Alberto Voltolini

In (1990), Jerry Fodor has defended a naturalized conception of meaning for Mentalese expressions which relies on the notion of asymmetric dependence. According to this conception, any naturalized theory of meaning must be able to account for the fact that meaning is robust, namely that any token of a certain Mentalese expression “x” retains the expression’s meaning, X, for any Y (≠ X) which happens to cause it. Now, this robustness of “x”‘s meaning can precisely be explained in terms of the subsistence of an asymmetric dependence of any nomic connection between Ys and “x”‘s tokens on another nomic connection between Xs and “x”‘s tokens. According to Fodor, then, this relation between nomic connections can account in perfectly naturalistic terms for “x” meaning X, by providing a sufficient condition for such a meaning. In what follows, however, I will try to show, first, that the subsistence of asymmetric dependencies of the kind envisaged by Fodor is not enough for assigning meaning to a certain expression. Indeed, there are dependencies of this kind which are meaning-irrelevant. Secondly, I will claim that asymmetric dependence relations are not able even to support for the robustness of meaning. For there are cases in which according to the structure of these relations we would have to conclude that meaning is altered although robustness would require to have it unchanged.

Da Hegel fino a Bradley, l'attacco idealista ad una concezione pluralistica della realtà come una credenza non suffragata dalla verità delle cose si è valso dell'argomento semantico secondo il quale le espressioni indicali, su cui da ultimo riposerebbe tutta la valenza referenziale del linguaggio, non si riferiscono a segmenti discreti del reale ma si limitano ad esprimere universali. Dal versante ontologico opposto, Russell ha guidato la reazione all'idealismo assoluto (inaugurando così uno dei filoni di riflessione della filosofia analitica) facendo perno proprio sulla capacità da parte di tali espressioni di designare direttamente atomi distinti di realtà. L'argomento idealista, nelle sue linee generali, funziona così. Anche ammesso che un termine singolare "N" non possa denotare un'entità reale finché non è disambiguato da un completamento indicale (del tipo "questo N"), un'operazione del genere è inutile perché un'espressione indicale è a sua volta incapace di designare univocamente un individuo. Quando uso "questo", ad es., un tale uso non designa alcunché perché ogni cosa è un questo e il questo in sé stesso non è alcun individuo. Quello che faccio in tale uso è piuttosto dare luogo all'espressione di un universale, nella fattispecie del concetto (individuale) di questità. L'argomento idealista è fallace. Ma la replica russelliana, che pure ha dalla sua tutta la forza del senso comune, non è in grado di metterlo fuori gioco integralmente. Infatti, entrambi assumono - l'uno come premessa all'interno di un ragionamento ad absurdum, l'altro come tesi positiva - che riferirsi mediante un indicale ad un individuo reale corrisponde a discriminarlo da tutti gli altri individui del suo dominio. Questo significa, in altre parole, che entrambi assumono la tesi dell'indistinzione di semantica ed epistemologia. Solo una dottrina che condivida le tesi semantiche di Russell sugli indicali ma non presupponga il collassare di semantica ed epistemologia può far decadere del tutto l'argomento idealista..

In one of its latest papers Timothy Williamson has drawn a distinction between two readings of the phrase "possible F", where "F" is a predicate variable: the predicative and the attributive. In what follows, on the one hand I will hold that the first reading naturally applies to the phrase "possible object", thereby supporting a moderata conception of possibilia as entities that possibly exist. Moreover, I will maintain that one such conception provides the best possible account of Tractarian objects. On the other hand, I will claim that the second reading of the phrase "possible state of affairs" supports a parsimonious ontology of states of affairs, according to which a possible state of affairs is nothing over and above the de re possibility its constituents have of being related in a certain way to each other. As a result facts, i.e. possible states of affairs actually obtaining, are the only genuine states of affairs that there are, or, to put it differently, for any given state of affairs it is redundant that it is a fact. Besides, I will also claim that, appearances notwithstanding, this ontology of Sachverhalten underlies the Tractatus itself. Finally, I will try to show how, again appearances notwithstanding, this thrifty ontology of Sachverhalten squares with the semantic theses of the Tractatus according to which an elementary proposition presents a possible state of affairs as its sense and it is true if ‘that’ possible states of affairs obtains.

