Marcos Bruno Silva

This article proposes a critical reformulation of semantic inferentialism and logical expressivism from a peripheral perspective. It argues that, for groups subjected to regimes of racial, colonial, and gender domination, language should be conceived neither as a mirror of reality nor merely as a lamp that makes explicit norms already operative in language games. Such regimes of domination are analyzed as forms of grammatical violence, understood as the imposition of networks of material inferences that not only fix the meaning of the concepts operative in our language games but also prey upon the grammar of an autochthonous form of life, insofar as they redistribute authority, value, recognition, and exclusion. Concepts such as “race” and “gender” function as conceptual axes with high inferential density that naturalize hierarchies under the appearance of normative neutrality. A distinction is thus drawn between inferential bootstrapping and grammatical levers. The former designates the process of making rules explicit while participating in the practices that confer meaning upon them. Grammatical levers name situated interventions that identify conceptual fulcrums within these inferential networks and, beyond making them explicit, mobilize collective action to shift them. The paper also discusses normative “aquilombamento” as a historical form of collective consolidation of alternative grammars. Examples such as the Quilombo dos Palmares, the activism of Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers are analyzed as struggles for grammatical sovereignty and normative self-determination by minoritized groups within supremacist language games, rather than as demands for mere assimilation, integration, or expansion of civil rights.

This article proposes the concept of grammatical leverage as a neopragmatist and anticolonial model of normative, conceptual, and affective transformation within forms of life marked by domination and exploitation. Drawing on Wittgenstein (1953, 1969) and Brandom (1994, 2000), in dialogue with peripheral and quilombola perspectives (Nascimento 2021), we argue that reversing unjust language-games requires not only conceptual reconstruction but also affective reorientation-such as the conversion of shame into collective pride among oppressed groups. Inspired by Wittgenstein’s hinge epistemology, we understand grammar as a system of normative hinges, that is, fulcrums of meaning and value that sustain forms of life. To leverage grammar is to redirect these fulcrums, shifting tacit certainties that naturalize racial, patriarchal, and colonial hierarchies. We critically reinterpret Brandom’s semantic inferentialism and logical expressivism to include the affective and embodied dimensions of normativity, conceiving meaning as part of a shared inferential landscape. We propose five levels of normative resistance-from semantic awareness to grammatical sovereignty-and three modalities of leverage: interfixal (conceptual redefinition), inter-resistant (community creation), and inter-potent (affective reversal). Thus, to leverage grammar is to move the world: language ceases to be a site of captivity and becomes a territory of resistance, authorship, and collective self-determination.

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein suggests that doubting whether he “is a man” may exceed the limits of how our epistemic language-games function (§79). Since the certainty that things like “men” and “women” exist in the world is so deeply embedded in our world-picture (Weltbild) that it cannot be called into question, it might constitute a curious example of what the author calls a “hinge certainty”. However, the fact that our worldview is shaped by gender- related certainties should not be taken as immutable. In this paper, we argue that even if the gender binary can be considered a hinge certainty, this does not prevent it from being challenged and changed. To do so, we first contend that any interpretation of how hinges structure our epistemic language-games must prioritize at least one of the metaphors presented in On Certainty over the others. The selected metaphors would support either an anti-foundationalist or foundationalist epistemological reading. A foundationalist view of hinge certainties, we argue, is responsible for their supposed immutability, including gender- related hinge certainties. We then take the presumed immutability of gender certainties as a specific case study concerning the alleged immutability of hinge certainties. Here, we propose interpreting the gender binary as the foundation of our world-picture, whose “certainty” can be seen as a violent normative constraint. Through our anti-foundationalist reading of Wittgensteinian epistemology, we maintain that hinge certainties must be mutable, given their functional status — that is, their role or function should vary across different contexts. In defense of revising hinge certainties, we argue that our practices can serve as tools to challenge the hinge status of the gender binary.

Embora Negritude sem Identidade, de Érico Andrade, apresente uma crítica instigante à modernidade e uma valorização da singularidade da experiência negra, a obra levanta sérias questões teóricas e políticas. O uso ambíguo e indefinido do conceito de “identidade” compromete a clareza argumentativa, especialmente quando Andrade propõe a renúncia à identidade como estratégia de resistência. Tal proposta ignora o papel central que a identidade desempenha na coesão política, jurídica e histórica de grupos minorizados. Ao abrir mão desse conceito por falta de fundamento ontológico, corre-se o risco de desarmar pragmaticamente tais grupos na luta por direitos, reconhecimento e proteção legal. Além disso, a obra negligencia a inter-relação entre racismo e especismo, ignorando como ambos compartilham a mesma lógica excludente da modernidade. A crítica de Andrade ao racismo moderno não se estende ao seu antropocentrismo, reforçando, mesmo que involuntariamente, um paradigma que desqualifica outros seres com base em critérios arbitrários de racionalidade. Por fim, ao enfatizar o corpo e a performatividade como núcleo da experiência negra, o autor pode incorrer no mesmo erro que critica: o achatamento da singularidade, reproduzindo estereótipos que associam a negritude exclusivamente à corporeidade, em detrimento da diversidade intelectual e existencial de pessoas negras.

