Spring Session 2015
Marcello Frixione (University of Genova)
April 27 Mon — 11.00-13.00
Aula Seminari — Aula Direzione di Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Poetry and "Implicatures"
Abstract. Ernie Lepore (2009) tries to reconcile the so-called Heresy of Paraphrase (according to which poetry cannot be paraphrased or translated) and the Principle of Semantic Innocence – according to which an (unambiguous) word has the same meaning across every context in which it can occur. Lepore’s solutions consists in assuming that poems are in some sense analogous to quotations. It is an interesting proposal, which allows to account for many important aspects of poetry. However, in my opinion, it probably leaves aside many constitutive features of poetic texts. I shall argue that many characteristic traits of poetry (which are relevant for the problem of paraphrase) are more likely to be pragmatic in nature, and are in some sense analogous to conversational implicatures, according to the analysis by Paul Grice.
George Bealer (Yale University)
May 4 MON — 11.00-13.00
Aula Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Concepts and Properties, Analysis and Definition
Abstract.
This paper is the first step in a larger project whose goal is to define the following family of notions in logical terms broadly construed: real definition, essence, logical operation, ontogenetic operation, logical constant, and metaphysical ground. The aim of the paper is to lay out in a more satisfactory way the background framework of concepts and properties needed to carry out the larger project. More specifically, the aim is to set out more clearly the nature of concepts and properties if analysis and definition are to play their proper role in such a framework. The setting for this work is the theory of fine-grained content and, in particular, recalcitrant fine-grained intensional phenomena. The latter include unresolved instances of Frege’s Puzzle, Mates’s Puzzle, Kripke’s Puzzle, and, more to the present purpose, the paradox of analysis and various unresolved substitutivity puzzles involving analysis contexts and definition contexts.
Stefano Di Bella (Milano)
April 20 Mon — 11.00-13.00
Aula Seminari — Aula Direzione di Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Realism versus Conventionalism in Leibniz’s Confrontation with Locke
on the Names for Natural Kinds
Abstract.
“Je ne sais pourquoi on veut toujours chez vous faire dépendre de notre opinion ou connaissance les vertus, les vérités et les espèces. Elles sont dans la nature, soit que nous le sachions ou approuvions ou non: en parler autrement, c’est changer les noms des choses et le langage reçu sans aucun sujet.” (NE III.6.§39, p. 275)
Theophilus’s statement, in the midst of his discussion with Philalethes on the names of substances, seems to express in a lapidary way a basic opposition between Leibniz and Locke we are easily inclined to represent to ourselves: on one hand a bold conventionalistically-minded approach to the language-world relationship, aiming at emphasizing the mind-dependence and relativity of the conceptual framework by which we are accustomed to single out and describe the objects of our knowledge. On the other hand, the vigorous defence of the commonsensical assumption, according to which this framework is rooted in reality.
Actually, this picture reflects Leibniz’s overall attitude in his discussion with Locke in the Nouveaux Essays; I mean, his general concern in contrasting the conventionalist drift of the Essay, derived from the latter’s devastanding attack to the traditional substantialist/essentialist framework. Still, this polemical defence could hide to the reader a deeply- seated background of assumptions and problems, shared by both thinkers, that can be traced back to the beginning of Leibniz’s intellectual career, and makes the contrast of their respective solutions less staightforward than it might appear.
Nor is it easy to spell out exactly the relationship between Locke’s anti-realist concern and his fundamentally descriptivist account of the semantics of substance names. But here also, Leibniz’s defence of essentialism can be hardly captured, as one could expect in line with a standard alternative, by the appeal to a direct reference view of the kind we are nowadays familiar with.
Dorothea Debus (University of York)
April 13 MON — 11.00-13.00
Aula Direzione del Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Shaping Our (Mental) Lives: On the Possibility and Value of Emotion Regulation
Abstract. The present paper is part of a wider project which explores the ways in which subjects take an active part in shaping their own mental lives and the mental lives of others. Here I consider the specific case of our active involvement with our own and others' emotional experiences. The recent empirical literature subsumes relevant phenomena under the title of 'emotion regulation', and drawing on relevant empirical work, in the present context I consider the phenomenon of emotion regulation from a philosophical perspective. I firstly consider the question how emotion regulation is possible, and address that question by determining some of the conditions that need to be met in order for a subject to be able to regulate emotions. I secondly address some axiological issues related to the topic of emotion regulation; that is, I ask why and how emotion regulation might be of value. In addressing these two sets of questions, the present paper in turn hopes to contribute to our understanding of how, more generally, subjects do take an active part in, and thus shape, their own and others' (mental) lives, and why and how different ways of doing so might be more or less valuable.
José Martinez (Barcelona)
March 27 Fri — 14.30-16.30
Aula Seminari — Aula Direzione di Dipartimento (Via Festa del Perdono 7, Milano)
Two criticisms of Camp's analysis of ontological confusion.