In this paper, I will first try to provide a new argument in favour of the contextualist position on the semantics/pragmatics divide. I will argue that many puns, notably multi-stable ones, cannot be dealt with in the non-contextualist way, i.e., as displaying a phenomenon that effectively involves wide context, the concrete situation of discourse, yet only in a pre-, or at least inter-, semantic sense. For, insofar as they involve ambiguous utterances rather than ambiguous sentences, these puns show that the wide context affecting them has a semantic role: it provides many truth-conditions for a single utterance. Moreover, I will try to show that the contextualist can provide a unitary account of the general phenomenon of puns. On the one hand, this account explains multi-stable puns as well as those puns the non-contextualist claims to deal with successfully, i.e., the ones involving a speaker-induced removal of a well-grounded misunderstanding. On the other hand, it also explains zeugmatic puns, i.e., those involving an ‘impossible’ meaning.

In this paper, I want to argue for two main and related points. First, I want to defend Richard Wollheim’s well-known thesis that the twofold mental state of seeing-in is the distinctive pictorial experience that marks figurativity. Figurativity is what makes a representation pictorial, a depiction of its subject. Moreover, I want to show that insofar as it is a mark of figurativity, all seeing-in is inflected. That is to say, every mental state of seeing-in is such that the characterisation of the properties by which a certain subject is seen in a given picture as having refers to the design properties of the picture’s vehicle, i.e., to the visible surface properties of that vehicle that are responsible for the fact that one such subject is seen in it, precisely taken in such a design role. Finally, I will try to show that seeing-in is qualified by inflection independently of whether it is conscious or unconscious seeing-in

Abstract:In this paper I will first contend that semantically based arguments in favour of or against problematic entities—like those provided, respectively, in a realist Meinongian and in an antirealist Russellian camp—are ultimately inconclusive. Indeed, only genuinely ontological arguments, specifically addressed to prove (or to reject) the existence of entities of a definite kind, suit the purpose. Thus, I will sketch an argument intended to show that there really are entities of an apparently specific kind, i.e. intentionalia, broadly conceived as things that may actually exist as well as actually not exist. Finally, I will try to explain why that argument proves the existence of only some sorts of intentionalia, by showing how this is related to the fact that, as some have correctly maintained, intentionalia have no intrinsic nature.

What is depiction? This is a venerable question that has received many different answers throughout the whole history of philosophy, especially in contemporary times. A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction elaborates a new account on this matter by providing a theory of depiction that tries to combine the merits of the previous theories while dropping their defects. It is argued that a picture is a representation in a pictorial or figurative mode, and its 'figurativity' is given by a special perception, perceiving-in, whose nature is reconceived. Such a perception inter alia grasps some properties which the picture's vehicle has in common with what is perceived in it; by so doing, that perception provides the picture with a figurative content. In contrast, the picture's representational value, its subject or its pictorial content, is given by a conventionally or causally based selection out of that figurative content.

In this paper, I first want to vindicate Wollheim’s idea that seeing-in, taken as the twofold phenomenologically sui generis experience which picture perception consists in, accounts for the phenomenon of perceptual constancy. Following Wollheim’s usage himself, by “perceptual constancy” I will mean a particular phenomenon of perceptual robustness, namely the fact that a picture’s subject is experienced as undistorted from any point of view in which a spectator may regard a picture. Moreover, I will properly take into consideration the specific impression of “being followed” by the gaze of a picture’s subject in portraits (and alike pictures), which in these cases is a consequence of perceptual constancy. For this impression corroborates a particular reading of what the seeing-in experience really consists in. According to such a reading, in the configurational fold of that experience one experiences both the merely visible surface properties and the design properties of the picture’s vehicle, where such design properties also include the so-called grouping properties of the vehicle. On the basis of such a fold, moreover, in the recognitional fold of the seeing-in experience one knowingly illusorily sees the picture as its subject.

