"Diego Marconi analizza in questo saggio alcune tappe fondamentali della riflessione di Wittgenstein, illlustrando i motivi per cui gran parte della discussione filosofica odierna risalga all'esperienza intellettuale del filosofo di Vienna: dal "sapere senza fondamenti" al "pensiero debole", dalla filosofia analitica all'ermeneutica.

Putnam and others have argued that semantic externalism extends to artifactual kind words such as “pencil” or “doorstop”. I first show that, even with natural kinds, externalism applies to words for ground level kinds. The issue then arises of which categories of artifacts should be identified as kinds in the relevant, restricted sense. I argue that, though there are natural taxonomies of artifactual categories at least some of which have well-defined ground levels, even words for such kinds do not appear (...) to have externalist semantics, as they do not support ignorance or error arguments. Some think that membership to any kind is determined by objective features. Against this, I argue that the makers’ productive intentions are often crucial in selecting which pattern of features counts as constitutive of a kind. Though externalists may insist that membership to a kind is ultimately determined by sharing objective features, the resulting version of externalism can hardly be distinguished from internalism. (shrink)

Diego Marconi; VIII*—On the Structure of Lexical Competence, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 131–150, https://do.

Externalism about artifactual words requires that (a) members of an artifactual word’s extension share a common nature, i.e. a set of necessary features, and (b) that possession of such features determines the word’s extension independently of whether the linguistic community is aware of them (ignorance) or can accurately describe them (error). However, many common artifactual words appear to be so used that features that are universally shared among members of their extensions are hard to come by, and even fewer can (...) be plausibly regarded as necessary; morevoer, it is highly doubtful that a speaker could manage to refer to kind A while being utterly ignorant of the role the As play in the A-producing community, and it is no less doubtful that an artifactual word that was used to refer to certain objects would keep referring to them (and be regarded as having referred to them) once it has been shown that the associated description is utterly false of such objects, the reason being that we could easily make things that do fit the associated description. Against generalized externalism, it is suggested that artifactual words come in (at least) three different semantic varieties: a few have an externalist semantics, others have an internalist semantics, still others have neither but rather behave as “family names” in Wittgenstein’s sense. (shrink)

. David Chalmerss version of two-dimensional semantics is an attempt at setting up a unified semantic framework that would vindicate both the Fregean and the Kripkean semantic intuitions. I claim that there are three acceptable ways of carrying out such a project, and that Chalmerss theory does not coherently fit any of the three patterns. I suggest that the theory may be seen as pointing to the possibility of a double reading for many linguistic expressions (a double reading which, however, (...) is not easily identified with straightforward semantic ambiguity). (shrink)

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein addressed the issue of beliefs that are not to be argued for, either because any grounds we could produce are less certain than the belief they are supposed to ground, or because our interlocutors would not accept our reasons. However, he did not address the closely related issue of justifying a conclusion to interlocutors who do not see that it follows from premises they accept. In fact, Wittgenstein had discussed the issue in the Remarks on the (...) Foundations of Mathematics; his view had been that certain inferential practices are constitutive of our notions of thinking and inferring. I argue that his treatment of unfounded beliefs in On Certainty essentially replicates, mutatis mutandis, his treatment of basic logical inference. (shrink)

What's the relation between being a P and being called 'P', for example, between being a cat and being called 'cat'? Surely something might be a cat without being called 'cat'; indeed, cats as such might not be called 'cats'. If the word 'cat' disappeared from the language, the event would not entail the disappearence of cats. What about the converse implication? Does being called 'cat' entail being a cat? It would seem so. For suppose 'cat' refers to certain objects, (...) and let Moon be one such object. Consider the statement that Moon is a cat. The statement is true just in case Moon is one of the objects that 'cat' refers to, which she is. Hence, the statement is true, therefore Moon is a cat. Being among the objects that 'cat' refers to entails being a cat. However, it is one thing to say that 'cat' refers to certain objects, and (possibly) a different thing to say that certain objects are called 'cats'. Spiders are often called 'insects', yet 'insect' does not refer to spiders: it is not correct to call spiders 'insects'. "Being called" is often intended as a descriptive notion: whether something is, or is not called 'P' is just a fact that can be stated in terms of people's behavior or patterns of behavior. Reference, on the other hand, may not be descriptive in this sense. Philosophers have often been trying to characterize the quasi-technical notion of reference by suitably restricting or qualifying the everyday, descriptive notion of "being called". Success in such an enterprise would amount to showing that being called* 'P' -a suitably modified version of being called 'P'- entails being P. Whether the enterprise is bound to fail is not the topic of this article. Here, I would like to show that one such attempt did fail, whereas another, more recent attempt that would seem to be bound to fail for analogous reasons does not fail; or not for such reasons, anyway. A few decades ago, some philosophers believed that being called 'P' was (with some qualifications) a sufficient condition for being a P.. (shrink)

