Enrico Terrone

In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to the underrepresentation, exclusion or outright discrimination experienced by women and members of other visible minority groups in academic philosophy. Much of this debate has focused on the state of contemporary Anglophone philosophy, which is dominated by the tradition of analytic philosophy. Moreover, there is growing interest in academia and society more generally for issues revolving around linguistic justice and linguistic discrimination (sometimes called ‘linguicism’ or ‘languagism’) (see e.g. Van Parijs 2011). Globalization and the increasing adoption of English as global linguistic vehicle or lingua franca push these issues at the forefront of much of the world’s attention. The convergence of these two trends suggests the appropriateness of an analysis of the condition of non-native speakers of English in analytic philosophy.

This paper develops Richard Wollheim’s claim that the proper appreciation of a picture involves not only enjoying a seeing-in experience but also abiding by a standard of correctness. While scholars have so far focused on what fixes the standard, thereby discussing the alternative between intentions and causal mechanisms, the paper focuses on what the standard does, that is, establishing which kinds, individuals, features and standpoints are relevant to the understanding of pictures. It is argued that, while standards concerning kinds, individuals and features can be relevant also to ordinary perception, standards concerning standpoints are specific to pictorial experience. Drawing on all this, the paper proposes an ontology of depiction according to which a picture is constituted by both its visual appearance and its standard of correctness.

The story of the Ship of Theseus is one of the most venerable conundrums in philosophy. Some philosophers consider it a genuine puzzle. Others deny that it is so. It is, therefore, an open question whether there is or there is not a puzzle in the Ship of Theseus story. So, arguably, it makes sense to test empirically whether people perceive the case as a puzzle. Recently, David Rose, Edouard Machery, Stephen Stich and forty-two other researchers from different countries have undertaken that task. We argue that their tests do not provide any evidence that bears on the question as to whether the Ship of Theseus case is a genuine puzzle. In our discussion we address also what should be taken into account if one wishes to test the puzzling, or not puzzling, status of the Ship of Theseus story.

A series of recent experimental studies have cast doubt on the existence of a traditional tension that aestheticians have noted in our aesthetic judgments and practices, viz. the problem of taste. The existence of the problem has been acknowledged since Hume and Kant, though not enough has been done to analyse it in depth. In this paper, we remedy this by proposing six possible conceptualizations of it. Drawing on our analysis of the problem of taste, we argue that the experimental results in question are not a real challenge to its existence. By contrast, they provide empirical evidence in its support.

Both perception and imagination seem to play a crucial role in our engagement with fiction films but whether they really do so, and which role they possibly play, is controversial. On the one hand, a fiction film, as film, is a depiction that invites us to perceive the events portrayed. On the other hand, as fiction, it invites us to imagine the story told. Thus, after watching the film Alien, one might say that one saw Ripley fighting the monster but one might also say that one imagined Ripley fighting the monster. Are these two reports compatible? If they are, how can we combine them so to make sense of them? If, instead, they are not, which of them should we give up?

This paper explores some phenomenological consequences of the ontological affinity between films and pop songs. Given the central place of the recording technology in both films and pop songs, one can wonder whether pop songs can elicit from their listeners the same kind of experience that films elicit from their spectators. In other words, one can wonder whether pop songs encourage us to play a ‘game of make-believe’ analogous to that we play when we engage with films. The main part of the paper is meant to provide a positive answer to this question. The remaining sections illustrate and test the proposed account by contrasting paradigmatic pop songs with borderline cases.

The main accounts of the documentary in contemporary analytic aesthetics have difficulties in dealing with the distinction between documentaries and docudramas. On the one hand, the assertion-based accounts proposed by Carroll, Ponech and Plantinga cannot properly differentiate documentaries from docudramas. On the other hand, Currie’s account can do so by relying on the notion of trace but this involves an undesirable side-effect, namely, the exclusion, from the documentary, of those documentaries that do not include traces of their subjects, as for instance documentaries that resort to reenactments. Is there a way to exclude docudramas from the documentary without also excluding other films that we usually treat as documentaries? The paper affirmatively answers to this question by relying on the notion perceptual belief, that is, a belief that one can form by endorsing one's perception. Documentaries are defined as films that mandate us to form perceptual beliefs. Even if a docudrama mandates us to form beliefs, it does not mandate us to form perceptual beliefs, and thus does not count as a documentary. By contrast, a documentary that resorts to reenactments still mandates us to form perceptual beliefs and thus properly satisfies the definition proposed.

