Università di Bologna Dipartimento di Filosofia e comunicazione

Corso di Filosofia del linguaggio LM 2013/14

da J. R. Stroop 1935, *

5ª settimana

per i corsi di laurea in Semiotica (6 o 12 cfu), Scienze filosofiche, Geografia e processi territoriali (6 cfu), Italianistica, culture letterarie europee, scienze linguistiche - curriculum italianistica (6 cfu), Italianistica, culture letterarie europee, scienze linguistiche – curriculum italianistica e scienze linguistiche (6 cfu), Lingue e letterature moderne, comparate e postcoloniali(6 cfu).

* “Studies of Interference in Serial Verbal Reactions” (Journal of Experimental Psychology 18: 643-61),

Ecco il calendario di quanto deve ancora accadere:

28 ottobre 2013 Lingua e attenzione 2

29 ottobre 2013 Gottlob Frege “Senso e significato”

30 ottobre 2013 Conclusioni 1

Nelle 2 settimane 4-17 novembre NON c’è lezione

18 novembre 2013 Lingua e immaginazione 1

19 novembre 2013 Lingua e immaginazione 2

20 novembre 2013 Lingua e immaginazione 3

25 novembre 2013 Kendall Walton “Thoughtwriters”

26 novembre 2013 Lingua e memoria

27 novembre 2013 Fare filosofia: un’applicazione: Guerra giusta? Guerra buona?

2 dicembre 2013 Lingua e contesto 1

3 dicembre 2013 François Recanati “Literalism and Contextualism: Some Varieties”

4 dicembre 2013 Lingua e contesto 2

9 dicembre 2013 Parlare di individui

10 dicembre 2013 Fare filosofia: la mente degli altri – “Che cosa si prova ad essere un pipistrello”

di Thomas Nagel

11 dicembre 2013 Parlare di proprietà e relazioni

16 dicembre 2013 Saul Kripke “Un rompicapo sulla credenza”

17 dicembre 2013 Paradossi e rompicapi

18 dicembre 2013 Conclusioni 2

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Due cose: uno, per un malfunzionamento del mio mac, non sono riuscito a mettere nulla on line. Lo farò questa settimana. Due, il corso termina questa settimana, per chi lo segue per 6 crediti, e per chi lo segue per 12 riprende il 18 novembre, in aula D, in via A. Gardino 23.

I materiali del corso che si trovano on line, comprendono, oltre agli appunti di queste 5 settimane: brani da Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, Austin, un pezzo di Kanizsa su vedere e pensare, un capitolo di Umiltà sull’attenzione, un saggio di Massironi sempre su vedere e pensare.

1. Philosophy and attention16

That talk and text call for attention to what they are about is, I think, common sense. The remark is implicit in speaking of calling attention. This doesn’t mean that talk and text cannot be unattended for either external or internal reasons – a more attracting contemporary event or a talk with no new information. As Campbell’s work shows, however, the relation between reference and attention may be richer and less obvious, working on our better understanding of either.

Before discussing under what respects attention is the proper cognitive dimension for reference, however, I want to make a short excursus on what philosophers have remarked about attention.

To my knowledge the first who attributes attention the establishment of a relation between mind and object, and then the fixation of a word for the object, is Peter John Olivi in the early ’80ies of the XIII century. Olivi argued, besides, for direct perception, i.e. perception unmediated by species, thereby opposing Aquinas and what was then the main trend on the subject, and in addition he denied any representational content to a (mental) word. If I had to tell it in contemporary terms, which are different from his, I would say that according to Olivi my uttering a word, and I would add my understanding it, is an act by which I fix my attention on a thing. The act isn’t mediated by anything – for instance, my word doesn’t quote or point to a concept, by means of which I pick out the thing on which to fix my attention.

Of course, many philosophers had occasionally used before Olivi, and after him, the term “attention” or the verbal form “attending” (or better their rendering in their own languages). Even more occasionally they dropped some remarks on attention, like Plato, who in the Euthyphro

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discusses at some length on attending the gods. “What is the meaning of “attention”?” Socrates asks Euthypro. Attention comes out as difficult to define because multifarious. Attending the gods has almost nothing in common with attending an animal.17 In On Interpretation, Aristotle writes something that is closer to how I discuss here attention. Writes he:

Verbs in and by themselves are substantival and have significance, for he who uses such expressions arrests the hearer’s mind, and fixes his attention; but they do not, as they stand, express any judgment, either positive or negative (Aristotle [350BC] 2012 §3).

