Alberto Voltolini | Università degli Studi di Torino (original) (raw)
Papers by Alberto Voltolini
Philosophia, 2024
In this paper, we want to maintain that the puzzle of imaginative resistance basically is a pragm... more In this paper, we want to maintain that the puzzle of imaginative resistance basically is a pragmatic issue due to the failure of participative imagination, as involving a pre-semantic level relating to a wide context (the overall situation of discourse). Since the linguistic meanings of the relevant fiction-involving sentences violate some of our basic norms, what such sentences (fictionally) say cannot be participatively imagined. That failure leads one to refrain from ascribing such sentences the fictional truth-conditions they would have in narrow fictional contexts (sets of fixed parameters) as determined by those meanings in those contexts. Yet one could still make that ascription, for one can cognitively imagine what such sentences would say in those contexts. As is proved by the fact that if one either adopts an alternative view on such norms or, for some reason, brackets them, one can again perform that ascription.
Grazer Philosophische Studien, 2023
In this paper, I want to defend two claims. First, as regards fictional characters (ficta), one m... more In this paper, I want to defend two claims. First, as regards fictional characters (ficta), one must appeal to constitutive properties, i.e., properties that are not only necessary but also essential for a fictum involved by a certain narration; namely, the internal discourse about a fictum. Such properties are indeed the properties that are truly predicated of ficta, either explicitly or implicitly, in that narration. For the appeal to such properties may explain not only i) the truth of important bits of external discourse, i.e., the discourse concerning a fictum outside that narration, but also ii) a fictum's individuation, i.e., what makes that fictum the object it is. Second, ficta are truly internally predicated such properties, i..e., they possess such properties in a specific, constitutive, mode. For those properties are members of the property sets with which ficta are somehow correlated; indeed, possession of truly internally predicated properties precisely amounts to set-membership.
Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, 2024
In this paper, first, I want to claim that, if an experience of seeing-in is a substantively cogn... more In this paper, first, I want to claim that, if an experience of seeing-in is a substantively cognitively penetrated form of perceptual experience, as Wollheim (2003a) claimed, then pace Brown (2010) and Hopkins (1998), what one sees in the picture coincides with what the picture presents, i.e., its figurative content. Secondly, I also want to claim that this coincidence does not mean that seeing-in turns out to be either a form of mental imagery or a form of imagination, even socially-based (e.g. in terms of make-believe games), as some people have claimed (Walton 1990, Dorsch 2016). For, as Wollheim repeatedly stressed, a seeing-in experience remains a sui generis perceptual experience; notably, a properly fusional twofold perceptual experience.
Argumenta, 2023
In this paper, I want to revive an idea stemming out of the Cartesian-Husserlian phenomenological... more In this paper, I want to revive an idea stemming out of the Cartesian-Husserlian phenomenological tradition as regards what makes the case that something-primarily a state, but also an event, or even a property-is mental; namely, the both necessary and sufficient conditions of mentality, i.e., the mark of the mental. According to this idea, the mark of the mental is, primarily for a state, its being an experience, to be meant as the property of having a phenomenal character that makes that state phenomenally aware. I defend this idea while also endorsing its most problematic consequence; namely, that internal states, whether standing (e.g., dispositional beliefs or desires) or occurrent (subpersonal states), that are not phenomenally aware are not mental. For I try to show why this consequence is not so problematic as it seems.
Philosophical Psychology, 2023
In this paper, against a new imagination-based account defended by Anna Ichino in some recent wor... more In this paper, against a new imagination-based account defended by Anna Ichino in some recent works, I defend the intuitive and traditional idea that so-called religious beliefs are indeed those doxastic attitudes that they are traditionally taken to be, i.e., bona fide beliefs. Yet I take that the objects of such beliefs amount to be different from what religious believers consciously take them to be; namely, they are mythological characters, a species of fictional characters-namely, fictional characters not consciously recognized as such-instead of being concrete individuals possibly endowed with supernatural powers. Yet religious believers also unconsciously recognize the fictional nature of religious objects of belief as mythological characters, as their behavior ultimately shows. This account indeed allows me to give a different yet still doxastic explanation of the two main reasons that Ichino advocates in favor of her account; namely, the incompatibility of so-called religious beliefs with other beliefs and their imperviousness to evidence, especially of a negative kind.
