Objetivou-se estratificar fatores de risco para doenças cardiovasculares (DCV) em dez anos em jogadores de basquetebol em cadeiras de rodas. O percentual de risco cardiovascular foi estratificado pelos escores de Framingham (ERF) e de Risco Global (ERG). Dos treze jogadores avaliados, 38,46% apresentava sobrepeso e obesidade e 77%, alterações na porcentagem de gordura corporal e na circunferência abdominal. O ERF identificou 15,38% dos jogadores com risco intermediário para desenvolvimento de DCV e pelo ERG, 15,4% dos homens apresentava risco intermediário, 7,7% (...) alto risco por diabetes e 7,7% muito alto risco por doenças ateroscleróticas. Os resultados de composição corporal demonstram uma predisposição para desenvolvimento de DCV, sendo que o ERG identificou indivíduos com alto risco e muito alto risco. Conclui-se que a identificação dos fatores de risco é útil para que ocorra uma maior prevenção das DCV e aconselhamento adequado sobre adoção de hábitos de vida saudáveis por esses indivíduos. (shrink)

. David Chalmerss version of two-dimensional semantics is an attempt at setting up a unified semantic framework that would vindicate both the Fregean and the Kripkean semantic intuitions. I claim that there are three acceptable ways of carrying out such a project, and that Chalmerss theory does not coherently fit any of the three patterns. I suggest that the theory may be seen as pointing to the possibility of a double reading for many linguistic expressions (a double reading which, however, (...) is not easily identified with straightforward semantic ambiguity). (shrink)

Externalism about artifactual words requires that (a) members of an artifactual word’s extension share a common nature, i.e. a set of necessary features, and (b) that possession of such features determines the word’s extension independently of whether the linguistic community is aware of them (ignorance) or can accurately describe them (error). However, many common artifactual words appear to be so used that features that are universally shared among members of their extensions are hard to come by, and even fewer can (...) be plausibly regarded as necessary; morevoer, it is highly doubtful that a speaker could manage to refer to kind A while being utterly ignorant of the role the As play in the A-producing community, and it is no less doubtful that an artifactual word that was used to refer to certain objects would keep referring to them (and be regarded as having referred to them) once it has been shown that the associated description is utterly false of such objects, the reason being that we could easily make things that do fit the associated description. Against generalized externalism, it is suggested that artifactual words come in (at least) three different semantic varieties: a few have an externalist semantics, others have an internalist semantics, still others have neither but rather behave as “family names” in Wittgenstein’s sense. (shrink)

In the following, I will mean by ‘verificationism’ the doctrine according to which understanding a sentence entails that one knows how to verify it, i.e. how to determine its truth value. It is not the only possible meaning of ‘verificationism’, nor perhaps the most common. However, it is with reference to this sense of ‘verificationism’ that I am going to ask the question whether the Tractatus is committed to verificationism.

Different notions of analysis have been both theorized and put to use in early analytic philosophy. Two of them stand out: connective analysis and analysis as paraphrase. The latter played a central role in the development of analytic philosophy from Frege to Quine and beyond. With the advent of formal semantics of natural language in the 1970s, paraphrase came to be characterizable as translation into a formal “target language”. While I claim that the method cannot achieve its original philosophical aims, (...) I insist that, in spite of them, it is far from being a theoretically empty operation and that it lives on in some contemporary philosophical enterprises. (shrink)

The connection between sense, verification, and mode of verification never entirely disappeared from Wittgenstein’s philosophy. However, there was a time – the years 1929– 1932 – when Wittgenstein upheld explicitly verificationist views: he identified a proposition’s meaning with the mode or method of its verification, and he said that to understand a proposition is to know how the proposition is verified. This has been regarded as puzzling, in view of the fact that the Tractatus is usually considered not to be (...) committed to verificationism; indeed, it is usually regarded as incompatible with verificationism. Several people have proposed to revise such a received view: Michael Wrigley (1989) has claimed that verificationism must be implicit in the Tractatus; and P. M.S. Hacker (1986) has argued that the Tractatus, though not verificationist, is not as distant from verificationism as it has been taken to be. In another paper (Marconi, forthcoming) I discuss their views. Here I will just notice that, even if one regards the Tractatus as implicitly verificationist, the problem remains of explaining why and how did Wittgenstein reach the explicitly – indeed, blatantly – verificationist outlook of the early Thirties. This is the first question I would like to try to answer in this paper. The second question is, why was such rampant verificationism short-lived? Or in other words, why was verificationism de-emphasized so that, although verificationist themes are undoubtedly present in the later Wittgenstein’s writings, the extreme formulations of the early Thirties tend to disappear after 1933? (shrink)

