Cesare Cozzo

Università degli Studi "La Sapienza" di Roma, Philosophy, Faculty Member

Followers

123

Following

Co-author

Public Views

Cesare Cozzo studied at Rome, Florence and Stockholm. He is full professor of Logic at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Rome "La Sapienza". His main research has been in theory of meaning and philosophy of logic. He is author of three books: Teoria del significato e filosofia della logica (Clueb, Bologna 1994), Meaning and Argument (Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm 1994), Introduzione a Dummett (Laterza, Roma 2008), and of several articles. A significant part of his work has been focused on the idea that the sense of a linguistic expression is given by some rules for its use in arguments: he has developed a fallibilist and non-holistic version of this idea.
Address: Italy

less

InterestsView All (23)

Uploads

Papers by Cesare Cozzo

Epistemic truth as a regulative idea for assertoric practice

Topoi, 2025

This paper outlines a non-reductive epistemic conception of truth, compatible with an inferential... more This paper outlines a non-reductive epistemic conception of truth, compatible with an inferentialist conception of meaning.
According to the non-reductive epistemic conception, truth is a regulative idea. I propose a general way of understanding the notion of “regulative idea”: a concept X is a regulative idea for a social practice P if seven principles (formulated in sections 4-10) apply to X and P. The non-reductive epistemic conception of truth consists of five statements: 1. the concept TRUE presupposes the concept JUSTIFIED ASSERTION; 2. the concept JUSTIFIED ASSERTION presupposes the concept TRUE; 3.“an assertion that p is justified” does not imply “it is true that p”; 4. “it is true that p” does not imply “an assertion that p is justifiable”; 5. TRUE is a regulative idea for assertoric practice. Statement 5 is explained by bringing together the seven general principles about regulativity and applying them to the concept TRUE and assertoric practice.

Pursuit of the concept of validity: A dialogue

Theoria, Jun 18, 2024

Dummett, Analytic and Synthetic Deductions

Synthese Library/Synthese library, 2024

Intuitionistic Truth

Olismo epistemologico senza olismo linguistico

Download

Gulliver, Truth and Virtue

Topoi-an International Review of Philosophy, Sep 24, 2011

In the hitherto unknown manuscript containing the fifth part of his Travels Lemuel Gulliver descr... more In the hitherto unknown manuscript containing the fifth part of his Travels Lemuel Gulliver describes three peoples living on three different islands. I shall first summarize Gulliver's description of their customs, which may be of some interest to philosophers investigating the notion of truth. I shall then attempt to draw some conclusions from these. The three peoples encountered by Gulliver speak a language that appears to be good English, but he soon realizes that there are some important differences. 2. Laconia Gulliver's initial unreflecting comment on the first people is: "they are a laconic tribe: they know the futility of words". Gulliver does not tell us the name of the remote island where they live. I shall call it "Laconia" (though it is not in Greece). The reason for Gulliver's remark is that the inhabitants of Laconia never engage in discussions on matters of fact, such as whether apples are ripe or whether a storm is coming. They do make utterances that seem to be assertions, but Gulliver calls these "announcements". He uses the word "announcement" almost as a technical term intended to highlight the fact that the practice of this strange community differs in some significant respects from our own practice of making assertions. If a woman of Laconia, seated at table, announces: "This apple is ripe", she usually behaves accordingly: she eats the apple, or offers it to her child. Her announcement expresses something that functions as a basis for action, as a belief does: the sentence announced is treated as a guide for choosing means to achieve ends. In general, Laconians draw conclusions from their announcements, which manifest themselves in further announcements and in actions. The woman might say: "You like apples. This apple is ripe. Hence it can be eaten. So I give it to you." Obviously, we would be strongly inclined to interpret the woman's announcement as the sincere expression of a belief that the apple is ripe. Let us define quasi-assertion a speech act normally taken to express a behavioural disposition which, on initial consideration, we would construe as a belief. Laconian announcements are quasi-assertions. Laconian speakers do not always act in accordance with their announcements. One of the occasions on which a Laconian is criticized by other Laconians is when a speaker's actions fail to match his/her announcements: the others shake their heads and show disapproval. They may say: "you are not sincere" or "you are not serious". This reaction is easily explained. Since an announcement expresses a disposition to behave in a certain way, Laconians rely on the announcer to behave in that way and are disappointed if this does not happen: therefore they criticize the announcement. Quasi-assertions are thus subject to a norm of sincerity. There are other occasions for criticism in Laconia. After an announcement, if circumstances allow for a comfortable verbal exchange, other Laconians have the right to ask: "Why?". They are entitled to criticize an announcer who fails to answer. An answer is a personal justification of the announcement. A personal justification consists of further announcements. For example, the woman says: "it smells delicious", as her personal justification for the announcement "this apple is ripe". But sometimes personal justifications are concatenations of several announcements, which appear to be genuine pieces of reasoning. Some announcements are treated as incompatible with other announcements made by the same person. If the woman has announced "this apple is ripe", she would be criticized for adding "this apple is unripe". In this specific sense, announcements (and justifications) are required to be compatible with the same speaker's previous announcements. If they are not, they are criticized. Laconians also use the word "true". They do not hesitate to transform "the apple is ripe" into "it is true that the apple is ripe" or "'the apple is ripe' is true". The converse inference is drawn with equal ease. This allows them to exploit the expressive advantages offered by the equivalence schemata containing the word "true" (A if, and only if, it is true that A; A if, and only if, "A" is true). If someone announces: "a storm is coming", rather than repeating "a storm is coming", other Laconians say "that is true", to express their agreement with the previous speaker. They may also use the word "true" to make generalizations such as: "everything the king says is true". We have described four similarities between Laconian announcements and our assertions: 1) announcements are speech acts normally taken to express a behavioural disposition which we would prima facie characterize as belief (quasi-assertions); 2) Laconians give personal justifications of their announcements; 3) Laconians criticize announcements as insincere or unjustified; 4) Laconians use the word "true" in their announcements as we use it in our assertions. However, Gulliver is right in saying that the members of the first community are "a laconic tribe". The inhabitants of Laconia talk far less than we do, because they are indifferent to the fact that their own announcements and those of their fellow-speakers often disagree. To be precise, any English speaker would say that they disagree, but Laconians do not seem to care. A boy announces: "there are crabs on the beach". A girl: "there are no crabs on the beach". Each is sincere. Each may ask the other: "Why do you say this?". And each may provide justification. However, this apparent difference of opinion does not give rise to any discussion. They accept this difference pacifically as if it were utterly negligible and inconsequential. If the personal justification given by the boy does not

