Abstract. The aim of this paper is first to defend the intuition that truth is grounded in how things are and, second, to argue that this fact is consistent with Minimalism. After having cashed out that intuition in terms of explanatory claims of the form ‘if it is true that p, it is true that p because p’, I set out an argument against Minimalism which is based on the same intuition, and I argue that a strategy the minimalist could (...) adopt to resist the argument, i.e. to deny the correctness of the intuition, is flawed. Then I explain why the intuition is correct and I make some claims concerning the kind of explanations which are involved in it. Now the stage is set up to present the right way for the minimalist to resist the argument. I finally answer some objections. (shrink)

The paper aims at identifying similarities and differences between two different ways of using the word “true”, on the one hand when it is used to refer to a property of what we say or believe, here called “words’ truth”, on the other when it is used to refer to a feature of things in general (as when we say “he is a true friend”), here called “things’ truth”. I will point out how such similarities and differences may be usefully (...) described starting from the feature of truth called “transparency” which is often considered as exclusively pertaining to words’ truth. The upshot of the paper will be that Aquinas was right in considering the two kinds of truth as species of the unique genus “adaequatio rei et intellectus”, but that this conclusion can be reached without any commitment to the ideology (in the Quinean sense) of the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

L’articolo si propone di individuare somiglianze e differenze fra due usi del termine “vero”, quello per cui esso è usato per riferirsi a una caratteristica esclusiva delle cose che diciamo e pensiamo, detta nel testo “verità-delle-parole”, e quello per cui è usato per riferirsi a una caratteristica di cose di qualsiasi tipo (come quando diciamo “quello è un vero amico”), detta nel testo “verità-delle-cose”. L’idea centrale dell’articolo è che tali somiglianze e differenze possano essere proficuamente descritte a partire da quella (...) caratteristica della verità, solitamente considerata esclusiva della verità delle cose, detta “trasparenza”. (shrink)

Although philosophers have been concerned with truth since at least the age of Plato, the last thirty years have witnessed a veritable explosion of the philosophical debate on this topic. The touchpaper which lit the fuse for this was undoubtedly the Deflationist Renaissance (half a century after the seminal work of F.P. Ramsey) due, in the Seventies, both to the Quinean disquotational interpretation of the Tarskian truth definitions and to the development of the prosentential theory of truth by D. Grover, (...) J. Kamp and N. Belnap, and, from the second half of the Eighties onwards, to the forceful defences of deflationary conceptions provided by H. Field and P. Horwich. The philosophical struggle on deflationism has been thought-provoking: by arguing on the merits and shortcomings of such a conception, philosophers have come to broaden and deepen the discussion on truth beyond the boundaries of deflationism. The varieties of problems tackled by the essays in this book highlight how the land of Truth is still far from having been totally explored, and how, in this intellectual endeavour, real progresses can be achieved. (shrink)

La critica all’antirealismo costruttivista del pensiero postmoderno è al centro della riflessione di Maurizio Ferraris per lo meno a partire da Il mondo esterno (Ferraris 2001). Forme radicali di costruttivismo sono state però difese anche al di fuori del pensiero postmoderno tanto nella tradizione della filosofia analitica quanto, più recentemente, nell’ambito delle scienze cognitive. Nell’articolo viene dapprima presentata e criticata un’affermazione dal netto sapore costruttivista fatta da Vittorio Gallese e George Lakoff in uno degli articoli più influenti nel dibattito degli (...) ultimi anni sulla natura dei concetti: The Brain’s Concepts (Gallese, Lakoff 2005). Tale posizione viene quindi messa in relazione con quella forma di antirealismo costruttivista, detta anche relativismo concettuale, difesa, in modi e con esiti diversi, da filosofi quali Nelson Goodman, Hilary Putnam e Richard Rorty. Si sostiene quindi che tutte queste forme di antirealismo costruttivista incorrono in un dilemma: o esse abbracciano la problematica tesi metafisica di un’efficacia causale a ritroso delle nostre menti sul mondo oppure si riducono a una plausibile, ma ontologicamente innocua, affermazione dell’esistenza, in linea di principio, di molteplici modi di categorizzare la realtà e, nel caso delle teorie cosiddette incarnate della cognizione, della dipendenza di tali modi dalle forme che assume l’interazione senso-motoria di un organismo col suo ambiente. Viene infine mostrato come dall’osservazione dei molteplici modi in cui è possibile categorizzare la realtà sia possibile trarre conclusioni metafisiche di segno opposto all’antirealismo costruttivista. (shrink)

In introducing the present issue, we make clear that the concept of the other is susceptible to so multifarious declinations that it actually forms a conceptual galaxy. It is precisely this galaxy that the ten essays in the issue aim to shed light on. We then account for the basic ideas of each essay, and we stress the remarkable fact that they help to clarify how the concept of the other represents a useful means to undermine the purported divide between (...) continental and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This volume brings together a number of previously unpublished essays that will advance the reader's philosophical understanding of specific aspects of causation, agency and moral responsibility. These are deeply intertwined notions, and a large proportion of the volume is taken up by papers that shed light on their mutual connections or defend certain claims concerning them. The volume investigates several important questions, including: Can causation be perceived? If it can, can it be perceived in any way other than visually? Can (...) the interventionist theory developed by James Woodward offer an adequate account of causation? Is a causal relation a necessary condition for moral responsibility? Can there be a responsibility difference without a causal difference? Are causal ascriptions based on the more primitive language game of blame ascriptions? What can be learnt from the analogy between causal interference and unbreakable processes, on one side, and motivational interferences and "unbreakable" resolutions, on the other side? How can humans be routinely considered responsible for non-deliberated omissions? Should the connection between moral responsibility and the epistemic conditions usually required for moral responsibility to be obtained be weakened? What is the connection between awareness of one's doing and intentional action? These essays constitute a valid contribution towards the discovery of reasonable answers to such deep questions as the metaphysics of causal relations, the epistemology of causal explanations, the interventionist theory of causation, and the relationship among causality and moral responsibility, willpower, agency and intentional action. (shrink)

According to Lynch’s aletich functionalism truth is manifested by/immanent in different properties in different domains of discourse; so a core concept of Alethic Functionalism is the concept of the relation of manifestation holding between truth and other properties. The claim I’m going to defend is that Lynch makes too many theoretical demands on the manifestation relation and this makes it a metaphysical monster, that is to say a relation with mutually inconsistent features. In order to make manifestation a coherent notion (...) one should give up some of its original features, but this makes Alethic Functionalism a much less appealing theory than it was supposed to be. (shrink)