Semantic theories based on a hierarchy of types have prominently been used to defend the possibility of unrestricted quantification. However, they also pose a prima facie problem for it: each quantifier ranges over at most one level of the hierarchy and is therefore not unrestricted. It is difficult to evaluate this problem without a principled account of what it is for a quantifier to be unrestricted. Drawing on an insight of Russell’s about the relationship between quantification and the structure of (...) predication, we offer such an account. We use this account to examine the problem in three different type-theoretic settings, which are increasingly permissive with respect to predication. We conclude that unrestricted quantification is available in all but the most permissive kind of type theory. (shrink)

Plural logic is widely assumed to have two important virtues: ontological innocence and determinacy. It is claimed to be innocent in the sense that it incurs no ontological commitments beyond those already incurred by the first-order quantifiers. It is claimed to be determinate in the sense that it is immune to the threat of non-standard interpretations that confronts higher-order logics on their more traditional, set-based semantics. We challenge both claims. Our challenge is based on a Henkin-style semantics for plural logic (...) that does not resort to sets or set-like objects to interpret plural variables, but adopts the view that a plural variable has many objects as its values. Using this semantics, we also articulate a generalized notion of ontological commitment which enables us to develop some ideas of earlier critics of the alleged ontological innocence of plural logic. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive and systematic introduction to the linguistics of humor, exploring not only theoretical linguistic analyses, but also topics from applied linguistics. It will be a valuable resource for students from advanced undergraduate level upwards, particularly those coming to linguistics from related disciplines.

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)

Questo saggio, risultato del lavoro seminariale svolto presso la Fondazione Centro Studi Campostrini, avanza una proposta teoricasulla base di un’ipotesi. L’ipotesi è che quando usiamo il vocabolariodella credenza diciamo qualcosa di specifico e irriducibile adaltre nozioni. Alla ricerca del nucleo di irriducibilità e specificitàdella credenza Giuseppe Di Salvatore scarta tutte quelle forme dicredenza che dipendono in maniera più o meno diretta da unaconsiderazione in termini di conoscenza o da un’implicazione dellaverità. Se alcuni tipi di giustificazione della credenza possono essereutili (...) a individuarne l’irriducibilità, solo le credenze primitive, unacomplessa nozione di “credenza soggettiva” e un originale modellofiduciario della credenza fungono da buoni candidati per difenderela specificità della credenza. Dopo la discussione di alcune tesi diLudwig Wittgenstein e il ricorso a fonti eterogenee, da William Jamesa Henry Habberley Price fino a Niklas Luhmann, l’autore proponela nozione originale di “credenza progressiva” come il migliorcandidato che confermi l’ipotesi di partenza. In essa una precisaidea di rischio e la fiducia, al cui dibattito è dedicata un’ampiaattenzione, contribuiscono a delineare la credenza progressivainsieme ad alcuni suoi aspetti soggettivi, così profilandola comeuna postura sperimentale. Il saggio si completa con una riflessionesulla peculiarità della questione filosofica della credenza religiosa,la quale viene approcciata nella sua preliminare generalità, quindiconfrontata con la credenza progressiva. (shrink)

Proclus, successor of the School of Athens in the fifth century AD, is one of the last great voices of a pagan polytheistic world in crisis in the face of the gradual rise of Christianity. His writing bears witness not only to one of the most influential metaphysical representations for the constitution of the idea of a philosophical "system" based on a complex "language game" based on the conceptual sphere of "order" and "unity", but also of an attempt to reconcile (...) rhetorics with philosophy. In the three chapters in which the book is structured (style, system, unity), then, a conscious intention is evident in Proclus, to adapt the content of his systematic metaphysics to literary form. Hence there is a consistency traced in Proclus' stylistic choices, with the aesthetic norms of a rhetorical canon, probably established in the cycle of readings of the Neoplatonic school. His writing bears witness not only to one of the most influential metaphysical representations for the constitution of the idea of a philosophical "system" based on a complex "language game" based on the conceptual sphere of "order" and "unity", but also of an attempt to reconcile rhetorics with philosophy. In the three chapters in which the book is structured (style, system, unity), then, a conscious intention is evident in Proclus, to adapt the content of his systematic metaphysics to literary form. Hence there is a consistency traced in Proclus' stylistic choices, with the aesthetic norms of a rhetorical canon, probably established in the cycle of readings of the Neoplatonic school. The way in which expressive "art" is subordinated in Proclus to philosophy is one of the most emblematic examples of a development in late antiquity, that of the enkuklios paideia - the union of all the arts necessary for the formation of man - that would later constitute in the Latin world the cycle of liberal arts. (shrink)

