•  10
    Fifth Pisa Colloquium in Logic, Language and Epistemology (edited book)
    with Luca Bellotti
    ETS. 2023.
  •  2
    On Russell’s Criticism of Causality
    In Luca Bellotti & Giacomo Turbanti (eds.), Fifth Pisa Colloquium in Logic, Language and Epistemology, Ets. pp. 105-126. 2023.
    In this paper, I argue that the standard interpretation of Russell as a causal eliminativist is partial and misleading. Instead, I defend the thesis that his criticism of causality was actually part of the more ambitious project of transposing the common- sense concept of “cause” in the categories that articulate the representations of modern science. I also show that Russell endorsed such a project all along his philosophical career, despite the numerous changes of mind that characterized the d…Read more
  •  5
    Dynamic approaches to semantics like Discourse Representation Theoryor Jaszczolt’s Default Semantics provide more and more effective tools to represent how speakers handle meanings in linguistic practices. These deeper perspectives may give us a lever to lift some of the philosophical perplexities crowding semantics and to catch a glimpse of what hides beneath them. In this paper, I exploit these approaches with relation to the analysis of belief reports. However…Read more
  •  30
    An Expressivist Strategy to Understand Logical Forms
    Logic and Logical Philosophy 32 (3): 511-525. 2023.
    This paper discusses a generalization of logical expressivism. It is shown that, in the wide sense defined here, the expressivist approach is neutral with respect to different theories of inference and offers a natural framework for understanding logical forms and their function. An expressivist strategy for explaining the development of logical forms is then applied to the analysis of Frege’s Begriffsschrift, Gentzen’s sequent calculus and Belnap’s display logic.
  •  4
    Philosophy of Communication
    Palgrave Macmillan. 2023.
    By comprehensively exploring the theoretical questions raised by professional communication, this book provides an introduction to the philosophy of communication. Key Features: Arranged in three parts encompassing the theory of communication, conflict transformation and the role communication plays within organizations. Examines how agreement is reached through communication, how such agreement is negotiated between different perspectives and how such negotiation produces our organizations. Inc…Read more
  • Some Remarks on the Categories of the Manifest Image
    Philosophical Inquiries 10 (1): 49-72. 2022.
    This paper addresses the question whether or not philosophical discourse can avail the categories of the scientific image. I argue that the clash of the images is bet- ter understood on the semantic rather than the ontologic level and that it results from the challenge to the representational adequacy of the categories tha articulate the conceptual repertoires of the manifest image. A challenge that will be met by a succesful recategoriza- tion of the concept of a person in the scientific image.…Read more
  • Is There a Logic to «Erinnerung»?
    Iride 35 (95): 161-172. 2022.
    In his reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Robert Brandom offers an interpretation of the Hegel’s notion of Erinnerung as a retrospective rational recollection of the process of determination of conceptual contents. This paper argues that this recollection is essential for the account of representation in Brandom’s normative pragmatics, but it is not obvious how such an operation could be made explicit in his inferential semantics. Finally, some consequences are discussed of this potential p…Read more
  • This volume is a Festschrift in honour of Enrico Moriconi, to celebrate his 70th birthday and retirement. It consists of twelve original short essays by some of his friends, colleagues and former students, in the areas of general logic, proof theory, history of logic, philosophy of mathematics, epistemology and philosophy of language, mainly focused on some of his favourite research topics.
  •  11
  •  2
    This paper explores some of the assumptions orienting the debate about logical pluralism. I argue that these assumptions are grounded in the truth-conditional character of the semantic metavocabularies in which the debate is conducted. Then, I suggest an expressivist strategy to reinterpret the pluralist claim that there are different logics and I show how the expressive role of logical vocabularies can be equally well characterized by means of different expressive resources not involving the no…Read more
  • The Constitutive Role of Trust in Semantics
    Teoria 39 (2): 201-217. 2019.
    The aim of this paper is to characterize the semantic notion of trust, as it has been introduced by Robert Brandom. Traditionally, the concept of trust does not play any central role in semantics. This, I suggest, depends on the fact that the very social dimension plays a rather marginal role in the traditional representationalist theory of meaning. In Brandom’s normative inferentialism, instead, trust is essential to the constitution of the discursive communities, whose rules are taken to defin…Read more
  •  2
    One of the most striking clashes between the results of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections on language games and Robert Brandom’s normative analysis of pragmatics concerns the pride of place granted by the latter to assertional practices. While Wittgenstein believes that there is no privileged language game, Brandom maintains that the game of giving and asking for reasons is fundamental for the possibility of any linguistic practice to be properly meaningful. Recently, Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lanc…Read more
  •  3
    The early writings of Wilfrid Sellars are characterized by the analysis of themes and problems from Rudolph Carnap's philosophy of language. In particular, Sellars investigated the notion of "material'' rules of inference and explored the possibility of a "pure'' pragmatics. In these initial researches Sellars laid the foundations for his inferentialist analysis of meaning. A crucial component of such an analysis is the seminal form of rational expressivism that Sellars began to develop at the t…Read more
  • Rationality and the Variety of Language Games
    Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin 8 (9). 2019.
