Mumble Research Group - Conferences & Workshops

Webex link: https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=mcf064983fff7ce3467aa327720bb2c42

Upcoming Events Season 2024/25

Workshop: Perceiving High-Level Properties

Date: December 12-13, 2024

Venue: Palazzo Donatello, UniSR Campus Milano 2, Segrate (MI) and online via this Microsoft Teams link

A detailed description of the workshop is available here.

Attendance information

Attendance is free, but seats are limited. Please kindly inform us of your in-person attendance by emailing barbieri.alberto[at]unisr.it.

You may experience some issues enjoying Teams meetings through Google Chrome. Please consider downloading the Microsoft Teams app or using a different web browser.

Funding

The event is co-funded by CRESA – Centro di Ricerca in Epistemologia Sperimentale e Applicata.

Scientific and Organising Committee

Alberto Barbieri

Francesca De Vecchi

Elisabetta Sacchi

Abstracts

Anna Donise (University of Naples), Higher-order Level Properties and Values. Elements for a Stratified Theory

TBA

Francesca Forlè (Vita-Salute San Raffaele University), Tertiary Qualities as Global Qualities of Gestalts: A Phenomenological Account

Gloomy atmospheres, cheerful pieces of music, melancholic landscapes. It seems that we can aptly describe inanimate objects by means of psychological terms. However, how can this be justified if we are dealing with non-psychological phenomena? What kind of qualities – if any – are we grasping when we say that an atmosphere is gloomy or that a piece of music is cheerful?

In this talk I will briefly present some of the main theoretical options that have been proposed to answer these questions, such as projective theories (Wollheim), persona theories (Levinson, Cochrane), contour theories (Kivy, Davies), and arousal theories (Matravers, Ridley). I will argue, however, that all of them have troubles in explaining how the same expressive qualities (such as gloominess, cheerfulness, sadness, serenity) can be ascribed to very different things such as an atmosphere, a piece of music, a personal feeling, or a bodily expression.

As a way out of this issue, I will propose to conceive expressive – and more generally – tertiary qualities as a kind of qualities that are not reducible to the factual properties of their bearers, even though they can be argued to be founded on such properties. I will rather maintain that expressive and tertiary qualities are global qualities of Gestalts (De Monticelli and Forlè 2024): as such, they do not pertain to specific components but to specific structures of components, the single components being variable in their factual properties. I will also maintain that, being global qualities of gestalts, tertiary qualities are not produced by the mere addition of the components’ qualities. Rather, they are able to re-define the qualities of the components themselves.

On this background, I will argue that a tertiary quality is such that it regulates the ways in which the single components of a Gestalt can co-vary, defining therefore the limits to the possible co-variations of such components, limits beyond which that tertiary quality can no longer be obtained (De Monticelli 2018, 2021).

Giulia Martina (University of Dortmund), Smelling What It Is

Even though our noses are very sensitive, we are generally pretty bad at recognising what we are smelling. Western subjects can name only 30-50% of common smells, and often report having no idea what they are smelling, even if the smell feels familiar. However, when given labels to choose from or visual cues (e.g. a picture of an object with that smell), the same subjects will very quickly recognise whether it is fitting or not. One might sniff a sample and claim they have no clue what it is; but when one is told ‘It’s thyme’, a ‘ah-ah!’ moment follows: ‘Yes, of course it’s thyme! I can smell it now. How could I not get it?’. This recognition seems to have an experiential dimension: one’s experience seems to change in coming to smell what it is. How should we understand this change? In this talk, I discuss whether these experiences are examples of high-level property perception, specifically olfactory perception of natural and artificial kinds. The hypothesis is especially interesting to test in olfactory cases as, unlike in vision, we seem to have a change from an almost complete absence of recognition – at first, one cannot say anything at all about the smell, not even in terms of low-level features – to an experience with recognition. Moreover, the hypothesis has some plausibility. First, the hedonic dimension and ‘epistemic emotions’ such as a feeling of surprise or confirmation cannot fully explain the change in experience. Second, how one conceptualises the smell can make a difference to the phenomenal structure of the experience – the same smell can be experienced as a composite of different, equally appropriate, smells. Third, we cannot simply appeal to one’s attending to, or noticing, a certain olfactory quality – one can be very focused on the smell when one has no idea what it is. Still, I argue that there are less costly and superior explanations of the phenomenon that do not appeal to natural and artificial kind perception.

Thomas Raleigh (University of Luxembourg), Property Perception and Indeterminacy

TBA

Elisabetta Sacchi (Vita-Salute San Raffaele University), The Conceptualist Argument against Sensory Liberalism

TBA

Błażej Skrzypulec (Jagiellonian University), Structural Experiential Properties

An important distinction made by philosophers in analyzing perceptual experiences is between experiential content and experiential structures. Content is described as a changeable aspect of experiences that characterizes what is presented by an experience. On the other hand, experiential structures are relatively invariant ways of organizing experiential content. Some experiential structures are 'structural experential properties' that one can be phenomenally aware of when having a perceptual experience. The most popular example of a structural property discussed in the philosophical literature is the boundedness of the visual field, which determines the spatial organization of visual content. In the talk, I explicate the notion of structural properties and explore relations between this notion and the notion of high-level perceptual properties. In particular, I consider the relation between structural properties and low-level perceptual properties to determine whether structural properties are somehow dependent on other types of perceptual properties. I also consider the epistemic role of structural properties and their relation to the transparency thesis.

Joulia Smortchkova (Grenoble Alpes University), Can Empirical Data Help Us Establish High-Level Perception?

