•  20
    Pieranna Garavaso and Nicla Vassallo investigate Gottlob Frege's largely unexplored notion of thinking to provide insight into the roles of language in expressing thoughts and in fostering the development of human knowledge. The analysis will benefit studies of epistemology, logic, philosophy of mind, psychology, and philosophy of language
  •  3
    On the Links between Language and Thinking
    Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 55 17-22. 2018.
    Historically, George Boole’s philosophy of logic has been regarded as the very opposite of Gottlob Frege’s, insofar as Frege is characterized as a strong logical anti-psychologist. Although there are significant differences between Frege’s and Boole’s views on logic, there are also significant similarities, which provide support for our representation of Frege’s philosophy of logic as weakly psychologistic. Both Boole and Frege aspire to capture the essence of a pure and ideally perfect language…Read more
  •  42
    The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Feminism (edited book)
    Bloomsbury. 2018.
    Applying the tools and methods of analytic philosophy, analytic feminism is an approach adopted in discussions of sexism, classism and racism. The Bloomsbury Companion to Analytic Feminism presents the first comprehensive reference resource to the nature, history and significance of this growing tradition and the forms of social discrimination widely covered in feminist writings. Through individual sections on metaphysics, epistemology, and value theory, a team of esteemed philosophers examine …Read more
  • A starting point of the discussion in this paper is the claim that one similarity between Wittgenstein's thought and Quine's is a form of holism with regard to the system of beliefs that human beings hold. I argue that this thesis can be plausibly supported on the basis of some of the writings of these two philosophers. The discussion of this similarity brings to light also some 'dissonance' between Wittgenstein and Quine. This difference is my point of departure from the mere analysis of thes…Read more
  •  48
    On the Virtues and Plausibility of Feminist Epistemologies
    Epistemologia, Rivista Italiana di Filosofia Della Scienza (1): 99-131. 2003.
    In this paper, we examine some issues debated in mainstream epistemology for which the social features of knowledge are relevant, such as the epistemic relevance of social contexts, the nature of practical knowledge, and the epistemic role of testimony. In the first part of the paper, we show how feminist epistemologies have usefully stressed the social character of knowledge in many central areas of debate within mainstream epistemology. We call these the virtues of feminist epistemology: the…Read more
  •  42
    In the first section, I characterize realism and illustrate the sense in which Wittgenstein's account of mathematics is anti-realist. In the second section, I spell out the above notion of objectivity and show how and anti-realist account of truth, namely, Putnam's idealized rational acceptability, preserves objectivity. In the third section, I discuss the "majority argument" and illustrate how Wittgenstein's anti-realism can also account for the objectivity of mathematics. What Putnam's and …Read more
  •  64
    Taylor’s defenses of two traditional arguments for the existence of god
    with Lory Lemke
    Sophia 29 (1): 31-41. 1990.
    In 1963, in the first edition of his book Metaphysics, Richard Taylor presented two interesting defenses of the cosmological and design arguments for the existence of God. Surprisingly, even after the third edition has appeared, his defense of the cosmological argument has passed relatively unnoticed, and while his novel account of the argument from design has provoked a fair amount of critical discussion, little attention is given to Taylor's reply contained in the same text. In this paper, we …Read more
  •  15
    The Argument from Agreement and Mathematical Realism
    Journal of Philosophical Research 17 173-187. 1992.
    Traditionally, in the philosophy of mathematics realists claim that mathematical objects exist independently of the human mind, whereas idealists regard them as mental constructions dependent upon human thought.It is tempting for realists to support their view by appeal to our widespread agreement on mathematical results. Roughly speaking, our agreement is explained by the fact that these results are about the same mathematical objects. It is alleged that the idealist’s appeal to mental construc…Read more
  •  96
    Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mathematics
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 26 (2): 179-191. 1988.
    This paper has two main purposes: first to compare Wittgenstein's views to the more traditional views in the philosophy of mathematics; second, to provide a general outline for a Wittgensteinian reply to two objections against Wittgenstein's account of mathematics: the objectivity objection and the consistency objections, respectively. Two fundamental thesmes of Wittgenstein's account of mathematics title the first two sections: mathematical propositions are rules and not descritpions and mathem…Read more
  •  16
    Poetry and Literature: An Introduction to Its Criticism and History
    with W. G. Regier, Benedetto Croce, and Giovanni Gullace
    Substance 12 (4): 95. 1983.
  •  16
    Filosofia delle donne
    Laterza, Bari. 2007.
    Filosofia delle donne (Philosophy of Women) is a book written in Italian in which authors Pieranna Garavaso (University of Minnesota, Morris, USA) and Nicla Vassallo (University of Genoa, Italy) claim that a greater interaction between analytic philosophy and feminist philosophies can generate philosophical theories that are more accessible and relevant to a broader range of people. This interaction can also produce richer solutions to traditional philosophical problems. The authors' main inter…Read more
  •  54
    Frege and the analysis of thoughts
    History and Philosophy of Logic 12 (2): 195-210. 1991.
