LOGOS, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Logic, History and Philosophy of Science

My thesis is a work in historical epistemology of language sciences. It deals with the redefinition of semiotics that occurs at the turn of the 20th century in correlation with the development of new formal languages for the modern mathematically oriented logic. In that context, it focuses on the constitutive conditions of Frege’s logicist program (1893) and of Husserl’s idea of phenomenology (1913). Aiming at determining the impact of their semiotic modelings on the development of their theories of meaning, it provides a chronological and systematic reconstruction of their conceptions of logic from 1879 to 1901. And in so doing, it leads to the setting up of an alternative between two ways of relating a calculus to its signification (either monistic or dualistic), correlated with two opposite views on semiotic meaning (either intensional or extensional), and entailing two different conceptions of logic (either as calculus or as language). Thereby, it lays out the syntax-semantics dichotomous framework that underpins the rise of modern logic.

When formulating his idea of pure logic in the Prolegomena (1900: chap. XI), Husserl configures it on two levels: the superior one of formal logic, concerned with the axiomatization of mathematical structures, and the inferior one of transcendantal logic grounding the former from an epistemological standpoint (i.e. as a science and in terms of theory of knowledge). Only the latter is taken into consideration in the Logical Investigations (1901), while the theoretical work on formal logic that Husserl conducted at the same time seems at first glance rather independent. This paper is about that work as collected in the appendices VI–X to Husserliana 12 (1970). It aims at explicating how Husserl’s conception formal logic fits in with his idea of pure logic.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a unitary typology for the incompatibilities of meanings at stake on different levels of Husserlian pure logic—namely, between systems of axioms and pure morphology of meanings; I show that they perfectly match by converging on the notion of Widersinn (counter-sense).

Philosophical investigations into logic and mathematics undertaken at the turn of the 20th century have shaped analytic philosophy up until now. Although many promising efforts have been made over the past several decades to integrate Husserl’s early writings into this background, the significance of his work is still prejudicially underrated and unexploited. In this project, I wish to further these researches into the roots of contemporary philosophy by reassessing the relevance of Husserl’s philosophy of logic and mathematic. To do this, I intend to piece together Husserl’s ideas on pure logic, which is in many respects closely related to what has come to be called mathematical logic, using the numerous pertinent texts published by the Husserl Archives since the 1970’s. I plan to establish their connections with topics at issue in contemporary history and philosophy of logic and mathematic. With this in mind, a first set of questions will concern the very structuring of pure logic and ask for a formal understanding of its components and their relations from the standpoint of modern mathematical logic. Then, on the basis of that intended reconstruction of Husserlian pure logic, a second set of questions will concern its epistemological import, with respect to the putative transcendental foundation of mathematical logic in the whole structuring of pure logic, and will appraise its semantic and epistemic account of mathematical truth. The methods of this research project will be based on the use of contemporary logico-mathematical languages so as to obtain an updated formal reproduction of the set of statements constituting pure logic, and thereby, to evaluate it as theory according to its soundness and adequacy (with respect to the identification of its goals). In this way, my research project should provide an unprecedented formal (unitary and systemic) reconstruction of the whole structuring of Husserlian pure logic, especially, taking into account its progressive refinement, say, from 1900 to 1929.

All our cognitive activities, whether practical or theoretical, are about something. To access those intended references, whether abstract or concrete, real or ideal, we design networks of concepts. Now, it is clear that the quality of our cognition—its correctness and adequacy, its usefulness or fecundity—mostly depends on the quality of our conceptual designs. And yet in most cases, such designs further rely on semiotic systems (be they visual, tactile, auditive, or otherwise). Thus, against a common internalist account according to which what we refer to in our cognitive activities is solely determined by our conceptual mental states, a more plausible view is that the structuring of our abstract objective networks of concepts proceeds from our concrete subjective uses of symbolic systems to intend some reference(s) as cognitive agents.  So in this research project, I wish to further investigate this semiotic-intentionalist based approach to conceptual engineering, which is still underexploited in the analytic tradition. To do so, and building on my past work, I intend to bring together various philosophical theories of semiotic referential meaning from a historically informed perspective. I plan to establish, explore and exploit their connections with recent proof-theoretic trends and advances in formal semantics, with a focus on methodological and conceptual issues. The challenge is then to recover, on those grounds, the philosophical import of some groundbreaking results in proof-theoretic semantics, and convert them into methodological justification for the possibility of semiotic cognition. And from this cross-disciplinary approach, using insights from philosophy, semiotics, and logic, I aim to develop a consistent and explanatorily powerful theoretical model that provides new methodological foundations for traditionally dominant models in epistemology of semiotics (viz. of semiotic systems of natural or formal languages). I believe that this can shed new light on topics currently at issue in the multi-disciplinary field of conceptual engineering, as well as generating debate and bringing new life to mainstream philosophy now.

This paper deals with Husserl’s idea of pure logic as it is coined in the Logical Investigations (1900/1901). First, it exposes the formation of pure logic around a conception of completeness (Sect. 2); then, it presents intentionality as the keystone of such a structuring (Sect. 3); and finally, it provides a systematic reconstruction of pure logic from the semiotic standpoint of intentionality (Sect. 4). In this way, it establishes Husserlian pure logic as a phenomenological epistemology of mathematical logic.

