Diego Marconi | Università degli Studi di Torino (original) (raw)
Papers by Diego Marconi
De Gruyter eBooks, Dec 31, 2008
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Dec 31, 2022
Synthese, Feb 1, 2005
David Chalmers's version of two-dimensional semantics is an attempt at setting up a unified seman... more David Chalmers's 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 Chalmers's 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). • 'Lois believes that Superman can fly' and 'Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly' differ in truth value; a theory of meaning should account for the difference (such an account is hard to provide if 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' are assigned the same semantic value). • It is not plausible that the word 'Pegasus' plays no role in our inquiry aiming at establishing that Pegasus does not exist (Quine 1952); a theory of meaning should account for that (if a name's only semantic value is its reference, this is hard). • Oscar believes that the English sentence 'Water is drinkable' is true; Twin Oscar believes that the Twin-English sentence 'Water is drinkable' is true. Such beliefs underlie patterns of behaviour that are in systematic correspondence with each other. A theory of meaning should account for the similarity (such an account is not easily provided if 'water' in English and 'water' in Twin-English have radically different semantic values). So, in David Chalmers's words, 'There remains an intuition that 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus' (or 'water' and 'H2O'[...]) differ in at least some dimension of their meaning, corresponding to the difference in their cognitive and rational roles.' (2002c, 8; cf. 2002a, 3). There is an aspect of content (or of meaning) that is not captured by the notion of reference. Of course, the Kripkean (or 'Millian') intuitions are also here to stay: among others, the intuition that the truth value of 'Napoleon married Marie-Louise' does not depend on any non-trivial property of Napoleon, except his having married Marie-Louise; the intuition that the truth conditions
Springer eBooks, 2014
As a contribution to the debate on the intelligibility of the notion of relative truth, I discuss... more As a contribution to the debate on the intelligibility of the notion of relative truth, I discuss three issues that are of some interest in the way of bush-beating. They are (1) whether relative truth can be explicated as truth in a subjective world, (2) whether alleged relative truth could just be belief (i.e., "p is true for X" = "X believes that p"), and, finally (3) whether plain truth could, or should be defined on the basis of relative truth. The first two questions receive a negative answer, while the third is seen to depend on further decisions on the nature of relative truth, though one particular attempt at articulating the relation between plain and relative truth (Kölbel 2002) is shown to be unconvincing.
Rivista di filosofia, 2011
Sistemi intelligenti, 2012
Sistemi Intelligenti, 2005
Da qualche secolo siamo abituati ad associare la mente al cervello, la massa gelatinosa contenuta... more Da qualche secolo siamo abituati ad associare la mente al cervello, la massa gelatinosa contenuta nella scatola cranica. Alcuni dicono che la mente è un insieme di funzionalità che, in teoria, potrebbero essere realizzate anche da altri supporti materiali, ma che di fatto, nella specie umana, sono realizzate dal cervello (o tutt'al più dal sistema nervoso centrale); altri dicono che la mente,
Conference Cognitive Science, 2015
This paper investigates the notion of visual load, an estimate for a lexical item's efficacy in a... more This paper investigates the notion of visual load, an estimate for a lexical item's efficacy in activating mental images associated with the concept it refers to. We elaborate on the centrality of this notion which is deeply and variously connected to lexical processing. A computational model of the visual load is introduced that builds on few low level features and on the dependency structure of sentences. The system implementing the proposed model has been experimentally assessed and shown to reasonably approximate human response.
Philosophical arguments and neuropsychological research on deficits of lexical processing converg... more Philosophical arguments and neuropsychological research on deficits of lexical processing converge in indicating that our competence on word meaning may have two components: inferential competence, that takes care of word-word relations and is relevant to tasks such as recovery of a word from its definition, pairing of synonyms, semantic inference ("Milan is north of Rome" ! "Rome is south of Milan") and more; and referential competence, that takes care of word-world relations, or, more carefully, of connections between words and perception of the outside world (through vision, hearing, touch). Normal subjects are competent in both ways; however, there are patients in which one component seems to be impaired while the other performs at normal level. Typically, cases are found of patients that are excellent at defining, say, the word 'duck' but cannot recover the word when shown the picture of a duck. Complementary cases have also been found and studied. Recent experiments using neuroimaging (fMRI) found that certain visual areas are active even in purely inferential performances, and a current experiment appears to show that such activation is a function of what might be called the "visual load" of both the linguistic material presented as stimulus and the target word. Such recent results will be presented and discussed. It should be noted that the notion of "visual load", as applying to both individual words and complex phrases, has also been given a computational interpretation.