The connection between sense, verification, and mode of verification never entirely disappeared from Wittgenstein’s philosophy. However, there was a time – the years 1929– 1932 – when Wittgenstein upheld explicitly verificationist views: he identified a proposition’s meaning with the mode or method of its verification, and he said that to understand a proposition is to know how the proposition is verified. This has been regarded as puzzling, in view of the fact that the Tractatus is usually considered not to be (...) committed to verificationism; indeed, it is usually regarded as incompatible with verificationism. Several people have proposed to revise such a received view: Michael Wrigley (1989) has claimed that verificationism must be implicit in the Tractatus; and P. M.S. Hacker (1986) has argued that the Tractatus, though not verificationist, is not as distant from verificationism as it has been taken to be. In another paper (Marconi, forthcoming) I discuss their views. Here I will just notice that, even if one regards the Tractatus as implicitly verificationist, the problem remains of explaining why and how did Wittgenstein reach the explicitly – indeed, blatantly – verificationist outlook of the early Thirties. This is the first question I would like to try to answer in this paper. The second question is, why was such rampant verificationism short-lived? Or in other words, why was verificationism de-emphasized so that, although verificationist themes are undoubtedly present in the later Wittgenstein’s writings, the extreme formulations of the early Thirties tend to disappear after 1933? (shrink)

This book provides a general survey of the main concepts, questions and results that have been developed in the recent interactions between quantum information, quantum computation and logic. Divided into 10 chapters, the books starts with an introduction of the main concepts of the quantum-theoretic formalism used in quantum information. It then gives a synthetic presentation of the main “mathematical characters” of the quantum computational game: qubits, quregisters, mixtures of quregisters, quantum logical gates. Next, the book investigates the puzzling entanglement-phenomena (...) and logically analyses the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox and introduces the reader to quantum computational logics, and new forms of quantum logic. The middle chapters investigate the possibility of a quantum computational semantics for a language that can express sentences like “Alice knows that everybody knows that she is pretty”, explore the mathematical concept of quantum Turing machine, and illustrate some characteristic examples that arise in the framework of musical languages. The book concludes with an analysis of recent discussions, and contains a Mathematical Appendix which is a survey of the definitions of all main mathematical concepts used in the book. (shrink)

Although remote working can involve positive outcomes both for employees and organizations, in the case of the sudden and forced remote working situation that came into place during the COVID-19 crisis there have also been reports of negative aspects, one of which is technostress. In this context of crisis, leadership is crucial in sustainably managing and supporting employees, especially employees with workaholic tendencies who are more prone to developing negative work and health outcomes. However, while research on the role of (...) the positive aspects of leadership during crises does exist, the negative aspects of leadership during the COVID-19 crisis have not yet been studied. The present study aimed to explore the role of authoritarian leadership in a sample of 339 administrative university employees who worked either completely from home or from home and the workplace. The study examined the moderating effect of a manager on this relationship and the connections between workaholism and technostress through conditional process analysis. Results pointed out that high authoritarian leadership had an enhancing effect, whereas low authoritarian leadership had a protective effect on the relationship between workaholism and technostress, only in the group of complete remote workers. Thus, authoritarian leadership should be avoided and training leaders to be aware of its effect appears to be essential. Limitations, future directions for the study, and practical implications are also discussed. (shrink)

Different notions of analysis have been both theorized and put to use in early analytic philosophy. Two of them stand out: connective analysis and analysis as paraphrase. The latter played a central role in the development of analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine and beyond. With the advent of formal semantics of natural language in the 1970s, paraphrase came to be characterizable as translation into a formal “target language”. While I claim that the method cannot achieve its original philosophical aims, (...) I insist that, in spite of them, it is far from being a theoretically empty operation and that it lives on in some contemporary philosophical enterprises. (shrink)

In this article I first sketch what I take to be two Quinean arguments for the continuity of philosophy with science. After examining Wittgenstein’s reasons for not accepting the arguments, I conclude that they are ineffective on Wittgenstein’s assumptions. Next, I ask three related questions: Where do Quine’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophical views essentially diverge? Did Wittgenstein have an argument against the continuity of science with philosophy? Did Wittgenstein believe until the end of his philosophical career that scientific results are philosophically (...) irrelevant? It will be seen that all three questions are related with Wittgenstein’s distinction between conceptual and factual issues. I conclude that the opposition between Quinean philosophy and Wittgensteinian philosophy is genuine. (shrink)

