Argumenta – Journal of Analytic Philosophy

 

Book Reviews

Issue: Issue 10 • Author/s: Kourken Michaelian, Patrizia Pedrini, Elisabetta Sacchi
Topics: Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Political philosophy, Theoretical philosophy

Fiction, Imagination, and Normative Rationality [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 11 • Author/s: Malvina Ongaro
Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of science, Theoretical philosophy

Rationality is a cornerstone of economics. The properties defining rationality are embodied by the Rational Agent, whose actions are prescriptive for economic agents. However, the Rational Agent is a fictional character: so why should real agents act like it? The Rational Agent takes its normative force from the arguments in support of the properties it embodies. In this paper, I explore the grounds for the normative force of the Rational Agent by looking at one of them. I explain the compelling pull of the famous Dutch Book argument using tools…

Introduction: COVID-19 Models and the Difficult Balance between Methods and Values [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 13 • Author/s: Margherita Benzi, Francesco Barone-Adesi, Raffaella Campaner
Topics: Introduction, Philosophy of science, Theoretical philosophy

Agent-Based Models as Etio-Prognostic Explanations [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 13 • Author/s: Olaf Dammann
Topics: Epistemology, Philosophy of science, Theoretical philosophy

Agent-based models (ABMs) are one type of simulation model used in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast to equation-based models, ABMs are algorithms that use individual agents and attribute changing characteristics to each one, multiple times during multiple iterations over time. This paper focuses on three philosophical aspects of ABMs as models of causal mechanisms, as generators of emergent phenomena, and as providers of explanation. Based on my discussion, I conclude that while ABMs cannot help much with causal inference, they can be viewed as etio-prognostic explanations of…

The Source of Modality: Introduction [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 14 • Author/s: Giacomo Giannini, Joaquim Giannotti
Topics: Epistemology, Introduction, Metaphysics, Modal Logic, Ontology, Theoretical philosophy

Contexts: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Context (But Were Afraid to Ask) [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Diana Mazzarella, Antonio Negro, Carlo Penco
Topics: Introduction, Meta-Philosophy, Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Theoretical philosophy

We give a short recap of how the notion of context has been developed in the philosophy of language since its introduction by Frege. We introduce various aspects of the concept of context: context of utterance, context at the semantics-pragmatics boundary, and social and cognitive context. We thereby offer to readers not accustomed to the distinctions used in the philosophy of language a framework to better understand the papers enclosed in this issue (and of which we provide summaries at the end of this introduction).

Directives and Context [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Tadeusz Ciecierski, Paweł Grabarczyk
Topics: Meta-Philosophy, Philosophy of language, Theoretical philosophy

The paper aims to add contextual dependence to the new directival theory of meaning, a functional role semantics based on Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s directival theory of meaning. We show that the original formulation of the theory does not have a straight answer on how the meaning of indexicals and demonstratives is established. We illustrate it in the example of some problematic axiomatic and inferential directives containing indexicals. We show that the main reason why developing the new directival theory of meaning in this direction is difficult is that the theory focuses…

Opening Up New (and Old) Vistas on the Contextualist-Minimalist Debate [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Ernesto Perini-Santos
Topics: Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Theoretical philosophy

The border war between semantics and pragmatics has an early version in the dispute between Mates and Cavell. While Mates argues for a strict separation between semantic inferences and mere pragmatic regularities, Cavell argues for a “logic of ordinary language”, identifying the commitments following the act of saying something. This answer gives a clue to the contemporary debate between minimalists and contextualists: we may either think that pragmatic inferences are only effective after the proposition is grasped, or think that it is part of the determination of what is said.…

Believing the Formless? [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Giuseppe Varnier, Salvatore Pistoia-Reda
Topics: Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Theoretical philosophy

In this note, we discuss the analyticity puzzle affecting the logicality of language hypothesis. The analyticity puzzle is the fact that only some analyticities result in ungrammaticality, which seems to conflict with the idea that an inferential device plays a role in determining the set of the possible sentences of the language. The literature includes two solutions to account for this puzzling evidence. According to one of the solutions, the deductive system can access both ungrammatical and grammatical trivialities, though only the latter can be rescued, i.e. made informative, via…

Scalar Implicatures and Presupposition of Existence: Strawson-entailment and the Grammatical Theory [Special Issue]

Issue: Issue 15 • Author/s: Aldair Díaz-Gómez
Topics: Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Theoretical philosophy

Two strong contenders for scalar implicature (SI) computation are the pragmatic and the grammatical theories. While the former sustains that context plays a major role, the latter suggests context is required but is lexically and monotonically constrained (Chierchia 2012). In particular, this paper discusses a processing account for SIs that is dependent on the satisfaction of the Strawsonian presupposition of existence, necessary for the realization of the asymmetric entailment pattern among relevant alternatives. This observation complies with the principles of the grammatical view, for it predicts SIs in the presence…
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