This paper considers two different kinds of philosophical interpretations of the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. On the one hand, Eternal Sunshine as a thought experiment that can function as an argument against utilitarianism. On the other hand, Eternal Sunshine as an instance of the genre of the remarriage comedy. I will argue that these two kinds of interpretations are in conflict. More specifically, Eternal Sunshine, understood as a comedy of remarriage, cannot function as an argument against utilitarianism, at least in the sense specified by Grau and Wartenberg. Finally, I will suggest a different way in which Eternal Sunshine, understood as a comedy of remarriage, might function as an argument against utilitarianism.

This paper considers two issues raised by the claim that fictional characters are abstract artifacts. First, given that artifacts normally have functions, what is the function of a fictional character? Second, given that, in experiencing works of fictions, we usually treat fictional characters as concrete individuals, how can such a phenomenology fit with an ontology according to which fictional characters are abstract artifacts? I will indirectly address the second issue by directly addressing the first one. For this purpose, I will rely on the notion of a mental file. I will argue that the function of fictional characters is the generation of mental files of a special kind. I will show that our experience of fictional characters as concrete individuals depends on the kind of mental files that are generated by fictional characters as abstract artifacts. I will conclude that an appreciator of a work of fiction can open two files about a certain fictional character; one about the character as an individual in the fictional world, and the other about the character as an abstract artifact in the actual world. In this sense, our relation to a fictional character is characterized by a duality of files or ‘twofileness’.

Nelson Goodman notoriously distinguished between autographic works, whose instances should be identified by taking history of production into account, and allographic works, whose instances can be identified independently of history of production. Scholars such as Jerrold Levinson, Flint Schier, and Gregory Currie have criticized Goodman’s autographic/allographic distinction arguing that all works are such that their instances should be identified by taking history of production into account. I will address this objection by exploiting David Davies’ distinction between e-instances and p-instances of a work, thereby restating the autographic/allographic distinction. Then, I will show that this way of restating this distinction leads us to effective accounts of relevant related phenomena such as forgery, plagiarism, and digital technologies. Finally, I will show the theoretical advantages of my account of the autographic/allographic distinction in comparison with an alternative account recently proposed by Jason D’Cruz and P.D. Magnus.

Conceiving of fictional characters as types allows us to reconcile intuitions of sameness and difference about characters such as Batman that appear in different fictional worlds. Sameness occurs at the type level while difference occurs at the token level. Yet, the claim that fictional characters are types raises three main issues. Firstly, types seem to be eternal forms whereas fictional characters seem to be the outcome of a process of creation. Secondly, the tokens of a type are concrete particulars in the actual world whereas the alleged tokens of a fictional character are concrete particulars in a fictional world. Thirdly, many fictional characters, unlike Batman, only appear in one work of fiction, and therefore one can wonder whether it does make sense to treat them as types. The main aim of this paper is to address these issues in order to defend a creationist account of fictional characters as types.

Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Stacie Friend’s claim that fiction is a genre, her notion of genre can be fruitfully applied to a paradigmatic genre such as science fiction. This article deploys Friend’s notion of genre in order to improve the influential characterization of science fiction proposed by Darko Suvin and to defend it from a criticism recently raised by Simon Evnine. According to Suvin, a work of science fiction must concern “a fictional ‘novum’ validated by cognitive logic.” While Suvin conceives of his characterization as a necessary and sufficient condition for membership in the genre, I propose to cast the notions of “fictional novum” and “cognitive validation” as standard features of the genre, which works of science fiction should have but might lack. I argue that this amended version of Suvin’s characterization can better account for two basic properties of science fiction as a genre, namely its historicity and its relevance to appreciation. Lastly, I show that the amended version can shed some light on the affinity between works of science fiction and philosophical thought experiments.

I rely on Frascolla's interpretation of the Tractatus ontology to develop an account of depiction in which a picture is conceived of as a visual structure constituted by pixels that are conceived of, in their turn, as elementary propositions. Then I argue that such an account is complementary to the considerations about «noticing aspects» in the Philosophical Investigations, to the extent that the visual structure constituted by pixels provides a design allowing the picture’s viewer to notice aspects. Finally I argue that a joint reading of the considerations about pictures in the Tractatus and in the Philosophical Investigations allows us to address some important issues in the contemporary philosophical debate about depiction