Augustine, to whom Olivi refers back, drops a few remarks on attention. In the De magistro [389] 2006, a dialogue between him and his son Adeodatus, mostly concerned with language, Augustine writes:

[…] when a sign is given one should look (attendere) to what it signified, and, with that in view, should answer yes or no (Augustine 8.23)

[…] as soon as signs are heard, the attention (intentio) is directed to the things they signify (Augustine 8.24).

In learning the thing I did not trust the words of another but my own eyes. I trusted the words simply so far as to direct my attention (attenderem) to what was pointed out, that is, to find my answer by looking at a visible object (Augustine 10.35).

Here, Augustine uses the Latin attendere, intention, and again attendere. And he uses the second word also for what we would call ostensive definition, connecting it with the direction of attention:

The holding out of the finger is not the wall but the sign by means of which the wall is pointed out (Augustine 3.6. Cf. Augustine 7.19). [In Latin, the expression for “the holding out” is intentio.]

In a sign there are two things, sound and meaning. We perceive the sound when it strikes our ear, while the meaning becomes clear when we look at the thing signified. The pointing with the finger can indicate nothing but the object pointed out, and it points not to a sign but to a part of the body which we call caput. In that way, accordingly, I cannot learn the thing, because I knew it already, nor can I learn the sign because it is not pointed to. I am not greatly interested in the act of pointing. As a gesture it is a sign of something being pointed out rather than of the object pointed out. It is as when we say, "Lo"; for we are accustomed to use that adverb when we point with the ringer in case one sign is not sufficient. What I am really trying to convince you of, if I can, is this. We learn nothing by means of these signs we call words. On the contrary, as I said, we learn the force of the word, that is the meaning which lies in the sound of the word, when we come to know the object signified by the word. Then only do we perceive that the word was a sign conveying that meaning (Augustine 10.34).

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The last quote shows that Olivi keeps close to Augustine’s original understanding of the relation between attention and meaning. Aside from these authors most of Medieval and Modern philosophy wasn’t much concerned with attention and language but rather centered on attention and mind.

Aquinas gives attention the important non-semantic role of isolating and abstracting.18 The isolating role is still generally attributed to selective attention.

Clear and distinct ideas require attention, according to René Descartes,19 and to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.20 Both connect attention and memory and the latter attention and pleasure too. Descartes is a good example of the beam of light metaphor for attention and seems to have, in contemporary terms, an act view of attention. With attention have also been concerned John Locke and George Berkeley, and later William James and Francis H. Bradley. Locke writes of attention as a mode of thinking – the mode in which ideas are taken notice of and are registered in memory (Locke [1689] 1979: II 19 §1). Nowadays we would call such a view of attention an adverbial one. Berkeley ascribed attention a role similar to that Aquinas ascribed it, though this time played somehow negatively. We can simulate abstraction disattending many features of a particular, and hence consider a particular merely as triangular (Berkeley 1710: Introduction to 2nd edn. §16). James claims that “Everybody knows what attention is” thus skipping an account of it. At the same time, he gives attention explanatory roles, asserting that volition is nothing but attention (James 1890: 424). Bradley instead develops the adverbial account.

Attention has been a topic in the work of many contemporary philosophers. Some dealt with attention and mind. Among them, Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilbert Ryle and Alan White. Merleau-Ponty dedicates a chapter to heed concepts offering in [1945] 2002 a dispositional account of attention, an account that, in [1968] 2003, in his Course at the College de France he mitigates. White investigates attention and a family of concepts related to it, such as consciousness, realization, noticing, and interest, enjoyment, and pleasure (the last three discussed by Ryle too, see Ryle [1953] 1971 and [1954] 1971). White suggests an adverbial view of attention – though an activity with no characters of its own (cf. Calabi 1994: 251; on White, see Mole 2011, chs. 2 and 3). Wittgenstein doesn’t say much concerning attention. Calabi (1994) envisages in Wittgenstein a mix of attention and imagination in catching aspects of a thing, in representing an object when perceiving an object of a different kind, and in pure imagining. He has also occasionally an act view of attention when what is at stake is singling out a thing. By attending to an

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object we can abstract one aspect in it (Wittgenstein 1953 I, 33; 2005: 25). At the same time, there are no criteria for claiming one is attending to something. A person may “show all the signs of attention, in reading, yet not attending, be like a reading machine, or attending to other things” (1953 I, 156). A rather intriguing analysis of attention, as opposed to judgment, and as a non-intellectualistic cognitive ability is in Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2002, Introduction III):

[…] attention is neither an association of images, nor the return to itself of thought already in control of its objects, but the active constitution of a new object which makes explicit and articulate what was until then presented as no more than an indeterminate horizon. (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2002: 35)

According to Merleau-Ponty, attention structures our world on indeterminate horizons.