Philosophy of Humour: New Perspectives, 2023
In this chapter, I claim that a revised version of the classical theory of incongruity and its re... more In this chapter, I claim that a revised version of the classical theory of incongruity and its resolution may provide both necessary and sufficient conditions for humour. If the revision worked, it would be a great result, for it would show that being humorous is an objective property, though a relational, actually mind-dependent, one; namely, a response-dependent property of perceived incongruity. More precisely, something (a story, typically a pun or a joke, or even a picture as well as the apprehension of an actual piece of behaviour) is humorous if and only if it makes one entertain, within a fictional representational model, a representation that is perceived, or better realized, as paradoxical or absurd with respect to another representation. This representation was previously entertained, possibly implicitly, within the same model. Putting together the first representation with the second one, since they are located in that model, allows for one’s disengagement. Primarily, this disengagement is moral: morally implausible representations can be entertained with other incongruous representations (at least, up to a certain extent), since they are located in a fictional, not a real, model.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Feb 16, 2023
Topoi, 2022
On the basis of a new criterion for a property to be perceivable–a property is perceivable iff it... more On the basis of a new criterion for a property to be perceivable–a property is perceivable iff it is not only given immediately and non-volitionally, but also grasped via a holistic form of attention–in this paper we will claim that not only facial properties, but other high-order properties located in a hierarchy of high-order properties, notably gender and racial properties, are perceivable as well. Such claims will be both theoretically and empirically justified.
Philosophies, 2023
Once one draws a distinction between loyal non-existent items, which do not exist in a non-univer... more Once one draws a distinction between loyal non-existent items, which do not exist in a non-universal sense of the first-order existence predicate, and non-items, which fail to exist in a universal sense of that predicate, one may allow for the former but not for the latter in the overall ontological domain, so as to adopt a form of soft Parmenideanism. There are both theoretical and empirical reasons for this distinction.
British Journal of Aesthetics, 2023
In this paper, I want to claim that, in conformity with basic intuitions, there are some aestheti... more In this paper, I want to claim that, in conformity with basic intuitions, there are some aesthetic properties that are perceivable. For they are high-level properties that are not only grasped immediately, but also attended to holistically, just like the grouping properties they depend on and that are responsible for the Gestalt effects or switches through which they are grasped. Yet, unlike such grouping properties, they are holistically attended to in a disinterested modality, where objects and their properties are regarded for their own sake.
Disputatio, 2022
In this paper, I want to show that, in his comparison of the relationships holding between the ey... more In this paper, I want to show that, in his comparison of the relationships holding between the eye and the visual field on the one hand and the metaphysical subject and the world on the other, at the time of the
Tractatus Logico–Philosophicus (as well as at the time of thePhilosophical Remarks), Wittgenstein was not concerned with the particular location of the eye relative to the visual field, but with the issue that the visual field has not the boundaries that folks would expect it to have; one of its essential
properties is that it has no definite boundaries, but just a particular structure
that makes it essentially asymmetrical and oriented: in a word, perspectival. For this issue makes it the case that its relationship with the visual field is necessary, not contingent. That is an idea that Wittgenstein partially revised in the later phase of his philosophy by making the matter of necessity, viz. of grammar, dependent on contingent facts fixating one’s phenomenology.
