07 APhEx num 7, anno 2013

John Langshaw Austin (1911-1960) was one of the most influential British philosophers of his time, for his rigorous thought, extraordinary personality and innovative philosophical method. According to John Searle, Austin was a philosopher both passionately loved and hated by his contemporaries, because, like Socrates, he seemed to destroy all philosophical orthodoxy without presenting an alternative, and equally comforting, orthodoxy. Austin’s work is known for two major contributions to contemporary philosophy. On the one hand, his ‘linguistic phenomenology’, a peculiar method of philosophical analysis of the concepts and ways of expression of everyday language. On the other hand, Speech Act Theory, the idea of a performative dimension in any use of the language: with a well-known slogan, “to say something is to do something.” Speech Act Theory has had consequences and import in research fields as diverse as philosophy of language, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law, linguistics, artificial intelligence and feminist philosophy. Here we will focus on Austin’s contributions to philosophy of language, epistemology and philosophy of action, and on two main developments of speech act theory: the dispute between conventionalism and intentionalism on the one hand, and the debate on free speech, pornography, and censorship on the other.

As Moro suggests, we are because we speak. So, the author proposes a particular travel across the human language, and, more precisely, a study on the relationship between our reason and its linguistic structure. Then Moro presents 17 snapshots on human language, how many stages in the history of linguistics, from the Bible to Chomsky.

The paper inquires into the role of trial narratives for the establishment of justice conceived as correct application of the law, and wonders whether trial narratives are (more) similar to literary narratives, to historical ones, or to scientific reports. Given a number of similarities and differences, the paper claims that it is incorrect to equate trial narratives with other kinds of them: they are a specific kind of narrative, irreducible to others.

The aim of this entry is to introduce the reader to the debate on scepticism in contemporary analytic philosophy. I will consider two sorts of sceptical arguments, arguments that aim to show our lack of knowledge. The first kind of argument essentially involved the possibility of sceptical scenarios, scenarios in which our beliefs are false, although the appearances are the same they actually are. The second kind of argument aims to show that there is an internal incoherence in the idea of a sort of justification which falls short of deductive proof. Several replies to the challenge these arguments pose will be considered and discussed; in particular, I will consider an externalist reply, in the form defended by Tim Williamson, a “dogmatist” reply developed by Jim Pryor, and a reply, Wittgensteinean in inspiration, developed by Crispin Wright.

In this paper, the essays edited by Aldo Trucchio in the volume Cartografie di guerra (Mimesis, 2011) are examined. The reasons why the contemporary world, the evolution of democracy, and the transformation of war into international police operations can (or even must) still be comprehended starting from Kant, are shown. Indeed, Kant is one of the main protagonists of the epistemic, economic and political change which characterised his time –and thus, he is a subtle observer of mature modernity. Moreover, his works discuss the main concepts necessary to give a philosophical ground to any political and institutional project. Thanks to its approach, the volume integrates history and current events, philosophy and action, and offers a wide number of reflections on ethics and right, coexistence and war, democracy and the dream of a perpetual peace, thus resulting absolutely interesting for any readers.

Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) is undoubtedly the most influential logician of the 20th Century. Thanks to him, we have some of the most notable results in field of foundational research, such as the completeness theorem for the first-order logical calculus, the two incompleteness theorems, the proof of consistency between Cantor’s hypothesis of the continuum and the axioms of set theory. He is also known for much disputed philosophical stances, such as his Platonism approach towards the existence and the nature of mathematical objects. His complex personality, along with his extraordinary scientific production, have spread his fame well beyond the field of logic.

The topic of mathematical explanation, although subjected to philosophical analysis since Aristotle, has recently assumed a key role in the contemporary debate in philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics. The aim of the present paper is to offer a survey of the topic. First, we will divide the analysis of mathematical explanation into the two areas of investigation that distinguish his study (mathematical explanation in the empirical sciences and mathematical explanation in mathematics, respectively). Secondly, we will present some of the main philosophical positions that have been developed to capture the notion of mathematical explanation, trying to identify some criteria or characterizations that have been proposed in the current debate. Finally, we show how the study of mathematical explanation interests philosophical debates that concern different areas of philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics.

In this paper we review Marraffa and Paternoster’s book “Persons, minds, brains”. The two authors offer a very systematic reconstruction of the rising and the development of cognitive science, as well as a clearly presentation of its theoretical and methodological foundations and a discussion of the principal transformations that have characterized the sciences of the mind during the last thirty years.

The text offers a Critical Review of "Dalla comunicazione al linguaggio. Scimmie, ominidi e umani in una prospettiva darwiniana" by Francesco Ferretti and Ines Adornetti. The author critically reflects on the book by considering its methodologies, its arguments, and its relation with other books of the same type and on the same subject.

The distinctive features of Fine's thought within analytic philosophy are: the opposition to any kind of reductionism; the idea that philosophical analysis should always try to respect and develop our intuitions. He applied this overall approach to several philosophical issues. His most important works, characterized by a a constant attention to the logical formalization of philosophical problems, concern metaphysics (in particular the relation of parthood and the distinction between necessary and essential properties) and philosophy of language (in particular the supervaluationist treatment of vagueness and the semantics of variables). In recent years, Fine has set forth a new view of ontology, according to which the research focus should not be on existence (as Quine thought), but on reality.

Jonathan Lowe is one of the most influential metaphysicans and philosophers of mind in the last two decades. Lowe’s metaphysics is overtly inspired by some Aristotelian theses, but it contains original theses with regard to the relationship between metaphysics and natural sciences, the problems concerning temporality and change and the analytical theories of identity and properties. Moreover, in recent years, Lowe has developed and defended an “interactivistic and dualistic” or “non-Cartesian dualistic” metaphysical theory of mind.

