Plural expressions found in natural languages allow us to talk about many objects simultaneously. Plural logic — a logical system that takes plurals at face value — has seen a surge of interest in recent years. This book explores its broader significance for philosophy, logic, and linguistics. What can plural logic do for us? Are the bold claims made on its behalf correct? After introducing plural logic and its main applications, the book provides a systematic analysis of the relation between (...) this logic and other theoretical frameworks such as set theory, mereology, higher-order logic, and modal logic. The applications of plural logic rely on two assumptions, namely that this logic is ontologically innocent and has great expressive power. These assumptions are shown to be problematic. The result is a more nuanced picture of plural logic's applications than has been given thus far. Questions about the correct logic of plurals play a central role in the final chapters, where traditional plural logic is rejected in favor of a "critical" alternative. The most striking feature of this alternative is that there is no universal plurality. This leads to a novel approach to the relation between the many and the one. In particular, critical plural logic paves the way for an account of sets capable of solving the set-theoretic paradoxes. (shrink)

Quine maintained that philosophical and scientific theorizing should be conducted in an untyped language, which has just one style of variables and quantifiers. By contrast, typed languages, such as those advocated by Frege and Russell, include multiple styles of variables and matching kinds of quantification. Which form should our theories take? In this article, I argue that expressivity does not favour typed languages over untyped ones.

In linguistics, the dominant approach to the semantics of plurals appeals to mereology. However, this approach has received strong criticisms from philosophical logicians who subscribe to an alternative framework based on plural logic. In the first part of the article, we offer a precise characterization of the mereological approach and the semantic background in which the debate can be meaningfully reconstructed. In the second part, we deal with the criticisms and assess their logical, linguistic, and philosophical significance. We identify four (...) main objections and show how each can be addressed. Finally, we compare the strengths and shortcomings of the mereological approach and plural logic. Our conclusion is that the former remains a viable and well-motivated framework for the analysis of plurals. (shrink)

A prominent objection against the logicality of second-order logic is the so-called Overgeneration Argument. However, it is far from clear how this argument is to be understood. In the first part of the article, we examine the argument and locate its main source, namely, the alleged entanglement of second-order logic and mathematics. We then identify various reasons why the entanglement may be thought to be problematic. In the second part of the article, we take a metatheoretic perspective on the matter. (...) We prove a number of results establishing that the entanglement is sensitive to the kind of semantics used for second-order logic. These results provide evidence that by moving from the standard set-theoretic semantics for second-order logic to a semantics which makes use of higher-order resources, the entanglement either disappears or may no longer be in conflict with the logicality of second-order logic. (shrink)

This article addresses the questions “why do we still have to read Kant today?”, “what kind of responses can he give us in the era of global terrorism?”. In other terms, today, “What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?”. Because his concept of renewed religious laity, distant from both fanatic fundamentalism and indifferent secularism, becomes the compass we can only rely on and authentically trust in the relationship with the other. Issues identified on reading the interesting kantian work, (...) studied during the last academic year and discussed in the meeting of the 17th March 2017 between Liceo Classico “La Farina” and DICAM of the University in Messina, in the context of the project Tradition and Contemporaneity, set by the Italian Philosophical Society (SFI). (shrink)

The Overgeneration Argument is a prominent objection against the model-theoretic account of logical consequence for second-order languages. In previous work we have offered a reconstruction of this argument which locates its source in the conflict between the neutrality of second-order logic and its alleged entanglement with mathematics. Some cases of this conflict concern small large cardinals. In this article, we show that in these cases the conflict can be resolved by moving from a set-theoretic implementation of the model-theoretic account to (...) one which uses higher-order resources. (shrink)

According to the singular conception of reality, there are objects and there are singular properties, i.e. properties that are instantiated by objects separately. It has been argued that semantic considerations about plurals give us reasons to embrace a plural conception of reality. This is the view that, in addition to singular properties, there are plural properties, i.e. properties that are instantiated jointly by many objects. In this article, I propose and defend a novel semantic account of plurals which dispenses with (...) plural properties and thus undermines the semantic argument in favor of the plural conception of reality. (shrink)

