of identifying emerging technologies that are relevant to small beekeepers in emerging economies. The analysis of patents classified under A01K 47/00 revealed the emergence of pivotal innovations in domains such as hive design, automated honey extraction, and the integration of sensors for hive monitoring. The surveillance process facilitated the collection and analysis of data on the most patented technologies in the sector, thereby addressing key planning questions. (...) The study identified technological trends with the potential to transform beekeeping in low-tech contexts, thereby enhancing the productivity and sustainability of beekeeping operations. The findings of this study indicate that the identified technologies have the potential to significantly contribute to the well-being of small beekeepers, provided that their adoption is facilitated through the provision of governmental and organizational support. It is recommended that future research investigate the implementation of these technologies and the factors that influence their adoption in diverse production contexts. (shrink)

This article introduces some soft computing methods generally used for data analysis and flow pattern detection in fluid dynamics. These techniques decompose the original flow field as an expansion of modes, which can be either orthogonal in time, or in space or in time and space, or they can simply be selected using some sophisticated statistical techniques. The performance of these methods is tested in the turbulent wake of a wall-mounted square cylinder. This highly complex flow is suitable to show (...) the ability of the aforementioned methods to reduce the degrees of freedom of the original data by only retaining the large scales in the flow. The main result is a reduced-order model of the original flow case, based on a low number of modes. A deep discussion is carried out about how to choose the most computationally efficient method to obtain suitable reduced-order models of the flow. The techniques introduced in this article are data-driven methods that could be applied to model any type of non-linear dynamical system, including numerical and experimental databases. (shrink)

Objectives To increase postmortem organ donation rates, several countries are adopting an opt-out (presumed consent) policy, meaning that individuals are deemed donors unless they expressly refused so. Although opt-out countries tend to have higher donation rates, there is no conclusive evidence that this is caused by the policy itself. The main objective of this study is to better assess the direct impact of consent policy defaults per se on deceased organ recovery rates when considering the role of the family in (...) the decision-making process. This study does not take into account any indirect effects of defaults, such as potential psychological and behavioural effects on individuals and their relatives. -/- Design Based on previous work regarding consent policies, we created a conceptual model of the decision-making process for deceased organ recovery that included any scenario that could be directly influenced by opt-in or opt-out policies. We then applied this model to internationally published data of the consent process to determine how frequently policy defaults could apply. -/- Main outcome measures We measure the direct impact that opt-in and opt-out policies have per se on deceased organ recovery. -/- Results Our analysis shows that opt-in and opt-out have strictly identical outcomes in eight out of nine situations. They only differ when neither the deceased nor the family have expressed a preference and defaults therefore apply. The direct impact of consent policy defaults is typically circumscribed to a range of 0%–5% of all opportunities for organ recovery. Our study also shows that the intervention of the family improves organ retrieval under opt-in but hinders it under opt-out. -/- Conclusions This study may warn policy makers that, by emphasising the need to introduce presumed consent to increase organ recovery rates, they might be overestimating the influence of the default and underestimating the power granted to families. (shrink)

This dissertation focuses on teleology and functions in biology. More precisely, it focuses on the scientific legitimacy of teleofunctional attributions and explanations in biology. It belongs to a multi-faceted debate that can be traced back to at least the 1970s. One aspect of the debate concerns the naturalization of functions. Most authors try to reduce, translate or explain functions and teleology in terms of efficient causes so that they find their place in the framework of the natural sciences. Our approach (...) here is radically different, as we question the premise that teleological explanations are disguised causal explanations. On the contrary, we defend that they are acceptable in natural sciences and in biology in particular. We challenge the idea that teleological explanations are immature causal explanations, as well as the idea that teleology and functions are some sort of intentional explanations. We therefore reject the accusations of anthropomorphism, vitalism and finalism. On the contrary, we defend that teleology, causality and intentionality correspond to different, autonomous and complementary modes of representation of the outside world. -/- ———[FRANÇAIS]——— -/- Ce travail de thèse porte sur la téléologie et les fonctions en biologie. Plus précisément, il porte sur la légitimité scientifique des attributions et des explications téléofonctionnelles en biologie. Il s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un débat à plusieurs facettes que l’on peut faire remonter au moins jusqu’aux années 1970 et qui est encore très actif aujourd’hui. L’un des aspects du débat porte sur la naturalisation des fonctions, c’est-à-dire sur la manière de les réduire, de les traduire ou de les expliciter en termes de causes efficientes de sorte qu’elles trouvent leur place dans le cadre des sciences de la nature. Notre approche ici est radicalement différente, car nous remettons en question la prémisse selon laquelle les explications téléologiques seraient des explications causales déguisées. Nous défendons au contraire qu’elles sont acceptables en tant que telles aussi bien de façon générale que dans le domaine scientifique et en particulier en biologie. De façon générale, nous remettons en question l’idée selon laquelle la pensée téléologique serait une pensée causale immature, ainsi que sa dépendance présumée vis-à-vis de la psychologie, c’est-à-dire de l’intentionnalité. Nous rejetons donc les accusations d’anthropomorphisme, de vitalisme et de finalisme formulées contre elle. Nous défendons au contraire que la téléologie, la causalité et l’intentionnalité correspondent à des modes différents, autonomes et complémentaires de représentation du monde extérieur. (shrink)