Acta Analytica, 2023
In this paper, we present some experimental findings whose best explanation, first of all, provid... more In this paper, we present some experimental findings whose best explanation, first of all, provides a positive answer to a philosophical question in ontology as to whether, in the overall domain of beings, there are fictional characters (ficta) over and above concrete individuals. Moreover, since such findings arise out of different comparisons between fictional characters and concrete individuals on the one hand and fictional characters again and non-items that do not belong at all to such an overall domain on the other hand, they also suggest that ficta are allowed as inhabiting a particular subrealm of that domain distinct from the one inhabited by concrete individuals, as previous findings in cognitive psychology had suggested.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2023
There are some complex experiences, such as the experiences that allow us to under-stand linguist... more There are some complex experiences, such as the experiences that allow us to under-stand linguistic expressions and pictures respectively, which seem to be very similar. For they are stratified experiences in which, on top of grasping certain low-level prop-erties, one also grasps some high-level semantic-like properties. Yet first of all, those similarities notwithstanding, a phenomenologically-based reflection shows that such experiences are different. For a meaning experience has a high-level fold – in which one grasps the relevant expression’s meaning - that is not perceptual, but is only based on a low-level perceptual fold that merely grasps that expression in its acousti-cally relevant properties. While a pictorial experience, a seeing-in experience, has two folds, the configurational and the recognitional fold, in which one respectively grasps the physical basis of a picture, its vehicle, and what the picture presents, its subject, that are both perceptual, insofar as they are intimately connected. For unlike a mean-ing experience, in a seeing-in experience one can perceptually read off the picture’s subject from the picture’s vehicle. Moreover, this phenomenological difference is neu-rologically implemented. For not only the cerebral areas that respectively implement such experiences are different, at least as far as the access to those experiences’ re-spective high-level content is concerned. As is shown by the fact that one can selec-tively be impaired in the area respectively implementing the meaning vs. the seeing-in experience without losing one’s pictorial vs. semantic competence respectively. But also, unlike meaning experiences, the area implementing the seeing-in experiential folds is perceptual as a whole. For not only a picture’s subject can be accessed earlier than an expression’s meaning, but also the neural underpinnings of such folds are lo-cated in the perceptual areas of the brain.
Revista de Filosofia Aurora, 2022
In this article I shall first and foremost attempt to show that the semantic requirements of Witt... more In this article I shall first and foremost attempt to show that the semantic requirements of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus intend the objects of the Tractatus to be conceived of as possibilia in the Russellian sense (1903), i.e. as objects that may exist or may not exist; secondly, that the general ontology of the Tractatus suggests integrating this onto-semantic concept with a concept of these objects not properly as qualia but as sensibilia in the Russellian sense (1914), i.e. as sense data that may exist or may not exist.
Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia, 2016
█ Abstract In this paper, we want to support Kriegel’s argument in favor of the thesis that there... more █ Abstract In this paper, we want to support Kriegel’s argument in favor of the thesis that there is a cognitive form of phenomenology that is both irreducible to and independent of any sensory form of phenomenology by providing another argument in favor of the same thesis. Indeed, this new argument is also intended to show that the thought experiment Kriegel’s argument relies on does describe a genuine metaphysical possibility. In our view, Kriegel has not entirely succeeded in showing that his own argument displays that possibility. We present our argument in two steps. First, we attempt to prove that there is a cognitive phenomenology that is irreducible to any form of sensory phenomenology. Our proof relies on a kind of phenomenal contrast argument that however does not appeal to introspection. Second, by showing that the link between this form of cognitive phenomenology, the phenomenology of having thoughts, and sensory phenomenology in general is extrinsic, we also aim to demo...
Phenomenology and Mind, 2016
According to a position which has dominated the theoretical landscape in the philosophy of mind u... more According to a position which has dominated the theoretical landscape in the philosophy of mind until recently, only sensory states exhibit a characteristic phenomenal dimension, whereas cognitive states either utterly lack it, or inherit it from some of their accompanying sensory states. This position has recently been challenged by several scholars who have stressed the irreducibility of cognitive phenomenology to a merely sensory one. The aim of this introductory paper is to provide a general overview of the debate on cognitive phenomenology in order to give the reader a flavor of the richness of the themes that surround this area of investigation centered on the relationship between consciousness and cognition.
