Abstract
In this paper I will give some remarks on the intersection between Agazzi’s work and some topics in philosophy of language and mind. In Sect. 1 I give an introduction to the approach to meaning in Agazzi’s works, and to his recent idea of general semiotics. In describing Agazzi’s treatment of meaning and understanding it appears that some of his papers antedate arguments later become fundamental in the philosophy of language and mind, mainly by Putnam and Searle . In Sect. 2 I describe his discussion of the limits of intensional logics, which antedates analogous criticism made by Putnam; in Sect. 3 I focus on the link between the operational aspects of meaning and the idea of three level semantics; eventually in Sect. 4 I present what can be considered a forerunner of Searle’s argument of the Chinese room in a different setting.
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Notes
- 1.
See also Marconi (1997), who discusses the different aspects of structural semantic competence and sees in inferential competence the aspect linked to meaning postulates and inferential role, although he claims that only the combination of inferential and referential competence makes a reasonable project of the idea of semantic competence.
- 2.
It is not easy to say whether this is a correct interpretation of Agazzi’s argument. However this interpretation has the merit of avoiding the problem of the dogma of the conceptual as discussed by Donald Davidson. With this solution we have two kinds of ontologies, the ontology of ordinary language (with universal domain) and the ontology of specific sciences, like chemistry, that are subparts of the universal domain. Let us call them “external” and “internal” ontologies. With this solution we do not have any more and we do not need the notion of “empirical content” as “something neutral and common that lies beyond all schemata”; we have on the contrary a dichotomy where empirical content is given by the external ontology given by ordinary language and conceptual schemes are given by the expressive resources of the different internal ontologies. The connection between a conceptual schema and an empirical content is given by the operative procedures. On this line of thought see Bottani (1997: 246–249).
- 3.
A development of this kind with some historical remarks on the topic is presented in Penco (2013).
- 4.
Agazzi had presented his paper in English at the “Wiener memorial meeting on the idea of control” that took place in Genoa on October 26–29, 1965 where he also had an interesting discussion with Putnam on the topic of artificial intelligence. For technical reasons the recordings of that conference were seriously damaged and the proceedings never published, Therefore Agazzi published an Italian translation of his paper in the Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica (Agazzi 1967). This translation was then reprinted in a volume edited by Paolo Aldo Rossi in 1978.
- 5.
Penco (2012) claims that Searle’s vision of “symbol manipulation” is very strict, and represents a weak point in Searle’s analysis; however the Turing test could be “updated” to problems of understanding language in context.
- 6.
See also Agazzi (1991: 239–241). Generally speaking, if we could build a robot that behaves in a way which is undistinguishable from human behaviour, Agazzi, with Putnam, should probably admit that it would be undecidable whether this individual has a consciousness or not (if they were “like us” or they were, following Chalmers , “zombies”).
- 7.
See Agazzi (2013).
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Penco, C. (2015). Philosophy of Language and Mind. In: Alai, M., Buzzoni, M., Tarozzi, G. (eds) Science Between Truth and Ethical Responsibility. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16369-7_14
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