What is absolutely unrestricted quantification? We distinguish two theoretical roles and identify two conceptions of absolute generality: maximally strong generality and maximally inclusive generality. We also distinguish two corresponding kinds of absolute domain. A maximally strong domain contains every potential counterexample to a generalisation. A maximally inclusive domain is such that no domain extends it. We argue that both conceptions of absolute generality are legitimate and investigate the relations between them. Although these conceptions coincide in standard settings, we show how (...) they diverge under more complex assumptions about the structure of meaningful predication, such as cumulative type theory. We conclude by arguing that maximally strong generality is the more theoretically valuable conception. (shrink)

Personality research has functioned under the prevailing influence of middle-level theorizing sufficiently long to justify consideration of the effects of this approach. Despite improvements in precision and testability of hypotheses, with resulting increases in volume of research, the pervasive effect of several practical dangers of middle-level theorizing are identified. These involve the unappreciated failure to test comprehensive theories when concepts from them have been extirpated, overly-weak justification of research methods, a vanity of small differences, and insufficient theoretical precision in framing (...) empirical efforts. Ways of avoiding these dangers are explored, and it is concluded that the most promising is a comparative analytic stance toward inquiry that reconsiders comprehensive theorizing without courting ambiguity and imprecision. (shrink)

È la morte la cartina al tornasole che rivela l’atteggiamento esistenziale che si concretizza nel rapporto con l’altro. Dal modo in cui la si valuta, e, conseguentemente, dal modo in cui si vive, dipende il grado di autenticità della propria esistenza. Per argomentare la suddetta tesi ricorreremo al racconto di Tolstòj La morte di Ivàn Il’íc.

Nell’illustrare la specificità dell’approccio mitico-simbolico o ‘mitologico’ nell’analisi dei fenomeni politici il saggio evidenzia l’esigenza di un rinnovamento critico della concezione antropologica, che non limitandosi all’analisi della “finitudine”, della “condizionatezza” e “nullità”,dialetticamente comprenda il ricorso alla tematica della libertà intesa come liberazione e del connesso ineludibile problema di educarla.

Prima parte. Genealogia heideggeriana del pensiero di Luig Pareyson e di Gianni Vattimo -- Seconda parte. Ontologie ed ermeneutiche del cristianesimo -- Conclusione -- Appendice I. Intervista a Gianni Vattimo -- Appendice II. Intervista a Claudio Ciancio -- Bibliografia. Martin Heidegger ; Luigi Pareyson ; Gianni Vattimo ; Altri autori.

Abstract: L’articolo si propone di individuare i caratteri costitutivi della cura attraverso un’analisi simbolica della parabola del buon Samaritano, nella quale il rapporto con l’altro presuppone la nostalgia del totalmente Altro. Key words: simbolo, liberazione, responsabilità, agape, attraversare, coscienza.

Acceptable analyticities, i.e. contradictions or tautologies, constitute problematic evidence for the idea that language includes a deductive system. In recent discussion, two accounts have been presented in the literature to explain the available evidence. According to one of the accounts, grammatical analyticities are accessible to the system but a pragmatic strengthening repair mechanism can apply and prevent the structures from being actually interpreted as contradictions or tautologies. The proposed data, however, leaves it open whether other versions of the meaning modulation (...) operation are required. Novel evidence we present argues that a loosening version of the repair mechanism must be available. Our observation concerns acceptable lexical contradictions that cannot be rescued if only a strengthening version of the pragmatic strategy is available. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and criticize a number of influential anti-skeptical strategies inspired by Wittgenstein’s remarks on ‘hinges’. Furthermore, I argue that, following Wittgen- stein’s analogy between ‘hinges’ and ‘rules of grammar’, we should be able to get rid of Cartesian skeptical scenarios as nonsensical, even if apparently intelligible, combinations of signs.