Crítica (México D. F. En línea), 2017
We maintain that no extant argument in favor of phenomenal externalism (PE) is really convincing.... more We maintain that no extant argument in favor of phenomenal externalism (PE) is really convincing. PE is the thesis that the phenomenal properties of our experiences must be individuated widely insofar as they are constituted by worldly properties. We consider what we take to be the five best arguments for PE. We try to show that none of them really proves what it aims at proving. Unless better arguments in favor of phenomenal externalism show up in the debate, we see noreason to relinquish an idea that seems intuitive and appeals to many cognitive scientists: that phenomenology is narrow, i.e., that phenomenal properties are intrinsic properties of our experiences. This idea grounds the opposite philosophical position, phenomenal internalism (PI).
Philosophia, 2024
In this paper, we want to maintain that the puzzle of imaginative resistance basically is a pragm... more In this paper, we want to maintain that the puzzle of imaginative resistance basically is a pragmatic issue due to the failure of participative imagination, as involving a pre-semantic level relating to a wide context (the overall situation of discourse). Since the linguistic meanings of the relevant fiction-involving sentences violate some of our basic norms, what such sentences (fictionally) say cannot be participatively imagined. That failure leads one to refrain from ascribing such sentences the fictional truth-conditions they would have in narrow fictional contexts (sets of fixed parameters) as determined by those meanings in those contexts. Yet one could still make that ascription, for one can cognitively imagine what such sentences would say in those contexts. As is proved by the fact that if one either adopts an alternative view on such norms or, for some reason, brackets them, one can again perform that ascription.
Grazer Philosophische Studien, 2023
In this paper, I want to defend two claims. First, as regards fictional characters (ficta), one m... more In this paper, I want to defend two claims. First, as regards fictional characters (ficta), one must appeal to constitutive properties, i.e., properties that are not only necessary but also essential for a fictum involved by a certain narration; namely, the internal discourse about a fictum. Such properties are indeed the properties that are truly predicated of ficta, either explicitly or implicitly, in that narration. For the appeal to such properties may explain not only i) the truth of important bits of external discourse, i.e., the discourse concerning a fictum outside that narration, but also ii) a fictum's individuation, i.e., what makes that fictum the object it is. Second, ficta are truly internally predicated such properties, i..e., they possess such properties in a specific, constitutive, mode. For those properties are members of the property sets with which ficta are somehow correlated; indeed, possession of truly internally predicated properties precisely amounts to set-membership.
Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, 2024
In this paper, first, I want to claim that, if an experience of seeing-in is a substantively cogn... more In this paper, first, I want to claim that, if an experience of seeing-in is a substantively cognitively penetrated form of perceptual experience, as Wollheim (2003a) claimed, then pace Brown (2010) and Hopkins (1998), what one sees in the picture coincides with what the picture presents, i.e., its figurative content. Secondly, I also want to claim that this coincidence does not mean that seeing-in turns out to be either a form of mental imagery or a form of imagination, even socially-based (e.g. in terms of make-believe games), as some people have claimed (Walton 1990, Dorsch 2016). For, as Wollheim repeatedly stressed, a seeing-in experience remains a sui generis perceptual experience; notably, a properly fusional twofold perceptual experience.
Argumenta, 2023
In this paper, I want to revive an idea stemming out of the Cartesian-Husserlian phenomenological... more In this paper, I want to revive an idea stemming out of the Cartesian-Husserlian phenomenological tradition as regards what makes the case that something-primarily a state, but also an event, or even a property-is mental; namely, the both necessary and sufficient conditions of mentality, i.e., the mark of the mental. According to this idea, the mark of the mental is, primarily for a state, its being an experience, to be meant as the property of having a phenomenal character that makes that state phenomenally aware. I defend this idea while also endorsing its most problematic consequence; namely, that internal states, whether standing (e.g., dispositional beliefs or desires) or occurrent (subpersonal states), that are not phenomenally aware are not mental. For I try to show why this consequence is not so problematic as it seems.