The claim that truth is mind dependent has some initial plausibility only if truth bearers are taken to be mind dependent entities such as beliefs or statements. Even on that assumption, however, the claim is not uncontroversial. If it is spelled out as the thesis that “in a world devoid of mind nothing would be true”, then everything depends on how the phrase ‘true in world w’ is interpreted. If ‘A is true in w’ is interpreted as ‘A is true (...) of w’ (i.e. ‘w satisfies A’s truth conditions’, the claim need not be true. If on the other hand it is interpreted as ‘A is true of w and exists in w’ then the claim is trivially true, though devoid of any antirealistic efficacy. Philosophers like Heidegger and Rorty, who hold that truth is mind dependent but reality is not, must regard such principles as “A if and only if it is true that A” as only contingently true, which may be a good reason to reject the mind dependence of truth anyway. (shrink)

I discuss Paolo Casalegno's objections to my views about semantic normativity as presented in my book Lexical Competence (MIT Press, 1997) and in a later paper. I argue that, contrary to Casalegno's claim, the phenomenon of semantic deference can be accounted for without having to appeal to an “objective” notion of reference, i.e. to the view that words have the reference they have independently of whatever knowledge or ability is available to or within the linguistic community. Against both Casalegno and (...) Timothy Williamson, I argue that a semantic norm based on objective reference would be really inapplicable, even though a speaker might believe to be guided by such a norm. (shrink)

Je m’efforcerai de donner plus de poids aux doutes de Pascal Engel relatifs à deux affirmations de Timothy Williamson dans Philosophy of Philosophy: que les expériences de pensée philosophiques portent sur une possibilité métaphysique par opposition à une possibilité conceptuelle, et que le raisonnement contrefactuel joue un rôle crucial pour atteindre les conclusions modales pertinentes dans les arguments fondés sur des expériences de pensée. Dans le premier cas, je soutiendrai qu’à moins de comprendre la notion de conceptuel dans un sens (...) psychologique, il est difficile de saisir la différence entre des expériences de pensée qui « portent sur des concepts » ou possibilités conceptuelles et des expériences de pensée qui « portent sur des êtres réels » ou possibilités métaphysiques. Dans le second cas, je soutiendrai qu’il n’est pas clair que les contrefactuels sont des prémisses indispensables dans des arguments fondés sur des expériences de pensée ou que le raisonnement contrefactuel prend l’avantage sur le raisonnement déductif ordinaire pour atteindre des conclusions modales. (shrink)

Chinese traditional characters share with Peirce’s existential graphs the fact of being endowed with an object-language that they describe through a nonlinear syntax and in an iconic way. Here iconicity is not restricted to images and perceptive similarity since diagrams and graphic metaphors are iconic too. The graphs are shown to be a borderland between Western traditional logic and Chinese traditional writing and culture, so the écart (Jullien’s concept for cultural distance) between characters and graphs is preserved even though graphs (...) break with the Western prejudice in favor of conventionality at the expense of iconicity in logical systems. The take-home lesson for the study of writing systems is to substitute the orality-writing duality with the interplay among orality, writing, and pictures thus shifting from a linguistic typology to a semiotic one. (shrink)

In questa comunicazione, non intendo contribuire all’analisi di questa o quella classe di espressioni linguistiche. Vorrei invece dare un contributo alla nostra consapevolezza (chiamiamola pure “filosofica”) della funzione che il concetto di forma logica svolge nelle nostre analisi. Più in particolare, vorrei mettere in guardia contro certe possibili conseguenze di quello che a me pare un uso “metafisico” dell’idea di forma logica. Vorrei dimostrare che una certa eredità filosofica, per lo pi...