According to H-N. Castañeda, a guise - the very thin individual which lies at the bottom of the ontological furniture of the world - is indifferent to existence in a Meinongian way, in the sense that it remains the same whether it exists or not. Moreover, its existence does not alter its intentional character, as it is the very same individual which is thought of regardless of its being real or not1. In what follows, I will attempt to show that with regards to guises both theses are illegitimate, unless one introduces the notion of an existentially-conditioned property as a counterfactual property which a guise has prior to its actual existence. To do so means to work out an amendment to Castañeda's Guise Theory, as the doctrine which supports his main ontological assumptions.

In this paper, we first want to defend the idea that reference intentionality is the relation of constitution holding between an intentional state, a thought, and the object it is about, its intentional object. As such, reference intentionality is for a thought an essential property, whose predication to that thought is true in virtue of the nature of such a thought. We will take this to be one of the main lessons of serious externalism, according to which the intentional object occurs in the individuation conditions of the thought about it. Moreover, we want to draw some consequences of this idea. First, in conformity with serious externalism we will claim that an objectual thought is nothing but its intentional object in a cogitative modality, which is nothing but a certain motivational role for that object to play with respect to a subject. Second, we will claim that one such thought, both as a type and as a token, is an abstract particular, respectively a kind and a relational trope

In this paper, I want to deal with the problem of how to find an adequate context of interpretation for indexical sentences that enables one to account for the intuitive truth-conditional content which some apparently puzzling indexical sentences like “I am not here now” as well as other such sentences contextually have. In this respect, I will pursue a fictionalist line. This line allows for shifts in interpretation contexts and urges that such shifts are governed by pretense, which has to be understood in terms of socially shared make-believe games. By appealing to pretense so conceived, I will show that the fictionalist perspective is halfway between an intentionalist perspective, according to which the above indexical sentences have to be interpreted in a shifted intended context, (this perspective is primarily defined by Predelli 1998, Analysis 58, 107; Mind and Language 13, 400) and a conventionalist perspective, according to which indexical reference shifts in accordance with a conventional setting. (For this perspective, cf. Corazza et al. 2002, Philosophical Studies 107, See also Corazza 2004, Reflecting the Mind: Indexicality and Quasi-Indexicality, Oxford University Press). Finally, I will claim that the fictionalist analysis of cases of non-ordinary uses of indexicals like “here” and “now” can be retained in face of a new alternative analysis of those cases in terms of an ‘unbound anaphora’ – theory (cf. Corazza 2004, Synthese 138, 145).

A theory of intentionality is outlined, in which the desideratum that the intentional be the same as the real object is argued for in terms of an anti-realist ontology. According to such an ontology, an ordinary object is in itself an object of discourse taken as intentional when posited phenomenologically and as possible when posited naturalistically, i.e. as not existing in some possible worlds but as existing in others. If the actual world is included among the latter, the object deserves to be called "rear". Qua possible object, it answers to a principle of individuation which also works as a criterion of discrimination. According to such a principle, any possible object has a counterfactual individualising property which takes substance plus origin in a given spacetime as the object's essential properties, where it exists. It is, moreover, an object of discourse insofar as it generically depends, for its own being, on a singular term being publicly used to refer to it

In this paper, we first set out three requirements that each e-theory – a theory whose task is to explain data – must fulfill in order to be one such good theory: i) an ontological requirement, i.e. adequate simplicity, ii) a methodological requirement, i.e. plurality of research procedures, iii) an epistemological requirement, i.e. compatibility with the best available epistemical procedures. Moreover, we will claim that from the metaphilosophical point of view, unlike scientific naturalism on the one hand and supernaturalism on the other, liberal naturalism is the only philosophical approach capable of fulfilling all such requirements.