Philosophical Psychology, 2023
In this paper, against a new imagination-based account defended by Anna Ichino in some recent wor... more In this paper, against a new imagination-based account defended by Anna Ichino in some recent works, I defend the intuitive and traditional idea that so-called religious beliefs are indeed those doxastic attitudes that they are traditionally taken to be, i.e., bona fide beliefs. Yet I take that the objects of such beliefs amount to be different from what religious believers consciously take them to be; namely, they are mythological characters, a species of fictional characters-namely, fictional characters not consciously recognized as such-instead of being concrete individuals possibly endowed with supernatural powers. Yet religious believers also unconsciously recognize the fictional nature of religious objects of belief as mythological characters, as their behavior ultimately shows. This account indeed allows me to give a different yet still doxastic explanation of the two main reasons that Ichino advocates in favor of her account; namely, the incompatibility of so-called religious beliefs with other beliefs and their imperviousness to evidence, especially of a negative kind.
Philosophy of Humour: New Perspectives, 2023
In this chapter, I claim that a revised version of the classical theory of incongruity and its re... more In this chapter, I claim that a revised version of the classical theory of incongruity and its resolution may provide both necessary and sufficient conditions for humour. If the revision worked, it would be a great result, for it would show that being humorous is an objective property, though a relational, actually mind-dependent, one; namely, a response-dependent property of perceived incongruity. More precisely, something (a story, typically a pun or a joke, or even a picture as well as the apprehension of an actual piece of behaviour) is humorous if and only if it makes one entertain, within a fictional representational model, a representation that is perceived, or better realized, as paradoxical or absurd with respect to another representation. This representation was previously entertained, possibly implicitly, within the same model. Putting together the first representation with the second one, since they are located in that model, allows for one’s disengagement. Primarily, this disengagement is moral: morally implausible representations can be entertained with other incongruous representations (at least, up to a certain extent), since they are located in a fictional, not a real, model.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Feb 16, 2023
Topoi, 2022
On the basis of a new criterion for a property to be perceivable–a property is perceivable iff it... more On the basis of a new criterion for a property to be perceivable–a property is perceivable iff it is not only given immediately and non-volitionally, but also grasped via a holistic form of attention–in this paper we will claim that not only facial properties, but other high-order properties located in a hierarchy of high-order properties, notably gender and racial properties, are perceivable as well. Such claims will be both theoretically and empirically justified.
Philosophies, 2023
Once one draws a distinction between loyal non-existent items, which do not exist in a non-univer... more Once one draws a distinction between loyal non-existent items, which do not exist in a non-universal sense of the first-order existence predicate, and non-items, which fail to exist in a universal sense of that predicate, one may allow for the former but not for the latter in the overall ontological domain, so as to adopt a form of soft Parmenideanism. There are both theoretical and empirical reasons for this distinction.
British Journal of Aesthetics, 2023
In this paper, I want to claim that, in conformity with basic intuitions, there are some aestheti... more In this paper, I want to claim that, in conformity with basic intuitions, there are some aesthetic properties that are perceivable. For they are high-level properties that are not only grasped immediately, but also attended to holistically, just like the grouping properties they depend on and that are responsible for the Gestalt effects or switches through which they are grasped. Yet, unlike such grouping properties, they are holistically attended to in a disinterested modality, where objects and their properties are regarded for their own sake.
Disputatio, 2022
In this paper, I want to show that, in his comparison of the relationships holding between the ey... more In this paper, I want to show that, in his comparison of the relationships holding between the eye and the visual field on the one hand and the metaphysical subject and the world on the other, at the time of the
Tractatus Logico–Philosophicus (as well as at the time of thePhilosophical Remarks), Wittgenstein was not concerned with the particular location of the eye relative to the visual field, but with the issue that the visual field has not the boundaries that folks would expect it to have; one of its essential
properties is that it has no definite boundaries, but just a particular structure
that makes it essentially asymmetrical and oriented: in a word, perspectival. For this issue makes it the case that its relationship with the visual field is necessary, not contingent. That is an idea that Wittgenstein partially revised in the later phase of his philosophy by making the matter of necessity, viz. of grammar, dependent on contingent facts fixating one’s phenomenology.