In the debate about the reach of perceptual content philosophers have often appealed to empirical results, such as data from gist perception (Bayne and McClelland, 2019), perceptual adaptation (Fish, 2013; Block, 2014), unilateral neglect (Nanay, 2012), or from perceptual learning (Ransom, 2020), to give just a few examples. The appeal to empirical data can be split in two broad groups: appeals that do not question the traditional way of distinguishing between perception and cognition, and appeals that challenge some of the features traditionally associated with perception, such as informational encapsulation or stimulus-dependence. In my talk I will examine a few empirical results which purport to establish high-level perception, and discuss the possibility of appealing to such empirical data to make the case for high-level perception without already presupposing a substantial theory of perception.

Alberto Voltolini (University of Turin), The Necessary and Jointly Sufficient Conditions for a Higher-Level Property to Be Perceivable

Higher-level properties are the properties that depend, possibly generically, on low-level properties (colors, shapes, sounds, textures …) for their instantiation. In this talk, I maintain that there are two necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for a higher-level property to be a perceivable property. First, i): the property is given immediately. Immediacy (Fish 2013, Nes 2016) has to do with all the factors that show that a perceivable property is grasped passively, not spontaneously: e.g. automaticity (Toribio 2018), adaptation-sensitivity (Block 2022), non-inferentiality (Raftopoulos 2009). Second, ii): the property is given via a grouping operation (Jagnow 2015, Calzavarini-Voltolini 2022,2023, Landers 2021, Martina-Voltolini 2017, Voltolini 2015,2020,2023) that involves a perceptual form of attention (Stokes 2018). ii) is relevant on this concern, for it allows for a form of both non-conceptual and perceptual form of recognition, compatible only with a kind of cognitive penetration that is both weak (it only affects phenomenal character) and lite (it applies contingently to tokens of perceptual experiences of the same kind) (Macpherson 2012,2015). In the light of i)-ii), I also claim that other major candidates for being higher-level perceivable properties – namely, kind properties and meaning properties (Siegel 2011) – are not such. For they do not satisfy ii).

Program

Day 1: December 12, 2024 -- Room 204, Palazzo Donatello

9:45-10:00 || Welcome and opening remarks

Chair: Francesca De Vecchi

10:00-11:15 || Francesca Forlè (San Raffaele University), Tertiary Qualities as Global Qualities of Gestalts: A Phenomenological Account

11:15-11:45 || Coffee Break

11:45-13:00 || Anna Donise (University of Naples), Higher-Order Level Properties and Values. Elements for a Stratified Theory

13:00-14:30 || Lunch

Chair: Elisabetta Sacchi

14:30-15:45 || Joulia Smortchkova (Grenoble Alpes University), Can Empirical Data Help Us Establish High-Level Perception?

15:45-17:00 || Alberto Voltolini (University of Turin), The Necessary and Jointly Sufficient Conditions for a Higher-Level Property to Be Perceivable

17:00-17:30 || Coffee Break

Chair: Alfredo Tomasetta

17:30-18:45 || Giulia Martina (Dortmund University), Smelling What It Is

20:00 || Social Dinner

Day 2: December 13, 2024 -- Room 204, Palazzo Donatello

Chair: Alberto Barbieri

9:00-10:15 || Elisabetta Sacchi (San Raffale University), The Conceptualist Argument Against Sensory Liberalism

10:15-11:30 || Thomas Raleigh (University of Luxembourg), Property Perception and Indeterminacy

11:30-12:00 || Coffee Break

Chair: Davide Bordini

12:00-13:15 || Błażej Skrzypulec (Jagiellonian University), Structural Experiential Properties

13:15 || End of the Workshop and Lunch

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Past Events

Workshop "Atmospheres of Places, Objects, and Events"

20-21 November 2024

PRIN-PNRR Project “Atmospheres (ATMOS): What They Are and How They are Grasped”

PI: Prof. Elvira Di Bona, University of Turin

Organized by ATMOS Post-doctoral Researcher Mariaenrica Giannuzzi and PEA Post-doctoral Researcher Luca

Marchetti, in collaboration with ERC Research Group PEA “The Philosophy of Experiential Artifacts” University of Genoa

and ATMOS member Prof. Marcello Frixione

Wednesday, November 20

Aula Magna, Via Balbi 2, Genova

h 9.30-10.25 Marta Benenti (University of Murcia)

“Atmospheres: from Attunement to Perceptual Detection”

COFFEE BREAK

h 11.00-11.30 Francesca Forlè (Vita-Salute San Raffaele University)

“Atmospheres as Spatialized Tertiary Qualities. A Phenomenological Account”

h 11.30-12.00 Adam Andrzejewski (University of Warsaw)

“Aesthetic Atmospheres and Ontology”

h 12.00-12.30 Carmen Bonasera (University of Turin)

“Uncomfortable Atmospheres: Preliminary Hypotheses on Atmospheres and Negative Empathy in Literature”

LUNCH BREAK

h 15.00-15.30 Simone Santamato (Vita-Salute San Raffaele University)

“Atmosphere Constitution. A Phenomenological Inquiry Into Atmospherology”

h 15.30-16.00 Sara Borriello (Tor Vergata University)

“Atmospheres and the Expressiveness of the Inorganic: From Phenomenological Realism to

Hermann Schmitz”

h 16.00-16.30 Elisa Caldarola (CUNY New York/University of Turin)

“The Atmospheres of Installation Art”

COFFEE BREAK

h 17.00-17.55 Elena Mancioppi (University of Gastronomic Sciences Pollenzo)

“Osmospheres: Smell and Atmospheres”

SOCIAL DINNER

Thursday, November 21

h 9.30-10.25 Lisa Giombini (University of Roma Tre)

“Atmospheres and Authenticity in Architectural Conservation”

COFFEE BREAK

h 11.00-11.30 Margherita Fontana (University of Milan)

“The Atmosphere in a Shell: Geodesic Domes between Virtual Spaceships and Greenhouses”

h 11.30-12.00 Thorsten Botz-Bornstein (Gulf University)

