Giuseppe Lorini

Generally, the focus in the theory of information is almost exclusively on information that can be termed declarative, descriptive, factual, constative, or apophantic, by which is meant information that has a semantic content that can be true or false. Examples of carriers of apophantic information are train timetables, bank account statements, and medical reports. However, alongside apophantic information, there is another type of information that is much less studied but no less important: information that serves a function that is not descriptive but normative, what we could call “normative information”. A traffic sign indicating no overtaking, the land-use specifications outlined in a local plan, and the graphic instructions for assembling IKEA furniture are examples of items that convey normative information. The paper investigates this underexplored type of information and seeks to demonstrate the value of studying it for information theory and the philosophy of normativity.

Starting from the ontological question of norms, namely from the question “What do we talk about when we talk about norms?”, the author highlights the existence of thetic norms, that is, norms established through an act of normative production, which have not been formulated linguistically. Notably, the author focuses on drawn (or graphic) norms, that is those norms that do not arise from a linguistic formulation or from a linguistic representation, but from a graphic representation, from a drawing (for example, Ikea’s diagram instruction manuals and traffic signs). In conclusion, the author examines a particular set of drawn norms, corporeal drawn norms, and investigates their essentially deictic nature.

This article concerns the types of praxeological constraints on nomothetic power; that is, constraints that are inherent in the nature of the nomothetic act itself and exist independently of the norms in force in a specific system of norms.The praxeological constraints on nomothetic power are different in kind. In this sense, it is possible to draw a distinction among three different kinds of intrinsic constraints on the creation of rules: (i) hyletic constraints (that depend on the material structure of things), (ii) eidetic constraints (that depend on the eidos of things), and (iii) logical constraints (that depend on the logic itself).

Revenge is usually considered a mere instinctive and spontaneous reaction to an injustice. However, as the legal anthropologist knows well, revenge is also an action regulated by unwritten laws in most traditional communities. It is therefore possible to see revenge as one of the most ancient legal institutions, and possibly the most ancient form of punishment provided for by traditional legal systems.This paper is centered on such “normative” revenge, analyzed through the reading of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Here, the plot is characterized by a number of cross-revenges, all of them committed in compliance with the unwritten norm “Offences must be revenged.” Such a rule is a common feature of the rural legal order in nineteenth century’s Italy, and it will lead to the dramatic ending “They killed gaffer Turiddu!”

The Polish philosopher Czesław Znamierowski (1888–1967) was perhaps not a pur sang phenomenologist; however, he was significantly inspired and influenced by Reinach’s A priori foundations of the civil law. In 1921, a few years before Gerda Walther, Edith Stein and Dietrich von Hildebrand, he started publishing articles and books on what he called “social ontology.” The social ontology which emerges from these writings, and which we sketch out in our essay, is remarkably similar to, and yet no less strikingly different from, the social ontologies of these phenomenological classics, the latter no doubt due to Znamierowski’s at times not quite accurate criticism of Reinach, but even more due to Znamierowski’s own acumen and unconfessedly phenomenological insightfulness. We explain his conceptual apparatus, his “social acts” and “social facts”, his “social bearing” and “social function”, and the rest of it; we also amply illustrate this with examples provided by Znamierowski himself and by ourselves. We try to show that Znamierowski in virtue of his method, the substance of his thought, and also his style, and not just in virtue of the influences he had absorbed, was a de facto phenomenologist, even though he did not call himself such. Last but not least, we attempt to demonstrate that Znamierowski’s social ontology is by and large correct and can be put to fruitful use even today, rather than be of merely historical interest.

Siamo ormai lontani dalla stagione in cui la forza propulsiva della “svolta linguistica” si impose come tendenza dominante nel dibattito filosofico. Da varie angolazioni si è potuto parlare negli ultimi anni di pictorial turn come antidoto all’egemonia del paradigma linguistico in filosofia. Il volume Verità, Immagine, Normatività. Truth, Image, and Normativity non si inserisce direttamente in questa nuova tendenza, ma ruota comunque intorno a questioni che derivano dal medesimo sfondo. I 24 saggi qui raccolti tengono conto dei diversi ruoli che le immagini possono svolgere, a seconda che si focalizzi la loro dimensione descrittiva o normativa, e indagano alcuni aspetti del rapporto tra immagine e linguaggio. Questi problemi di filosofia dell’immagine, intesa sia come immagine cognitiva sia come immagine grafica, costituiscono il fil rouge di questo volume. Una tale riflessione sui linguaggi figurati e sulla comunicazione visiva non-linguistica costringe a riformulare in termini nuovi le grandi domande concernenti le tradizionali nozioni di verità, oggettività, normatività, consenso e persuasione.

Recently, various philosophers and ethologists have argued or hypothesised that, in addition to humans, there are also non-human animals that are capable of following rules and implementing normative behaviours. The investigation of animal normativity until now, however, has been almost exclusively focused on mammals and, in particular, non-human primates and cetaceans. In contrast, this work aims to extend this research to the world of invertebrates and, more specifically, to the world of eusocial insects. For the purpose of investigating whether there are clues of normativity in the world of eusocial insects, we will inquire into the question of whether certain behaviours of ants can be considered normatively conditioned behaviours.

Does the idea of justice make sense only in the human world? Can it make sense also in the world of non-human animals? Put another way, is there scope for justice in the animal world, or is it simply a “might is right” world? Starting from recent research of ethologists, philosophers, psychologists, and jurists, we will reflect on the hypothesis of the existence of an “animal justice” through the identification of three possible contexts of justice in the animal world (distributive justice, ludic fairness, retributive justice) and the analysis of a famous experiment on justice among monkeys. This research allows us to explore the axiological dimension of the hypothetical deontic world of non human animals.

