Crítica. Revista Hispanoamericana de Filosofía

Superafirmabilidad, justificación, y los retos de una verdad antirrealista

Guillermo Torices Degollado — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Superassertibility (SA) aims to be an anti-realist notion of truth in discourses such as the comic, the moral, and the social, where truth depends on subjects’ judgments. Its success lies in that an increased justification can be stable: an assertion would remain justified despite the emergence of new information. Yet, SA faces difficulties in achieving such stability due to a restricted anti-realist conception of access to evidence. I propose to reinterpret stability through epistemic trust: a normative and practical commitment underlying any act of assertion. When someone asserts p, they not only recognize the evidence but also rationally assume that justification will persist unless legitimate counterevidence arises.

Lagunas expresivas en la demostración euclidiana

José Seoane — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Some proofs presented by Euclid in his Elements can be called polymodal (Seoane 2022). This characterization is based on an expressive feature: such proofs combine two communication formats, a detailed format and a summary format. Don Fallis draws attention to different classes of “gaps” in mathematical proof; one of them consists of “enthymematic gaps” (Fallis 2003). Its definition seems to point to the same phenomenon captured (in the case in question) by the idea of a summary format of the Euclidean polymodal proof. However, basic methodological differences with Fallis lead me to propose, in order to capture this case, an alternative notion, which I call “summary expressive gap (without structural cost)”.

A Naturalistic Analysis of Content Ascriptions

Esteban Withrington — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I articulate and defend an analysis of true content ascriptions proposed by Devitt, according to which they predicate worldly semantic properties instead of involving relations to abstract propositions. I develop the metaphysical case against treating contents as abstract propositions, addressing possible replies to Devitt’s argument based on the causal-explanatory roles of contents and offering further considerations. I explain how the Devittian analysis of content ascriptions can account for the validity of certain inferences often thought to require a propositional analysis. Finally, I argue that it also circumvents linguistic problems faced by the standard propositional analysis of ascriptions and offers a plausible alternative for capturing their logical form and meaning.

Explanatory Proofs and Grounding in Mathematics: A Reply to Maarefi

Marc Lange — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Do explanatory proofs of theorems in mathematics derive their explanatory power by virtue of providing information about the grounds of the theorems they explain? I have argued that they do not (Lange 2019), and I have offered my own account of what makes certain mathematical proofs but not others able to explain why some theorem holds (Lange 2017). Recently, Maarefi (2025) has critiqued both these arguments and that account in support of a grounding-based conception of explanatory proofs. Here I respond to some of his critiques.

Nota del editor

Santiago Echeverri — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Précis of Contingent A Priori Truths. Metaphysics, Semantics, Epistemology and Pragmatics

Marco Ruffino — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Measures without Measurement: A Critique of Ruffino’s Institutional Approach to the Contingent A Priori

Emiliano Boccardi — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper presents three objections to Marco Ruffino’s account of contingent a priori truths. First, I argue that Ruffino’s “Philonous’ Objection” neglects what is widely considered the mark of perception—namely, perceptual constancies, which allow stable representations despite variable sensory input. Second, I show that Ruffino’s institutional approach to the contingent a priori faces challenges under both relational (ratio-based) and monadic (property-ascribing) interpretations of measurement statements: the former diminishes the need for stipulation, while the latter risks conflating stipulative acts with empirical measurement outcomes. Third, I contend that Ruffino’s account risks an unwarranted commitment to social constructivism about brute physical facts.

Contingent A Priori Truths, Illocutionary Acts, and De Re Knowledge

Thainá Coltro Demartini — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, I analyze Ruffino’s proposal that we should evaluate contingent a priori truths resulting from initial baptisms (i.e., propositions that are uttered to introduce of a new word to a community’s vocabulary) as illocutionary acts. I argue that, even if we concede such an interpretation as the correct way to understand the phenomenon, it is not sufficient to support the claim that there are cases of contingent a priori truths that provide the speaker with de re knowledge about objects that are not themselves conventional in some way.

Ruffino on the Contingent A Priori

Nathan Salmon — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This is a rejoinder of sorts to Marco Ruffino’s critique in his book Contingent A Priori Truths (Springer, Switzerland, 2022) of my own criticism of Saul Kripke’s case for the contingent a priori. A distinction is drawn between knowledge concerning the meter stick S that its length is such-and-such and knowledge concerning S’s length that it is such-and-such.

Contingent A Priori Truths as Original Declarations. Some Comments on Marco Ruffino

Eleonora Orlando — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In his book Contingent A Priori Truths, Marco Ruffino proposes to understand Kripke’s examples of the contingent a priori in terms of utterances with a declarative illocutionary force. I think that Marco’s approach is very original and insightful, and he provides us with many detailed and thoughtful considerations in its support. Although I agree with the general picture, there are some aspects that remain a bit obscure to me, which will be the focus of this commentary, namely, the nature of the truth-makers of the allegedly (contingently) a priori true original declarations, and the transmission of a priori knowledge from baptizers to later uses.

The Limits of Stipulation: Reconsidering the Standard Meter

Eduardo Villanueva — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper criticizes Ruffino’s illocutionary defense of Kripke’s famous example of the contingent a priori: the standard meter. Ruffino uses Searle and Vanderveken’s speech act theory to argue that measurement stipulations generate a priori knowledge of contingent facts. Against this, I argue that the institutional conditions underlying these stipulations cannot be separated from the grounds of justification. Unlike mathematical or logical knowledge, knowledge that these institutional conditions are satisfied is essential to knowledge of measurement stipulations, preventing genuine a priori status.

Is Kripke’s Meter Sentence A Priori?

Mario Gómez-Torrente — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Marco Ruffino has proposed that Kripke’s meter sentence is a priori because the fact it describes is created in a performative declarative speech act by the stipulator. I criticize the idea that the fact described is created by the stipulator, and go on to criticize also Kripke’s view in unpublished work, that even if his original meter sentence is not a priori, a suitable conditional variation is.

Contingent A Priori Truths: Reply to My Critics

Marco Ruffino — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Fragmentos de una identidad: reflexiones filosóficas sobre el Diario de Alejandro Rossi

Gustavo Ortiz Millán — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Alejandro Rossi, Diario, tres volúmenes, edición de Malva Flores, Milenka Flores y David Medina Portillo, prólogo de Malva Flores, Ariel, Ciudad de México, 2024. ISBN 978–607–569–682–9

José Ferreirós y María de Paz (comps.), La génesis de la geometría: una perspectiva interdisciplinaria

Jorge Alberto Molina — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

José Ferreirós y María de Paz (comps.), La génesis de la geometría: una perspectiva interdisciplinaria, Plaza y Valdés Editores, Madrid, 2023, 362pp., ISBN 978–84–17121–70–9