How do we individuate the content of our mental states? According to externalism, the content of (some of) our mental states depends, at least in part, by factors external to the individual, i.e. factors involving not only the brain and the body but also the external environment. Since the tem “externalism” is a very general label that applies to a variety of very different positions, in this paper I will distinguish between, on the one hand, the semantic content of intentional states (beliefs, desires, intentions, hopes), which is conceptual and referential and, on the other hand, the phenomenal content of conscious states (perceptions, bodily sensations, emotions, moods), which is qualitative and experiential. On the basis of this classification, I will treat separately semantic externalism and phenomenal externalism.

The purpose of this article is an analysis of Maurizio Ferraris' theories presented in the volume "New Realism' Manifesto", under the etiquette of "New Realism". We've chosen, for reader's commodity and to distinguish Ferraris definition from other, previous uses of this terminology, to utilize the expression "Philosophical Neorealism". Philosophical Neorealism maintains the existence of an independent-from-our-knowledge-capacity reality and, furthermore, it tries to brick in a real short-circuit this "independence axiom" with the kantian thesis according to which "thoughts without intuitions are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind". This attempt implies the elaboration of several, very odd, "fashionable nonsense" (following Ferraris' lexicon) of postmodern philosophies, and, more in general, of every sort of ontological and epistemological relativism. The latter (but, more precisely, we're speaking about forms of relativism as well as the Nietzsche's one) are at fault, according Ferraris, of the misplacement of the most "illuministic" meaning of a true and genuine philosophical criticism, as well as of his natural calling to the socratic parrhesia. However, even if in "Documentality" (2009), Maurizio Ferraris asserted without esitazione that in philosophical realism it's clearly appropriate to distinguish and separate the perspective and the level of 'reality' from the plane of 'truth', in "Manifesto", this distinction is left out or, more precisely, not further articulated.

What is a human person? The paper presents some main responses contemporary analytic philosophers have given to this question. In particular, the following theories are examined: a human person is an immaterial soul, an organism belonging to the species Home Sapiens, an entity constituted by – and yet distinct from – a human organism, a bundle of mental states, a specific four-dimensional worm. These theories are briefly outlined, along with the arguments offered in their favour and the objections they have to meet.

Mary Brenda Hesse (1924 ) is an English scientist and philosopher of science, who has focused in particular [on the study of science and] on the epistemological debate on the role played by models and analogies in the development of scientific theories. In the literature there are many studies devoted to the reconstruction of her positions in this particular debate. There are, however, fewer studies devoted to the understanding of her theory of language, concept-formation and concept-function. This paper aims to provide a partial reconstruction of the semantic theory proposed by Hesse. In what follows I will examine her views about the function of predicates, the semantic relationship between language and world and, finally, her network theory of meaning.

The Knowability Paradox is a short argument whose conclusion is that if every truth is knowable, then every truth is also known. If one accepts the further plausible assumption that there are truths that as a matter of fact nobody knows, from the conclusion of the argument it is possible to derive that there are truths that it’s impossible to know. The argument has been considered by many as paradoxical insofar it seems to show the existence of necessary epistemic limitations from the mere contingent existence of ignorance. Furthermore, the conclusion of the paradox has been considered problematic for several philosophical theories such as the internal realism of Putnam and the semantic antirealism of Dummett and Wright, according to which every truth is knowable (at least in principle). The present contribution aims to provide an introduction to the paradox and to the philosophical debate about it. I will summarize the historical circumstances in which the paradox was originally formulated and present the various philosophical theories potentially threatened by it. I will then discuss the main reactions to the conclusion of the paradox and I will examine the criticisms addressed to it.

G. E. Moore (1873-1958) was a British philosopher who contributed decisively to the birth of analytic philosophy. Although he didn’t enjoy the same notoriety that Russell and Wittgenstein did out of the academy, his influence has been deep and enduring, and has marked crucial moments in the agenda of the analytic tradition. From his early contributions in the revolt against British idealism (Bradley, McTaggart) to his mature essays on common sense and skepticism, his positions have been the target of criticisms and appreciations, constantly shaping the philosophical debate. A special place is to be assigned to Principia Ethica (1903), whose publication conventionally identifies the starting point of analytic ethics, which for more than fifty years relied on conceptual analysis to reveal the ontological and semantic commitments implicit in our judgments of value.

In this book the German philosopher Markus Gabriel expounds his proposal for an “iperrealist” ontology, based on the idea of the compresence of uncountable “fields of sense”, within which everything that exists “appears-in-a-world”. In this critical study I try to scrutinize the basic notions of Gabriel’s proposal signaling where they seem to me defective.

This article discusses attempts to produce counterexamples to modus ponens. I open by clarifying what it means to give a counterexample to a logical principle. I then consider three types of attack on modus ponens: (i) McGee-style counterexamples in which the major premise consists of iterated conditionals (ii) Lycan-style counterexamples and (iii) objections to modus ponens based on counterexamples to modus tollens. For each kind of counterexample, I discuss the main critical responses. In the final section, I implement a formal semantics that is independently motivated: one can combine this semantics with two different definitions of logical consequence. According to one of them, modus ponens is invalid. According to the other, it is valid.

In this entry I explore the phenomenon of self-deception, which belongs to the family of the so called “motivated irrationality”. I will review the main questions on which the philosophical discussion focuses, among which is the problem of establishing whether or not self-deception is intentional. We will also address the problem of the motivational content of self-deception, summarized by the question “What does the self-deceiver want?” We will also try to adjudicate the question whether the self-deceiver is really convinced of the truth of what he or she tells to himself or herself. We will also see what it is that a self-deceiver does not know about himself or herself and we will analyze how we should assess self-deception as external observers