Corruption is not a modern phenomenon but it has always been present in the human history. So, it is not a natural phenomenon but a historical one whosecauses can be attributed to individuals as much as to political and social organizations. There is a great agreement among specialists and non-specialists about the damages and the losses that result of the practice of corruption. A common question among the ones that want to do something in order to get away with such behavior is to find the most effective way of doing it. Would there be these means? In order to give some insight for possible attitudes and plans it was asked to four philosophers, tree Germans and one Italian, if it would be viable an effective combat to corruption and what could be done. From the point of view of the researcher’s common European situation and the cultural difference between two countries, it could be noticed that a solution can only go through the guiding element of the economic-social-political organization that show off corruption and its evils in the forms of privileges, marginalization and extreme poverty. More than affecting individuals, corruption strikes much more and always the collective causing abasement mainly among the least favored.

O Problema da Exclusão das Cores impõe inter alia que a lógica deva olhar para arranjos conceituais no mundo. Isto representa o colapso do que Wittgenstein defendia na explicação tractariana da lógica (cf. 5.473 e 5.551). O tipo de estrutura lógica que nós encontramos dentro das proposições elementares não pode ser expresso em termos de verofuncionalidade, i.e., com produtos e somas lógicas. Além disso, uma vez que proposições elementares não podem ser capturadas adequadamente através da negação de um elemento repetido, o tipo de exclusão dentro de sistemas não pode ser a da contradição. Isto significa a emergência necessária da semântica em um domínio alegadamente sintático. Nós demandamos então novas ferramentas para expressar operadores não-neutros com escopos restritos e exclusões semânticas mais finas. Introduzo aqui, então, a noção de graus de exclusão interna e externa (de segunda ordem) a um sistema. Estes graus de exclusão podem não ser homogêneos, mas devem ser infinitos dependendo do sistema de proposições em que estivermos trabalhando. Ao longo do caminho, defendo que não podemos reduzir um sistema a outro sem distorções e que fazer isto é tampouco necessário.

Gaslighting pode ser entendido enquanto um tipo de manipulação na qual a vítima é induzida a pôr em dúvida suas próprias percepções e experiências mais básicas e, portanto, sanidade. Para compreender qual a natureza do tipo de dúvida que surge nas vítimas de casos de gaslighting, Trächtler (2022) busca explicitar como é possível que alguém seja levado ao desespero ao ser manipulado a suscitar autoquestionamentos sistemáticos sobre assuntos tão fundamentais de sua própria vida. Para tanto, a autora apresenta uma conceituação do gaslighting enquanto um tipo de injustiça epistêmica seguindo Fricker (2007). Alinhado a isto, a partir de reflexões epistemológicas inspiradas no Sobre a Certeza (1969), obra póstuma de Wittgenstein, Trächtler fornece também uma discussão detalhada sobre a natureza de nossas práticas de duvidar. Aqui defendemos, como Trächler que os autoquestionamentos presentes na prática de gaslighting de fato violam os limites dos nossos jogos de linguagem cotidianos, mas consideramos incoerente interpretar que o dano causado nessa prática incida prioritariamente sobre ao domínio epistêmico da vítima. Nesse sentido, também inspirados em Wittgenstein (1969), defenderemos aqui que o fenômeno gaslighting deva ser mais adequadamente enquadrado conceitualmente como uma forma de violência gramatical. Gaslighting deveria ser tomado, portanto, como um ataque prioritariamente gramatical, no sentido wittgensteiniano, que propriamente epistemológico. A partir dessa conceitualização, exploramos as implicações do que chamamos aqui de violência gramatical e apontamos uma possível forma de resistir, também, gramaticalmente, ao gaslighting.

Here I defend that the systems of propositions (Satzsysteme) in the middle period of Wittgenstein's Philosophy represent the development of the tractarian notion of logical space after the Color Exclusion Problem. I aim then to deal with some essential features of these emergent systems, namely: 1. the radicalization of a kind of holism to be found already in the Tractatus; 2. the exclusion by contrariety, which shows the insufficiency of contradiction in capturing finer conceptual exclusions; 3. the asymmetric negation, which allows the explosion of alternatives and overcomes the tractarian bipolarity; and 4. the mandatory exhaustion (completeness) of possibilities, i.e., all possible articulation of conceptual elements must be totally provided in a system.