Chinese traditional characters share with Peirce’s existential graphs the fact of being endowed with an object-language that they describe through a nonlinear syntax and in an iconic way. Here iconicity is not restricted to images and perceptive similarity since diagrams and graphic metaphors are iconic too. The graphs are shown to be a borderland between Western traditional logic and Chinese traditional writing and culture, so the écart (Jullien’s concept for cultural distance) between characters and graphs is preserved even though graphs (...) break with the Western prejudice in favor of conventionality at the expense of iconicity in logical systems. The take-home lesson for the study of writing systems is to substitute the orality-writing duality with the interplay among orality, writing, and pictures thus shifting from a linguistic typology to a semiotic one. (shrink)

"Diego Marconi analizza in questo saggio alcune tappe fondamentali della riflessione di Wittgenstein, illlustrando i motivi per cui gran parte della discussione filosofica odierna risalga all'esperienza intellettuale del filosofo di Vienna: dal "sapere senza fondamenti" al "pensiero debole", dalla filosofia analitica all'ermeneutica.

In discussions in cognitive science, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and linguistics, it is often taken for granted that we (as well as some machines) have certain abilities, such as the ability to do multiplications or the ability to identify grammatical sentences. Such abilities are regarded as in some sense infinitary, and they are identified with, or taken to be based upon, knowledge of the relevant rules (the rule of multiplication, or the rules of grammar). In what follows, I (...) argue that whatever such abilities we do possess are not infinitary in any plausible sense. Therefore, the (alleged) infinitary nature of our (or a machine's) knowledge of such rules cannot be accounted for by bringing it back to infinitary abilities. (shrink)

Je m’efforcerai de donner plus de poids aux doutes de Pascal Engel relatifs à deux affirmations de Timothy Williamson dans Philosophy of Philosophy: que les expériences de pensée philosophiques portent sur une possibilité métaphysique par opposition à une possibilité conceptuelle, et que le raisonnement contrefactuel joue un rôle crucial pour atteindre les conclusions modales pertinentes dans les arguments fondés sur des expériences de pensée. Dans le premier cas, je soutiendrai qu’à moins de comprendre la notion de conceptuel dans un sens (...) psychologique, il est difficile de saisir la différence entre des expériences de pensée qui « portent sur des concepts » ou possibilités conceptuelles et des expériences de pensée qui « portent sur des êtres réels » ou possibilités métaphysiques. Dans le second cas, je soutiendrai qu’il n’est pas clair que les contrefactuels sont des prémisses indispensables dans des arguments fondés sur des expériences de pensée ou que le raisonnement contrefactuel prend l’avantage sur le raisonnement déductif ordinaire pour atteindre des conclusions modales. (shrink)

I discuss Paolo Casalegno's objections to my views about semantic normativity as presented in my book Lexical Competence (MIT Press, 1997) and in a later paper. I argue that, contrary to Casalegno's claim, the phenomenon of semantic deference can be accounted for without having to appeal to an “objective” notion of reference, i.e. to the view that words have the reference they have independently of whatever knowledge or ability is available to or within the linguistic community. Against both Casalegno and (...) Timothy Williamson, I argue that a semantic norm based on objective reference would be really inapplicable, even though a speaker might believe to be guided by such a norm. (shrink)

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein addressed the issue of beliefs that are not to be argued for, either because any grounds we could produce are less certain than the belief they are supposed to ground, or because our interlocutors would not accept our reasons. However, he did not address the closely related issue of justifying a conclusion to interlocutors who do not see that it follows from premises they accept. In fact, Wittgenstein had discussed the issue in the Remarks on the (...) Foundations of Mathematics; his view had been that certain inferential practices are constitutive of our notions of thinking and inferring. I argue that his treatment of unfounded beliefs in On Certainty essentially replicates, mutatis mutandis, his treatment of basic logical inference. (shrink)

A emoção sempre foi definida como um estado afetivo que se contrapõe à cognição ou à atividade racional. Tal distinção é hoje radicalmente negada pelas pesquisas em neurociências. As emoções, stricto sensu, se expressam sob forma de manifestações intensas, abruptas, inesperadas. Convém, por isso, reconhecer que a emoção envolve uma experiência sensorial e uma dimensão comportamental ou expressiva representada pela resposta motora que ela suscita . Assim, as emoções comportariam sentimentos e/ou atitudes , cujas manifestações variam segundo a intensidade, as (...) circunstâncias e a natureza dos agentes desencadeadores. Dessa gama enorme de possibilidades depende a caracterização precisa dos estados mentais que tais sensações suscitam e as formas de conduta que elas engendram. A atitude emocional, todavia, nem sempre se distingue do comportamento voluntário, aquele guiado pela decisão do agente. Algumas emoções não somente desencadeiam certas formas de comportamento, como são modos apropriados de os indivíduos se adaptarem às situações vividas. É dessa interação que trata o nosso trabalho. (shrink)