    One of the most striking clashes between the results of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s reflections on language games and Robert Brandom’s normative analysis of pragmatics concerns the pride of place granted by the latter to assertional practices. While Wittgenstein believes that there is no privileged language game, Brandom maintains that the game of giving and asking for reasons is fundamental for the possibility of any linguistic practice to be properly meaningful. Recently, Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lanc…Read more
  •  219
    Che cosa vuol dire per le espressioni del nostro linguaggio avere un significato? Secondo un approccio oggi sostanzialmente standard in semantica, avere significato vuol dire prima di tutto avere un contenuto rappresentazionale, cioè poter rappresentare qualcosa. Secondo un inferenzialista come Robert Brandom, invece, le espressioni del nostro linguaggio hanno contenuto perché sono inserite in una rete di relazioni inferenziali, rispetto alla quale possono essere utilizzate per dare e richiedere…Read more
  •  32
    Recent attempts to define and support realism in semantics seem to acknowledge, as the only defence from skeptical attacks to the notion of meaning, a flat acceptance of the existence of representational relations between language and things in the world. In this paper I reconsider part of the mistrust about the normative character of meaning, in order to show that some of the worries urging the realists to cling on representationalism actually rest on misconceptions. To the contrary, I suggest …Read more
  •  27
    On The Pragmatic Content of Science and Common Sense
    European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 9 (2). 2017.
    In our paper we aim to update and revise the pragmatist conception of the relationship between science and common sense. First of all, we introduce two technical notions (MI and SI), with which we identify the normative spaces of the manifest and the scientific image, and we highlight the differences between these two notions and their Sellarsian cognates. Secondly, within each normative space we investigate the connections between languages and practices: we ground linguistic contents on the no…Read more
  •  24
    Expressing Rules
    Phenomenology and Mind 13 168-174. 2017.
    The notion of conceptual normativity is grounded on the idea that our conceptual contents are established by the norms of the discursive social practices we engage in. This idea involves two major problems. First, where do the norms of discursive practices come from and how can the contents that they establish be objective? Second, what is the role of the vocabulary that we use to express such norms as explicit rules? This article draws the outline of an account that could possibly answer both q…Read more
  •  55
    Robert Brandom's Normative Inferentialism
    John Benjamins Publishing Company. 2017.
    The philosophy of language of Robert Brandom is based on a theoretical structure composed of three main elements: the normative analysis of linguistic practices, the inferential characterization of conceptual contents and the expressive articulation of the relations between the former two. Normative pragmatics aims to explain how linguistic practices are sufficient to confer contentful states in those who engage in them. Inferential semantics provides a theory of such pragmatic significances in …Read more
  •  21
    Dynamic approaches to semantics like Discourse Representation Theory or Jaszczolt's Default Semantics provide more and more effective tools to represent how speakers handle meanings in linguistic practices. These deeper perspectives may give us a lever to lift some of the philosophical perplexities crowding semantics and to catch a glimpse of what hides beneath them. In this paper, I exploit these approaches with relation to the analysis of belief reports. However, it will emerge that, despite t…Read more
  •  47
    Modality in Brandom's Incompatibility Semantics
    In María Inés Crespo, Dimitris Gakis & Galit Weidman-Sassoon (eds.), Proceedings of the Amsterdam Graduate Conference - Truth, Meaning, and Normativity, Illc Publications. 2011.
    In the fifth of his John Locke Lectures, Robert Brandom takes up the challenge to define a formal semantics for modelling conceptual contents according to his normative analysis of linguistic practices. The project is to exploit the notion of incompatibility in order to directly define a modally robust relation of entailment. Unfortunately, it can be proved that, in the original definition, the modal system represented by Incompatibility Semantics (IS) collapses into propositional calculus. In t…Read more
  • Perspectives in the Interpretation of Defeasible Reasoning
    The Logica Yearbook 2013 2013 239-254. 2014.
    Non-monotonicity in logic is a symptom that may have many causes. In the formalisation of defeasible reasoning, an epistemic diagnosis has largely prevailed according to which some inferences are non-monotonic because they are provisionally drawn in the absence of relevant or complete information. The Gabbay-Makinson rules for cumulative consequence relations are a paradigmatic example of this epistemic approach. In this paper a different approach to defeasible reasoning is introduced, based on …Read more
  •  286
    A Paradox of Inferentialism
    AL-Mukhatabat 16 163-195. 2015.
    John McDowell articulated a radical criticism of normative inferentialism against Robert Brandom’s expressivist account of conceptual contents. One of his main concerns consists in vindicating a notion of intentionality that could not be reduced to the deontic relations that are established by discursive practitioners. Noticeably, large part of this discussion is focused on empirical knowledge and observational judgments. McDowell argues that there is no role for inference in the application of …Read more
  •  50
    Normativity and the Realist Stance in Semantics
    Humana Mente - Journal of Philosophical Studies 21 83-102. 2012.
    Recent attempts to define and support realism in semantics seem to acknowledge, as the only defence from skeptical attacks to the notion of meaning, a flat acceptance of the existence of representational relations between language and things in the world. In this paper I reconsider part of the mistrust about the normative character of meaning, in order to show that some of the worries urging the realists to cling to representationalism actually rest on misconceptions. To the contrary, I suggest …Read more