In this paper we focus on the logicality of language, i.e. the idea that the language system contains a deductive device to exclude analytic constructions. Puzzling evidence for the logicality of language comes from acceptable contradictions and tautologies. The standard response in the literature involves assuming that the language system only accesses analyticities that are due to skeletons as opposed to standard logical forms. In this paper we submit evidence in support of alternative accounts of logicality, which reject the stipulation (...) of a natural logic and assume instead the meaning modulation of nonlogical terms. (shrink)

Lanthimos’ film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, though widely unpopular, can be seen as a profound interpretation of the question of our freedom to choose and how unconditional love leads us to self-responsibility. The film is rich with symbolism which echoes Iphigenia with subtle Christian references, such as the use of Schubert’s Jesus Christus and Bach’s St. John Passion. Perhaps the film has been poorly received also because of the actors’ striking performances which, without seeing the meaning of the (...) story, could be considered wooden. Rather, the coldness of the characters is intentional because it portrays the shirking of responsibility for our actions which turns a person into a lifeless being. Keywords: Agape, freedom, Greek tragedy, justice, responsibility. (shrink)

This note focuses on the interaction between logic and grammar and discusses whether logical rules are irrelevant for syntactic formation. Classical evidence for the independence of syntax from logic comes from the acceptability of analytic propositions. Based on this piece of evidence, various authors in traditional discussions pronounced that language is illogical. This note focuses instead on two ways to oppose such pronouncements. In Gramscian linguistics, one can maintain that language is not illogical by broadening the notion of language one (...) adopts. In an alternative account we submit, one can oppose those pronouncements by restricting the notion of analyticity which is assumed to be relevant for syntactic formation. (shrink)

In this book an introduction to the grammatical view of the scalar implicature phenomenon is presented. A detailed overview is offered concerning the embeddability of the exhaustivity operator, and the contextual dependance of the alternatives generation process. The theoretical implications of the grammatical view with respect to the abductive character of the scalar implicature are also discussed. A pragmatic account of the assertive content is proposed in correlation with a blindness-based account of the semantic content carried by scalar sentences, in (...) order to ensure that the information globally conveyed by the latter is sometimes different from the semantic content automatically generated. -/- . (shrink)

Negli ultimi quindici anni la letteratura filosofico-linguistica ha registrato un rinnovato interesse per i meccanismi di implicatura, specialmente del tipo scalare. In buona parte, l’interesse stato suscitato dall’emergere di una prospettiva grammaticale, secondo la quale i fenomeni di implicatura scalare sarebbero conseguenza di un meccanismo interpretativo incassato nella logica delle lingue naturali, e quindi riferibile al componente semantico dell’architettura cognitiva umana. L’obiettivo di questo testo fornire una presentazione di alcuni tra gli argomenti che hanno motivato l’emergere della prospettiva grammaticale. Inizieremo, (...) con una descrizione del fenomeno di implicatura scalare, sostanzialmente condivisa dai fautori delle diverse prospettive. Quindi, approfondiremo la nostra comprensione del fenomeno, pre- sentando alcuni punti fermi della prospettiva pragmaticista, e mostrandone i punti di debolezza individuati dai fautori della prospettiva grammaticale. Infine, presenteremo la prospettiva grammaticale, presentando da una parte i vantaggi che questo approccio presenta rispetto alla prospettiva pragmaticista, e dall’altra discutendo le sfide che attendono questa nuova prospettiva. (shrink)

Even-like particles have widely been analyzed as inducing scalar and additive presuppositions (cf. Horn 1969; Karttunen & Peters 1979; Rooth 1992; Gast & van der Auwera 2011). However, the additivity of even has been controversial since at least Horn 1992 and increasingly called into question (see Greenberg & Umbach 2021 for references); Greenberg specifically argues that scalar even-like particles can vary in additivity. This claim is surprising in light of the typological study in Gast & van der Auwera 2011, which (...) subsumes even and similar expressions under a larger class of additive particles. Against this background, we present an analysis of Italian addirittura, which with perfino has been described as scalar-additive (Visconti 2005) – but only optionally so – and is chosen preferentially over perfino precisely in those contexts that Greenberg takes to challenge the additivity of even. We argue, drawing on observations in Atayan 2017, that addirittura contrasts with perfino in deriving its scalar alternatives from rhetorical structure rather than focus structure. Once this is recognized we can view addirittura as additive, after all, in a rhetorical sense we describe below. (shrink)