Acta Analytica, 2023
In this paper, we present some experimental findings whose best explanation, first of all, provid... more In this paper, we present some experimental findings whose best explanation, first of all, provides a positive answer to a philosophical question in ontology as to whether, in the overall domain of beings, there are fictional characters (ficta) over and above concrete individuals. Moreover, since such findings arise out of different comparisons between fictional characters and concrete individuals on the one hand and fictional characters again and non-items that do not belong at all to such an overall domain on the other hand, they also suggest that ficta are allowed as inhabiting a particular subrealm of that domain distinct from the one inhabited by concrete individuals, as previous findings in cognitive psychology had suggested.
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2023
There are some complex experiences, such as the experiences that allow us to under-stand linguist... more There are some complex experiences, such as the experiences that allow us to under-stand linguistic expressions and pictures respectively, which seem to be very similar. For they are stratified experiences in which, on top of grasping certain low-level prop-erties, one also grasps some high-level semantic-like properties. Yet first of all, those similarities notwithstanding, a phenomenologically-based reflection shows that such experiences are different. For a meaning experience has a high-level fold – in which one grasps the relevant expression’s meaning - that is not perceptual, but is only based on a low-level perceptual fold that merely grasps that expression in its acousti-cally relevant properties. While a pictorial experience, a seeing-in experience, has two folds, the configurational and the recognitional fold, in which one respectively grasps the physical basis of a picture, its vehicle, and what the picture presents, its subject, that are both perceptual, insofar as they are intimately connected. For unlike a mean-ing experience, in a seeing-in experience one can perceptually read off the picture’s subject from the picture’s vehicle. Moreover, this phenomenological difference is neu-rologically implemented. For not only the cerebral areas that respectively implement such experiences are different, at least as far as the access to those experiences’ re-spective high-level content is concerned. As is shown by the fact that one can selec-tively be impaired in the area respectively implementing the meaning vs. the seeing-in experience without losing one’s pictorial vs. semantic competence respectively. But also, unlike meaning experiences, the area implementing the seeing-in experiential folds is perceptual as a whole. For not only a picture’s subject can be accessed earlier than an expression’s meaning, but also the neural underpinnings of such folds are lo-cated in the perceptual areas of the brain.
Revista de Filosofia Aurora, 2022
In this article I shall first and foremost attempt to show that the semantic requirements of Witt... more In this article I shall first and foremost attempt to show that the semantic requirements of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus intend the objects of the Tractatus to be conceived of as possibilia in the Russellian sense (1903), i.e. as objects that may exist or may not exist; secondly, that the general ontology of the Tractatus suggests integrating this onto-semantic concept with a concept of these objects not properly as qualia but as sensibilia in the Russellian sense (1914), i.e. as sense data that may exist or may not exist.
Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia e Psicologia, 2016
█ Abstract In this paper, we want to support Kriegel’s argument in favor of the thesis that there... more █ Abstract In this paper, we want to support Kriegel’s argument in favor of the thesis that there is a cognitive form of phenomenology that is both irreducible to and independent of any sensory form of phenomenology by providing another argument in favor of the same thesis. Indeed, this new argument is also intended to show that the thought experiment Kriegel’s argument relies on does describe a genuine metaphysical possibility. In our view, Kriegel has not entirely succeeded in showing that his own argument displays that possibility. We present our argument in two steps. First, we attempt to prove that there is a cognitive phenomenology that is irreducible to any form of sensory phenomenology. Our proof relies on a kind of phenomenal contrast argument that however does not appeal to introspection. Second, by showing that the link between this form of cognitive phenomenology, the phenomenology of having thoughts, and sensory phenomenology in general is extrinsic, we also aim to demo...
Phenomenology and Mind, 2016
According to a position which has dominated the theoretical landscape in the philosophy of mind u... more According to a position which has dominated the theoretical landscape in the philosophy of mind until recently, only sensory states exhibit a characteristic phenomenal dimension, whereas cognitive states either utterly lack it, or inherit it from some of their accompanying sensory states. This position has recently been challenged by several scholars who have stressed the irreducibility of cognitive phenomenology to a merely sensory one. The aim of this introductory paper is to provide a general overview of the debate on cognitive phenomenology in order to give the reader a flavor of the richness of the themes that surround this area of investigation centered on the relationship between consciousness and cognition.