"Toxic Atmospheres"

h 12.05-13.00 Alberto Voltolini (University of Turin)

"Atmospheres of and in Pictures"

LUNCH BREAK

h 14.30-15.00 Cristiano Vidali (University of Cagliari-Paris Nanterre)

“Not Even Quasi-Things: Phenomenology of Atmospheres Beyond Intentionality”

h 15.00-15.30 Matteo Mauro Lenti (University of Turin)

“An Atmosphere of Affordances: A Unified Framework on Action and Perception”

h 15.30-16.00 Lukáš Makky (University of Presov)

“Dialectic of Time and Space in the Concept of Aura and Atmosphere”

COFFEE BREAK

h 16.35-17.30 Paola Sabbion and Elisabetta Canepa (University of Genoa)

“The Changing Essence of Atmospheres in Landscape and Architecture”

An Evergreen Problem: Intentionality from the Middle Ages to Today

30 October, 2024

Auditorium Quazza, via Sant'Ottavio 20, Turin, Italy

9.15-10.45am

Gianfranco Soldati (Fribourg), Perception and Imagination

10.45-11.15am Coffee break

11.15am-12.45pm

Davide Bordini (Turin), Something about the Question of Aboutness

Lunch break

2.45-4.15pm

Onorato Grassi (LUMSA, Rome), Medieval Sources of Intentionality

4.15-5-45pm Coffee break

5.45-6.15pm

Valentina Martinis (Liege), The Problem of Evaluability for Objectual Content

6.15-7.45pm

Alberto Voltolini (Turin), Presentation and Representation

Marking The Mark of the Mental

International Final Conference PRIN Project 2017P9E9NF

May 29 – June 1 2023, Turin

Palazzo Badini Confalonieri, via Verdi 10, II floor

https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=mef7aa26cc202c039124c4aa03b6810c1

Programme

May 29, afternoon

14.30-16.00

Alfredo Tomasetta (IUSS Pavia) A Theory of Phenomenal For-me-ness

16.00-17.30

Katalin Farkas (CEU), Are Character Traits Mental?

17.30-18.00

Coffee break

18.00-19.30

Andrea Pace Giannotta (Bergamo), Phenomenal Intentionality and Process Ontology

May 30, morning

9.00-10.30

Laura Gow (Liverpool) Apparent Relationality as the Mark of the Mental (online)

10.30-11.00

Coffee break

11.00-12.30

Kevin Mulligan (Geneva and Lugano), On the Difference between the Mental and the Psychological

May 30, afternoon

14.30-16.00

Tuomas Pernu (East Finland), No Marks of the Mental without Marks of the Physical

16.00-17.30

Gianfranco Soldati (Fribourg), Intentionality: a Natural Mark of the Mental?

17.30-18.00

Coffee break

18.00-19.30

Tim Crane (CEU), Unconscious Intentionality (online)

May 31, morning

9.00-10.30

Guillaume Frechette (Lisbon and Zurich), Intentionality As the Salient Mark of the Mental.

10.30-11.00

Coffee break

11.00-12.30

Mark Textor (King’s College London), Marks of the Mental: Brentano and Beyond

May 31, afternoon

14.30-16.00

Michelle Montague (Austin), Brentano on Relations

16.00-17.30

Elisabetta Sacchi and Alberto Barbieri (S. Raffaele Milan), In Defence of a sui generis Disjunctivist Account of the Mark of the Mental

17.30-18.00

Coffee break

18.00-19.30

Arnaud Dewalque (Liège), Three Cambridge Arguments for Experientialism

June 1, morning

9.00-10.30

Sam Coleman (Hertfordshire), Consciousness is Neither Necessary Nor Sufficient for Mentality

10.30-11.00

Coffee break

11.00-12.30

Alberto Voltolini (Turin), The Experiential Copula as the Mark of the Mental

****

The Structure of Intentionality

January 27, 2023

Aula di Antica, Palazzo Nuovo, via S. Ottavio 20 2nd floor, Turin

or join online:

https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=mef7aa26cc202c039124c4aa03b6810c1

Program

Morning

9-10.15 am

Hamid Taieb (Humboldt University Berlin)

Relational Intentionality in the History of Philosophy: An Overview

10.15-11.30 am

Andrew Thomas (University of Durham)

A New Look at Semantic Instrumentalism

11.30-11.45 am Coffee Break

11.45am-1pm

Mohammad Saleh Zarepour (University of Manchester)

Intentionality Primitivism Reconsidered

Afternoon

3pm-4.15pm

Stefania Centrone (FernUni Hagen)

Conceptions of Intentionality

4.15-5.30pm

Andrea Marchesi (University of Rome I)

The Liar, Intentionality, and Parthood

5.30-5.45 pm Coffee Break

5.45-7pm

Alberto Voltolini (University of Turin)

Full-blown Relationality

How the Senses Present the World

20-21 June 2022

Palazzo Badini-Confalonieri, via Verdi 10, Turin

Online: https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=meddc47a9afeef79bb8522ec74dfa4dc8

No need to register, but email giulia.martina@unito if you are planning to join in person

Programme

June 20

9:30 (brief introduction)

9:40 - 11:00 Nick Young (University of Milan)

Hearing Sad Speech in Minor Melodies

11:00-11:30 Break

11:30-12:50 Elvira Di Bona (University of Turin)

How Audition Is Temporal

12:50-14:50 Lunch break

14:50-16:10 Louise Richardson (University of York)

Grief, Smell, & the Olfactory Air of a Person (joint work with Becky Millar)

16:10-16:40 Break

16:40-18:00 Giulia Martina (University of Turin)

Smelling Things (joint work with Matthew Nudds)

19:30 Dinner

June 21st

9:40 - 11:00 Mark E. Kalderon (University College London)