What aesthetic interest do we have in watching films? In a much debated paper, Roger Scruton argued that this interest typically comes down to the interest in the dramatic representations recorded by such films. Berys Gaut and Catharine Abell criticized Scruton’s argument by claiming that films can elicit an aesthetic interest also by virtue of their pictorial representation. In this article, we develop a different criticism of Scruton’s argument. In our view, a film can elicit an aesthetic interest that does not come down to an interest in the dramatic representation or in the pictorial representation. We will argue that this is a distinctively cinematic interest. In section I we outline Scruton’s argument. In section II we point out an interest in how the cinematic medium presents the portrayed subject as detached from the spectator’s environment. In section III, by referring to Wittgenstein’s account of the contemplation from outside, we contend that the interest in films introduced in section II can count as an aesthetic interest. In section IV we argue that both documentaries and fiction films can elicit this kind of interest. In section V we compare the three different kinds of aesthetic interest that, in our view, a film can elicit. In section VI we describe the corresponding kinds of cinematic achievements

This paper casts the television series BoJack Horseman as a challenge to the genre that Stanley Cavell calls “the comedy of remarriage.” First, it is argued that the last season of the series explicitly suggests but finally contradicts the narrative pattern of the comedy of remarriage. Then, the impossibility of remarriage in BoJack Horseman is traced back to some structural features of the medium of television and its relationship to time. Finally, the impossibility of remarriage in BoJack Horseman is related to the capacity of the medium of television to enable self-defeating fictions which challenge fiction as a cultural institution.

Social individuals are social entities having a distinctive individuality, often signaled by the use of a proper name to designate them. This article proposes an account of social individuals based on the notion of a mental file, understood as a repository of information about a single individual. First, I consider a variant of the puzzle of the ship of Theseus in which the object having problematic identity conditions is a social individual, namely, a rock band. Then, I argue that we can figure out such identity conditions by considering the mental files concerning this band. In conclusion, I outline a version of social constructionism according to which the existence of social individuals like bands depends on mental files about them.

This article addresses the definition of cinema by focusing on the related ontological question of which basic category circumscribes cinematic works. According to Noël Carroll, the definition of cinema consists both of ontological conditions that treat the moving image as a type and of other conditions that treat it as a display. But following Carroll’s ontological conditions, the digital encoding of a moving image enigmatically ends up being both a type and a token. Solving such a puzzle by clarifying the relation between the cinematic type and the digital type leads us to define the moving image in general as a type that specifies a spatiotemporal distribution of pixels

According to the standard view of pictorial reference, a picture produces singular thought in virtue of both its appearance and its history. Zeimbekis (2010) challenges this view, arguing that the perception of the picture's appearance does not contribute to the production of singular thought. The paper defends the standard view from Zeimbekis' challenge, specifying the roles of appearance and history in pictorial reference. While knowledge about the picture's history allows one to identify the standpoint from which to see the scene depicted, the perception of the picture's appearance exploits that standpoint to single out individuals in that scene.

L’articolo si focalizza sulle relazioni fra la nozione di Ferraris di documentalità e le nozioni tradizionali di causalità, intenzionalità, e normatività. Mostrerò che la nozione di documentalità, al cui centro troviamo la nozione di traccia, si basa su una spiegazione della causalità stando alla quale i documenti sono costituiti da catene causali. Stando così le cose, occorre formulare un criterio per differenziare le catene documentali da altri tipi di catene causali. Argomenterò che, riconducendo l’intenzionalità alla documentalità, Ferraris si preclude la possibilità di usare l’intenzionalità come criterio. Senza un tale criterio, però, la teoria della documentalità rischia di ritornare alla tesi di Derrida stando alla quale nulla esiste al di fuori del testo. La parte finale dell’articolo considera due strategie grazie alle quali la teoria può evitare tale rischio.