Yet, some other philosophers in the last century have connected attention with language, as we saw Campbell did, especially in relation to demonstrative reference. Writes Russell:

“This”, of course, is what I call an “emphatic particular”. It is simply a proper name for the present object of attention, a proper name, meaning nothing. It is ambiguous, because, of course, the object of attention is always changing from moment to moment and from person to person. (Russell 1918: 54)

Russell has an epistemic reason for requiring the referent of a proper name to be the present object of attention. He thinks that to warrant its existence, which, according to him, is a phenomenal existence. Ryle connects reference and attention at a more general level, somehow reverting to a common sense use of “calling attention to”:

If I want to talk about a non-stock use of a word or fish-knife, it is not enough to try to refer to it by the phrase “the non-stock use of it”, for there may be any number of such non-stock uses. To call my hearer’s attention to a particular non-stock use of it, I have to give some description of it, for example, to cite a special context in which the word is known to be used in a non-stock way. (Ryle [1953] 1971: 316)

Michael Polanyi makes a similar point, adding to it another relevant one. By communication the speaker calls attention to his or her utterance, and to him or her self. By the power of language, then, attention is drawn to what the message is about.

Communication is a form of address, calling someone’s attention to its message and to its speaker. Yet the possibility of communicating information to others is already foreshadowed in the mere descriptive powers of language. A small set of consistently

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used symbols which, owing to their peculiar manageability, enable us to think about their subject matter more swiftly in terms of its symbolic representation, can be used to carry information to other people if they can use this representation as we do (Polanyi 1958: 217).21

Here, now, quotes which closely connect reference and attention – the quotes are from Donald Davidson, Gareth Evans, Donnellan, Kaplan. Davidson and Evans make points close to Campbell’s. I have already introduced Donnellan’s view, and Kaplan shows a clear understanding of focusing one’s own attention.

Sentences with demonstratives obviously yield a very sensitive test of the correctness of a theory of meaning, and constitute the most direct link between language and the recurrent macroscopic objects of human interest and attention (Davidson 1967: 35).

Thus the notion of the intended referent is rather like the notion of a target. Suppose the subject, in the case we have been considering, had aimed a gun at the man he could see. Even if his general plan was to shoot b—for example, because the offence he wished to avenge occurred in the previous encounter— it is undeniable that a was his target, and that he intended to shoot a. His lowest-level action plan concerned a; success in it would involve the shooting of a. Similarly, a is the speaker’s linguistic target when he utters the sentence “That man over there is F”; this time he is directing, not a gun, but his audience’s attention. It is a whom his audience must think of if the speaker’s lowest-level linguistic action plan is to be carried out. This is so even if he might be credited with the higher-level intention to be referring to b—because, in using the predicate F, he is giving expression to information gained in the previous encounter (Evans 1982: 317).

Davidson and Evans discuss demonstrative reference and attention. The same seems true of Kaplan, whose work on demonstratives has become the standard view on the subject. Yet the following passage, which moves from demonstrative reference, already suggests a broader relation between reference and attention:

While recognizing the teleological character of most pointing—it is typically directed by the speaker’s intention to point at a perceived individual on whom he has focused—I claimed that the demonstration rather than the directing intention determined the referent.

I am now inclined to regard the directing intention, at least in the case of perceptual demonstratives, as criterial, and to regard the demonstration as a mere externalization of this inner intention (Kaplan 1989: 582).22

Discussing his own approach to demonstrative descriptions (a dthat is a technical variant on a description following a demonstrative like “that”), Kaplan presents in the following way the contribution of the attached descriptive matter:

The description completes the character of the associated occurrence of “dthat”, but makes no contribution to content. Like a whispered aside or a gesture, the description is thought of as off-the-record (i.e., off the content record). It determines and directs attention to what is being said […] (Kaplan: 1989b: 581).

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Donnellan, whose view I have already introduced, instead, links attention and reference in a fully general way: referring is a tool for calling attention.