Everything you wanted to know about direct reference and always dared to ask is contained in Recanati's new book, which is not only a comprehensive survey on the received doctrine but also an original attempt to find a new way out of the many puzzles which surround the "new theory of reference" (in H. Wettstein's words) since its origins. Principles and conceptions are indeed acutely specified and Recanati's own theses are argued for in a very subtle and rigorous way. One cannot leave the volume without the impression that his understanding of the subject has been radically deepened and enlightened. A thorough analysis of such a detailed work would probably need a paper as long as the volume itself. Thus, I will limit myself to reconstruct three general aims of the book and to discuss some of the issues they raise. These aims are: i) to find a new criterion for the referentiality of directly referential terms (from now on, DR terms); ii) to develop a multi-layered pragmatics which allows one to deal pragmatically with what has been hitherto considered as belonging to a semantic layer only; iii) to put forward a truth-conditional pragmatic analysis of belief reports which accounts for the semantic import of the non truth-conditional thought underlying a linguistic utterance. Let me deal with i) first. Recanati puts forward a criterion of referentiality which in his mind allows one to tell de jure rigid designators (names, indexicals: what we have above labeled DR terms) from de facto ones (definite descriptions such as "the cube root of 27"). The former, not the latter, directly designate their referent since they are type-referential. He defines type-referentiality as follows: A term is (type)-referential if and only if its linguistic meaning includes a feature, call it 'REF', by virtue of which it indicates that the truth-condition ... of the utterance where it occurs is singular. (p.17) Suppose we take the following two utterances, "3 is odd" and "The cube root of 27 is odd", where the former contains a de jure, the latter a de facto, rigid designator. Although both utterances have singular truth-conditions, let us say are associated with a singular proposition to the effect that the number 3 is odd, the former, but not the latter, presents itself as true iff 3 is odd, i.e..

Along with a well-honoured tradition, we will accept that intentionality is at least a property a thought holds necessarily, i.e., in all possible worlds that contain it; more specifically, a necessary relation, namely the relation of existential dependence of the thought on its intentional object. Yet we will first of all try to show that intentionality is more than that. For we will claim that intentionality is an essential property of the thought, namely a property whose predication to the thought is true in virtue of the identity, or nature, of such a thought. More particularly, for us intentionality will again be a relation, yet a relation of ontological dependence of the thought on its intentional object; specifically, the relation for the thought of being constituted by its object. Moreover, we will try to show that if intentionality is such a constitutive relation for the thought that has it, certain metaphysical consequences ensue. First, an objectual thought, a thought whose content basically consists in its intentional object, is nothing but that object in a certain cogitative modality, or, which is the same, as playing a certain motivational role for the subject entertaining the thought itself (at a certain time). Second, if an objectual thought is nothing but an intentional object in a cogitative modality, such a thought, not only as a type, but also as a token, is an abstract entity. More specifically, an objectual thought-type, an abstract object par excellence, is indeed instantiated by objectual thought-tokens which are again abstract particulars, yet of a specific kind: namely, tropes of a relational sort depending for their existence on their bearers (and possibly also on their temporal location).

At least prima facie, there is no doubt that the later Wittgenstein conceived intentionality as a normative notion, where the normativity in question is of a linguistic kind. As he repeatedly says, the (internal) agreement between thought and reality that makes a particular subsisting state of affairs be the fulfilment of a certain intentional state is to be found in language, and language is intrinsically normative. Or, to put it more precisely, it is a rule of grammar that the intentional state that p is the state that p satisfies. Yet the arguments that one can reconstruct on a textual basis in order to support this conception do not seem entirely convincing. On the one hand, one can exploit a straightforward argument for a linguistically normative intentionality to the effect that there cannot be a priority of thought over public language. According to this argument, if there were a prelinguistic thought, this could only be expressed by an impossible private language. Yet this argument basically relies on the implicit but controversial premise that any language is a normatively imbued structure. On the other hand, one can retrace an indirect argument for a linguistically normative intentionality to the effect that public language cannot derive its meaningfulness from a prelinguistic thought not only originally, but also intrinsically, endowed with intentionality, for there is no such thing: any attempt at singling out such a thought is doomed to fail, for it faces an infinite regress problem. Yet even this argument relies on a tacit premise claiming that thought has a physical design component, it is a (psychic) fact. This premise cannot be taken for granted if one accepts that intentional states have both original and intrinsic intentionality. These two elements – having both original and intrinsic intentionality – can indeed be simultaneously accommodated if one maintains that intentional states are abstract particulars having no physical basis. At any rate, evicting intentionality from language as conceived by Wittgenstein, hence from normativity, does not show that Wittgenstein was wrong in thinking that meaning is an intrinsically normative notion. On the contrary, one can precisely combine a non-normative view of intentionality with a normative conception of meaning: the meaning of an expression is what the intending of an intentional content becomes once that intending is expressed by correctly using the expression in question. Moreover, appearances notwithstanding, there is room for attributing to the later Wittgenstein not the ambitious thesis that public language precedes thought in general (so that intentionality is a linguistically normative property), but just the more cautious thesis that complex thoughts require language in order for them to be articulated.