Is the boundary between the normal and the pathological real or fiction? Are health and disease just a matter of fact or are they value-laden? Here we present some examples of how alleged diseases can be invented and propagated by the industry (disease mongering) or by the methodology of medical science itself. We show that the boundary between health and disease is blurred and depends on individual and social representations, culture relative ways of categorising things and people, and by the (...) society’s degree of medicalisation. However, we do not mean that it is not real, rather that it is more complex than expected, as the subjectivity of social constructions and individual experiences makes them no less real. Finally, we conclude that health and disease belong to both objective and subjective kinds of reality, so the fictional can be real. (shrink)

It seems natural to think of an unwilling addict as having a pattern of preferences that she does not endorse—preferences that, in some sense, she does not ‘identify’ with. Following Frankfurt (1971), Jeffrey (1974) proposed a way of modeling those features of an agent’s preferences by appealing to preferences among preferences.Th„e addict’s preferences are preferences she does not prefer to have. I argue that this modeling suggestion will not do, for it follows from plausible assumptions that a minimally rational agent (...) must prefer those first-order preferences she actually has. I close by considering two different but related ways to think about the initial phenomenon. (shrink)

En metafísica contemporánea, es común trabajar bajo una metodología basada en virtudes teóricas. En caso de disputa, esta metodología nos aconseja elegir la teoría que mejor satisfaga las virtudes teóricas estándar: precisión empírica, fecundidad, poder unificador, consistencia y simplicidad. Sin embargo, no hay consenso sobre cómo deben frasearse tales virtudes, ni sobre cómo ponderarlas. Aquí me concentraré en ofrecer razones a favor de una manera de frasear el principio de parsimonia ideológica, una especie de simplicidad. Defiendo que dicho principio debería (...) decir que, dadas dos teorías T1 y T2, ceteris paribus, si T1 postula menos tipos de expresiones primitvas que T2, entonces es más probable que T1 sea una teoría fiel a que T2 lo sea. Se elabora en qué consiste la cláusula ceteris paribus, qué quiere decir "postular menos tipos de expresiones primitivas" (parsimonia ideológica cualitativa) y en qué consiste la fidelidad teórica. (shrink)

The particular behavior exhibited by sentences featuring predicates of personal taste such as “tasty” may drive us to claim that their truth depends on the context of assessment, as MacFarlane does. MacFarlane considers two ways in which the truth of a sentence can depend on the context of assessment. On the one hand, we can say that the sentence expresses a proposition whose truth-value depends on the context of assessment. This is MacFarlane’s position, which he calls “truth relativism” and, following (...) Weatherson, I rebrand as “nonindexical relativism”. On the other hand, we can say that what proposition a sentence expresses depends on the context of assessment. MacFarlane calls this position “content relativism” and rejects it on the grounds that it leads to implausible readings of certain sentences and is unable to account for the speaker’s authority over the content of her assertions. In this paper, I too argue against content relativism, which, again following Weatherson, I rebrand as “indexical relativism”. However, my arguments against the theory are different from MacFarlane’s, which I prove unsound. In particular, I show that any version of indexical relativism will be unable to account for at least one of the phenomena that have been standardly used to motivate nonindexical relativism—faultless disagreement and retraction—in most of the ways in which it has been proposed to understand them. (shrink)