In questa nota si fornisce un esempio preliminare di analisi pragmatica delle strutture musicali. Nell’analisi, la stipulazione di una pragmatica musicale segue strettamente recenti proposte presentate in ambito semantico, in cui si illustrano le potenziali virtù rappresentazionali delle strutture musicali. In particolare, in questa nota si suggerisce la presenza di strategie di ricostruzione dei significati musicali le quali intervengono a prevenire la realizzazione di contenuti semantici contraddittori. L’evidenza utilizzata è ricavata da alcune misure del madrigale primo del II libro dei (...) madrigali di Monteverdi (1590), e dal testo (di T. Tasso) che le accompagna; sviluppi dell’analisi qui proposta dovranno fondarsi su evidenze indipendenti e auspicabilmente naturali. (shrink)

To celebrate his 80th birthday, the Roman universities of Roma Tre and the Pontifical Athenaeum S. Anselmo organised in May 2016 a conference entitled Around Gianni Vattimo. Friends, students and young researchers gathered for a moment of 'conversation' with one of the most important figures in contemporary Italian philosophy to retrace together some of the paths that Vattimo himself traced and opened up during his long academic and political career. Among the various themes of his thought, hermeneutics, Christianity and politics (...) were those privileged by the interventions of these memorable days: these in fact constitute the essential axes of the present volume that makes us re-read the fundamental knots of his philosophy. This work takes place under the banner of a new way of understanding philosophical research, no longer as the conquest of a unique and definitive knowledge, but as an infinite interpretative task, just as Heidegger and Nietzsche, the main authors of reference of the father of 'weak thought', now allow him to understand the search for Being that is given in language. (shrink)

The present paper presents experimental evidence confirming that contextually mismatching scalar implicatures can be generated even when quantifiers range over empty domains. In the literature, this possibility has been interpreted as providing further evidence for a grammatical approach to scalar implicatures. The main result presented here is that scalar sentences with empty domains are judged as more infelicitous when associated with a mismatching implicature than variants with the same empty domains but associated with a non-mismatching implicature. We interpret this result (...) as suggesting that the infelicity judgment associated with the first kind of sentence stems from the cumulative effect of the mismatching implicature and the contextual domain emptiness. Compared to previous literature on blind implicatures, our results indicate that the body of knowledge involved in relevance assignments is restricted to ignoring existential determination while still considering the properties attributed to nonexistent entities. They also show that, while not blocking implicature generation, contextual domain emptiness plays a role in speakers’ evaluation of scalar sentences, reflecting the unconscious nature of scalar implicature generation. (shrink)

Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across many key fields in biology, including genomics, systems biology, development, medicine, evolution, ecology, and systematics. Here we survey the current phenomics landscape, including data resources and handling, and the progress that (...) has been made to accurately capture relevant data descriptions for phenotypes. We present an example of the kind of integration across domains that computable phenotypes would enable, and we call upon the broader biology community, publishers, and relevant funding agencies to support efforts to surmount today's data barriers and facilitate analytical reproducibility. (shrink)

Since the famous passage in which Socrates (Plato 38a5-6) says that the unexamined, and therefore non-reflected, life is not worth living, “reflection” has been a diffuse and iterant term in ethics, moral philosophy, epistemology, political philosophy (Tiberius 2008; Skorupski 2010), but also in psychology (Marsico, Andrisano Ruggieri & Salvatore 2015). This chapter outlines the discussion of reflection and presents the book "Thinking about Onself", a volume that opens a new perspective on the topic of reflection, considering the most recent (...) approaches in both philosophy (namely in epistemology ) and cultural psychology. (shrink)

An introduction to the special issue on epistemic logic and the foundations of game theory edited by Michael Bacharach and Philippe Mongin. Contributors are Michael Bacharach, Robert Stalnaker, Salvatore Modica and Aldo Rustichini, Luc Lismont and Philippe Mongin, and Hyun-Song Shin and Timothy Williamson.