Michelli Gianluca

This paper addresses Quine’s critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction from Two Dogmas of Empiricism, where he argues that analyticity—truth by meaning alone—cannot be coherently defined without circular reasoning. Quine contends that defining analyticity in terms of necessity leads to circularity because necessity itself presupposes analyticity. In response, this paper uses Kripkean semantics to define analyticity as “global necessity”, or truth in all points of evaluation, thus countering Quine’s circularity objection. The proposed approach relies on Kripke’s modal logic framework, where analyticity can be anchored in the relational structure of possible worlds. By defining analytic statements as those true in all worlds, this proposal allows analyticity to be coherently applied across a family of logical systems, namely the family of normal modal logics. Comparing this approach with Rudolf Carnap’s definition of analyticity from Meaning and Necessity, the paper highlights that Kripkean semantics offers greater flexibility by allowing the same definition of analyticity to be applied across a whole range of frameworks. Thus, while analytic truths become framework-dependent, they preserve their value within formal systems, as well as their conventional character—which was first recognized by Carnap. After discussing a possible application of this work to current debates on topic-neutrality of logic and logical pluralism, the paper concludes that the proposed account of analyticity provides a counterpoint to Quine’s dismissal, supporting the analytic- synthetic distinction as both meaningful and practically useful in logical analyses.

Since the rise of Conceptual Metaphor Theory in the 1980s, metaphor theorists have investigated the diverse effects that metaphor has on cognitive processes. In certain situations—in political speech, for instance—it is noticed that metaphoric expressions are relatively frequent and play a decisive role. Some researchers—most notably, Steen—suggest that metaphors can be intentionally employed as metaphors in communication to achieve specific discourse goals. Thus, investigating the role of intentions behind metaphor use would shed light into the general question of why people resort to metaphors in specific contexts. Scholars generally take the utterers’ intentions to be individual mental states. In this paper, I examine another possibility. I argue that in the field of discourse analysis—as well as in Natural Language Processing applications—the notion of intention is best understood as a property attributed to linguistic acts. Building on Anscombe’s philosophy of intentional action, I conceive intentions as reasons for speaking as we do. Within this philosophical framework, I introduce the novel category of intentionalA metaphor, which refines existing notions of deliberate and purposeful metaphor. This alternative accounts for the observed asymmetries in production and reception of metaphor, and secures this approach from the most common critiques addressed to Deliberate Metaphor Theory.