Crítica (México D. F. En línea), 2017
We maintain that no extant argument in favor of phenomenal externalism (PE) is really convincing.... more We maintain that no extant argument in favor of phenomenal externalism (PE) is really convincing. PE is the thesis that the phenomenal properties of our experiences must be individuated widely insofar as they are constituted by worldly properties. We consider what we take to be the five best arguments for PE. We try to show that none of them really proves what it aims at proving. Unless better arguments in favor of phenomenal externalism show up in the debate, we see noreason to relinquish an idea that seems intuitive and appeals to many cognitive scientists: that phenomenology is narrow, i.e., that phenomenal properties are intrinsic properties of our experiences. This idea grounds the opposite philosophical position, phenomenal internalism (PI).
Springer, 2022
The first book to scrutinize whether analytic philosophy always pursues an argumentative ... more The first book to scrutinize whether analytic philosophy always pursues an argumentative strategy
Provides an in-depth analysis of the major turning points in analytic philosophy
Reconsiders the importance and the assessment of certain fundamental debates in analytic philosophy
What is depiction? This is a venerable question that has received many different answers througho... more What is depiction? This is a venerable question that has received many different answers throughout the whole history of philosophy, especially in contemporary times. A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction elaborates a new account on this matter by providing a theory of depiction that tries to combine the merits of the previous theories while dropping their defects. It is argued that a picture is a representation in a pictorial or figurative mode, and its 'figurativity' is given by a special perception, perceiving-in, whose nature is reconceived. Such a perception inter alia grasps some properties which the picture's vehicle has in common with what is perceived in it; by so doing, that perception provides the picture with a figurative content. In contrast, the picture's representational value, its subject or its pictorial content, is given by a conventionally or causally based selection out of that figurative content.
Cosa significa far finta? Esistono davvero Anna Karenina e Gatto Silvestro? Una guida alla finzio... more Cosa significa far finta? Esistono davvero Anna Karenina e Gatto Silvestro? Una guida alla finzione, come concetto e come pratica. Un'indagine sul far finta e i suoi oggetti e su chi fa finta per piacere o per mestiere.
Questo volume è un'introduzione ragionata ad uno dei temi classici della filosofia, l'intenzional... more Questo volume è un'introduzione ragionata ad uno dei temi classici della filosofia, l'intenzionalità. L'intenzionalità è una delle caratteristiche principali degli stati mentali: la proprietà di essere rivolti verso qualcosa o di avere un contenuto che possa essere vero oppure falso, soddisfatto oppure insoddisfatto. Gli autori discutono criticamente le principali teorie filosofiche contemporanee su questo tema. Queste teorie affrontano le seguenti domande: Esiste la proprietà dell'intenzionalità, oppure ne abbiamo solo un concetto nel nostro linguaggio? Se esiste, che tipo di proprietà è, e come l'identifichiamo? C'è un solo tipo di proprietà del genere o alle differenze tra tipi di stati mentali corrisponde una differente intenzionalità? È comunque il tratto distintivo del mentale? In che rapporto è con la coscienza? Può essere analizzata dalle scienze naturali? Le teorie, nel rispondere a queste domande, si avvalgono degli strumenti della filosofia della mente, della filosofia del linguaggio e delle scienze cognitive. Gli autori usano questi stessi strumenti per valutare la bontà delle diverse risposte.
Le Ricerche filosofiche (pubblicate postume nel 1953) sono il capolavoro della maturità di Wittge... more Le Ricerche filosofiche (pubblicate postume nel 1953) sono il capolavoro della maturità di Wittgenstein, nonché uno dei testi di riferimento principali di tutta la filosofia del Novecento. Alla comprensione precisa e accurata dei suoi temi introduce, sotto forma di commento, questo volume di Voltolini.