[…] but in the referential use the definite description is merely one tool for doing a certain job-calling attention to a person or thing (Donnellan 1966: 285).23

Here, in a last quote, see as Tyler Burge uses attention along the same path of Aquinas and Berkeley, but connecting it to perception rather than to intellectual abstraction.

[…] singular reference in perception that is most efficiently usable depends on attention (Burge 2010: 451).

The few hints and the short quotes pick up many facets of attention, from its nature – is attention a specific cognitive process or a mode of running a process? – to its effect – singling out –, from its having a volitional aspect and being related to passions and interests to it being a requirement and an aim of reference and communication, or in other words what is transferred in communication – referring requires the speaker to focus attention on the referee, calls the audience’s attention to it, thus tuning the speaker’s and the audience attention, or somehow metaphorically transferring the speaker’s attention to the audience.

Attention, however, has never been given such a basic role in relation to reference as in Campbell. Nowadays, attention is at the center of cognitive science’s concern, and this pops up in Campbell’s works, as we saw.24 Independently of the details of his account and of how he relates to contemporary cognitive research on the subject, there are two aspects of what Campbell reports about attention that are central.

(i) From his criticism of Gareth Evans comes out well Campbell’s anti-intellectualistic stand. Evans claimed that singular thoughts require the thinker to have a fundamental idea of the particular the person of whom she was thinking. A fundamental idea of a particular is one that discriminates the particular from any other one.

Consider a phrase such as “that instrument”.

According to Evans, a visual demonstrative is what he calls an “information-based” term. This means that there are two components to its ordinary functioning. On the one hand, there is the causal source of the information that one has about the thing. And, on the other hand, there is the content of the information that the causal links supply, in virtue of which the thinker knows which thing he is talking about (Campbell 2002: 111).

In order to use correctly the phrase “that instrument” the speaker has to posses a spatiotemporal identification of the relevant particular. The

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thing that best matches the identification is the particular referred to by means of the demonstrative phrase. This identification could be expressed by a sentence such as “That instrument is™”, where “™” voices the spatiotemporal properties of the relevant particular. I would put the difference between Evans and Campbell as follows. Whereas Evans requires the speaker to have (discriminative) knowledge of what she refers to, Campbell requires her only to have cognition of that particular – to have taken notice of it even if she is unable to tell what kind of thing it is.

(ii) It might be that the semantics of singular terms were conceived of indefinitely many correlations of words and objects, but running reference requires cognition. A correlation words/objects isn’t reference. In order to refer, the speaker has to have in mind what she refers to and transfer that cognition to her audience. Besides, that correlation might be problematic when a demonstrative is at stake. Disconsolate but happy of being still alive, closed in a car trunk I can say aloud «I am here now» appropriately referring to the place I am and to the moment I am here, though having no idea of how to discriminate the place I am from many other a place, and the moment I utter my self-comforting statement from any other moment. You, who are in the same trunk as me, listening to my statement understand what I mean even if you too have no idea of how to discriminate the moment in time and the location of my utterance.

This shows, I hope, how distant Campbell is from both the classical views of reference and the new theory of reference ones, at least in the two radical and somehow artificial pictures I have made of both.

From 1960 on psychologists have boosted works on attention, which has later become a main topic in cognitive science. Indeed, Campbell wishes to integrate his own philosophical reflection with cognitive science, especially with the work of Anne Treisman, who privileged attention to a location for integrating the many features, like shape, color, size etc., we store in different sections of the brain. There are at least other two topics in recent cognitive research that influence Campbell’s work. (a) In relation to vision, two areas are distinguished, one for visual perception and the other for visuomotor representation. Perceptual representation is the topic of Campbell’s conscious attention. (b) The relation between attention and consciousness. As with most literature nowadays Campbell seems to take for granted that there is nonconscious attention in hemispatial neglect, or neglect syndrome – in a neglect syndrome, a brain damaged person produces an attention and awareness deficit in half of the perceptual field. (But see Mole 2011.)

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2. Reference and attention II

Christopher Mole claims that one of the two deepest mysteries of the mind is the mystery of content: our beliefs, desires, etc., have

the property of being essentially about actual or possible things propositions, or states of affairs, rather than merely encoding information derived from those things, propositions, or states of affairs (Mole 2011: 136).

