Ernesto Perini-Santos

Ockham has a very particular definition of modality: every term that is predicable of a whole sentence is a modal term. His definition reaches well beyond “necessary,” “possible,” “contingent” and “impossible,” including predicates such as “known” and “believed,” but also “written” and “spoken.” He provides a general framework for inferences including every term covered by his definition of modality. However, there is a proper modal syllogistic in Ockham only for the Aristotelian modalities, that combines two distinct semantic apparatus, constituted by Ockhamist modal predicates, on the one hand, and by modal and modally modified copulae, on the other. For the development of a syllogistic for the Aristotelian modalities, both are needed. There is no similar apparatus for other modalities in Ockham

La theorie ockhamienne de la connaissance evidente porte sur certains aspects causaux qui ont lieu dans l'intellect et produisent l'assentiment a certaines propositions. Les propositions connues de facon evidente sont les propositions connues par les sens, celles dont la connaissance depend de la seule apprehension des concepts et, de facon indirecte, les conclusions des raisonnements. Dans tous ces cas, l'assentiment a la proposition est cause naturellement par l'apprehension des termes. Si le Venerabilis Inceptor suit une certaine tradition dans la reconnaissance des traits communs a ces situations, l'assentiment immediat et universel, il en offre une explication qui lui est propre, par la causalite naturelle. Cette explication se deploie dans une theorie de la scientia. Par scientia, il faut entendre a la fois le savoir et la science. Il s'agit, d'une part, d'une theorie sur un discours organise en syllogismes, ayant une certaine dynamique cognitive et constitue par des qualites mentales singulieres et, d'autre part, d'une theorie de la rationalite, construite autour des processus causaux naturels. Ce livre presente ce complexe theorique ockhamien et ses rapports avec les theories de Robert Grosseteste, Alhazen, Jean Duns Scot et Jean Buridan.

The truth-conditions of many utterances have components that do not correspond to any uttered morpheme. This happens because linguistic acts are always a supplement to whatever else is available to agents engaged in a conversation. Unarticulated constituents result from the informational trade-off between what is available in the situation of utterance and what needs to be linguistically articulated. Unarticulated constituents are constituents of propositions, that is, of classifying tools that are neutral with respect to the way in which what is given in a situation interacts with the words uttered.

McDowell’s argument to refuse a scientific approach to human rationality is that lawful explanations are unable to account for our rational agency. However, not every scientific explanation is a lawful one. There is another argument to the the same effect: (a) there are distinct inquiries concerning the space of reasons: causal inquiries and constitutive inquiries; (b) they are independent of each other; (c) science addresses only the first sort of questions; (d) therefore, it has no impact on inquiries concerning constitutive features of the space of reasons. I will argue that (b) is false, and therefore (c) is at best unclear. The idea of a second nature suggests more unified view of human knowledge, a sort of Hegelian approach. However, for Hegel, the realm of reason encompasses all of nature, and this is an untenable route towards a full re-enchantment of nature. We should be open to the consequences to our self-understanding of different inquiries of natural sciences about how our second nature emerges and how it unfolds. Once we take account of the different sorts of inquiry in the surroundings of rational agency, we see that we cannot predict in advance how our self-understanding will change as a result of changes in different scientific domains. The concept of second nature gives an appropriate frame to this sort of accommodation.

The border war between semantics and pragmatics has an early version in the dispute between Mates and Cavell. While Mates argues for a strict separation between semantic inferences and mere pragmatic regularities, Cavell argues for a “logic of ordinary language”, identifying the commitments following the act of saying something. This answer gives a clue to the contemporary debate between minimalists and contextualists: we may either think that pragmatic inferences are only effective after the proposition is grasped, or think that it is part of the determination of what is said. However, Cavell has also another answer, that seems much less amenable to logical regimentation: we understand what an agent is committed to as we evaluate what is appropriate to do in a given situation. In this latter case, there is no logic to backtrack to the very determination of what is said: the agent is attuned to the complexity of her contexts of action, but it does not lead to a local adjustment of concepts. This is precisely what a semanticist does, according to Predelli: she is attuned to the complexity of human purposes, and represents this contextual sensitivity at points of evaluation of sentences, but does not build this complexity into his semantic system. Predelli is at odds both with minimalists and contextualists in this respect, and we can see the specificity of his position as we construe different maps of the theoretical landscape. A bit of historical perspective opens up new ways to see some current discussions.