This book presents a novel theory of fictional entities which is syncretistic insofar as it integ... more This book presents a novel theory of fictional entities which is syncretistic insofar as it integrates the work of previous authors. It puts forward a new metaphysical conception of the nature of these entities, according to which a fictional entity is a compound entity built up from both a make-believe theoretical element and a set theoretical element. The fictional entity is constructed by imagining the existence of an individual with certain properties and adding a set-theoretical element consisting of the set of properties corresponding to the properties of the imagined entity.
Moreover, the book advances a new combined semantic and ontological defence of the existence of fictional entities.
abstract According to a position which has dominated the theoretical landscape in the philosophy ... more abstract According to a position which has dominated the theoretical landscape in the philosophy of mind until recently, only sensory states exhibit a characteristic phenomenal dimension, whereas cognitive states either utterly lack it, or inherit it from some of their accompanying sensory states. This position has recently been challenged by several scholars who have stressed the irreducibility of cognitive phenomenology to a merely sensory one. The aim of this introductory paper is to provide a general overview of the debate on cognitive phenomenology in order to give the reader a flavor of the richness of the themes that surround this area of investigation centered on the relationship between consciousness and cognition.
In ontology, realism and anti-realism may be taken as opposite attitudes towards entities of diff... more In ontology, realism and anti-realism may be taken as opposite attitudes towards entities of different kinds, so that one may turn out to be a realist with respect to certain entities, and an anti-realist with respect to others. In this book, the editors focus on this controversy concerning social entities in general and fictional entities in particular, the latter often being considered nowadays as kinds of social entities. More specifically, fictionalists (those who maintain that we only make-believe that there are entities of a certain kind) and creationists (those who believe that entities of a certain kind are the products of human activity) present themselves as the champions of the anti-realist and the realist stance, respectively, regarding the above entities. By evaluating the pros and cons of both these positions, this book intends to focus new light on a longstanding debate.
Table of Contents Acknowledgements * Notes on Contributors * MIND: * Rule and Exception in Wittg... more Table of Contents
Acknowledgements * Notes on Contributors * MIND: * Rule and Exception in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mind; W.Child * Reading-machines, Feelings of Influence, Experiences of Being Guided: Wittgenstein on Reading; J.Schulte * Reasons and Causes; F.Stoutland * Was Wittgenstein Wrong About Intentionality?; A.Voltolini * MEANING: * Wittgenstein Was Right about the Normativity of Meaning; H-J.Glock * Regularities, Rules, Meanings, Truth Conditions, and Epistemic Norms; P.Horwich * Wittgenstein and Necessary Facts; D.Marconi * Meaning in Context; E.Picardi * Conceptual Truth; T.Williamson * METAPHILOSOPHY: * An Adequacy Condition for the Interpretation of the Tractatus Ontology; P.Frascolla * Wittgenstein on Formal Objects, Properties and Relations; K.Mulligan * Method and Metaphilosophy in the Philosophical Investigations; M.Williams * A Final Assessment; A.Kenny * Index
Raffigurazioni come oggetti sociali Alberto Voltolini Per " raffigurazioni " (depictions) intendo... more Raffigurazioni come oggetti sociali Alberto Voltolini Per " raffigurazioni " (depictions) intendo quelle immagini dotate di valore figurativo che hanno altresì un valore rappresentazionale, sono rappresentazioni pittoriche di qualcosa. In questo lavoro cercherò di mostrare in primo luogo che le raffigurazioni sono oggetti sociali, attraverso l'analisi di quella che è la loro funzione fondamentale, quella di comunicare un contenuto che dà loro condizioni di accuratezza. In secondo luogo, cercherò di articolare quanto la prima parte del lavoro lascia sullo sfondo, e cioè come l'avere un valore rappresentazionale per le raffigurazioni dipende dal loro avere un (più generale) valore figurativo.
Rivista di Filosofia, 106(2015), pp.21-56. Bozze.
Claudio La Rocca, Massimo Mori e Alberto Voltolini discutono "Il mestiere di pensare", con una ri... more Claudio La Rocca, Massimo Mori e Alberto Voltolini discutono "Il mestiere di pensare", con una risposta di Diego Marconi.