In this paper I want to hold that Wittgenstein’s later position on qualitative states, which sees them as triplets made out of three necessary components - stimulus, qualitative element and manifestability - allows for supervenience of such states over physical ones. Insofar as this is the case, such a position is more akin to naturalism that the one that has been recently defended by Kim, who allows for merely partial supervenience of qualia over physical states. Moreover, Wittgenstein’s conception stems out of a critical refinement of ideas he held in the mid-Thirties and that were developed by Schlick. Insofar as Schlick’s development is the recognized ancestor of Kim’s latest stance on qualia, one may take Wittgenstein’s later theses on qualia as a possible refinement in a naturalist direction of Kim’s own conception.

Insofar as the so-called new theory of reference has come to be acknowleged as the leading theoretical paradigm in semantic research, it has been widely accepted that proper names directly refer to their designation. In advancing some of the most convincing arguments in favour of this view of names, S. Kripke has however left somehow undecided what the role of context is in determining which is the direct referent for a name. According to one interpretation of his thought, context has only an external task in allowing one to simultaneously select a name and a given referent for it. Although this interpretation is the most faithful to Kripke's own intentions, there is another possible interpretation of what he says, according to which context more significantly permits one to determine a given referent at a time for one and the same name1. This different interpretation of the role of context is not marginal for the purpose of semantics, since it generates two distinct theoretical conceptions of what a proper name is. According to the former, the 'idiosyncratic' conception, proper names are individuated (at least) by their form and bearer. According to the latter, the 'linguistic' conception, they are individuated by their morphology only: i.e., by their being (syntactically) unstructured strings of letters. The two conceptions prove to be substantially different when homonyms are called into play. Insofar as both the Greek philosopher and the famous shipowner are called "Aristotle", we have two distinct, albeit homonymous, names for the idiosyncratic conception but only one name (as applied to two distinct individuals) for the linguistic conception2. In what follows, I will first sketch one of the most recent attempts to support for the idiosyncratic view, namely the one which traces back to Kaplan [1990] theory of words, and recall its merits over its cognate idiosyncratic theories. I will then try to give an argument in favour of the linguistic conception, by pointing out how the latter....

On various occasions, Kendall Walton has put forward a theory of depiction based on the notion of make-believe: P depicts something only if in virtue of having a perception of P, one makes believe that that very experience is the perception of P’s subject. As a consequence, if an individual is not able to make believe, whatever they face in their perception does not count as a depiction for her. Yet there are many evidences from developmental psychology that show that very little children still unable to make believe can grasp a picture’s figurative value. As a result, Walton’s theory of depiction seems to be inadequate from an empirical point of view. Moreover, it also appears to be inadequate from a conceptual point of view. Walton’s ambition is to account in pretence-theoretical terms of what the twofold experience of seeing-in, which Wollheim took to be a necessary condition of depiction, amounts to. Yet relying on make-believe, hence on imagination, does not account for the genuinely perceptual character of the “seeing-in” experience. No treatment of imagination in terms of visualization seems to achieve such a purpose.

Creationism with respect to fictional entities, i.e., the position according to which ficta are creations of human practices, has recently become the most popular realist account of fictional entities. For it allows one to hold that there are fictional entities while simultaneously giving such entities a respectable metaphysical status, that of abstract artifacts. In this paper, I will draw what are the ontological and semantical consequences of this position, or at least of all its forms that are genuinely creationist. For some people, these consequences will sound as plagues against the position; for some others, especially realists on ficta, they are welcome results. Although I hold that all forms of genuine creationism have these consequences, I will conclude by explaining why I take moderate creationism, according to which ficta are created by means of a reflexive stance on the make-believe practice grounding them, to be the best of these forms