After analysing Habermas's philosophical evolution from his theory of interests to his late pragmatic realism, I will focus on the problems of this last conception, trying to draw a plausible way out which avoids both naturalistic reductionism and a too weak form of realism.

Cette enquête est motivée par la coexistence dans l’Antiquité tardive de trois mots exprimant d’une façon différente la lecture : ἀνάγνωσις, qui signifie « lire à haute voix » ; συνανάγνωσις, c’est-à-dire « lire avec quelqu’un » ; ἔντευξις, qui, parmi différentes significations, présente celle de « lecture » au sens général. À partir du V e siècle ap. J.-C., leur emploi est strictement lié à deux phénomènes importants : le premier est l’introduction des mots ἀνάγνωσις et συνανάγνωσις dans la (...) pratique d’enseignement de l’école néoplatonicienne comme synonymes indiquant une lecture exégétique des œuvres anciennes par le maître ; le deuxième concerne la diffusion de la formule « ceux qui lisent » (ἐντυγχάνοντες) ou « ceux qui vont lire » (ἐντευξόμενοι) dans les avertissements au lecteur des premiers commentaires composés directement sous forme écrite dans l’Antiquité tardive. Cette étude vise à démontrer que dans le milieu de l’école néoplatonicienne le couple ἐντυγχάνοντες / ἐντευξόμενοι est en rapport de conséquence avec le couple ἀνάγνωσις / συνανάγνωσις, exprimant un point de vue différent sur le destinataire : en effet, l’ἀνάγνωσις / συνανάγνωσις, en tant que pratique orale, est immédiatement reçue par l’élève, qui possède les aptitudes et les compétences appropriées pour comprendre ; le commentaire, en revanche, en tant que transposition de l’enseignement à l’écrit, doit faire face à deux difficultés : l’explicitation ponctuelle du sens caché dans les textes anciens que les lecteurs ont déjà sous les yeux (ἐντυγχάνοντες) ; et la persuasion d’un public de lecteurs (ἐντευξόμενοι), qui liront le commentaire. (shrink)

Issues relating to the migration of entire populations and to religious and political integralism have thrown the paradigm of ‘inclusion’ into crisis by challenging the already fragile equilibrium. This necessitates a push for deeper answers, not merely those imposed by a passing need. Balbo’s current reflections allow us to re-think the dilemma of our relationship with the ‘other’ through the paradigm of the ‘dialectic integration’, which by referring to the ‘sublation’ or experiential ‘going through’ seems to promote integral human development (...) in a more efficient way. Thanks to this, ‘differences are unified without destroying each other’, and thus, are mutually enriched in being: each one can improve creatively, not against, but with, for, through, and thanks to the ‘other’. (shrink)

The book contains essays in honor of Victor Raskin. The contributions are all directly related to some of the major areas of work in which Raskin's scholarship has spanned for decades. The obvious connecting idea is the encyclopedic script-based foundation of lexical meaning, which informs his pioneering work in semantics in the 1970s and 1980s. The first part of the book collects articles directly concerned with script-based semantics, which examine both the theoretical and methodological premises of the idea and its (...) applications. Script-based semantics is the foundation of both Raskin's ground-breaking work in humor research (addressed by the articles in part 2) and in Ontological semantics (addressed in part 3), the most recent development of script-based semantics. The fourth part is dedicated to a less-known, but equally important, strand of Raskin's research, the applications of linguistics to other fields, including writing, lexicography, and professional applications (e,g., tourism). Overall, the book provides and up-to-date, in-depth discussion of an influential strand of the discussion on semantics and its most recent developments and influence on other seemingly unrelated fields, such as Cognitive Linguistics. (shrink)