Perceptual Pragmatism and Objectivity

11:00-11:30 Break

11:30-12:50 Fabrizio Calzavarini (University of Bergamo)

The Empirical Status of Semantic Perceptualism

12:50-14:50 Lunch break

14:50-16:10 Robert Briscoe (Ohio University)

Perception and Pictorial Representation

16:10-16:40 Break

16:40-18:00 Alberto Voltolini (University of Turin)

Presentation, Positional Presence, and Presentification

19:30 Dinner

Formerly Anglo-German Now Global Picture Group Workshop

February, 16-17 2022

Department of Psychology, Palazzo Badini-Confalonieri, Aula Magna (ground floor), via Verdi 10, Turin

Programme

Feb 16, morning

9.45am-11.15am

Regina-Nino Mion (Tallinn)

Husserl on Depiction

11.15am-11.30am

Coffee break

11.30am-13.00pm

John Kulvicki (Dartmouth College)

Recording, Playing back, and Representing (Recording of the talk)

Feb 16, afternoon

3.00pm-4.30pm

Ludger Schwarte (Düsseldorf)

On Paint and the Epistemology of Colour (Recording of the talk)

4.30pm-4.45am

Coffee break

4.45pm-6.15pm

Michael Morris (Sussex)

Phenomenological Arguments in the Philosophy of Representation (Recording of the talk)

Feb 17, morning

9.45am-11.15am

Eva Schürmann (Magdeburg)

Pictures as Depictions of Ideas

11.15am-11.30am

Coffee break

11.30am-13.00pm

Robert Hopkins (NYU)

The Birth of an Icon

Feb 17, afternoon

3.00pm-4.30pm

Lambert Wiesing (Jena)

From the Fictionality of Images to the Illusion of Digital Photography (Recording of the talk)

4.30pm-4.45am

Coffee break

4.45pm-6.15pm

Alberto Voltolini (Turin)

The Flag Problem (Recording of the talk)

Imagining, Understanding, and Knowing

Turin, January 27-28, 2022

This is a hybrid event. However, due to Covid19 restrictions, the audience is NOT allowed to participate in person. To attend the workshop, click here.

27 January

9.00 Registration

9.30-9.45 Opening remarks: Alberto Voltolini & Carola Barbero on behalf of the MUMBLE Research Group

Chair: Carola Barbero

09.45-11.00 María José Alcaraz León (Murcia), Experiential Modalities of Fictional Worlds

11.00-11.30 Break

11.30-12.45 Wolfgang Huemer (Parma), How to Imagine Another’s Perspective

12.45-14.45 Lunch Break

Chair: Alberto Voltolini

14.45-16.00 Ingrid Vendrell Ferran (Heidelberg), Imaginative Acquaintance with Other Minds

16.15-17.30 Iris Vidmar Jovanović (Rijeka), The People We End Up Being: Aesthetic Cognitivism and Immoral Art

28 January

Chair: Fabrizio Calzavarini

10.00-11.15 Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham), Understanding Delusions

11.15-11.45 Break

11.45-13.00 Anna Ichino (Milan), Conspiracy Theories and Make-Believe

13.00-15.00 Lunch Break

Chair: Matteo Plebani

15.00-16.15 Jukka Mikkonen (Helsinki), On the Challenges in the Empirical Study of Literary Cognition

16.30-17.45 Marta Benenti (San Raffaele - Milan), Climate Fictions as Thought Experiments

*Past Events*

Narrations, Confabulations, and Conspiracies

XXVI Convegno nazionale della Società di Filosofia del Linguaggio

Turin, June 21-22, 2021

Lisa Bortolotti (University of Birmingham)

John Gibson (University of Louisville)

Elisabetta Gola (University of Cagliari)

Françoise Lavocat (The New Sorbonne University, Paris)

Dario Mangano (University of Palermo)

Pietro Perconti (University of Messina)

Isabella Pezzini (La Sapienza University of Rome)

Stefano Traini (University of Teramo)

Ugo Volli (University of Turin)

Sandro Zucchi (University of Milan)

21 giugno, mattina / June 21, morning

10-10.15 Saluto della Presidente della Società / SFL President’s Greeting

10.15-11.15 Pietro Perconti (Messina) “A Liberal Perspective on Narratives”

11.15-12.15 Anna Maria Lorusso (Bologna) “Fake news e cospirazioni: tra rumors e grandi narrazioni”

21 giugno, pomeriggio / June 22, afternoon

15-16 Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham) “Are Conspiracy Theories like Delusions?”

16-17 Alessandro Zucchi (Milan) “The Three Barbers Revisited”

17.00-17.30 pausa caffè virtuale / virtual coffee break

17.30-18.30 Ugo Volli (Turin) “I complotti sono storie”

22 giugno, mattina / June 22, morning

10-11 Dario Mangano (Palermo) “Il valore al tempo del Covid”

11-12 Françoise Lavocat (New Sorbonne University, Paris) “È la narrazione cospiratoria?”

22 giugno, pomeriggio / June 22, afternoon

15-16 Elisabetta Gola (Cagliari) “Narrazioni e metafore: processi di costruzione di immaginari letterari e scientifici”

16-17 Stefano Traini (Teramo) “Segreti, complotti e teorie semiotiche”

17.00-17.30 pausa caffè virtuale / virtual coffee break

17.30-18.30 John Gibson (Louisville) “Storied Selves & Worded Worlds”

18.30-20 Assemblea dei Soci SFL / SFL members Assembly

Abstracts

Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham)

Are Conspiracy Theories like Delusions?