Download

What can we learn from the paradox of knowability?

Topoi-an International Review of Philosophy, Sep 1, 1994

The intuitionistic conception of truth defended by Dummett, Martin L6f and Prawitz, according to ... more The intuitionistic conception of truth defended by Dummett, Martin L6f and Prawitz, according to which the notion of proof is conceptually prior I to the notion of truth, is a particular version of the epistemic conception of truth. The paradox of knowability (first published by Frederic Fitch in 1963) has been described by many authors 2 as an argument which threatens the epistemic, and the intuitionistic, conception of truth. In order to establish whether this is really so, one has to understand what the epistemic conception of truth really is. So I shall start in part I with a description of the matter at issue between the epistemic conception of truth and the opposite position, the realistic conception of truth. In part H I shall very briefly describe the paradox. In part I11 1 shall try to answer the question which appears in the title of this paper: "What can we learn from the paradox of knowability?". My conclusion will be that the paradox of knowability is not a refutation of the epistemic conception of truth, but helps us to better formulate (and understand) such a view.

Download

Are Dummett's requirements on a theory of meaning sufficient for rejecting classical Logic?

Erkenntnis, Mar 1, 1994

Download

On the Copernican Turn in Semantics

Theoria, Nov 4, 2008

Alberto Coffa used the phrase 'the Copernican turn in semantics' to denote a revolutionary transf... more Alberto Coffa used the phrase 'the Copernican turn in semantics' to denote a revolutionary transformation of philosophical views about the connection between the meanings of words and the acceptability of sentences and arguments containing those words. According to the new conception resulting from the Copernican turn, here called 'the Copernican view', rules of use are constitutive of the meanings of words. This view has been linked with two doctrines: (A) the instances of meaningconstitutive rules are analytically and a priori true or valid; (B) to grasp a meaning is to accept its rules. The pros and cons of different versions of the Copernican view, ascribable to Wittgenstein, Carnap, Gentzen, Dummett, Prawitz, Boghossian and other authors will be weighed. A new version will be proposed, which does neither imply (A) nor (B). * Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the conference Interpretation and Inference in honour of Dag Prawitz (Stockholm-Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, May 2006) and at the NOS-H workshop Rearticulations of Reason: Recent Currents (Rome-Norwegian Institute, October 2006); I am grateful to the participants for stimulating discussions. I also thank four anonymous referees, whose insightful comments on an earlier draft led to various improvements. A referee suggests that the new way of understanding meaning-constitutive rules proposed in this paper, even though it involves a rejection of absolute apriority, might be compatible with some kind of a priori relative to a context. In Cozzo (1994: 127, 184-5) a notion of relative apriority is indeed accepted. But I hope to better elaborate this and other interesting suggestions of the referees in future papers.