Sentences that exhibit sensitivity to order (e.g. 'John and Mary arrived at school in that order' and 'Mary and John arrived at school in that order') present a challenge for the standard formulation of plural logic. In response, some authors have advocated new versions of plural logic based on fine-grained notions of plural reference, such as serial reference (Hewitt 2012) and articulated reference (Ben-Yami 2013). The aim of this article is to show that sensitivity to order should be accounted for (...) without altering the standard formulation of plural logic. In particular, sensitivity to order does not call for a fine-grained notion of plural reference. We point out that the phenomenon in question is quite broad and that current proposals are not equipped to deal with the full range of cases in which order plays a role. Then we develop an alternative and unified account, which locates the phenomenon not in the way in which plural terms can refer, but in the meaning of special expressions such as 'in that order' and 'respectively'. (shrink)

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)

In constructional ontology, entities emerge by construction, that is, from the application of constructors to objects. We explore this approach to ontology, focusing on three modules: the constructors, the inputs to the constructors, and the constructional process. Our aim is to identify and assess some key theoretical choices arising in an ontology of this kind.

Semantic interpretations of both natural and formal languages are usually taken to involve the specification of a domain of entities with respect to which the sentences of the language are to be evaluated. A question that has received much attention of late is whether there is unrestricted quantification, quantification over a domain comprising absolutely everything there is. Is there a discourse or inquiry that has absolute generality? After framing the debate, this article provides an overview of the main arguments for (...) and against the possibility of unrestricted quantification, highlighting some of the broader implications of the debate. (shrink)

The Vitruvian Man of Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most famous and most studied drawings over the world as well as one of the most reproduced ones, e.g. in coins, space suit patches, books and movies. The aim of the present work is to discuss the Vitruvian Man as a figurative representation of the Leonardo’s scientific method. Our analysis is based on scientific elements both present in the drawing and provided by Leonardo in his approach to this drawing. (...) Our thesis is that the square symbolizes the measurable physical world and that the man inscribed within the square refers to the physics measurement process based on the operational definition of quantities, including the measurement unit system and the quantities conversion factors. Therefore, the measurement process is fundamental for the Leonardo’s approach to the scientific knowledge, albeit, the drawing also suggests that this latter does not correspond with the true knowledge. The circle, which has a different center with respect to the square, symbolizes the truth, to which the man inscribed in the square yearns, without ever achieving it, the truth being reachable only by the man inscribed within the circle. (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)

Since the Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine's dissipative structures and the outstanding work by Maturana and Varela, an exhaustive idea of what human mind is has lost its fascinating value and did not fund an epistemology anymore, falling down in the abrupt concept of a machinery or a mechanism. A failure, somehow, in interpreting what is life and the human being, arose from the dismiss of a sound epistemology or a basilar philosophic foundation of biology, which yet found an interesting contribution (...) with Maturana's and Varela's scientific efforts. In this book, we attempted to build a new epistemological model of life and the human mind taking into account the intriguing model of Prigogine's dissipative structure. Our model addresses, for the first time, three modalities of dissipation, besides dissipation in the thermodynamic field, introducing a Shannon's dissipation and a relational dissipation, able to give suggestive insights why life arose, mind developed and humans engage relationships. A new hypothesis on the origin of mind is presented. The book is exposed as an encouraging occasion to deepen our biological fundamental rules, giving amazing suggestion on our personal and social behaviours. Finally, it suggests a new psychotherapeutic approach to address important concerns about relation and affective life. (shrink)