Conspiracy theories are often likened to clinical delusions, and correlations have been found between conspiracist thinking and paranoia. In this paper, the similarities and differences between conspiracy theories and persecutory delusions are discussed. There is only a partial overlap between their surface features and aetiology. Moreover, when it comes to downstream effects, persecutory delusions are typically characterised by severe disruption to one’s life, whereas conspiracy theories do not seem to be psychologically harmful for the individual. The similarities between conspiracy theories and clinical delusions suggest that they are both ‘unshakeable’ and can become central to a person’s identity, but do not support the pathologisation of conspiracy theories.

John Gibson (Louisville)

Storied Selves & Worded Worlds

It is common to claim that fictional characters and the worlds they inhabit are in part constituted by the narratives that present them to appreciation. The question I explore here is how the employment of narrative in fictional contexts can show us something about how we too constitute a sense of our selves and ascribe structure and significance to social and cultural reality. I argue that what I will call thick narratives reveal a distinctive kind of meaning that is imaginative, not propositional, at root. Understanding the function of thick narratives, I claim, shows us something important about the nature of meaning in the context of fictional art and its broader epistemic and ethical significance.

Elisabetta Gola (Cagliari)

Narrazioni e metafore: processi di costruzione di immaginari letterari e scientifici

Le narrazioni e le metafore sono legate almeno da una duplice relazione: da un lato presentano diverse similarità, che le rende due meccanismi che entrano in gioco nella nostra mente per apprendere e comunicare contenuti “di verità”, inclusi quelli scientifici. D’altra parte, le metafore entrano nella narrazione, talvolta attraverso gli archetipi, a definire immaginari che esorcizzano paure (come nelle distopie), come un vaccino, oppure offrendoci esperienze già vissute dai personaggi nelle storie letterarie, offrendo così una cura. In entrambi i casi le metafore mediano l’esperienza del soggetto rispetto al nuovo contesto. Nella relazione esploreremo queste interazioni, portando alcuni casi esemplificativi e proponendo una revisione delle teorie della metafora più consolidate alla luce di queste necessità esplicative e del fatto che la nostra mente (e le sue possibilità argomentative) sembra funzionare più su base narrativa che logico-razionale.

Françoise Lavocat (Paris)

È la narrazione cospiratoria?

In questa presentazione, ritornerò prima sulla nozione di confabulazione, basata sul lavoro di un neuroscienziato, Armin Schnider. Mostrerò che la confabulazione non è solo un sintomo di una malattia psichiatrica, ma anche un'indicazione della fragilità del nostro apparato cognitivo, e in particolare dei processi di memoria. La tendenza alla confabulazione viene poi invocata per argomentare la nostra presunta incapacità di distinguere tra fatto e finzione. La sfiducia in questa capacità può portare alla considerazione che potremmo essere personaggi del film Matrix, per così dire, cervelli in una vasca.

In una seconda fase, considererò e discuterò le tesi che considerano la narrazione come uno strumento di falsificazione della realtà, con obiettivi più o meno determinati e identificati, in particolare quelle di Roland Barthes, Hayden White e Christian Salmon. L'imperialismo attuale della narratività (messo in evidenza, in particolare, da Raphaël Baroni), al servizio dell'idea che siamo fatti di narrazioni, circondati da narrazioni e modellati da narrazioni, sostiene una visione particolarmente disforica della narratività, che approfitta anche di un'indistinzione tra fatto e finzione.

Nella terza parte, cercherò di mettere queste tesi (che contesto) in prospettiva con la storia delle narrazioni dei disastri, in particolare delle pandemie, il che mi porterà a identificare alcuni dei motori delle correnti cospirative antiche e contemporanee. Mi chiederò fino a che punto le narrazioni, o almeno certe forme di narrazioni, siano intrinsecamente falsificanti. Mostrerò anche che il cospirazionismo contemporaneo (uno dei cui motti è quello di ingiungerci di "Svegliarci!" proprio come fa l'eroe di Matrix...) approfitta di un confondersi generalizzato del fatto e della finzione.

Anna Maria Lorusso (Bologna)

Fake news e cospirazioni: tra rumors e grandi narrazioni

L'idea dell'intervento è quella di mettere a confronto e distinguere la categoria di fake news e quella di cospirazioni, in funzione di due diversi modelli narrativi: il modello del pettegolezzo (per le fake news) e quello delle grandi narrazioni (per le cospirazioni). In entrambi i casi si tratta di vedere la funzione illocutiva di questi due "generi discorsivi" come essenzialmente non dichiarativa (il che li assolve, o almeno alleggerisce, dalla questione della verità) e piuttosto performativo-identitaria; ma si tratterà anche di vederne delle differenze (l'instabilità narrativa delle fake news-pettegolezzo, ad esempio, a fronte del manicheismo strutturante delle cospirazioni) e le possibili dinamiche di transizione dall'una all'altra.

Dario Mangano (Palermo)

Il valore al tempo del Covid

La questione del valore è centrale sia in linguistica sia in semiotica. È pensando il valore come prioritario rispetto alle entità di un qualunque codice espressivo che si è potuto concepire un approccio non ontologico ai linguaggi ma anche ripensare il concetto di narrazione pervenendo al paradigma della narratività. Le conseguenze di questo gesto teorico tuttavia non sono affatto esaurite, perché se è vero che “soltanto il fatto sociale può creare un sistema linguistico” (Saussure) le trasformazioni che occorrono nel primo si riverberano inevitabilmente sul secondo e viceversa, in modo tale una teoria dei linguaggi in quanto teoria del valore è anche una teoria della società. Da qui la centralità dell’analisi che, sola, consente di restituire una natura sistematica tanto ai fenomeni linguistici quanto a quelli sociali.

