1,721,010 research outputs found
Politicamente corretto e il rischio di nuove forme (indesiderate) di “ingiustizia discorsiva”
No full textThis paper addresses the risks involved in relying on the act of illocutionary resistance as an active form of resistance to discriminatory uses of language. As we will try to show, the indiscriminate use of this strategy in order to avoid any possible ambiguity or connivance with those using potentially discriminatory language can have consequences which go against the spirit underlying political correctness. In fact, the main risk is that performing such an act will give rise to new kinds of discursive injustice, which are unforeseen and probably undesirable, and as a result of which certain polarizations already present in society regarding sensitive issues (such as those involving political correctness), will be exacerbated rather than reduced
From impoliteness to linguistic violence: a non-ideal speech-act theoretical perspective
Get PDFThis paper explores the complex relationship between violence and language from a non-ideal speech-act theoretical perspective. After highlighting the limited attention given to conceptualizing linguistic violence within non-ideal philosophy of language, I first examine perspectives that conceive of linguistic violence as arising primarily from either perlocutionary consequences or illocutionary forces, arguing that both have limitations. Building on Marina Sbisà’s work on the ethical basis of (im)politeness, I then establish a connection between violent speech and impoliteness. More specifically, I situate linguistic violence and impoliteness along a continuum defined by the degree to which speech acts disregard layers of others’ subjectivity. Subsequently, I introduce context-dependent criteria, including the persistence of subjectivity denial, the nature of the layers disregarded, the impact of the environment, and the vulnerability of the target. As I argue, these criteria interact with illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions, pushing towards the threshold of violence. While the challenges of establishing precise boundaries remain, the proposed non-ideal framework aims to provide a starting point for clarifying when speech might legitimately be classified as violent through the disregard of subjectivity layers
Questioning Stephen Stich’s Epistemic Pragmatism: What is Wrong With Its Consequentialist Approach to Reasoning Strategy Assessment?
Get PDFIn this paper, I examine and then criticize the two main assumptions underlying Stephen Stich’s Epistemic Pragmatism and its resulting consequentialist approach to reasoning strategy assessment, that is, (1) the rejection of truth as our main epistemic goal and (2) the relativity of any assessment of reasoning strategies. According to Epistemic Pragmatism, indeed, any evaluation of reasoning strategies is to be made in terms of their conduciveness to achieving what their users intrinsically value. However, since, as I will try to show, neither Stich’s argument supporting the dismissal of truth as our main epistemic goal nor his relativistic view on reasoning strategies’ assessments are well supported, I will conclude that Epistemic Pragmatism cannot provide by itself an adequate consequentialist framework for comparatively assessing people’s reasoning strategies and their epistemic merits
Paul H. Grice
Get PDFPaul H. Grice è stato uno dei maggiori filosofi analitici del linguaggio, avendo di fatto contribuito alla nascita e definizione di un nuovo ambito di studi, la pragmatica del linguaggio, e allo sviluppo del dibattito, ancora oggi molto attuale, riguardante i rapporti tra semantica e pragmatica. In questo saggio, si intende presentare il suo pensiero filosofico, con particolare attenzione alla sua teoria del significato basata sulle intenzioni comunicative e alla sua teoria dell’implicatura, le principali critiche sollevate a tali teorie e infine la ricezione del suo pensiero nell’ambito di studi all’intersezione tra filosofia analitica del linguaggio, linguistica e psicologia cognitiva. Paul H. Grice has been one of the most influential philosophers of language of the 20th century.Indeed, his work contributed both to the birth of a new field of research, called “pragmatics”, and to the development of the debate, still relevant today, concerning the interface between semantics and pragmatics.In this paper, I first present Grice’s philosophical thinking, focusing on his intention-based theory of meaning and his notion of implicature, and then consider the main criticisms which have been levelled against them and the reception of his work in current studies at the intersection of philosophy of language, theoretical linguistics and cognitive science
Tra natura e cultura: la razionalità
Get PDFIn this paper, I first identify the four paradigms of rationality which have dominated studies on the relation between and culture in the definition of what characterizes human rationality. I then show how none of them can account for variability and, at the same time, complexity of people’s ways of reasoning from both a descriptive and a normative standpoint. Finally, I conclude by arguing for an interpretation of the hypothesis of “dual nature of human cognition” proposed by David Moshman, which seems to achieve a good compromise between universalistic and relativistic viewpoints in relation to studies on human rationality
Asserzione ed effetti sociali
Get PDFThis paper analyses whether and, if so, how assertion can be said to be social from a speech-act theoretical point of view. In the first part, I will present a well-know argument put forth by Peter Pagin against standard analyses of assertion as a social act. In the second part, I will argue that, while Pagin’s argument poses serious problems to this kind of analyses, there is an alternative route one can take in characterizing the social nature of assertion. In particular, my aim will be to show that, on the basis of an Austin-inspired conception of illocutionary act, one can provide a specific kind of social approach to assertion and its effects that is immune to Pagin’s argument
In What Sense (If Any) Can Rationality Be Said to Be Universal?
