This work addresses the critical discussion featured in the contemporary literature about two well-known paradoxes belonging to different philosophical traditions, namely Frege’s puzzling claim that “the concept horse is not a concept” and Gongsun Long’s “white horse is not horse”. We first present the source of Frege’s paradox and its different interpretations, which span from plain rejection to critical analysis, to conclude with a more general view of the role of philosophy as a fight against the misunderstandings that come from (...) the different uses of language (a point later developed by the “second” Wittgenstein). We then provide an overview of the ongoing discussions related to the Bai Ma Lun paradox, and we show that its major interpretations include—as in the case of Frege’s paradox—dismissive accounts that regard it as either useless or wrong, as well as attempts to interpret and repair the argument. Resting on our reading of Frege’s paradox as an example of the inescapability of language misunderstandings, we advance a similar line of interpretation for the paradox in the Bai Ma Lun: both the paradoxes, we suggest, can be regarded as different manifestations of similar concerns about language, and specifically about the difficulty of referring to concepts via language. (shrink)

According to David Lewis, the predicate ‘knows’ is context-sensitive in the sense that its truth conditions vary across conversational contexts, which stretch or compress the domain of error possibilities to be eliminated by the subject’s evidence. Our concern in this paper is to thematize, assess, and overcome within a neo-Lewisian contextualist project two important mismatches between our use of ‘know’ in ordinary life and the use of ‘know’ by ‘Lewisian’ ordinary speakers. The first mismatch is that Lewisian contextualism still overgenerates (...) the error possibilities which cannot be ignored in a given context, since it is oblivious to the distinction between ‘invented’ and ‘discovered’ possibilities. The second mismatch is a full-scale one: an adequate account of knowledge attribution is not exhausted by the subject’s negative capacity of pruning branches off the tree of counterpossibilities. We therefore introduce a new vector of value, which explains how ‘know’ comes in degrees: the satisfaction of ‘know better’ is made to depend on the capacity of imagining possibilities connected in a relevant way with the subject’s beliefs. (shrink)

: The Emotional Perception Model of moral judgment intends to account for experientialism about morality and moral reasoning. In explaining how moral beliefs are formed and applied in practical reasoning, the model attempts to overcome the mismatch between reason and action/desire: morality isn’t about reason for actions, yet moral beliefs, if caused by desires, may play a motivational role in agency. The account allows for two kinds of moral beliefs: genuine moral beliefs, which enjoy a relation to desire, and motivationally (...) inert moral beliefs acquired in ways other than experience. Such etiology-based dichotomy of concepts, I will argue, leads to the undesirable view of cognition as a non-homogeneous phenomenon. Moreover, the distinction between moral beliefs and moral beliefs would entail a further dichotomy encompassing the domain of moral agency: one and the same action might possibly be either genuine moral, or not moral, if acted by individuals lacking the capacity for moral feelings, such as psychopaths. Keywords : Moral Beliefs; Cognitive Homogeneity; Moral Agency; Motivation; Psychopathy Credenze morali e omogeneità cognitiva Riassunto : L’ Emotional Perception Model del giudizio morale offre un approccio esperienzialista alla moralità e al ragionamento morale. Il modello, che propone una spiegazione di come le credenze morali vengano prima formate e poi applicate, intende superare il disallineamento tra ragione e azione/desiderio: la moralità non riguarda le ragioni per agire, tuttavia le credenze morali, se causate dal desiderio o in relazione con esso, svolgono un ruolo motivazionale nell’azione. Questo approccio consente di identificare due tipi di credenza morale: le credenze morali genuine, che trattengono una relazione con il desiderio, e le credenze morali senza relazione alcuna con il desiderio e dunque caratterizzate da inerzia motivazionale. Tale tassonomia, la cui origine è da rintracciare nell’eziologia dei concetti, porta alla sgradita visione della cognizione come fenomeno disomogeneo. Inoltre la distinzione tra credenze morali e credenze morali introdurrebbe una ulteriore possibile dicotomia interna al dominio dell’azione morale: una medesima azione può essere al contempo genuinamente morale oppure no, a seconda che venga agita da un individuo con la capacità di esperire sentimenti morali o da uno che ne sia privo, come nel caso di soggetti psicopatici. Parole chiave : Credenze morali; Omogeneità cognitiva; Agentività morale; Motivazione; Psicopatia. (shrink)

