Héctor-Neri Castañeda (December 13, 1924 – September 7, 1991) was a Guatemalan- American philosopher and founder of the journal ''

Noûs ''Noûs'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal on philosophy published by Wiley-Blackwell. It was established in 1967 by Hector-Neri Castañeda and is currently edited by Ernest Sosa (Rutgers University). The journal is accompanied by ...

''.

Biography

Born in San Vicente,

Zacapa Zacapa () is the departmental capital municipality of Zacapa Department, one of the 22 Departments of Guatemala. It is located approximately from Guatemala City. Sports Football club Deportivo Zacapa competes in Guatemala's top division and p ...

, Guatemala, he emigrated to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

in 1948 and studied under

Wilfrid Sellars Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism, who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States". Life and career His father ...

at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

, where he earned a B.A. in 1950 and M.A. in 1952. Castañeda received his Ph.D. in June 1954 from the University of Minnesota for his dissertation ''The Logical Structure of Moral Reasoning''. Sellars served as his doctoral advisor. He studied at

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

from 1955–1956, after which he once again returned to the U.S. to take a sabbatical-replacement position in philosophy at Duke University. Castañeda is noted for his development of

guise theory Guise (; nl, Wieze) is a commune in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. The city was the birthplace of the noble family of Guise, Dukes of Guise, who later became Princes of Joinville. Population Sights The remains ...

, which he applied to outstanding problems in the analysis of thought, language, and the structure of the world. He is also credited with the discovery of the " quasi-indexical". He died of a

brain tumor A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and seconda ...

in 1991.

Academic career

Following his brief stay at Duke University, Castañeda's first full-time academic appointment was as a professor in the Philosophy department at

Wayne State University Wayne State University (WSU) is a public research university in Detroit, Michigan. It is Michigan's third-largest university. Founded in 1868, Wayne State consists of 13 schools and colleges offering approximately 350 programs to nearly 25,000 ...

, where he taught from 1957–1969. It was there that he founded the philosophical journal ''

'', in 1967. From 1962–1963, he was also a visiting professor at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

. He was granted a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation between 1967 and 1968. He moved to

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universi ...

in 1969, and eventually became the Mahlon Powell Professor of Philosophy as well as that university's first

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Affairs, a position he held from 1978–1981. He was a fellow at the

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) is an interdisciplinary research lab at Stanford University that offers a residential postdoctoral fellowship program for scientists and scholars studying "the five core social and ...

from 1981–1982.

Philosophical work

Guise theory

Castañeda started from the fact that thoughts about real things in the world are of a fundamentally similar nature to thoughts about things in the imagination, it is still a thought, and from there he hypothesized an entire realm of

abstract objects In metaphysics, the distinction between abstract and concrete refers to a divide between two types of entities. Many philosophers hold that this difference has fundamental metaphysical significance. Examples of concrete objects include plants, hum ...

(he calls it "abstractist ontology") that included both the real and the imagined.Castañeda, H., "Thinking and the Structure of the World: Discours d'Ontologie", ''Critica'', 6(18) (1972): 43–86; reprinted as "Thinking and the Structure of the World," ''Philosophia'' 4(1) (1974): 3–40. He referred to these objects collectively as "guises", and argued that they could be treated as sets of properties. He went on to develop the guise theory of intentionality and analyse all of language and

perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system ...

in terms of these guises, ultimately developing an entire

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

based on them. One noted critic of guise theory was

Alvin Plantinga Alvin Carl Plantinga (born November 15, 1932) is an American analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology (particularly on issues involving epistemic justification), and logic. From 1963 to 198 ...

, who developed his own rival theory involving a realm of abstract objects. Edward N. Zalta
"Two (Related) World Views"
''Noûs'', 29(2) (1995): 189–211. Both theories were in fact based on even earlier work developed by

Alexius Meinong Alexius Meinong Ritter von Handschuchsheim (17 July 1853 – 27 November 1920) was an Austrian philosopher, a realist known for his unique ontology. He also made contributions to philosophy of mind and theory of value. Life Alexius Meinong ...

. They differed, however, in the details of their metaphysical system and in how they regarded the basic building blocks of their respective systems. Castañeda's theory was temporarily undermined by the problem posed by Romane Clark's paradox, a paradox in naive predication theory. Castañeda worked out a solution to block the paradox.

Deontic logic

deontic logic Deontic logic is the field of philosophical logic that is concerned with obligation, permission, and related concepts. Alternatively, a deontic logic is a formal system that attempts to capture the essential logical features of these concepts. It ...

, Castañeda rejected

Ross's paradox Imperative logic is the field of logic concerned with imperatives. In contrast to declaratives, it is not clear whether imperatives denote propositions or more generally what role truth and falsity play in their semantics. Thus, there is almost ...

"on the grounds that the inference is only pragmatically odd in ways that are independently predictable by any adequate theory of the pragmatics of deontic language."

Quasi-indexical

Castañeda introduced the concept of the quasi-indexical (or quasi-indicator), a linguistic device by which one person can attribute an indexical reference to another. His discussion on this matter strongly influenced John Perry's theory of indexicals, an influence which Perry acknowledged in the first footnote of the paper "The Problem of the Essential Indexical" (1979).

Awards and honors

In addition to his other academic honors, Castañeda received grants from the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

, the

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation of New York City in the United States, simply known as Mellon Foundation, is a private foundation with five core areas of interest, and endowed with wealth accumulated by Andrew Mellon of the Mellon family of Pitts ...

, and the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

. He served as president of the

American Philosophical Association The American Philosophical Association (APA) is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarl ...

Central Division from 1979–1980, and was named to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 1990. Castañeda was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor by the Government of Guatemala in 1991.

Select publications

* "On the Semantics of the Ought-to-Do", ''Synthese'', 21, 3/4, Semantics of Natural Language, 1970, pp. 449–468. * "Intentions and the Structure of Intending", ''The Journal of Philosophy'', 68, 1971, pp. 453–466. * ''The Structure of Morality'', Springfield: Thomas, 1974. * ''Thinking and Doing. The Philosophical Foundations of Institutions'', Dordrecht, Reidel, 1975. * ''On Philosophical Method'', Detroit: Nous publications, 1980. * "The Paradoxes of Deontic Logic: The Simplest Solution to All of Them in One Fell Swoop", in Risto Hilpinen (ed.), ''New Studies in Deontic Logic'', Dordrecht: Reidel, 1981, pp. 37–85. * ''Thinking, Language and Experience'', Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. * ''The Phenomeno-Logic of the I. Essays on Self-consciousness'', edited by James G. Hart and Tomis Kapitan, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. * ''Sprache und Erfahrung. Texte zu einer neue Ontologie'' (Eingeleitet und übersetzt von Helmut Pape), Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1982.

References

Sources

*Adriano Palma, ed. (2014)
''Castañeda and His Guises: Essays on the Work of Hector-Neri Castañeda''
Boston/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.