In discussions in cognitive science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and linguistics, it is often taken for granted that we (as well as some machines) have certain abilities, such as the ability to do multiplications or the ability to identify grammatical sentences. Such abilities are regarded as in some sense infinitary, and they are identified with, or taken to be based upon, knowledge of the relevant rules (the rule of multiplication, or the rules of grammar). In what follows, I (...) argue that whatever such abilities we do possess are not infinitary in any plausible sense. Therefore, the (alleged) infinitary nature of our (or a machine's) knowledge of such rules cannot be accounted for by bringing it back to infinitary abilities. (shrink)

Chapter VI discusses a few assumptions which underlie the proposed reconstruction of Hegel's procedures. It is shown that certain equivalents of such assumptions are either explicitly accepted by Hegel, or they are consequences of theses he subscribed to. Finally, it is suggested that some of these assumptions envisage a conception of language and philosophy which has an interesting parallel in Wittgenstein's later work. Such a conception sets philosophy sharply apart from the sciences, and deemphasizes the formation of contradictions. The general (...) relationship between vagueness and contradiction is briefly explored to show that some familiar contradiction-generating procedures can be seen to be based on vagueness of the relevant theoretical expressions. ;Chapter V deals with the Aufhebung. After an examination of Hegel's own theory of sublation, and an analysis of some textual examples, it is shown that some Aufhebung-procedures can be modelled by certain patterns of argument concerning simple algebraic structures. A few Hegelian concepts, such as "opposition," "unity," "passing over," "reflection," are partially explicated in the process. ;Chapter IV plays a pivotal role in the dissertation. It explains the generation of dialectical contradictions as stemming from syntactic and intensional indeterminacy of the theoretical terms. It is shown that Hegel's conceptual terms have no well-determined sense, so that their senses can be identified in different and possibly inconsistent ways. It is also shown that they can be made to play different syntactic roles, for no rigid determination of their syntactic function is assumed. This, again, may create contradictions. Both kinds of indeterminacy are related to Hegel's borrowing of his conceptual terms from a "natural" philosophical koine. ;Chapter III is an analysis of Hegel's language in the Logic. It tries to determine the grammatical and semantical status of Hegel's conceptual terms and to explicate the Hegelian use of the copula as occurring in certain typical sentential forms. ;The presence of the so-called "dialectical contradictions" is the most evident logico-linguistic peculiarity of Hegel's text. After a discussion of Hegel's theory of contradiction, and of some of its interpretations, it is argued that any satisfactory account of the dialectical method must explain the formation of contradictions on the basis of other logico-linguistic features of Hegel's text. ;Chapter II deals with a few such explanations which have been offered by modern interpreters of Hegel. Use of contemporary analytic concepts in the logical and linguistic analysis of Hegel's text is justified with reference to the Carnapian categories of "explication" and "rational reconstruction." ;The literature on Hegel's dialectic has made important contributions to an understanding of its nature both as a metaphysical theory of reality and as a philosophical attitude towards the human world. However, many recent interpreters agree that no satisfactory progress has been made in understanding dialectic as a method. This dissertation identifies the dialectical method as the specific form of Hegel's philosophical discourse, and tries to bring out its basic logico-linguistic features. The Science of Logic is chosen as the field of inquiry, because of its crucial position among Hegel's mature works. (shrink)

There are two prevalent accounts of semantic normativity: the prescriptive account, which can be found in some of Wittgenstein’s remarks, and the regularity account, which may have been Sellars’s view and is nowadays defended by some antinormativists. On the former account, meanings are norms that govern the use of words; on the latter, they are regularities of use which, in themselves, do not engender any prescriptions. I argue that only the prescriptive view can account for certain platitudes about meaning, which (...) motivate the very idea of semantic normativity. After some preliminary clarifications about the form that alleged semantic norms should take in order to be prima facie plausible, I argue—against some antinormativists—that whatever normativity is involved in the meaning of words cannot be brought back to a general norm of truth as distinct from specifically semantic norms, for semantic norms already involve a norm of truth. Next, I examine what I take to be the strongest objection to semantic normativity, namely the identification of meaning with use: as use is just a bunch of facts, it cannot be attributed any normative import. Nowadays, this view has been defended by Paul Horwich. After criticizing Horwich’s claim that meaning, though not normative in itself, has unmediated normative implications, I propose a different view of the relation between use and meaning, on which meaning is not quite identical with use but is grounded on use. I propose as a model the idea of a hyperconformist social system: a system in which customs, and only customs, generate norms. I suggest that language is such a system, and describe two reasons why it is plausible for language to work like that. Finally, I analyze statements of meaning on the model of Ruth Millikan “pushmi-pullyu” representations, i.e. as having both descriptive and normative import. I point out that, however, there are exceptions to meaning’s being grounded on use, as there are cases in which semantic norms are dictated by authorities of several kinds. Lastly, I briefly discuss the suggestion that meaning supervenes on use, showing that, aside from its inherent difficulties, it does not explain why meaning would supervene on use. (shrink)