Generally, when thinking of artifacts, one imagines “technical artifacts”. Technical artifacts are those artifacts that perform a mere causal function. Their purpose is to instrumentally help and support an action, not to change behaviour. However, technical artifacts do not exhaust the set of artifacts. Alongside technical artifacts there are also artifacts that we can call “cognitive artifacts”. Cognitive artifacts are all those artifacts that operate upon information in order to improve human cognitive performances. Artifacts of a further, different kind are what we may call “regulatory artifacts”; that is, material artifacts devised and made to regulate behaviour. Consider a roundabout, a traffic light or a speed bump. These artifacts do not make us stronger, faster, or more intelligent. They are placed on the road surface to regulate traffic. This article investigates artifacts of this third kind and, especially, the functions that they perform.

In Speech Acts, John Searle argues that institutional facts presuppose, for their existence, the existence of certain institutions (understood as systems of constitutive rules). In this paper I extend Searle’s theory of institutional facts arguing that a further level is needed for the investigation of the structure of institutional reality: the level of meta-institutional concepts. The meta-institutional concepts are concepts that go beyond (Greek: metá) the institutions of which they are conditions of possibility. An example of meta-institutional concept is the concept of game. In a culture which does not have the concept of game, we could move the chess-men according to the rules of chess, we could also perform a castling, but it would be impossible to play chess.

A widespread opinion holds that norms and codes of conduct as such can only be established via words, that is, in some lexical form. This perspective can be criticized: some norms produced by human acts are not word-based at all. For example, many norms are actually conveyed through graphics (e. g. road signs and land-use maps), sounds (e. g. the referee’s whistle), a silent gesture (the traffic warden’s signal to halt). In this article, we will focus on the norms that are created by means of drawings and can be termed “drawn norms” or “graphical norms.” Specifically, we will inquire into the phenomenon of graphical norms with particular regard to traffic signs and land-use plans, and we will discuss the philosophical and legal problems to which these phenomena give rise.

En el presente ensayo, el autor, partiendo del libro de John R. Searle The Construction of Social Reality, estudia la ontología social del último Searle poniendo en evidencia las novedades respecto a la teoría de los hechos institucionales formulada por el propio Searle en los años sesenta. Es así novedosa la cuestión que se plantea sobre la fundación de la realidad institucional: ¿Cómo pueden existir objetos institucionales en un mundo que se compone totalmente de partículas físicas en campos de fuerza? Es novedosa también la delimitación trazada por Searle entre dos de los rasgos de las entidades institucionales: la socialidad y la simbolicidad. Es novedosa la definición que da Searle de las "reglas constitutivas", no como reglas que constituyen el objeto del cual son regla, sino como reglas que adscriben funciones. Y es finalmente novedosa la postura de Searle sobre el nexo entre los performativos y los estados de cosas institucionales, y en concreto la consideración de los estados de cosas producidos por performativos como estados de cosas institucionales. El ensayo termina con una crítica a la tesis de Searle sobre la exhaustividad del paradigma bruto vs. institucional

Riprendendo quanto George Edward Moore scrive a proposito del concetto di “bene” (“good”), Hans Kelsen sostiene che il concetto di “dovere” (“Sollen”) sia un concetto semplice, un concetto ultimo, e in quanto tale né definibile, né analizzabile. Questa tesi di Kelsen sembra essere smentita dalle ricerche che sono state condotte parallelamente da Georg Henrik von Wright e Amedeo Giovanni Conte a partire dagli anni '80 del XX secolo. Von Wright e Conte hanno, infatti, distinto dal concetto di “dovere deontico” (“deontic Ought”), il dovere par excellence, altre specie di dovere che essi considerano categorialmente irriducibili al concetto di dovere deontico come il “dovere tecnico” (“technical Ought”) e il “dovere anankastico”. È proprio all'indagine di queste due specie di dovere adeontico che è dedicato il libro Anankastico in deontica.

Since the middle of the last century, normative language has been much studied. In particular, the normative function performed by certain sentences and by certain speech acts has been investigated in depth. Still, the normative function performed by certain physical artifacts designed and built to regulate human behaviors has not yet been thoroughly investigated. We propose to call this specific type of artifacts with normative intent ‘deontic artifacts’. This article aims to investigate this normative phenomenon that is so widespread in our daily reality, but so often forgotten by scholars of norms and normativity.

Siamo ormai lontani dalla stagione in cui la forza propulsiva della “svolta linguistica” si impose come tendenza dominante nel dibattito filosofico. Da varie angolazioni si è potuto parlare negli ultimi anni di pictorial turn come antidoto all’egemonia del paradigma linguistico in filosofia. Il volume Verità, Immagine, Normatività. Truth, Image, and Normativity non si inserisce direttamente in questa nuova tendenza, ma ruota comunque intorno a questioni che derivano dal medesimo sfondo. I 24 saggi qui raccolti tengono conto dei diversi ruoli che le immagini possono svolgere, a seconda che si focalizzi la loro dimensione descrittiva o normativa, e indagano alcuni aspetti del rapporto tra immagine e linguaggio. Questi problemi di filosofia dell’immagine, intesa sia come immagine cognitiva sia come immagine grafica, costituiscono il fil rouge di questo volume. Una tale riflessione sui linguaggi figurati e sulla comunicazione visiva non-linguistica costringe a riformulare in termini nuovi le grandi domande concernenti le tradizionali nozioni di verità, oggettività, normatività, consenso e persuasione.