Philosophy, Cognition and Pragmatics

This book contains essential contributions to enrich and broaden the application field of pragmatics. It provides an example of how the fruitful reflections and refined conceptual distinctions born in the philosophical field can find a practical application in addressing social, cognitive, clinical, and psychological problems. Its chapters address, from different points of view, the relationship between pragmatic linguistics and philosophy, and outline the possible application of pragmatic theories to different domains. Developed during the third Pragmasophia international conference, whose name is derived from the Greek terms πρᾶγμα (action, fact) and σοϕία (knowledge, science), the book aligns itself with its aim to study human actions and activities and how they take shape through language. But ‘Pragma’ and ‘Sophia’ also signal another purpose: highlighting the importance of creating links between empirical investigations on language use, and more traditional philosophical approaches. In this reading, ‘Pragma’ represents the experimental goal devoted to analysing and interpreting language facts. In contrast, the term ‘Sophia’ recalls the original vocation of past philosophers to pursue an ideal of ‘pure knowledge’, disconnected from any practical-economic interest. While maintaining the conference's original purpose of encouraging productive comparisons between different approaches, the book consists of two sections:  first, on philosophical approaches, recalls more theoretical aspects (closer to the term ‘Sophia’); the second, ‘Inferential and Cognitive Pragmatics,’ addresses more practical issues affecting domains such as Greek literature, pragmatic disorders, dictionary entries, and speech analysis. The reader, whether in linguists, philosophy or psychology, obtains a complete overview of the most advanced current research lines, both theoretical and empirical, and thus contributes to broadening the scope of pragmatics.

Alessando Capone has a doctorate in linguistics (University of Oxford) and a doctorate in philosophy of language (University of Palermo). He is full professor of linguistics. He is also a series editor for Springer, an editor for Intercultural Pragmatics, author of five monographs and three books of poems, editor of 16 international volumes, and author of papers published in top international journals. He is a board member of numerous international journals.

Pietro Perconti is full professor of Philosophy of mind at the University of Messina, Department of cognitive science. His research interests include social cognition, consciousness, and the social role of cognitive science. In the past, research areas also cover history of  the Western philosophy, in particular the German classical age. Perconti is the author of over 100 publications, including eight books. The first book is Kantian Linguistics: Theories of mental representation and the linguistic transformation of Kantism (Nodus, Munster, 1999). The latter, The Future of the Artificial Mind (with A. Plebe) (CRC, 2022), provides an outline of what the artificial mind is now and the social impact it might have in the future. 

Roberto Graci has a PhD in Cognitive Sciences from the University of Messina. His work focuses on the communicative competence of people with aphasia and its implication on the semantics/pragmatics debate. He has published several papers emphasising the productive comparison between theoretical pragmatics and speech-language pathology. Roberto Graci has also actively participated in important events on linguistics and philosophy of language, including Pragmasophia 3 and the XIV Congress of SIFA (Italian Society of Analytical Philosophy).