Download

Cogency and Context

Topoi-an International Review of Philosophy, Mar 20, 2017

Cogency is the force, or strength, of arguments. A cogent inference is an inference that "compels... more Cogency is the force, or strength, of arguments. A cogent inference is an inference that "compels us to accept the conclusion" if we accept the premises. An ambiguity lurks here. In what sense are we compelled? There are at least three senses. The first kind of compelling inferences can be illustrated by an example (see Kahneman 2012, p. 19). We have some given data: the picture of a woman's face. The data are automatically processed: the expression on her face is such that we immediately think, or rather feel, that the woman is angry. The given data, the picture of a face, are the premise of an inference and the processed data are the conclusion: the thought that the woman is angry. The term "inference" is now used to denote a transition from given data to processed data. But the process is so rapid that we are not even aware of a transition taking place. We see that there is a woman's face before us, and at the same time we feel and believe that the woman is angry. In this sense we can say that the inference is unconscious, involuntary and automatic. We cannot help but feel that the woman is angry. The passage from premise to conclusion is not something that we do. It is not an act performed by an agent, but an event that simply happens to us. An event that we undergo, beyond our rational control. Precisely because the transition is automatic we are compelled to feel that the woman is angry. This is the first kind of compulsion: automatic compulsion. As Daniel Kahneman says, such automatic processes may depend on "innate skills" or may "become fast and automatic through prolonged practice" (p. 22). Automatic inferences are made continuously when we are awake; their role in our mental life is extremely pervasive and influential. However, they often lead to errors.

Download

Necessity of Thought

Outstanding contributions to logic, Nov 28, 2014

The concept of “necessity of thought” plays a central role in Dag Prawitz’s essay “Logical Conseq... more The concept of “necessity of thought” plays a central role in Dag Prawitz’s essay “Logical Consequence from a Constructivist Point of View”. The theme is later developed in various articles devoted to the notion of valid inference. In Sect. 4.1 I explain how the notion of necessity of thought emerges from Prawitz’s analysis of logical consequence. I try to expound Prawitz’s views concerning the necessity of thought in Sects. 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4. In Sects. 4.5 and 4.6 I discuss some problems arising with regard to Prawitz’s views.

Fallibility and Fruitfulness of Deductions

Erkenntnis, Nov 3, 2021

Meaning and argument: A theory of meaning centred on immediate argumental role

Meaning and Argument A theoiy of meaning centred on immediate argumentai role Akademisk avhandlin... more

Download

Realismi: una mappa concettuale

§1. Formulazione generica della questione. Chi ha l'abitudine di sfogliare le riviste filosofiche... more §1. Formulazione generica della questione. Chi ha l'abitudine di sfogliare le riviste filosofiche sa che "metafisica" non è più una parola che scotta. I maestri dell'inizio del secolo (gli empiristi logici sono l'esempio più tipico) identificarono la metafisica con il non-senso e usarono la parola come un marchio di infamia. Non mancavano precedenti nella storia della filosofia. Ma oggi gli allievi di quei maestri preferiscono rifarsi ad un uso diverso, meno fazioso, del termine per indicare con esso un'indagine filosofica, che non solo non deve essere trascurata, ma concerne i fondamenti di molte altre ricerche, ed è quindi per molti versi centrale. Una delle principali questioni di cui si occupano oggi i filosofi "analitici" da Oxford a Harvard, dall'Australia alla Scandinavia, è dichiaratamente metafisica: la questione del realismo. In questa sede, intendo solo fornire una specie di approssimativa mappa interdisciplinare sull'argomento. La formula più generale (e più generica) di cui ci si può servire per una esplicazione della nozione di realismo è forse la seguente: 1) il realismo è la tesi filosofica secondo la quale la realtà è indipendente da noi. Si tratta di una tesi metafisica nel senso in cui la metafisica concerne l'essere-in-quanto-essere. Il realismo è la tesi che l'essere è indipendente da noi. Prendendo spunto dalla formulazione 1), sono tre le domande da porre per considerare le varie versioni del realismo: i) che cosa si intende con realtà-ii) che cosa si intende con indipendente-iii) che cosa si intende con noi. Lasciamo per un momento aperte le ultime due questioni, e affrontiamo la prima. §2. Contestualizzazione della nozione di realtà: realtà, pensiero e linguaggio. Se ci si limita ad una nozione di realtà semplicemente data per scontata e assunta senza collegamenti con altre nozioni, è difficile vedere come possa prender forma una argomentazione filosofica che la concerna. Non a caso, fin dalle sue origini greche, la filosofia ha considerato la realtà nel suo nesso problematico con un linguaggio che cerca di parlarne e con un pensiero che cerca di conoscerla. Nesso e/o distanza, che sono appunto al centro del problema del realismo. 1 Si potrebbe sostenere che la nozione di riferimento possa applicarsi anche agli enunciati e che p.es. un fatto sia il referente di un enunciato. Per Frege, a partire dal 1892, quando pubblica "Über Sinn und Bedeutung", la Bedeutung (il referente) di un enunciato è un valore di verità, un tipo assai particolare di oggetto. Questa è forse la più controversa fra le tesi di Frege, cf.Barwise and Perry, "Frege's Slingshot",