Some philosophers think, Mole reminds us, that the notion of attention can be put to work to dissolve the mystery. It can’t, adds he. Campbell is one of those philosophers. The main reason why it can’t is, according to Mole, that there is no form of attention that single out an object rather than its properties. The argument for that owes much to Wittgenstein’s criticism of ostensive definitions in the Investigations. (But Wittgenstein would have rather claimed that we can’t understand in isolation a word as referring to an object, but only grasp a whole language game.) Wittgenstein’s criticism, and as a consequence Mole’s, are, I think, wrong. Mole is wrong because the unmarked case of ostension is to an object rather than to its properties, because an object has perceptual features a property lacks – namely, the following features; dynamic properties, boundaries, constancy of form, color and dimension (cf. Koffka 1935: 240-242) (Wittgenstein is wrong for the same reasons. Our prelinguistic cognition makes it that a word point us out a thing somehow independently of our linguistic competence. By the way, a word is an artifact which acts at a prelinguistic level too – it is itself an object which can be perceived, and whose introduction perceptually changes the scene.) Indeterminacy conjectures in Wittgenstein, and later in Quine, depend on looking at the words and as if what is there, what words connect with, were all on a par, with no cognitive affordances. That’s not the case. Attention combines with cognitive systems, such as perception and memory, and it can be devoted to individual items, if these cognitive systems can grasp an individual item – which is the case for perception, as we have just seen. That dependency, by the way, brings limited support to the adverbial view of attention – a view to which Mole subscribes. For sure, I can attentively listen or look, but even for inattentively listening or looking I have to devote some attention. Perhaps the best view of attention takes it to be cognitive energy together with a system (partially) monitoring how to distribute that energy. Besides, attention suits perception, but, though some attention is spent on remembering and on intuiting, we would say neither “I attentively remember” nor “I attentively intuit”, neither “I remember with care” nor “I intuit with care”. We can

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say “I have studied the case with care” or “I have prepared the event with care”, etc. We can perhaps say “She talks with care”, meaning that she devotes much attention to her words and the topics about which she is talking.

A call for attention can be voluntary or not. A person enters the room and her entering calls for my attention, whether or not she wants me to notice her coming in. A pecking on the window calls for my attention and I see the cat asking for it to be opened. A memory crosses my mind and the movie we saw last Friday calls for my attention. Etc. Waving my hand I call the attention of my son, who is at the end of the platform. Saying “The bike!”, I call your attention to the bike, which is running dangerously close. Speaking is a best way voluntarily to call for attention, and among best ways to fix our own attention on a thing or an issue – think of how we investigate a case in deliberation, think of fluent speech when it is unlikely that there is a previous fix of attention on most of the objects and events talked about, or when I keep repeating to myself the word “watch” to remember that I have to pick up my repaired watch, or my writing on my agenda on today’s page “Watch” for the same reason.

The Wittgenstein/Mole problem – whether it is possible to fix, or call for, attention to an object independently of mastering a whole language game and to the object rather than to its properties – becomes then the problem whether we can perceive, (intuit,) remember or talk of an object independently of mastering a whole language game and independently of the object’s properties. A further problem is whether talking directly link with a thing or whether it fix attention and call for it because of a previously established link with a thing.

I have already hinted at why I think Wittgenstein and Mole are wrong. The indeterminacy problems are problems of interpretation: we have a word and wonder with what thing, if any, it links. In many a case, and specifically in referring, as Donnellan (1966) maintains, the matter goes the other way around. We have individuated a particular, an object, and utter something to call attention to it.25 Of course, we don’t perceive, for instance, a thing independently of its properties, but we can individuate a thing independently of individuating most of its properties. (See Kanizsa 1980 and 1984.) This isn’t surprising. As Socrates remarks already in the Cratylus, and as neoreferentialists show in detail, we happen to be wrong on an object’s property and relation, and yet to be speaking of that object. And it is particular objects that we investigate. If we had to be right on its properties and relations, on its qualities, in order to individuate an object, that wouldn’t be possible – and, as I hinted at, an object has perceptual features a quality doesn’t have. Moreover, we can also individuate a quality

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without being able to tell which property it is, without being able to tell its characteristic features.

Can talking directly link with a thing? Or does it always run on a previously established link with it? I have two arguments to show that talking can directly link with a thing.26 There is the Donnellan case, namely that of a definite description referring to a thing that doesn’t satisfy its condition and there is a more “experimental” argument I will give you below.