Data questa premessa, esiste uno specifico genere comunicativo che nella moderna società dei consumi ha assunto su di sé l’onere di articolare l’universo valoriale condiviso: la pubblicità. Considerato inizialmente un prodotto culturale semplice, quasi banale nel suo modo di dare valore ai prodotti di consumo, mercé l’analisi il testo pubblicitario si rivelato essere un oggetto di senso affatto complesso, capace di rivelare l’articolazione profonda dei sistemi valoriali di un’epoca. Se la pubblicità funziona è perché è in grado di contribuire a costruire precisi immaginari all’interno dei quali, prima ancora dei prodotti, sono appunto i valori a trovare posto, e dunque senso.

Se il discorso di marca accompagna ormai le nostre vite al punto da non distinguerlo nemmeno più dagli altri che intessono la semiosfera, può accadere talvolta che un sommovimento culturale scuota il sistema al punto da scompaginarlo radicalmente. È nel momento in cui il meccanismo si inceppa che i suoi ingranaggi diventano visibili e con essi il loro funzionamento. Un simile terremoto è avvenuto il 9 marzo 2020.

Fino al fatidico giorno d’inizio del lockdown questa stessa parola era del tutto ignota alla gran parte degli italiani, e forse proprio per questo è stata preferita a “confinamento”. Dalla sera alla mattina tutto si è fermato: le automobili hanno smesso di circolare, le attività commerciali hanno chiuso e nelle città ha preso corpo un silenzio irreale. Se il mondo dello spettacolo si è fermato insieme a tutto il resto, così non è stato per quello della pubblicità che ha subito cominciato a produrre nuovi commercial a più non posso. Nel giro di pochi giorni ogni break pubblicitario è cambiato. Pasta, biscotti, automobili, assicurazioni, perfino la carta igienica non è più stata quella che avevamo imparato a conoscere. Il Covid ha dato ai brand ciò che non nient’altro avrebbe potuto dargli: una Grande Narrazione tutta nuova, perfettamente adatta alla postmodernità. Una narrazione che tocca all’analisi decostruire per rivelare i meccanismi di costruzione del valore che la innervano.

Pietro Perconti (Messina)

A Liberal Perspective on Narratives

In my talk I want to focus on the thesis of the ubiquity of narratives, that is, the thesis that narratives are everywhere, and their moral correlate, that is, the thesis that a non-narrative life is not worth living. I am not suggesting that stories are not an important way of making sense of our lives, nor that they are not one of the most common ways of representing what happens to us, both in the eyes of others and in our own eyes. However, I will argue for a more liberal view that life is not poorer in the absence of narratives, just different. In particular, I will propose three personality styles: in addition to the narrative style, there is also an episodic personality style, based on individual episodes rather than the overall meaning of biographies, and a sentimental personality style, based on non-conceptual experiences and non-linguistic resources for experiencing things in the world. Finally, some consequences of this liberal way of thinking about narratives are considered, especially in ethics and clinical psychology.

Stefano Traini (Teramo)

Segreti, complotti e teorie semiotiche

Nel mio intervento partirò dalle riflessioni di Umberto Eco, il quale descrive il ragionamento complottistico come una forma anomala di semiosi basata su uno slittamento incontrollato e deviante del senso. A seguire proverò a proporre una “semiotica del complotto” di matrice più metodologica e analitica. Il complotto sarà l’oggetto di studio attraverso il quale mettere alla prova le teorie semiotiche, evidenziandone potenzialità e limiti.

Secrets, Conspiracies and Semiotic Theories

The starting point for my speech is an observation of Umberto Eco, who described conspiracy theories as an anomalous form of semiosis based on an uncontrolled and deviant slippage of meaning. Then, I will try to propose a more rigorously methodological and analytical “semiotics of conspiracy”. Conspiracy theories thus become a subject for study on which semiotic theories can be tested, highlighting their potential and their limits.

Ugo Volli (Turin)

I complotti sono storie

Da qualche anno si manifesta una grande attenzione giornalistica ma anche scientifica per le cosiddette “teorie del complotto”, spesso messe in relazioni con concetti come “fake news” e “postverità”. E certamente per molti fenomeni recenti, dal Covid alle elezioni americane alla Brexit si sono avanzate spiegazioni “complottistiche”. Ma il termine “teorie” è inadeguato a queste attribuzioni. Esse infatti non formulano principi generali, non giustificano le loro affermazioni, ma si presentano come constatazione di fatti. Si tratta piuttosto di narrazioni, che sfruttano alcuni meccanismi caratteristici delle strutture narrative. La relazione si propone di illustrare questi meccanismi e di esemplificarne l’uso analizzando alcuni casi topici di complottismo, innanzitutto i Protocolli dei Savi di Sion.

Plots Are Stories

For some years there has been a great journalistic but also scientific attention to the so-called "conspiracy theories", often related to concepts such as "fake news" and "post-truth". And certainly for many recent phenomena, from Covid to the American elections to Brexit, "conspiracy" explanations have been advanced. But the term "theories" is inadequate for these attributions. In fact, they do not formulate general principles, they do not justify their statements, but are presented as statements of facts. Rather, they are narratives, which exploit some characteristic mechanisms of narrative structures. The report aims to illustrate these mechanisms and to exemplify their use by analyzing some topical cases of conspiracy, first of all the Protocols of the Elders of Sion.

Alessandro Zucchi (Milan)

The Three Barbers Revisited

In the talk, I revisit Lewis Carroll’s story of the three barbers and I compare different narratives about what is going on in the story.

New Themes in the Philosophy of Perception

Turin, June 16-17, 2021

This event has been realized thanks to the financial contribution of the Dipartimento di Eccellenza ‘Filosofia e Scienze dell’Educazione’.