In this article I first sketch what I take to be two Quinean arguments for the continuity of philosophy with science. After examining Wittgenstein’s reasons for not accepting the arguments, I conclude that they are ineffective on Wittgenstein’s assumptions. Next, I ask three related questions: Where do Quine’s and Wittgenstein’s philosophical views essentially diverge? Did Wittgenstein have an argument against the continuity of science with philosophy? Did Wittgenstein believe until the end of his philosophical career that scientific results are philosophically (...) irrelevant? It will be seen that all three questions are related with Wittgenstein’s distinction between conceptual and factual issues. I conclude that the opposition between Quinean philosophy and Wittgensteinian philosophy is genuine. (shrink)

One of the most common strategies in philosophical dispute is that of accusing the opponent of begging the question, that is, of assuming or presupposing what is to be proved. Thus, it happens quite often that the credibility of a philosophical argument is infected by the suspicion of begging the question. In many cases it is an open question whether the suspicion is grounded, and the answer lurks somewhere in the dark of what the proponent of the argument does not (...) say. This is why it may take years, or even centuries, before the begging of the question is brought to light. But few philosophers would deny that once it is established that a certain argument begs the question, that argument has to be rejected without hesitation: question-begging arguments are bad arguments, hence one should not appeal to them. Logicians traditionally classify begging the question as a fallacy, that is, as a bad reasoning that seems good at first sight. The fallacy is known under the name of petitio principii. This paper originated in our dissatisfaction with definitions of petitio principii found here and there in logic textbooks. Although it is uncontroversial that there is something wrong with begging the question, it is not clear from those definitions what is wrong. (shrink)

The analysis is restricted to the architectural aspect. It puts in evidence a dialectical procedure which makes the gnoseological importance of the verb to look stand out clearly. The pharisee's knowledge is based on religious convictions ; that of the blind man on his experience.

There are two prevalent accounts of semantic normativity: the prescriptive account, which can be found in some of Wittgenstein’s remarks, and the regularity account, which may have been Sellars’s view and is nowadays defended by some antinormativists. On the former account, meanings are norms that govern the use of words; on the latter, they are regularities of use which, in themselves, do not engender any prescriptions. I argue that only the prescriptive view can account for certain platitudes about meaning, which (...) motivate the very idea of semantic normativity. After some preliminary clarifications about the form that alleged semantic norms should take in order to be prima facie plausible, I argue—against some antinormativists—that whatever normativity is involved in the meaning of words cannot be brought back to a general norm of truth as distinct from specifically semantic norms, for semantic norms already involve a norm of truth. Next, I examine what I take to be the strongest objection to semantic normativity, namely the identification of meaning with use: as use is just a bunch of facts, it cannot be attributed any normative import. Nowadays, this view has been defended by Paul Horwich. After criticizing Horwich’s claim that meaning, though not normative in itself, has unmediated normative implications, I propose a different view of the relation between use and meaning, on which meaning is not quite identical with use but is grounded on use. I propose as a model the idea of a hyperconformist social system: a system in which customs, and only customs, generate norms. I suggest that language is such a system, and describe two reasons why it is plausible for language to work like that. Finally, I analyze statements of meaning on the model of Ruth Millikan “pushmi-pullyu” representations, i.e. as having both descriptive and normative import. I point out that, however, there are exceptions to meaning’s being grounded on use, as there are cases in which semantic norms are dictated by authorities of several kinds. Lastly, I briefly discuss the suggestion that meaning supervenes on use, showing that, aside from its inherent difficulties, it does not explain why meaning would supervene on use. (shrink)

1. The issue - The reflection I am proposing was stimulated by some recent research on the mental processing of proper names. However, the issue I am raising is independent of both the particular nature of such results and the fact that they are accepted as well established. The question I would like to ask is whether (neuro)psychological results on the mental processing of language can falsify (or confirm) semantic theses about natural language. By a semantic thesis I mean something (...) like any of the following. (shrink)