In “Reference and Definite Descriptions” Donnellan claims that «there are two uses of definite descriptions». At the party I say, “The woman drinking a martini is Irish”, and I refer to the person even if she is not drinking a martini, and even if he is a man in disguise. How shall we understand this fact? In the perceptual case Donnellan is sketching, I look toward where the person is, my phrase calls for your attention, you try to figure out whom I mean, looking towards where I am focused on, and make out whom there I could have so described. You figure it out whether or not the person fits the description. Words always connect and reconnect with objects, or more generally with things. We explain that connection, as we account for the link through a causal-historical chain between the thing and the linguistic expression: what thing made Speaker use the description she used? What is relevant in the chain are Speaker’s beliefs concerning the thing, words and Hearer’s beliefs, and any other element that made Speaker choose the wording she chose.

Thus words can directly link with things, and, as the Donnellan case stresses, can be differently reconnected even exploiting the previous connection. By saying «Her husband is kind to her» Leonard may refer to the gentleman giving a cocktail to the lady near the French window, even if the gentleman isn’t her husband. This may happen because the gentleman is here the best candidate of whom the speaker is describing as “her husband”. (The example, originally due to Linsky 1963: 80, is discussed in Donnellan 1966 and Kripke 1977.)

A second way to illustrate my point is through some pseudo-experiments run with written words. I can direct your attention towards the man on the left just by the name “posted” on him (figure 1). I can group two of the three men by “posting” the same letter on two of them (figure 2). I can succeed in pointing to a man also posting the name at some distance, for instance in the caption (figure 3).

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figure 1

figure 2

figure 3

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Richard

figure 4

And once a word is so connected it can preferentially be used to renvoyer to (to point to) and as a representative of what it is connected with. This shows a way to solve the mystery of content: against what Brentano claimed, words aren’t essentially about what they are about. Words are used to call persons’ attention, and then, as their names, to distinguish one person from another, to speak of that person. Words are used to distinguish one thing from another and to call attention to a thing, and then, as name of that thing. Names are traces of these previous uses, and, as a natural evolution from their previous uses, they come to be used to refer to them. An element that distinguishes my brother from me is that I am called “Paolo” and he isn’t. At the pier three boats are moored, and what differentiates the one on the left is its name, “Cocò” it reads on its stern. Without stressing too much the intentional aspect, which grows with the development of language, with the awareness of what words can do, reference is the outcome of some of our actions, verbal gestures, eye gestures, etc. Words’ reference, in particular is an outcome of our verbal gestures. John L. Austin sees it, when he claims reference to be a locutionary act, specifically a rhetic act (Austin [1962] 1975: 93). Words refer because we do by means of them, but they come to refer even independently of what we refer to by using them, and refer even when we wouldn’t. In mistaking a person’s name, we call attention to the bearer of the name we utter. But, if we keep to the different use of a name, the name’s reference itself shifts.

Let me present attention and the link between words and things in more general terms. Attention is of two kinds. There is spatial attention. We attend to whatever happens in the range our sensors are surveying. A paper clip falls and we notice the soft banging on the floor. The blinking of the news on the web version of The Washington Post disturbs me, because

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it continuously calls for my attention, even when I have read the series of titles and looked at the series of pictures. There is selective attention. In the range of our sensors there occur events to which by nature or by decision we devote more than average attention – whatever a conspecific does is our concern, her attending to something, her movements, her keeping still, etc.; when we are checking out for something, as for instance when we are looking for a red hardbound book (and immediately the red books on the shelves emerge).

An utterance calls for and directs attention in either way. It brings in a perceptual shift – an utterance’s delivery is one such minor or major shift, the speaker moves, the sounds enter the scene, partially occupy it and finally fade. That calls for spatial attention. Besides, as an action by a conspecific, the utterance calls for our selective attention.

Thus the utterance of a phrase is an attention caller. It calls attention to what the words mark out, to whom utters them, to what she is doing, to what is happening there and then. Words call attention to a concrete particular the phrase designates, or to an abstract entity brought in by discourse itself. If you say “Mary is often late”, our attention is drawn to Mary (and to frequency and to lateness too).27 Mary may be entering the building we are in (and by the utterance we may come to know who is Mary) or may have to arrive, or may just be a topic of our conversation. If you introduce us to Mary, saying “This is Mary”, you call attention to her, first by “this” and double it by “Mary”. If the teacher says “Now, imagine a circle…” or “Take a line forming a closed loop, every point on which is a fixed distance from a center point – that’s a circle”, she calls our attention to an abstract entity, a circle. Or, better, she first calls our attention to it by a description (which amounts to a definition), and then doubles the call for attention by introducing us to the name of that closed loop. Words fix attention on and call it to anything, in any context. If what we want to call attention to is far away, or an abstract entity, it is a question of more words, of introducing it properly.