“Post-truth” is a misleading label: there is no new concept of truth, nor is there a change in what is true. However, there is something new, and bad, happening in our dealings with truth: the lack of trust in institutions dedicated to produce knowledge. In this chapter, I try to explain why this happens. I also address the effects of this lack of trust in the election of a far-right president in Brazil. The changes in our epistemic landscape result from deep-rooted features in human culture, the conflict between epistemic values, as embodied in our cooperative efforts to produce knowledge, and coordination values, that make the identitary function of beliefs very salient. Moreover, in the unstructured information landscape of the Internet, it is very difficult to read cues for reliable sources. There is another structural factor that plays an important role, the increasing inequalities, creating an environment in which status and identitary anxieties also increase, making identitary claims very powerful. These anxieties are exploited by the far-right, against our moral and epistemic common ground. The equilibrium between the coordination game and the epistemic game is fragile. The victim is our epistemic common ground.

A idéia que a teoria ockhamiana da notitia intuitiva tem conseqüências céticas está presente há algum tempo na literatura secundária. Este tema reaparece num recente artigo de Elizabeth Karger. Segundo Karger, o problema central da teoria ockhamiana é que um julgamento pode me parecer evidente e no entanto ser falso, em virtude da intervenção divina – a célebre notitia intuitiva de re non existente. O Venerabilis Inceptor teria tentado evitar o ceticismo, sem sucesso, estipulando que todo conhecimento evidente é relativo ao verdadeiro. Adão de Wodeham percebeu este ponto e negou ao conhecimento natural a certeza acerca de temas contingentes, isto é, diz Karger, teria reconhecido as conseqüências céticas da teoria ockhamiana. Esta interpretação não me parece correta. Inicialmente, julgamentos evidentes não são, em Ockham, julgamentos que pareçam evidentes, mas assentimentos causados de uma determinada maneira. Pode-se responder que a conseqüência cética permanece, o assentimento a proposições contingentes podendo sempre ser causado de maneira sobrenatural, pela ação divina, o que torna instável o conhecimento humano. Deve-se no entanto observar, por um lado, que a ligação estipulativa entre a cognitio evidente e a verdade não altera a situação cognitiva do homem e, por outro, é possível pensar que se pode ainda falar de conhecimento, com a estabilidade de processos naturais. Com efeito, esta parece ser a sugestão de Wodeham acerca da teoria ockhamiana, e certamente é a uma posição teórica possível. Não apenas Wodeham não tira conseqüências céticas da teoria ockhamiana, como estas não decorrem de maneira inelutável de sua teoria

Complexe significabilia are the significate of whole sentences, irreducible to what is signified by categorematic sub-sentential components. It has been propounded firstly by Adam Wodeham. Wodeham construes his argument for the postulation of complexe significabilia as a middle way between William of Ockham and Walter Chatton. According to Wodeham, Ockham’s view implies a reflexive theory of mental acts, which goes against the phenomenology of the act of assent. Moreover, it leads to an anti-realist epistemology. We need therefore things outside the mind to be object of the act of assent, which is also the conclusion reached by Chatton. However, against Chatton, Wodeham argues that things signified by the categorematic component of sentences cannot be the object of assent. In effect, sentences with different syncategorematic structures, but with the same categorematic components, would correspond to the same propositional attitude in Chatton’s framework, which is an unwelcome consequence. The result is that we need to postulate that the objects of assent are outside the mind, contra Ockham, that are not signified by sentential categorematic components, contra Chatton, but are irreducibly signified by the whole sentences.