As part of her argument that relativism and contextualism are nothing but notational variants of each other, Stojanovic holds that contextualism is flexible enough to achieve whatever relativism might do if the matter is what truth-value is assigned to each pair of sentence and context. In this paper, I reply to this statement by arguing that contextualism cannot be made as flexible as relativism without in fact turning it into a version of relativism. The key to my response to Stojanovic (...) is that, while relativism relativizes utterance truth, contextualism does not, so parameters that are not fixed at the context of utterance will be accessible for the relativist, but not for the contextualist. Although the relativity of utterance truth follows as soon as propositional truth is relativized to contexts of assessment, as the relativist does, it is easy to lose sight of this fact if we identify the context of assessment with the assessor’s context. Hence, the point of this paper is that the difference between relativism and contextualism is not one as to whose parameters play a role in determining the sentence’s truth-value. If it were, contextualism could indeed be made just as flexible as relativism. (shrink)

A central debate of Agroecology is the incorporation of socioeconomic and political-cultural criteria in the evaluation of agri-food sustainability. However, the way to define and evaluate these criteria remains an unexplored terrain. In this paper, we aim to systematise how these dimensions are being defined and evaluated through the analysis of 8 initiatives of Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) considered to be part of the agroecological movement in Spain. This analysis identifies those criteria that are commonplace, widely recognised and evaluated by (...) the PGS sample. An in-depth, qualitative analysis of the difficulties that PGS are encountering in defining and evaluating these criteria provides an insight into the complexity of the task. The analysis reveals the hurdles to overcome to better define Agroecology at a supralocal level in order to promote its scaling up and out. (shrink)

Este artículo reseña: Benjamín RIVAYA GARCÍA, Los derechos humanos en el cine, Palestra Editores.

Reflective function is defined as an individual’s ability to understand human behavior in terms of underlying mental states including thoughts, feelings, desires, beliefs, and intentions. More specifically, the capacity of parents to keep their child’s mental states in mind is referred to as parental RF. RF has been linked to adult mental health and parental RF to children’s mental health and development. The gold standard measure of RF is the interview-based Reflective Functioning Scale applied to the Parent Development Interview or (...) Adult Attachment Interview, which while well validated, is time-and labor-intensive to administer. Given the increasing need for reliable, valid, and rapid RF assessment in wide-ranging settings, two alternative measures were considered including the Reflective Function Questionnaire and Parental Reflective Function Questionnaire. We determined the convergent validity of these measures in comparison with the PDI-rated RFS. A sample of mothers and fathers was drawn from a sub-study of the ongoing Alberta Pregnancy Outcomes and Nutrition longitudinal cohort when their children were 42–60 months of age. Pearson correlations and multiple linear regression was conducted, followed by splitting the sample to compute Cohen’s kappas measures of agreement. Two subscales of the PRFQ correlated significantly with the gold standard PDI-rated RFS, providing evidence for convergent validity. As a brief multidimensional measure of parental RF, the PRFQ offers an alternative for measurement of RF in large-scale studies of parental development and child health. (shrink)

Frente a la imagen de un Vico ajeno a las exigencias del rigor metódico, este trabajo se propone plantear: a) Que la preocupación por el problema del método es una constante en el pesamiento de Vico. b) Que su aportación debe considerarse especialmente relevante en lo que atañe a los actuales empeños rehabilitadores de la racionalidad práctica y, en particular, para las más recientes teorias de la argumentación jurídica. c) Que, no obstante lo anterior, la actitud metódico jurídica de Vico (...) no puede ser calificada de meramente "retórica", más bien, entraña un intento de proyectar principios de justificación racional a los tópicos argumentativos del Derecho; o a propiciar un esfuerzo integrador de los topoi retóricos de las controversias jurídicas con las exigencias justificatorias de la razón práctica. Para explicitar este enfoque se procederá a abordar, por aproximación sucesiva, tres cuestiones: 1ª) Los aspectos básicos del actual debate sobre la racionalidad juridica y la teoría de la argumentación en el Derecho. 2ª) La apelación a Vico como punto de partida del nuevo interés por la revalorización de la tópica jurídica. 3ª) El significado de la argumentación en el "interior" de la reflexión metódica viquiana y en sus proyecciones "externas" al presente. (shrink)