    In both his earlier and later writings, Frege claims that distinct sentences can express the same thought, and that there is a correspondence between the parts of a thought and the parts of the sentence expressing it. The joint assertion of these claims gives rise to a problem: how can there be a correspondence between the parts of one thought and the parts of distinct sentences? This paper discusses Michael Dummett's and Gregory Currie's interpretations of Frege's views on the analysis of thoug…Read more
  •  73
    The distinction between the logical and the empirical in on certainty
    Philosophical Investigations 21 (3). 1998.
    In this paper, I propose a comparison between some widely accepted Quinian views and Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks on the logical and the empirical in On Certainty. While Quine's perspective and Wittgenstein's aare not thorougly dissimilar (so that the question of which influence Wittgenstein's thought might have had on the thought of some contemporary philosopher like Quine is both interesting and relevant), there is at least one important difference between them. I submit that Wittgenstein's…Read more
  •  15
    Wittgenstein's views on mathematics are radically original. He criticizes most of the traditional philosophies of mathematics. His views have been subject to harsh criticisms. In this dissertation, I attempt to defend Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics from two objections: the objectivity objection and the consistency objection. The first claims that Wittgenstein's account of mathematics is not sufficient for the objectivity of mathematics; the second claims that it is only a partial accou…Read more
  •  19
    Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics: A Reply to Two Objections
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 26 (2): 179-191. 1988.
    This paper has two main purposes: first, to compare Wittgenstein's views to the more traditional views in the philosophy of mathematics; second, to provide a general outline for a Wittgensteinian reply to these two objections. Two fundamental themes of Wittgenstein's account of mathematics title the following two sections: mathematical propositions are rules and not descriptions and mathematics is employed within a form of life. Under each heading, I examine Wittgenstein's rejection of alterna…Read more
  •  672
    This paper addresses a question concerning psycho­logical continuity, i.e., which features preserve the same psychological subject over time; this is not the same question as the one concerning the necessary and sufficient conditions for personal identity. Marc Slors defends an account of psychological continuity that adds two features to Derek Parfit’s Relation R, namely narrativity and embodiment. Slors’s account is a significant improvement on Parfit’s, but still lacks an explicit acknowledgm…Read more
  •  2
    This short introduction to the philosophy of mathematics focuses on the main ontological and epistemological concerns raised by any realist position on the existence of abstract objects. The first half of the book outlines Plato's and Kant's views on mathematics. The second half discusses the ontological and epistemological problems discussed in Paul Benacerraf's two seminal articles "What Numbers Could not Be" (1965) and "Mathematical Truth" (1973).
  •  141
    Quine, criticism of Quine's Naturalized Epistemology
  • The philosophy of religion in the United States: A Recent Research Meeting
    Verifiche: Rivista Trimestrale di Scienze Umane 13 (3): 393-402. 1984.
    A review of a conference meeting focused on the philosophy of religion
  •  67
    On Frege's Alleged Indispensability Argument
    Philosophia Mathematica 13 (2): 160-173. 2005.
    The expression ‘indispensability argument’ denotes a family of arguments for mathematical realism supported among others by Quine and Putnam. More and more often, Gottlob Frege is credited with being the first to state this argument in section 91 of the _Grundgesetze der Arithmetik_. Frege's alleged indispensability argument is the subject of this essay. On the basis of three significant differences between Mark Colyvan's indispensability arguments and Frege's applicability argument, I deny that…Read more
  •  52
    Actuality and Necessity
    Journal of Critical Analysis 9 (2): 35-40. 1992.
    In a recent contribution to the discussion of the necessary and the apriori, Philip Kitcher claims that "appropriate insertion of 'actual' and 'actually' can yield a necessary true sentence from anyl true sentence." The general thrust of Kitcher's discussion is the denial of the equivalence of necessity and apriority. I do not discuss any of the epistemological issues that are discussed by Kitcher. The focus of this paper is on the above quoted claim. What follows illustrate my reasons for dou…Read more
  •  315
    In "Has Semantics Rested on a Mistake?", Howard Wettstein denies that semantics must account for cognitive significance. He thus rejects Frege's condition of adequacy for semantics and rids the new theorists from seemingly intractable puzzles. In a more recent article, Wettstein claims that not only reference but even cognitive significance is not a matter of how the referent is presented to the mind of the speaker. In this paper, I submit that the crucial element in the debate between new the…Read more
  •  48
    The Argument from Agreement and Mathematical Realism
    Journal of Philosophical Research 17 173-187. 1992.
    Traditionally, in the philosophy of mathematics realists claim that mathematical objects exist independently of the human mind, whereas idealists regard them as mental constructions dependent upon human thought.It is tempting for realists to support their view by appeal to our widespread agreement on mathematical results. Roughly speaking, our agreement is explained by the fact that these results are about the same mathematical objects. It is alleged that the idealist’s appeal to mental construc…Read more
  •  58
    Hilary Putnam first published the consistency objection against Ludwig Wittgenstein’s account of mathematics in 1979. In 1983, Putnam and Benacerraf raised this objection against all conventionalist accounts of mathematics. I discuss the 1979 version and the scenario argument, which supports the key premise of the objection. The wide applicability of this objection is not apparent; I thus raise it against an imaginary axiomatic theory T similar to Peano arithmetic in all relevant aspects. I argu…Read more