Link: https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=mb4e07874c576fd5587f7007f8a8785fc

PW: RGfM4jeSB53

June 16 (CEST time)

Chair: Matteo Plebani (Turin)

10-11:30am Carola Barbero (Turin)

Reading (a Literary Work)

(Recording of the talk)

Reading starts with an act of perception, but rapidly moves into an area concerning the recognition of written words. Concerning word recognition two aspects, functioning simultaneously and working in parallel are the phonological – converting groups of letters into sounds – and the lexical one – giving access to a mental dictionary of the meaning of words. But what does the act of reading consist in? According to Peter Kivy – who sees literary works as performances – there is a parallel between reading texts and reading scores. Does this parallel hold? Another question is the one concerning reasons for reading. When we read we are interested in understanding what signs stand for and we also activate memory, perception, problem solving, and reasoning, and our attention is devoted in identifying those characteristics of texts which help categorizing them as works of a specific genre. Readers play a central role: without them and their activity, there wouldn’t be anything more than a page full of black spots. As they read and understand, they propositionally imagine what they read and at a further level, they may also imagine objectually and simulatively. Those objects coming into being thanks to words and that we imagine are similar to what Roman Ingarden sees as a skeleton, needing the experience of reading to be appropriately concretized.

Chair: Andrea Tortoreto (Turin)

11:45-13:15 Keith Wilson (Oslo)

The Perspectival Character of Experience

(Recording of the talk)

Perceptual experience is permeated by situation-dependent features such as spatial perspective, lighting, auditory, tactual and other environmental conditions. How should we explain the distinctive contribution of these features to the qualitative character of experience? In this talk I offer a realist view of perspectival features according to which they are (1) mind-independent relations between the perceiver and the elements presented, and (2) partially constitutive of the phenomenal character of perception.

break

Chair: Giulia Martina (Turin)

3-4:30pm Elvira Di Bona (Turin)

Solving Problems through Timbre

(Recording of the talk)

What do we hear when having an auditory experience? Do we commonly hear only pitch, loudness, and duration, or we can also hear the object and the event which are involved in the production of sound? I argue that when having an auditory experience, we can auditorily perceive both the object and the event which are involved in the production of sound because sound has a multidimensional audible quality named timbre. Timbre allows, indeed, the perception of some features of the sounding object and the event in which it is involved when producing a sound.

Chair: Fabrizio Calzavarini (Bergamo)

4.45-6.00pm Susanna Siegel (Harvard)

The Phenomenal Public

(Recording of the talk)

Can we perceive the public, or can we only imagine it? Which modes of mentality for grasping the public

in mass society facilitate democracy, and which modes anti-facilitate democracy? I argue that it is possible to perceive the public, but that these modes of mentality are more susceptible to anti-democratic

modes of politics than they are to democratic ones.

June 17 (CEST time)

Chair: Marta Benenti (Milan)

10-11.30am Anna Daria Drożdżowicz (Oslo)

Hearing the Speaker’s Voice and the Voice-Face Analogy

For humans, vocal sounds are among the most prevalent and salient sounds in the auditory environment. Voice perception is a remarkable capacity that commonly allows us to recognize a speaker's emotional state and their identity. Because of this, in the empirical literature, voice is often described as the auditory face of a speaker. But is the voice-face analogy useful for philosophical work on voice perception? In this talk I will first briefly discuss two types of information (beyond strictly linguistic information) that are typically conveyed in the speaker’s voice. Next, I will explore the analogy between voice and face. I will look at selected similarities and differences in the information they provide and how they do so, thereby suggesting some prospects and limitations for the use of the analogy in the philosophy of perception.

Chair: Alice Morelli (Turin)

11.45-1.15pm Alessandro Bertinetto (Turin)

Improvising Perception (of Improvisation)

(Recording of the talk)

The talk focuses on the relationship between perception and improvisation. Moving from the question of whether improvisation is a perceptual quality of a performance (as argued by Hamilton 2000)– that is, of whether perception can reliably detect the improvisational state of a performance– I will explore the idea that a perception capable of grasping the improvisational status of a performance is, as it were, also improvisational, as some scholars suggest (Iyer 2004).

Approaching this idea in a normative sense, it could then be argued that the right perception of an improvisation is itself improvisational, thereby offering a cue to support the thesis of the improvisationality of the mind proposed by some 4E cognition theorists by adding a fifth E: that of Extemporaneity (Torrance, Schumann 2019). Drawing on an ongoing joint work with Alfredo Paternoster, the heuristic hypothesis I will suggest is this: perceptual cognition can still be considered as improvisation – albeit a constrained improvisation – even rejecting that mind is a dynamic system, and instead accepting, for example, a theory such as Clark’s predictive model (Clark 2016). It could therefore turn out that a properly trained perception can reliably detect the improvisational status of a performance by grasping the extemporaneousness of the perceptive "performance" itself.

break

Chair: Vera Tripodi (Turin)

3-4.30pm Alberto Voltolini (Turin)

Perceiving Aesthetic Properties

(Recording of the talk)

It is hardly disputable that at least some aesthetic properties are perceivable. Such properties are high-order ones. Unlike other aesthetic properties, which perhaps are only experienceable, they are perceivable, insofar as they supervene on other high-order properties that are perceivable as well. The difference between such kinds of high-order properties has only to do with how the perceptually relevant holistic form of attention (distributed over properties and focused on objects) that concerns them is respectively mobilized (in an interested vs. a disinterested way).

Chair: Elvira Di Bona (Turin)

4.45-6.00pm Krisztina Orban, Julia Peters, Hong Yu Wong (Tübingen)

The Significance of Expression

(Recording of the talk)

In this talk we will explore the significance of expression for understanding mindedness. We will consider a range of basic cases of expressive behaviours. This will allow us to sketch a new account of expression which distinguishes it from other forms of mindedness. We suggest that expression is a basic form of mindedness that manifests the emotional and social character of mind.