El pensamiento utópico es un producto especialmente significativo de la modernidad occidental y, por tanto, no debe sorprender que la crisis que se ha cebado sobre ella lo arrastre consigo como pieza herida de muerte. A medida que nuestra postmodernidad, largamente anunciada desde Nietzsche, ha ido configurándose como nueva etapa en la que las pretensiones de la razón moderna evidencian el resquebrajamiento de lo que parecían sus bases más sólidas, el pensamiento utópico a través del cual plasmó sus ideales resulta (...) fuertemente cuestionado, tanto que apenas si es posible una honrosa salida de la escena cultural mediante revisión autocrítica de sus planteamientos. Achicado al máximo el espacio para la utopía en la reflexión filosófica contemporánea, ni siquiera cabe una cura de adelgazamiento de pensar utópico para hacerlo sostenible en medio de nuestras perplejidades. Hoy, y en cualquier caso venciendo un pudor difícilmente superable, cuesta asumir la defensa de lo utópico, y si se ha puesto muy complicado hablar de utopía es por el riesgo de caer bajo la doble acusación de ingenuidad y de cinismo. ¿Quién lo iba a decir, cuando el pensamiento utópico logró afirmarse como ariete de la crítica del orden establecido frente al pragmatismo de los defensores del statu quo? (shrink)

Según Williamson, saber y creer son estados mentales, pero creer algo verdadero y creer justificadamente algo verdadero no lo son. Ese tratamiento discriminatorio es relevante para la epistemología de Williamson. Su principal tesis epistemológica negativa y su principal tesis epistemológica positiva están en peligro si su teoría metafísica sobre lo mental es incorrecta. Presento aquí un problema para dicha teoría: impone limitaciones implausibles a los posibles usos de conceptos y expresiones lingüísticas. Describiré algunas opciones que tendría Williamson para evitar el (...) problema; pero sostendré que acarrean cierta dosis de arbitrariedad. (shrink)

Tanto la Fórmula Barcan como la postulación de possibilia contradicen los juicios intuitivos preteóricos de la mayoría de los sujetos, favorables al actualismo sobre la naturaleza de los mundos posibles. En este artículo discuto y rechazo dos argumentos que pretenderían contrarrestar tales juicios, y que conciben erróneamente la relación entre la semántica de mundos posibles y nuestros lenguajes naturales modales. El argumento más importante asume que el dominio de todas las entidades es idéntico al dominio de @. Desarrollo una interpretación (...) de la SMP conforme a la cual esa tesis no está suficientemente justificada. /// Barcan Formula and the postulation of possibilia contradict the pretheoretical intuitive judgments of most people, which favour actualism about possible worlds. In this paper I discuss and reject two arguments against such judgments, both of which conceive wrongly the relation between possible worlds semantics and modal natural languages. The more important argument assumes that the domain of the actual world is identical to the domain of @. I develop an interpretation of PWS which elucidates why that thesis is unwarranted. (shrink)

Karczmarczyck evalúa y critica algunas tesis centrales defendidas en mi libro Vericuetos de la filosofía de Wittgenstein en torno al lenguaje y el seguimiento de reglas, centrado en las ideas del segundo Wittgenstein. Debato aquí sobre diversos puntos examinados por Karczmarczyck. En particular: rechazo su concepción antirrealista de la intencionalidad, según la cual factores posteriores a una acción pueden determinar que dicha acción sea o no una acción deliberada; exploro otros aspectos de la contraposición realismo/antirrealismo, vinculándolos con la lectura antirrealista (...) que Kripke, Karczmarczyck y otros autores hacen de Wittgenstein; explico por qué no es circular mi solución disposicional-teleológica al enigma sobre seguir una regla. (shrink)

Kripke formula cuatro objeciones en contra de una solución disposicionalista simple al enigma wittgensteiniano sobre seguir una regla. En este trabajo presento dos propuestas parcialmente disposicionalistas diferentes a la teoría disposicionalista simple que Kripke discute y defiendo que aquellas cuatro objeciones no les afectan. Una de esas dos propuestas puede atribuirse, con cierta precaución, al propio Wittgenstein. La otra, que me parece preferible, invoca una noción teleológica de disposición. Ambas propuestas apelan al concepto de simplicidad, o —alternativamente— al concepto de (...) similitud natural. Rechazo también ciertas críticas que Kripke hace del uso de tales conceptos para solucionar el enigma sobre seguir una regla. (shrink)