Se dovessi scegliere un unico libro di Maurizio Ferraris da portarmi sulla proverbiale isola deserta sceglierei Una ikea di università. Lo farei per tre ragioni differenti. La prima è autobiografica: è il libro per merito – o per colpa – del quale ho finito per occuparmi di filosofia. La seconda è estetica: c’è in questo libro una felicità di scrittura che è raro trovare non solo in filosofia ma anche in letteratura; forse mi lascio condizionare da fattori idiosincratici, ma per me Una ikea è uno dei testi italiani più belli degli ultimi vent’anni. Infine c’è una terza ragione che è propriamente filosofica. Per come vedo io le cose, è in Una ikea che si compie la svolta decisiva nel percorso filosofico di Ferraris; è in questo libro – a partire dalla riflessione su natura e funzione di un peculiare oggetto sociale, l’università – che si gettano le basi delle dottrine a venire: la documentalità e il nuovo realismo. Nel mio saggio mi propongo dunque di rileggere Una ikea con il senno di poi, mostrando che i principi fondamentali della documentalità e del nuovo realismo erano già all’opera, in forma di vivide intuizioni, ben prima che queste teorie ricevessero un nome proprio e una trattazione sistematica. In particolare, è in Una ikea che Ferraris mette a punto il principio critico-metodico che da lì in poi guiderà l’intera sua ricerca: «Uno potrebbe opporre che qui si ha a che fare con una classica confusione tra ontologia e qualcosa che non è ontologia (e può essere tante altre cose: ermeneutica, filosofia della storia, psicologia delle visioni del mondo, storia delle mentalità, teoria della scienza, o al limite animismo, come ai tempi dei druidi). Come a dire che si confonde il fatto – del tutto indipendente dall’iniziativa umana – per cui c’è qualcosa, con il fatto che si possa descrivere quel qualcosa in tanti modi, e che in questa descrizione siamo relativamente liberi» (Una ikea di università: 42).

In the debate on our engagement with and appreciation of fiction films, the thesis that the viewer of a fiction film imagines observing fictional events, and the thesis that these events are imagined to be presented by a narrator, are usually taken as two components of one theoretical package, which philosophers such as George Wilson and Jerrold Levison defend, while philosophers such as Gregory Currie and Berys Gaut reject. This paper argues that the two theses can be disentangled and investigates their logical connection. The investigation shows that the second thesis entails the first but there is no entailment the other way around. Endorsing the first thesis is thus compatible with two options, namely endorsing the second thesis or abandoning it. However, the paper argues that if we endorse the first thesis, endorsing the second provides us with a more compelling explanation of our engagement with and appreciation of fiction films.

Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, raises an interesting philosophical issue, namely, how can one be in touch with past things if they no longer exist? It provides us with a way to address this issue by outlining an ontological view according to which past things still exist within a four-dimensional world. Although one cannot be in touch with past things by means of ordinary perception, one can do so by combining perception and memory. In this sense, In Search of Lost Time helps us to reconcile a four-dimensionalist ontology according to which things have both spatial and temporal parts with a realist phenomenology according to which experience gives us access to things as they are. In so doing, Proust’s masterpiece allows us to shed some light on what it means for a subject of experience to exist in a four-dimensional world.

This book uses the conceptual tools of philosophy to shed light on digital media and on the way in which they bear upon our existence. At the turn of the century, the rise of digital media significantly changed our world. The digitizing of traditional media has extraordinarily increased the circulation of texts, sound, and images. Digital media have also widened our horizons and altered our relationship with others and with ourselves. Information production and communication are still undoubtedly significant aspects of digital media and life. Recently, however, recording, registration and keeping track have taken the upper hand in both online practices and the imaginaries related to them. The essays in this book therefore focus primarily on the idea that digital media involve a significant overlapping between communication and recording.

The main aim of this paper is to characterize Maurizio Ferraris’ New Realism as a metaphilosophical account that develops Peter Strawson’s project of a descriptive metaphysics. The paper consists of two sections. The former outlines Strawson’s descriptive metaphysics by highlighting its realist commitments. The latter characterizes New Realism as a way of turning Strawson’s metaphysics into a metaphilosophy. New Realism moves from Strawson’s metaphysical description of the world we share through our experience to the metaphilosophical claim that philosophy should primarily consist in this kind of description.

The philosophy of film usually presupposes two main assumptions or dogmas. First, films are autonomous audiovisual structures that can be instantiated by particular screenings. Second, the cinematic experience is a surrogate of the audiovisual perception. Experimental cinema can defy these assumptions by making films that either lack an autonomous structure or do not provide spectators with an audiovisual experience that emulates ordinary perception. The paper analyzes Ugo Nespolo’s experimental films precisely as peculiar attempts to defy the two dogmas of the philosophy of film.

I term ‘institutional monism’ the ontological thesis according to which the distinction between institutions and practices is only a matter of degree and not of kind. This paper criticizes institutional monism and puts forward a dualist theory, which takes institutions and practices as two distinct ontological kinds. For that, I introduce a distinction between the attitude and the content of a mental state. I show there can be normativity at the level of the attitude as well as at the level of the content. In the former case we have a norm, in the latter a rule. This allows me to draw an ontological distinction between practices, understood as systems of norms, and institutions, understood as systems of rules.