Sistemi intelligenti, 2005
De Gruyter eBooks, Dec 31, 2015
Routledge eBooks, May 9, 2019
I suggest that one important reason why "fake news" are not resisted is the cri... more I suggest that one important reason why "fake news" are not resisted is the crisis of deference to experts, which, in turn, is justified in the name of "epistemic democracy", the belief that all opinions have the same epistemic value. I quote philosophical pronouncements that tend to support epistemic democracy.
Springer eBooks, 1996
The main reason why systems of natural language understanding are often said not to "really" unde... more The main reason why systems of natural language understanding are often said not to "really" understand natural language is their lack of referential competence. A traditional system, even an ideal one, cannot relate language to the perceived world, whereas-obviously-a human speaker can. The paper argues that the recognition abilities underlying the application of language to the world are indeed a prerequisite of semantic competence. If a system of the traditional kind were appropriately endowed with the analytic abilities of a system of artificial vision, it would display (partial) referential competence: e.g. it would be able to verify sentences. In response to Searle's objections to the so-called "robot reply", the paper argues that such an integrated system could not be considered as essentially on a par with a purely inferential system of the traditional kind, unless one were prepared to regard even the human understanding system as "purely syntactic" (and therefore incapable of genuine understanding).
An analysis of Putnam's article of 1975 and related discussions.
De Gruyter eBooks, Dec 31, 2008
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Dec 31, 2022
Synthese, Feb 1, 2005
David Chalmers's version of two-dimensional semantics is an attempt at setting up a unified seman... more David Chalmers's 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 Chalmers's 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). • 'Lois believes that Superman can fly' and 'Lois believes that Clark Kent can fly' differ in truth value; a theory of meaning should account for the difference (such an account is hard to provide if 'Superman' and 'Clark Kent' are assigned the same semantic value). • It is not plausible that the word 'Pegasus' plays no role in our inquiry aiming at establishing that Pegasus does not exist (Quine 1952); a theory of meaning should account for that (if a name's only semantic value is its reference, this is hard). • Oscar believes that the English sentence 'Water is drinkable' is true; Twin Oscar believes that the Twin-English sentence 'Water is drinkable' is true. Such beliefs underlie patterns of behaviour that are in systematic correspondence with each other. A theory of meaning should account for the similarity (such an account is not easily provided if 'water' in English and 'water' in Twin-English have radically different semantic values). So, in David Chalmers's words, 'There remains an intuition that 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus' (or 'water' and 'H2O'[...]) differ in at least some dimension of their meaning, corresponding to the difference in their cognitive and rational roles.' (2002c, 8; cf. 2002a, 3). There is an aspect of content (or of meaning) that is not captured by the notion of reference. Of course, the Kripkean (or 'Millian') intuitions are also here to stay: among others, the intuition that the truth value of 'Napoleon married Marie-Louise' does not depend on any non-trivial property of Napoleon, except his having married Marie-Louise; the intuition that the truth conditions
Springer eBooks, 2014
As a contribution to the debate on the intelligibility of the notion of relative truth, I discuss... more As a contribution to the debate on the intelligibility of the notion of relative truth, I discuss three issues that are of some interest in the way of bush-beating. They are (1) whether relative truth can be explicated as truth in a subjective world, (2) whether alleged relative truth could just be belief (i.e., "p is true for X" = "X believes that p"), and, finally (3) whether plain truth could, or should be defined on the basis of relative truth. The first two questions receive a negative answer, while the third is seen to depend on further decisions on the nature of relative truth, though one particular attempt at articulating the relation between plain and relative truth (Kölbel 2002) is shown to be unconvincing.