This handbook offers a deep analysis of the main forms of legal reasoning and argumentation from both a logical-philosophical and legal perspective. These forms are covered in an exhaustive and critical fashion, and the handbook accordingly divides in three parts: the first one introduces and discusses the basic concepts of practical reasoning. The second one discusses the main general forms of reasoning and argumentation relevant for legal discourse. The third one looks at their application in law as well as at (...) the different areas of legal reasoning. The handbook’s division in three parts reflects its conceptual architecture, since legal reasoning and argumentation are considered in relation to the more general types of reasoning. (shrink)

A Parábola dos Três Anéis é famosa em suas versões de Boccaccio e Lessing. Partilham a ideia fundamental de que apenas uma religião é verdadeira, mas a condição humana não nos permite saber qual é a verdadeira. É uma ideia inerentemente moderna enfatizar os limites do conhecimento humano enquanto se argumenta contra formas puras de ceticismo e relativismo. O resultado da parábola é a amizade em ambas as versões, mas a questão da verdade permanece no centro da estrutura conceitual subjacente (...) às histórias. Pelo contrário, os estudiosos passaram a dar muito mais relevância ao lado ético do diálogo, para que o relacionamento interpessoal não seja apenas o resultado de um processo cognitivo. O encontro pessoal deve ser anterior à questão da verdade. Esta nova abordagem é desafiada pela natureza do relacionamento com o outro. Deveria ser simétrico e mútuo? As opiniões sobre o diálogo inspiradas por Lévinas devem responder negativamente. Se quisermos manter a relevância da amizade, deveríamos preferir a ideia de diálogo de Buber. No nosso mundo, apesar disso, as desigualdades são tais que a simetria e a mutualidade não podem ser a condição padrão do diálogo e devemos ser antecipadamente responsáveis pelo outro (no sentido da servidão lévinasiana pelo outro). Uma mediação entre estes dois pontos de vista pode ser encontrada na noção de interindependência de Panikkar, como argumentarei. Na verdade, esta noção combina a interdependência presente na relação Eu-Tu de Buber e a independência ou separação sublinhada por Lévinas na relação com o outro entendida em termos de relação entre termos absolutos. (shrink)

1. The issue - The reflection I am proposing was stimulated by some recent research on the mental processing of proper names. However, the issue I am raising is independent of both the particular nature of such results and the fact that they are accepted as well established. The question I would like to ask is whether (neuro)psychological results on the mental processing of language can falsify (or confirm) semantic theses about natural language. By a semantic thesis I mean something (...) like any of the following. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the semantics of proper names from two different points of view. As everyboy knows, there is a standard account of the semantics of proper names - it is Kripke's account, essentially. And there is a certain amount of neuropsychological research on proper names, or on the mental representation, or processing of proper names -not too small an amount, at this point. There is a certain amount of evidence, and there are a few theories, none of (...) them regarded as definitive, if I read the state of the art correctly. It may be thought that such neuropsychological work is simply irrelevant to the concerns of semantics, and vice-versa. For semantics is concerned with the truth conditions of sentences per se, and neuropsychology has nothing to say about that; neuropsychology, on the other hand, is concerned with several mental performances involving proper names -retrieving them from memory, or using them as cues to a person's face- and with their place within semantic memory, and semantics has nothing to say about that. The truth conditions that semantics is after are defined on the ground of a metaphysical notion of truth, whereas the only notion of truth that can be relevant to psychology is an epistemological notion: i.e. psychology may be interested in, and may have something to say about the procedures by which we come to regard a sentence as true, not about the conditions on which it is "objectively" true. (shrink)

O ensaio conecta a memória pessoal e cultural do próprio autor a uma constelação de artistas gays que abordaram de modo autobiográfico os vínculos afetivos entre filhos homossexuais e suas mães. Trata-se de uma associação transnacional e trans-histórica entre literatura, cinema e artes plásticas a partir da obra de Abdellah Taïa, Édouard Louis, Roland Barthes, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pedro Almodóvar, Caio Fernando Abreu, Xavier Dolan, Pedro Lemebel, Farnese de Andrade, Paulo Gustavo e Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Com isso, o ensaio passeia (...) por cumplicidades sinuosas entre mães e filhos gays, esse vínculo em que tanto a designação de gênero da maternidade quanto a aparição da homossexualidade operam como corte e firmamento. Não se trata de extrair uma compreensão homogênea e psicologizante desses vínculos, mas de refletir, a partir da memória pessoal e cultural figurada nas artes, assim como a partir do gesto de narrar, a história social incorporada e subjetivada de ser mãe e de ser filho homossexual em processos de vinculação. (shrink)