Webinar Lectures on Aboutness and Subject Matter

(Video)

November 20, 2020, 5:00-7.00 pm (CET), Turin

"Aboutness: the Basics"

Aboutness is supposed to be the relation sentences bear to their subject matters. But what is S's subject matter? It is made up of S's ways of being true or false. Why believe in ways, when our toolkit already contains possible worlds? An "inference to the best explanation" is sketched. Reviewing a number of would-be analyses in terms of worlds, we find that (i) though tempting, they fail, and (ii) every one can be fixed, or anyway improved, by putting ways in where the worlds were.

November 27, 2020, 5:00-7.00 pm (CET), Turin

"Ways: the Basics"

Unfortunately none of this tells us what a "way for S to be true" really is. They can't be minimal sufficient conditions of truth, for minimal conditions are unavailable in many cases ("There are infinitely many stars" is Kratzer's example). Following Lewis on "world where S is true," we dodge the problem by splitting it inj two: (i) determining which set-of-ways proposition S expresses, and (ii) counting s a way for S to be true if s belongs to the set. (ii) is trivial, and (i) is a job for someone else (the metasemanticist). In effect then we treat the notion as primitive. Still something needs to be said about which primitive is intended. An exceedingly subtle four-part checklist is suggested.

December 4, 2020, 5:00-7.00 (CET) pm, Turin

"Insolubilia"

Ways and subject matter are unleashed on a bunch of puzzles and paradoxes: the Sorites, the Liar, Hempel's paradox of the ravens, Kripke's dogmatism paradox, Makinson's paradox of the preface, and the puzzle of logical omniscience.

Intentionality and Consciousness

Turin, December 17-18 2020, 5pm-8pm (CET)

https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=mf28012931ccc6e1f25dfce3b30c04786

Tim Crane (CEU Budapest)

How Intentionality and Consciousness are not Connected

Abstract: In this talk I describe one popular approach to the understanding of the relationship between consciousness and intentionality. At the heart of the analytic account of intentionality is what I call the propositional attitude project. The propositional attitude project, despite being widely accepted, is inadequate in its own terms — because of non-propositional intentionality — and also inadequate as the basis for linking consciousness and intentionality. In the background to the resistance to the intentionalst explanation of consciousness is a conception of consciousness which derives from behaviourism. If we are to understand the connection between intentionality and consciousnesss we must give up both the propositional attitude project and the behaviourist conception of consciousness.

Uriah Kriegel (Rice University, Houston)

The Structure of Phenomenal Justification

Abstract: Can a conscious experience justify you in believing something purely in virtue of what it is like for you to have that experience? Some philosophers certainly think so, defending what I will call phenomenal dogmatism:

(PD) For some experience E and belief B, (i) E provides immediate prima facie epistemic justification for B and (ii) E does so in virtue of (some of) E’s phenomenal properties.

Something like PD is defended by Pryor (2000), Huemer (2001), and following them many others. But PD is also the target of various objections. Some come from Bayesian probability theory, some from the psychology of cognitive penetration, some from broadly Sellarsian reflections on what it takes to justify, and some from other sources. Here I want to consider an objection that may be put as follows: What is so special about perceptual phenomenology that only it can immediately justify beliefs, while other kinds of phenomenology – including quite similar ones – remain ‘epistemically inert’? This objection has been aired a number of times in the recent literature (e.g., Ghijsen 2014, Siegel and Silins 2015, Teng 2018). The reason I want to consider this objection in particular is not that I think it is specially formidable, but because of where the response to the objection will lead us: a deeperunderstanding of the general phenomenon of phenomenal justification– the very idea of justification in virtue of phenomenology.

Pietro Perconti (University of Messina)

Mindreading Priority Account: From an Intentionalist Point of View

Abstract: According to the common sense view, self-consciousness is the climax of human cognition. This provides the ordinary feeling of being special thanks to the faculty of self-consciousness. But we may doubt how much nature cares about our satisfying feeling of being self-conscious. What if self-consciousness has any top role in human cognition (whatever it means)? In particular, is self-consciousness really prior to mindreading?, or the opposite? Name the first thesis "Self-Consciousness Priority Account" (SCPA) and the other "Mind Reading Priority Account" (MRPA). While MRPA is also the view that mindreading evolved prior to self-consciousness, SCPA is the claim that self-consciousness evolved prior to mindreading. In my talk I will argue for the moderate Mindreading Priority Account: Non-conceptual mindreading is prior to self-consciousness, but conceptual mindreading depends on conceptual self-consciousness.

Martine Nida-Ruemelin (University of Fribourg)

Does Consciousness require pre-reflective self-awareness?

Abstract: two senses of pre-reflective self-awareness are sometimes conflated in contemporary literature (a) awareness of one’s own experience while undergoing the experience and (b) awareness of oneself in undergoing an experience. I will propose an account of (a), primitive awareness, and argue that having an experience and being primitively aware of having it coincide. I will suggest that (b), pre-reflective self-awareness (in the restricted sense in which it is an awareness the subject has of itself) is most likely present in any conscious subject undergoing experiences which exhibit what I will call basic intentionality. For an experience to exhibit basic intentionality is for it to have a subject-object-structure.

60 Volt Workshop in onore di Alberto Voltolini

Turin April 16, 2021

15:00-18:00 (CEST)

link: https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=mc394fdb9f3378caaae02b55dc4be7a22

15:00 | Diego MARCONI (Turin)

Hotel Wittgenstein

15:30 | Pasquale FRASCOLLA (Naples, Federico II)

Alberto metafilosofo

16:00 | Alberto VOLTOLINI (Turin)

Commenti e risposte

16:20 | break

16: 30 | Sandro ZUCCHI (Milan, Statale)

Indeterminatezza in opere di finzione e non

17:00 | Roberto CASATI (Paris, CNRS-EHESS)

Mappe e immagini

17:30 | Alberto VOLTOLINI (Turin)

Commenti e risposte