The claim that truth is mind dependent has some initial plausibility only if truth bearers are taken to be mind dependent entities such as beliefs or statements. Even on that assumption, however, the claim is not uncontroversial. If it is spelled out as the thesis that “in a world devoid of mind nothing would be true”, then everything depends on how the phrase ‘true in world w’ is interpreted. If ‘A is true in w’ is interpreted as ‘A is true (...) of w’ (i.e. ‘w satisfies A’s truth conditions’, the claim need not be true. If on the other hand it is interpreted as ‘A is true of w and exists in w’ then the claim is trivially true, though devoid of any antirealistic efficacy. Philosophers like Heidegger and Rorty, who hold that truth is mind dependent but reality is not, must regard such principles as “A if and only if it is true that A” as only contingently true, which may be a good reason to reject the mind dependence of truth anyway. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the semantics of proper names from two different points of view. As everyboy knows, there is a standard account of the semantics of proper names - it is Kripke's account, essentially. And there is a certain amount of neuropsychological research on proper names, or on the mental representation, or processing of proper names -not too small an amount, at this point. There is a certain amount of evidence, and there are a few theories, none of (...) them regarded as definitive, if I read the state of the art correctly. It may be thought that such neuropsychological work is simply irrelevant to the concerns of semantics, and vice-versa. For semantics is concerned with the truth conditions of sentences per se, and neuropsychology has nothing to say about that; neuropsychology, on the other hand, is concerned with several mental performances involving proper names -retrieving them from memory, or using them as cues to a person's face- and with their place within semantic memory, and semantics has nothing to say about that. The truth conditions that semantics is after are defined on the ground of a metaphysical notion of truth, whereas the only notion of truth that can be relevant to psychology is an epistemological notion: i.e. psychology may be interested in, and may have something to say about the procedures by which we come to regard a sentence as true, not about the conditions on which it is "objectively" true. (shrink)

In questa comunicazione, non intendo contribuire all’analisi di questa o quella classe di espressioni linguistiche. Vorrei invece dare un contributo alla nostra consapevolezza (chiamiamola pure “filosofica”) della funzione che il concetto di forma logica svolge nelle nostre analisi. Più in particolare, vorrei mettere in guardia contro certe possibili conseguenze di quello che a me pare un uso “metafisico” dell’idea di forma logica. Vorrei dimostrare che una certa eredità filosofica, per lo pi...

Chapter VI discusses a few assumptions which underlie the proposed reconstruction of Hegel's procedures. It is shown that certain equivalents of such assumptions are either explicitly accepted by Hegel, or they are consequences of theses he subscribed to. Finally, it is suggested that some of these assumptions envisage a conception of language and philosophy which has an interesting parallel in Wittgenstein's later work. Such a conception sets philosophy sharply apart from the sciences, and deemphasizes the formation of contradictions. The general (...) relationship between vagueness and contradiction is briefly explored to show that some familiar contradiction-generating procedures can be seen to be based on vagueness of the relevant theoretical expressions. ;Chapter V deals with the Aufhebung. After an examination of Hegel's own theory of sublation, and an analysis of some textual examples, it is shown that some Aufhebung-procedures can be modelled by certain patterns of argument concerning simple algebraic structures. A few Hegelian concepts, such as "opposition," "unity," "passing over," "reflection," are partially explicated in the process. ;Chapter IV plays a pivotal role in the dissertation. It explains the generation of dialectical contradictions as stemming from syntactic and intensional indeterminacy of the theoretical terms. It is shown that Hegel's conceptual terms have no well-determined sense, so that their senses can be identified in different and possibly inconsistent ways. It is also shown that they can be made to play different syntactic roles, for no rigid determination of their syntactic function is assumed. This, again, may create contradictions. Both kinds of indeterminacy are related to Hegel's borrowing of his conceptual terms from a "natural" philosophical koine. ;Chapter III is an analysis of Hegel's language in the Logic. It tries to determine the grammatical and semantical status of Hegel's conceptual terms and to explicate the Hegelian use of the copula as occurring in certain typical sentential forms. ;The presence of the so-called "dialectical contradictions" is the most evident logico-linguistic peculiarity of Hegel's text. After a discussion of Hegel's theory of contradiction, and of some of its interpretations, it is argued that any satisfactory account of the dialectical method must explain the formation of contradictions on the basis of other logico-linguistic features of Hegel's text. ;Chapter II deals with a few such explanations which have been offered by modern interpreters of Hegel. Use of contemporary analytic concepts in the logical and linguistic analysis of Hegel's text is justified with reference to the Carnapian categories of "explication" and "rational reconstruction." ;The literature on Hegel's dialectic has made important contributions to an understanding of its nature both as a metaphysical theory of reality and as a philosophical attitude towards the human world. However, many recent interpreters agree that no satisfactory progress has been made in understanding dialectic as a method. This dissertation identifies the dialectical method as the specific form of Hegel's philosophical discourse, and tries to bring out its basic logico-linguistic features. The Science of Logic is chosen as the field of inquiry, because of its crucial position among Hegel's mature works. (shrink)