No full textIn this paper, I examine whether and if so, how, rationality can be said to be universal in light of the most recent developments in the studies on human reasoning. I propose an argumentation-based picture of rationality which, by focusing on the reason-giving function of reasoning, is able to account for its universal character without reducing it merely to adaptiveness or effectiveness in achieving one’s personal goals, which is what (as I will argue) the leading theories in contemporary psychological studies on reasoning seem to do
Recensione di "Ragionare nel quotidiano. Argomentare, valutare informazioni, prendere decisioni"
No full textIn this critical review, I first provide an overview of the book “Ragionare nel quotidiano” and then discuss and contextualize some of the main questions which are addressed in it. In the overview, I divide the book into three parts which are concerned respectively with (i) what an argument is and its criteria of correctness, (ii) reasoning fallacies and (iii) some specific forms of reasoning. Since the authors present the main critical thinking’s techniques in a very simple and clear way, I hold that this book can help to develop a culture of rational thinking in Italian schools and universities. However, as I underline in the final part, the authors fail to provide the research framework within which their work can be located. Therefore, I conclude by presenting the main approaches to argumentation and reasoning on which this work is based
Moorean utterances and the illocutionary dynamics of assertion
Get PDFThis paper aims to show, in the light of an Austin-inspired speech-act theoretical framework, that there is a fundamental difference in the absurdity that occurs when one utters either the belief or the knowledge version of Moorean sentences (whose linguistic form amounts to “p, but I don’t believe/know that p”) and that this difference lies in the kind of speech act norms that their utterance overtly violates. To do so, I will consider the conversational patterns in which the two versions might emerge and, in particular, what linguistic reactions they might elicit in the audience. I will show that, while it is possible to imagine conversational patterns in which someone asserts something and also says that she cannot believe it to be true (although they seem to occur very rarely), the same cannot be said for the knowledge version. I shall argue that while in both cases, a speech act norm appears to be overtly violated, these violations regard different kinds of speech act norms, and thereby result in two different kinds of absurdity
Argumentation as a Speech Act: A (Provisional) Balance
Get PDFThis paper investigates whether, and if so, in what way, argumentation can be profitably described in speech-act theoretical terms. I suggest that the two theories of argumentation that are supposed to provide the most elaborate analysis of it in speech-act theoretical terms (namely van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst’s Pragma-Dialectics and Lilian Bermejo-Luque’s linguistic normative model of argumentation) both suffer from the same two flaws: firstly, their “illocutionary act pluralism” assumption and secondly, a lack of interest in where arguing belongs in the classification of illocutionary acts. I argue that these flaws derive from the authors’ reliance on an intention-based speech-theoretical framework. Finally, I adopt a deontic framework for speech acts in order to propose an alternative way of accounting for argumentation which seems to overcome the two limitations outlined above. According to this framework, argumentation may be conceived as a speech act sequence, characterized by the conventional effects brought about by the communicative moves (as illocutionary acts) of which it is composed
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