: Traditional accounts regard the first-person pronoun as a special token-reflexive indexical whose referent, the utterer, is identified by the linguistic rule expressed by the term plus the context of utterance. This view falls short in accounting for all the I-uses in narrative practices, a domain broader than fiction including storytelling, pretense, direct speech reports, delayed communication, the historical present, and any other linguistic act in which the referent of the indexical is not perceptually accessible to the receiver. I propose (...) a model for the reference of “I” based on the distinction between three functions carried out by indexicals in communication, namely, the anaphoric, perceptual, and phantasmatic functions. The referential mechanism of the phantasmatic “I”, that is, the “I” used in phantasmatic function, is understood as an instance of imagination-oriented pointing exploiting the phantasmatic context, and not the perceptual context relevant in perceptual uses of indexicals. The rule for “I” is revised in light of the perceptual vs. phantasmatic deixis distinction; the resulting rule governing the reference of the phantasmatic “I” allows for a homogeneous treatment of ‘I’-tokens in narrative practices spanning the spectrum from fiction to non-fiction. Keywords : First-person Pronoun; Context; Imagination; Fiction; Indexicals; Narration; L'io fantasmatico. Sull’uso immaginativo del pronome di prima persona tra finzione e realtà Riassunto : Tradizionalmente “io” viene trattato come un indicale token-riflessivo speciale il cui referente, il produttore dell’occorrenza, è identificato attraverso la sola regola linguistica e il contesto di proferimento. Questo approccio, tuttavia, non riesce a rendere conto di quei casi in cui “io” appare all’interno di pratiche di narrazione, un dominio più ampio della finzione e che include lo storytelling, i racconti in discorso diretto e indiretto, la comunicazione differita, il presente storico e ogni altro atto linguistico in cui il referente indicale non è percettivamente accessibile al ricevente. Il modello per il riferimento di “io” qui proposto si basa sulla distinzione tra tre funzioni svolte dagli indicali nella comunicazione: la funzione anaforica, la funzione percettiva, e la funzione fantasmatica. Il meccanismo referenziale dell’io fantasmatico, ovvero del pronome di prima persona usato in funzione fantasmatica, è inteso come una istanza di deissi orientata dall’immaginazione che sfrutta il contesto fantasmatico, piuttosto che il contesto percettivo rilevante negli usi percettivi degli indicali. La regola per “io” è riformulata alla luce della distinzione tra deissi fantasmatica e deissi percettiva; la risultante regola per il riferimento indicale dell’io fantasmatico permette un trattamento omogeneo delle occorrenze di “io” nelle pratiche di narrazione che pertengono indistintamente alla finzione e alla realtà. Parole chiave : Pronome di prima persona; Contesto; Immaginazione; Finzione; Indicali; Narrazione. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Hector-Neri Castañeda's significant contributions to metaphilosophy. In his 1980 work, On Philosophical Method, Castañeda articulates a unique perspective, characterizing philosophy as fundamentally a dia-philosophical activity. By asserting the supremacy of synthesis over analysis within the metaphilosophical hierarchy, his account provides a purely theoretical defense of philosophical pluralism devoid of any relativistic inclinations. Despite Castañeda's enduring influence and profound impact on ongoing discussions in ontology, logic, and the philosophy of language, his metaphilosophical insights have largely been neglected. (...) In the context of today's increasingly diverse philosophical landscape, this paper posits that Castañeda's pluralist metaphilosophy retains substantial theoretical relevance. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy and psychology there is an ongoing debate about Theory of Mind , which mainly concerns our ability to understand other people. For almost two decades, authors have argued in favour of a crucial relationship between language and children's development of ToM. Studies based on verbal tasks suggest that children possess a ToM not earlier than about the age of four. Nevertheless, in recent years, this paradigm has been almost replaced by a 'new' nativist paradigm conceiving of mental (...) capacities as part of our purely biological inheritance. In contrast with the traditional tasks, non-verbal task results indicate that children possess ToM at the age of 15 months, or earlier. The contradictory data led to the so-called 'developmental gap': how is it that 15-month-olds already possess ToM, while failing the traditional tasks until the age of four? My thesis is that the data at our disposal, if interpreted in the light of a suitable theoretical framework, do not generate a genuine contradiction. Prior to the interpretation of the research results, a distinction between epistemological and metaphysical levels of investigation, and a clear analysis of notions such as 'representation', 'inference', 'mental state', and the like, is required. (shrink)

The advent of experimental philosophy has recently expanded the domain of philosophical debates so as to include discussions about survey-based methodology and the validity of its employment in philosophical inquiry. One of the main criticisms of this approach questions the alleged response-intuition equation, by claiming that ‘pragmatic cues’ might prevent the subjects from reporting their genuine intuitions about the survey scenarios and questions. The pragmatic cues discussed by the literature include aspects of a quite different nature, ranging from thinking-styles to (...) semantic ambiguities. In order to distinguish between language-related pragmatic cues, and other features not strictly dependent on language, the distinction between the ‘response problem’ and the ‘interpretation problem’—potentially triggered by language-related pragmatic cues—is introduced. By employing an illustrated survey, this study aims at revealing the extent to which the use of ‘non-linguistic’ vignettes might constitute a valid aid to the traditional ‘linguistic’ vignette. A positive response would encourage the usage of illustrations and other non-linguistic or minimally-linguistic models in survey-based studies, which considerably restricts the liability of surveys for the interpretation problem. (shrink)

After the recent “cognitive turn” it is commonly assumed that the domain of the cognitive is much broader than the domain of the linguistic. Consequently, the quickly decreasing appeal of “linguistic idealism” is now totally clouded by the view that language is not necessary for thought. I here highlight how the target paper is fully attuned to this mainstream view, which originally and fundamentally rejects any linguistic idealist claim. Furthermore, I propose a new formulation of an “old” methodological concern about (...) psychological explanations, which potentially challenges the efficacy of any argumentative strategy hinging on higher order cognitive capacities. (shrink)

Not only do we enjoy the company of fictional characters (such as Emma Bovary, Pinocchio, and the like) as we read a novel, watch a movie, or listen to a story ; but we also become emotionally involved with them and their adventures. This interaction with fiction constitutes the starting point of the ongoing philosophical debate on the ontological and metaphysical status of fictional objects, and challenges with various problems the theories of fiction currently found on the market. A survey (...) of these problems is offered in this contribution. (shrink)