Rivista di filosofia, 2011
Sistemi intelligenti, 2012
Sistemi Intelligenti, 2005
Da qualche secolo siamo abituati ad associare la mente al cervello, la massa gelatinosa contenuta... more Da qualche secolo siamo abituati ad associare la mente al cervello, la massa gelatinosa contenuta nella scatola cranica. Alcuni dicono che la mente è un insieme di funzionalità che, in teoria, potrebbero essere realizzate anche da altri supporti materiali, ma che di fatto, nella specie umana, sono realizzate dal cervello (o tutt'al più dal sistema nervoso centrale); altri dicono che la mente,
Conference Cognitive Science, 2015
This paper investigates the notion of visual load, an estimate for a lexical item's efficacy in a... more This paper investigates the notion of visual load, an estimate for a lexical item's efficacy in activating mental images associated with the concept it refers to. We elaborate on the centrality of this notion which is deeply and variously connected to lexical processing. A computational model of the visual load is introduced that builds on few low level features and on the dependency structure of sentences. The system implementing the proposed model has been experimentally assessed and shown to reasonably approximate human response.
Philosophical arguments and neuropsychological research on deficits of lexical processing converg... more Philosophical arguments and neuropsychological research on deficits of lexical processing converge in indicating that our competence on word meaning may have two components: inferential competence, that takes care of word-word relations and is relevant to tasks such as recovery of a word from its definition, pairing of synonyms, semantic inference ("Milan is north of Rome" ! "Rome is south of Milan") and more; and referential competence, that takes care of word-world relations, or, more carefully, of connections between words and perception of the outside world (through vision, hearing, touch). Normal subjects are competent in both ways; however, there are patients in which one component seems to be impaired while the other performs at normal level. Typically, cases are found of patients that are excellent at defining, say, the word 'duck' but cannot recover the word when shown the picture of a duck. Complementary cases have also been found and studied. Recent experiments using neuroimaging (fMRI) found that certain visual areas are active even in purely inferential performances, and a current experiment appears to show that such activation is a function of what might be called the "visual load" of both the linguistic material presented as stimulus and the target word. Such recent results will be presented and discussed. It should be noted that the notion of "visual load", as applying to both individual words and complex phrases, has also been given a computational interpretation.
Sistemi intelligenti, 2005
De Gruyter eBooks, Dec 31, 2015
Routledge eBooks, May 9, 2019
I suggest that one important reason why "fake news" are not resisted is the cri... more I suggest that one important reason why "fake news" are not resisted is the crisis of deference to experts, which, in turn, is justified in the name of "epistemic democracy", the belief that all opinions have the same epistemic value. I quote philosophical pronouncements that tend to support epistemic democracy.
Springer eBooks, 1996
The main reason why systems of natural language understanding are often said not to "really" unde... more The main reason why systems of natural language understanding are often said not to "really" understand natural language is their lack of referential competence. A traditional system, even an ideal one, cannot relate language to the perceived world, whereas-obviously-a human speaker can. The paper argues that the recognition abilities underlying the application of language to the world are indeed a prerequisite of semantic competence. If a system of the traditional kind were appropriately endowed with the analytic abilities of a system of artificial vision, it would display (partial) referential competence: e.g. it would be able to verify sentences. In response to Searle's objections to the so-called "robot reply", the paper argues that such an integrated system could not be considered as essentially on a par with a purely inferential system of the traditional kind, unless one were prepared to regard even the human understanding system as "purely syntactic" (and therefore incapable of genuine understanding).
An analysis of Putnam's article of 1975 and related discussions.
First part of a Ph.D. Thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 1979. Why any account of Hegel's dialecti... more First part of a Ph.D. Thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 1979. Why any account of Hegel's dialectic must explain the generation of contradictions (I), Survey of the literature (II), An analysis of Hegel's Language in the Science of logic (III).
Chapters IV-VI of a Ph.D. Thesis on Hegel, University of Pittsburgh, 1979. Generation of dialect... more Chapters IV-VI of a Ph.D. Thesis on Hegel, University of Pittsburgh, 1979. Generation of dialectical contradictions (IV), the Aufheben (V), Assumptions implicit in the proposed reconstruction (VI).
To be published in Grazer Philosophische Studien.