Castañeda

Castañeda Hector-Neri (1924–91), American analytical philosopher. Heavily influenced by his own critical reaction to Quine, Chisholm, and his teacher Wilfrid Sellars, Castañeda published four books and more than 175 essays. His work combines originality, rigor, and penetration, together with an unusual comprehensiveness – his network of theory and criticism reaches into nearly every area of philosophy, including action theory; deontic logic and practical reason; ethics; history of philosophy; metaphysics and ontology; philosophical methodology; philosophy of language, mind, and perception; and the theory of knowledge. His principal contributions are to metaphysics and ontology, indexical reference, and deontic logic and practical reasoning. In metaphysics and ontology, Castañeda’s chief work is guise theory, first articulated in a 1974 essay, a complex and global account of language, mind, ontology, and predication. By holding that ordinary concrete individuals, properties, and propositions all break down or separate into their various aspects or guises, he theorizes that thinking and reference are directed toward the latter. Each guise is a genuine item in the ontological inventory, having properties internally and externally. In addition, guises are related by standing in various sameness relations, only one of which is the familiar relation of strict identity. Since every guise enjoys bona fide ontological standing, whereas only some of these actually exist, Castañeda’s ontology and semantics are Meinongian. With its intricate account of predication, guise theory affords a unified treatment of a wide range of philosophical problems concerning reference to nonexistents, negative existentials, intentional identity, referential opacity, and other matters. Castañeda also played a pivotal role in emphasizing the significance of indexical reference. If, e.g., Paul assertively utters ‘I prefer Chardonnay’, it would obviously be incorrect for Bob to report ‘Paul says that I prefer Chardonnay’, since the last statement expresses (Bob’s) speaker’s reference, not Paul’s. At the same time, Castañeda contends, it is likewise incorrect for Bob to report Paul’s saying as either ‘Paul says that Paul prefers Chardonnay’ or ‘Paul says that Al’s luncheon guest prefers Chardonnay’ (when Paul is Al’s only luncheon guest), since each of these fail to represent the essentially indexical element of Paul’s assertion. Instead, Bob may correctly report ‘Paul says that he himself prefers Chardonnay’, where ‘he himself’ is a quasi-indicator, serving to depict Paul’s reference to himself qua self. For Castañeda (and others), quasi-indicators are a person’s irreducible, essential means for describing the thoughts and experiences of others. A complete account of his view of indexicals, together with a full articulation of guise theory and his unorthodox theories of definite descriptions and proper names, is contained in Thinking, Language, and Experience (1989). Castañeda’s main views on practical reason and deontic logic turn on his fundamental practition–proposition distinction. A number of valuable essays on these views, together with his important replies, are collected in James E. Tomberlin, ed., Agent, Language, and the Structure of the World (1983), and Tomberlin, ed., Hector-Neri Castañeda (1986). The latter also includes Castañeda’s revealing intellectual autobiography. See also DEONTIC LOGIC, GUISE THEORY, MEINONG , PRACTICAL REASONING , PRACTI — TION , QUASI — INDICATO. J.E.T.

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