El presente estudio busca establecer la relación interna entre el movimiento barroco y su actualización neobarroca con la deconstrucción de Jacques Derrida. Para ello, analizaremos, en primer lugar, el núcleo de ausencia que recorre al pensamiento derridiano en tres aspectos: ausencia de sentido, ausencia de identidad y ausencia o sustracción de alteridad. Como se verá, los tres quedarán vinculados con la idea de deus absconditus a través de la influencia de Pascal dando lugar a lo que denominaremos tenebrismo deconstructivo. En (...) segundo lugar, recurriremos a Severo Sarduy para dar cuenta de la hiperbolización que la deconstrucción lleva a cabo de características fundamentales del barroco y el neobarroco tematizadas por el pensador cubano (sustitución, proliferación y condensación). Por último, daremos cuenta del concepto de fantología (hantologie) que Derrida trae en diversos textos y en el que se muestra una espectralidad teatral propia también del barroco y el neobarroco. Concluiremos ahondando en la hipérbole, ya mencionada, pero en términos político-morales, esto es, el neobarroco de la deconstrucción no sería otra cosa que la exigencia trágica de lo imposible necesario: la justica, toda vez que la injusticia es inevitable. (shrink)

Desde un recorrido por algunas de las transformaciones desarrolladas en la práctica religiosa cotidiana de distintas comunidades, producidas en los meses iniciales de la pandemia del COVID 19, se abordaron las respuestas de estas comunidades religiosas, mediadas por las Tics. La investigación tenía el objetivo de profundizar en los procesos de adaptación de los rituales y celebraciones religiosas, desde un acercamiento a los procesos de virtualización y digitalización. Asimismo, analizar el espacio que ocuparon los Mass Media en la formulación de (...) relatos sobre las prácticas religiosas en el contexto pandémico. Por último, comprender el papel que tuvieron las comunidades religiosas en la resolución de muchos de los conflictos e incertidumbres existenciales generadas durante ese período. En este sentido, quería dar respuesta a cuestiones cómo ¿Qué implicó la situación de Pandemia para las comunidades religiosas? ¿En qué medida podemos hablar de una redefinición de los espacios sagrados? ¿Qué lugar ocuparon las tecnologías a la hora de solventar las dificultades cultuales en las congregaciones religiosas? ¿Cuál fue el relato de los Mass Media sobre las prácticas de estas comunidades religiosas? Para dar respuesta a estas cuestiones se optó por la etnografía virtual de los espacios mediados por las Tics, y la realización de entrevistas para recoger las experiencias religiosas offline. Los resultados revelaron que la resiliencia mostrada por las personas de estas comunidades religiosas reflejaba su capacidad para reformular y redimensionar las prácticas religiosas, desde las herramientas digitales. (shrink)

We propose an extension of answer sets, that we call safe beliefs, that can be used to study several properties and notions of answer sets and logic programming from a more general point of view. Our definition, based on intuitionistic logic and following ideas from D. Pearce [Stable inference as intuitionistic validity, Logic Programming 38 79–91], also provides a general approach to define several semantics based on different logics or inference systems. We prove that, in particular, intuitionistic logic can be (...) replaced with any other proper intermediate logic without modifying the resulting semantics. We also show that the answer set semantics satisfies an important property, the “extension by definition”, that can be used to construct program translations. As a result we are able to provide a polynomial translation from propositional theories into the class of disjunctive programs. (shrink)

I present some puzzling cases regarding knowledge and its relation to rational credence. They seem to entail a failure of an apparently correct principle: if S knows P, then the epistemic justi...

En el contexto de este artículo denominaremos mentalismo a la conjunción de dos tesis diferentes: (i) para que las expresiones lingüísticas tengan significado es necesario que haya entidades de carácter mental; (ii) tales entidades mentales son suficientes para fijar el significado de las expresiones correspondientes (es decir, lo determinan). Es característico deI segundo Wittgenstein el rechazo a ambas tesis. Pero son sus argumentos contra (ii), especialmente a partir de las consideraciones sobre seguir una regla, los que han concentrado casi toda (...) la atención. En este trabajo presento el argumento principal de Wittgentein contra (i), diferenciándolo de sus objeciones a (ii).In this article mentalism will be used to denominate the conjunction of two thesis: (i) it is a necessary condition for linguistic expressions having meaning the existence of mental entities; (ii) these mental entities are sufficient to fix the meaning of the corresponding expressions (they determine it). The two thesis are rejected by the later Wittgenstein. Most of the attention, though, has been paid to his arguments against (ii), especially based on discussions of rule-following. In this paper I work out Wittgenstein’s main argument against (i), and I distinguish it from his objections to (ii). (shrink)