Intentionality may be dealt with in two different ways: either ontologically, as an ordinary relation to some extraordinary objects, or epistemologically, as an extraordinary relation to some ordinary objects. This paper endorses the epistemological view in order to provide a model of semiotic intentionality defined as the meaning-and-cognizing process that constitutes to power of the mind to be about something on the basis of a semiotic system. After a short introduction that presents the components of semiotic intentionality (viz. sign, act, content, referent) along with their division into an intending and a fulfilling side (Sect. 1), the first main part of the paper analyzes semiotic intentionality at its primary level (a.k.a. 'concrete intentionality') as a real and subjective relation between meaning-intending and meaning-fulfilling acts grounded in the manipulation of some semiotic system (Sect. 2). Then, building on such concrete intentionality, the second main part of the paper analyzes semiotic intentionality at its secondary level (a.k.a. 'abstract intentionality') as an ideal and objective relation between intentional and fulfillment contents, which in turn: (i) proceed from an abstraction performed on the intending and fulfilling acts, respectively, and (ii) retroactively categorize the intending and fulfilling acts, respectively (Sect. 3). Finally, from this combination of an act-based conception of content with a presentationalist account of intentionality, the conclusion of this paper produces the intended model of semiotic intentionality in such a way that knowledge and truth are then respectively defined in it as the subjective correspondence between the two acts of concrete intentionality and as the objective correspondence between the two contents of abstract intentionality (Sect. 4).

Conceptual engineering is the fast-moving research field that means to provide a method to assess and improve any of our concepts working as cognitive devices, that is: to identify conceptual deficiencies, elaborate ameliorative strategies, and prescribe normative guidelines as to whether and how to use a concept. The aim of the SUFCE tutorial is to provide a systematic overview of the program of conceptual engineering so designed, with a focus on its foundational issues. It is divided into three sessions.

We use concepts all the time to make sense of reality. That of foodstuff types to put the groceries away, of GDP metrics to measure the country's economic progress, of `force' to explain the falling of bodies in Newtonian mechanics, etc. Here the quality of our cognitive activity crucially depends on the quality of our conceptual apparatus, so that: the better our concepts are, the better our cognition will be. Think of the percentage of waste you can recycle thanks to good concepts of selective sorting. Example like this are all around us everyday. And conceptual engineering is precisely the new research program that means to provide a method to assess and improve any of our concepts working as such cognitive devices. But conceptual engineering is still a very young research field and it still lacks, to date, an explicit account of what concepts are (as cognitive devices) and of what engineering is (in the case of cognition). Now, without such prior understanding of its subject matter, or so it is claimed here, conceptual engineering is bound to remain useless, merely operating as a piecemeal approach with no overall grip on its target domain. The purpose of the present research project is to overcome this knowledge gap by developing the theories of concepts and of (cognitive) engineering that will ground the systematic unified framework needed to efficiently and consistently implement conceptual engineering as a method for the cognitive optimization of our concepts. Given that conceptual deficiencies are ubiquitous (as revealed throughout many informational interviews with policy-makers, think tanks, entrepreneurs, practitioners and researchers from various domains), the challenge of setting up conceptual engineering in this way is of the most urgent scientific relevance.

Conceptual engineering means to provide a method to assess and improve our concepts working as cognitive devices. But conceptual engineering still lacks an account of what concepts are (as cognitive devices) and of what engineering is (in the case of cognition). And without such prior understanding of its subject matter, or so it is claimed here, conceptual engineering is bound to remain useless, merely operating as a piecemeal approach, with no overall grip on its target domain. The purpose of this programmatic paper is to overcome this knowledge gap by providing some guidelines for developing the theories of concepts and of cognition that will ground the systematic unified framework needed to effectively implement conceptual engineering as a widely applicable method for the cognitive optimization of our conceptual devices.

Conceptual engineering aims to provide a method for assessing and improving our concepts as cognitive devices. But conceptual engineering still lacks an account of what concepts are as cognitive devices. And without such prior understanding of its subject matter, or so it is claimed here, conceptual engineering is bound to remain useless, merely operating as a piecemeal approach, with no overall grip on its target domain. This paper partly overcomes this knowledge gap by developing a theory of concepts that grounds conceptual engineering as a widely applicable method for the cognitive optimization of our conceptual devices.

Conceptual engineering is the method for assessing and improving concepts. Some have recently claimed that the implementation of such method in the form of ameliorative projects is truth-driven and should thus be epistemically constrained. This paper challenges that claim on the basis of a social constructionist analysis of ideologies, and provides an alternative, pragmatic framework for determining the legitimacy of ameliorative conceptual projects in general.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of intentionality that intrinsically articulates contentless and contentful forms of intentionality, without presupposing the existence of any sort of intentional contents. Such twofold theory of intentionality will be achieved through the combination of an act-based conception of intentional content with a presentationalist account of the intentional relationship itself. And the main upshot will consist in a straightforward solution to the variants of the discontinuity predicament faced by the Radical Enactive program in cognitive science-namely, the scaling up problem, the origins of content problem, and the interaction problem. Keywords. Phenomenology, Theory of intentionality, Act-based theory of meaning, Presentationalist theory of mind.

The paper considers the "GR-desideratum", that is, the way general relativity implements general covariance, diffeomorphism invariance, and background independence. Two cases are discussed where 5-dimensional generalizations of general relativity run into interpretational troubles when the GR-desideratum is forced upon them. It is shown how the conceptual problems dissolve when such a desideratum is relaxed. In the end, it is suggested that a similar strategy might mitigate some major issues such as the problem of time or the embedding of quantum non-locality into relativistic spacetimes.

The paper presents an inquiry into the question regarding the compatibility of Bohmian mechanics, intended as a non-local theory of moving point-like particles, with background independence. This issue is worth being investigated because, if the Bohmian framework has to be of some help in developing new physics, it has to be compatible with the most well-established traits of modern physics, background independence being one of such traits. The paper highlights the fact that the notion of background independence in the context of spacetime physics is slippery and interpretation-laden. It is then suggested that the best-matching framework developed by Julian Barbour might provide a robust enough meaning of background independence. The structure of Bohmian dynamics is evaluated against this framework, reaching some intermediate results that speak in favor of the fact that Bohmian mechanics can be made background independent.