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36Wittgenstein in relation to our timesIn Rosaria Egidi (ed.), n Search of a New Humanism: the Philosophy of Georg Henrik von Wright, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1999.In "Wittgenstein in relation to his times" Von Wright1 poses a dilemma regarding the relationship between three wittgensteinian tenets: (i) the view that individual's beliefs and thoughts are entrenched in accepted language games and socially sanctioned forms of life (ii) the view that "philosophical problems are disquietudes of the mind caused by some malfunctioning in the language games, and hence in the way of life of the community". (iii) the "rejection of the scientific-technological civili…Read more
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32Expressing the BackgroundIcelandic Philosophical Association (talks). 1997.Is deduction of use in application to our everyday problems? Aristotle said that in practical matters we cannot use a strictly deductive attitude: "we must be content...in speaking about things which are only for the most part true, with premises of the same kind, to reach conclusions that are no better" (Nic.Eth.I,4 - my underlining). We may content ourselves with conclusions which - according to the usual views - are not true; but what happens when we realize that such conclusions bring us int…Read more
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30Olismo e molecolarismoIn Massimo Dell'Utri (ed.), Olismo, . 2002.In questo saggio non sviluppo una tesi precisa, ma presento alcune osservazioni sull'olismo e molecolarismo che tentano di mostrare la praticabilita' del molecolarismo e vederne allo stesso tempo le difficoltà: (i) Mi interrogo sulla fortuna del dibattito sull'olismo degli ultimi anni, come ripresa e precisazione delle osservazioni fatte a suo tempo da Dummett nel suo libro su Frege. (ii) Richiamo alcune idee fregeane a proposito di linguaggi formali che definiscono una specie di olismo innocuo,…Read more
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30Holism in Artificial Intelligence?In Maria Luisa Dalla Chiara (ed.), Language, Quantum, Music, . pp. 37--48. 1999.[This is a larger version of the published article] In the discussion on semantic holism it has been claimed that A.I. is almost entirely holistic. In this paper I show that some of the main lines of research in symbolic artificial intelligence are not holistic; I will consider three classical cases: toy words, frames and contextual reasoning. I claim that these examples from A.I. can be interpreted as implementing molecularist intuitions about language. Eventually I suggest that some assumption…Read more
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29What Is Said and What Is Not: The Semantics/pragmatics Interface (edited book)Chicago University Press. 2013.This volume contains essays that explore explicit and implicit communication through linguistic research. Taking as a framework Paul Grice's theories on "what is said," the contributors explore a number of areas, including: the boundary between semantics and pragmatics; the concept of implicit communication; the idea of the logical form of our assertions; the notion of conventional meaning; the phenomenon of deixis, which refers to when an utterance require context in order to be understood full…Read more
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29Kenny's Wrong FormulaPhilosophical Investigations 40 (2): 170-172. 2017.Kenny’s book on Wittgenstein has been studied by hundreds of students. What happens when a student comes to the lecturer and says that Kenny’s formula for the number of truth-functions is wrong? You read the 2006 revised edition of the book and realise that the student is right and are ashamed at not having pointed this out to the class. Then you try to focus on which misunderstandings may lie behind the wrong formula. This is what we are trying to do in these short remarks.
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28Meaning and Context-SensitivityInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2020.Meaning and Context-Sensitivity Truth-conditional semantics explains meaning in terms of truth-conditions. The meaning of a sentence is given by the conditions that must obtain in order for the sentence to be true. The meaning of a word is given by its contribution to the truth-conditions of the sentences in which it occurs. What a speaker … Continue reading Meaning and Context-Sensitivity →
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24Significato, uso, procedureLingua E Stile (2): 87-99. 1992.In this paper we give some theoretical links between the wittgensteinian strategy of language-games and the strategy followed by students in Artificial Intelligence in the seventies. We refer also to the interpretation given by Dummett and Prawitz to the Wittgenstein's slogan of "meaning as use", showing the link of this ideas with the needs of Artificial Intelligence. We sustain that the concept of "procedure" as developed in early Artificial Intelligence is still one of the main attempt, reali…Read more
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20Competenza e competenzeIride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 329-397. 1998.Lexical Competence si presenta come una analisi dei diversi aspetti del del concetto di competenza semantica, con contributi originali sull'aspetto referenziale e sui problemi al margine tra filosofia e intelligenza artificiale. La pacata analisi del concetto di competenza lessicale porta a criticare tesi filosofiche sostanziali: le teorie oggettivistiche del significato alla Putnam tendono a ipostatizzare le norme semantiche, e le teorie naturaliste alla Chomsky tendono a dare poco o nessuno sp…Read more
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14Discussione su "Lexical Competence" di Diego MarconiIride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 11 (2): 389-402. 1998.
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13Indexicals and essential demonstrationsSemiotica 2021 (240): 261-284. 2021.In this paper, I discuss some of Maximilian de Gaynesford’s arguments regarding indexicals. Although I agree with his treatment of the first singular personal pronoun as a prototype of demonstrative expressions, I challenge his refusal to treat indexicals as complex demonstratives. To offer an alternative to this refusal I try to develop a common ground from different theories that consider indexicals as linguistic constructions that embed a nonlinguistic element, following an original idea in F…Read more
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1M. MERLEAU-PONTY, "La prose du monde" (review)Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica 65 (n/a): 379. 1973.
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S.G. Shanker, "Wittgenstein and the Turning Point in the Philosophy of Mathematics" (review)Epistemologia 11 (1): 163. 1988.
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R. De Monticelli, "Dottrine dell'intelligenza. Saggio su Frege e Wittgenstein" (review)Epistemologia 6 (2): 360. 1983.
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P.A. French, T.E. Uehling Jr., H.K. Wettstein, "The Foundations of Analytic Philosophy" (review)Epistemologia 7 (2): 317. 1984.
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A. Greco, "Introduzione alla simulazione come metodologia di ricerca in psicologia" (review)Epistemologia 13 (2): 350. 1990.
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L. Wittgenstein, "Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics" (review)Epistemologia 2 (2): 436. 1979.
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Proceedings of the Workshop on Bob Brandom's Recent Philosophy of Language: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism Genoa, Italy, April 19-23, 2009 (edited book)University of Genoa, Department of Philosophy. 2009.
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Gottlob Frege |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Gottlob Frege |
Complex Demonstratives |
Demonstratives, Misc |