Download

Rule-following and the objectivity of proof

Crispin Wright has already remarked: «the ideas on rules can motivate much of what Wittgenstein s... more Crispin Wright has already remarked: «the ideas on rules can motivate much of what Wittgenstein says about Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics, and about mathematical objectivity, and logical compulsion-and in general can explain his opposition to ideas about mathematics that overlook what we might call the 'anthropological contribution'. What they cannot explain are his distinctive remarks about proof and the status, in point of certainty, of the conclusions of proof», Wright (1991), in Wright (2001) p. 421. 2 Dummett (1959), now in Dummett (1978) p. 184. 3 Wittgenstein (1956) I § 61.

Download

Karl-Otto Apel verso una teoria pragmatico-trascendentale della verità

Ruolo argomentativo immediato

Lingua E Stile, 1994

Download

Inference and compulsion

§1 Seven factors that characterize a conception of inference How can an inference be compelling? ... more §1 Seven factors that characterize a conception of inference How can an inference be compelling? The question presupposes a sufficiently clear, non-empty notion of inference. A first approximation is to say that an inference is a unit of reasoning. By dividing an instance of reasoning into parts that are themselves instances of reasoning we eventually come to an end: the result are minimal, elementary instances of reasoning. The word "inference" is used to refer to these units of reasoning. The first approximation, however, leaves room for many different notions of inference, according to which conception of reasoning one adopts. What is reasoning? A very general and abstract answer is: reasoning is data processing. If we accept this answer, an inference is a single simple transition from given data to processed data. The given data are the premises of the inference and the processed data are the conclusion (or conclusions) of the inference. This is a very broad notion of inference. Many authors prefer a more specific notion according to which, though an inference is always a particular kind of transition from given data to processed data, not every such transition is a genuine inference in the proper sense. Be that as it may, starting from the very broad notion of inference, one can distinguish at least seven factors with respect to which a conception of inference can differ from other conceptions. The first factor are premises and conclusions. What are they? The very general answer is that they are simply data. Carlo Cellucci (2002, p. 223, 2008, p. 337) argues for this view. Most contemporary authors, however, say that premises and conclusions can only be items capable of being true or false, truthbearers. This second, more specific, answer to the question as to the nature of premises and conclusions admits of many different developments: truth-bearers can be linguistic entities (sentences), non-linguistic abstract entities (propositions) or mental states, like beliefs. A third answer consists in saying that premises and conclusions are not objects or states in which we happen to find ourselves, but responsible acts or actions, which we do. Following Immanuel Kant (KrV B94/A69, Kant 1985, p. 138) one can say that they are «acts of the understanding [Handlungen des Verstandes]» or mental acts of judgement (cf. Martin Löf 1985, Sundholm 1994, 1998, 2002). If we prefer to focus on public linguistic practice, we can conceive of premises and conclusions as linguistic acts, such as assertions (but perhaps other linguistic acts as well, like questions or commands). The second factor is the subject processing the data. The subject, too, can be understood broadly or narrowly. If you think that only a person can make an inference, you have a narrow conception of the subject of inference. If you believe that not only a person, but also a machine, or a non

Download

Criteri ed enunciati psicologici

Download

Identità: logica e ontologia

Tale sussunzione può forse essere interpretata come segue: dire che 'A non è non A' è la stessa c... more Tale sussunzione può forse essere interpretata come segue: dire che 'A non è non A' è la stessa cosa che dire, invertendo l'ordine, che 'non A non è A'; ma (accettando l'equivalenza di "X non è Y" e "X è non Y") quest'ultimo equivale a ''non A è non A'', cioè a un esempio del principio di identità.

Download

Cesare Cozzo

Uploads

Papers by Cesare Cozzo

Log In