Words and phrases direct our attention even when there are problems, because they call for attention in many a way. If she says “Mary is late”, we wonder which Mary she may name, information we can retrieve by whom she looks at, and in indefinitely many other ways – by what she was saying a moment ago, by the people we know she knows, by the people we know her audience knows, etc., and about whom, by that trace, we can inquire, asking which Mary is late. If I overhear her saying “The wine is delicious”, what she claims draws my attention to wine (and to deliciousness), and may push me to look for the particular wine of which she is speaking. If there is no glass of wine in the vicinity, I may look at what she looks at – is there a

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bottle of wine, even an empty one, in the vicinities, or is there some other trace of wine – a book, a picture, etc.? Or, assuming she had some previous wine talk, I can ask to have it revived. And so on.

Closing, the allocation of cognitive energies has to be run by using our cognitive systems in a most satisfactory way. Language has three advantages for that. It focuses attention on an individual or a thing, it calls attention to either, it is an action, i.e. something that can be voluntarily produced and at the same time exploiting many natural ethological dimensions – starting from our selective attention for what our conspecifics do. Linguistic articulation keeps these two features and adds plasticity to our linguistic action suiting it to the task we are at. In grasping a language use everything is relevant, included previous uses, though the present use may call our attention to something other than what the previous one did.28

Prima di cominciare questa ultima lezione della prima parte del corso vorrei parlare di ieri. Frege è un pensatore difficile, vero, ma non difficilissimo, e un testo come “Senso e significato” ha diverse possibilità di lettura comprese alcune letture ingenue. Quando propongo che leggiate un pezzo e sono disponibile a rispondere a qualunque domanda, quello che mi aspetto è che leggiate e mi facciate domande per accertare se avete capito o chiedendo spiegazioni su cosa non avete capito, o su come il pezzo proposto si lega o si distingue da quanto si è visto fin qui. Ieri, l’impressione fredda era che nessuno avesse letto il pezzo. Forse non è così, ma chi l’ha letto non s’è sforzato di manifestarlo. Non leggere o tenersi per sé l’averlo fatto, non è il punto di queste esercitazioni. Come vi ho detto, e l’ho fatto seriamente, non esistono domande stupide. Come non imparereste a cucinare guardando una rubrica giornaliera di cucina in tv, senza mai mettervi ai fornelli, così non imparereste a fare filosofia, senza mai provarvi a prendere in mano un testo e un problema e a porre domande.

Conclusioni 1

Michael Dummett scriveva una ventina di anni fa e qualcosa:

Ciò che distingue la filosofia analitica, nelle sue diverse manifestazioni, è, primo, il credere che rendere filosoficamente conto del pensiero possa essere conseguito rendendo conto del linguaggio, e, secondo, che un resoconto del genere possa essere prodotto. (1993 :5)

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Ho ammirato molto Dummett. Queste righe mi sorprendevano già vent’anni fa, però, e oggi mi sembrano ancor più fuori bersaglio. Lo sono rispetto a alcuni degli stessi autori che cita, e non tratta, come Moore e Russell. Per Russell, ad esempio, chiarire la lingua che si usa è importante per evitare equivoci. Anche alcuni degli autori di cui Dummett si occupa, come Frege, hanno sempre privilegiato il pensiero sulla lingua, e nella seconda parte della loro vita hanno imputato alla lingua l’origine di alcuni problemi in qualche modo insuperabili. Inoltre, come ho cercato di mostrare discutendo di “Senso e significato”, la nozione fregeana di senso è tanto metafisica quanto cognitiva, o forse ancor più metafisica che cognitiva.

Non è questo dissenso con Dummett che mi turba, ma la sua mancanza di interesse per come è fatta la lingua, da cosa origina, cosa cambia. Dummett sembra pensare invece che si possa spiegare tutto a partire da una cosa, il mondo a partire dalla lingua. Una spiegazione può cominciare da qualunque punto, e quindi anche dalla lingua, certo. Non c’è però un punto privilegiato, e non si può spiegare quasi nulla da un punto solo – come pensare di vedere senza muovere gli occhi.

Fin qui ho cercato di mostrare come la lingua si sviluppi in un intreccio di azione, percezione e attenzione. Porterò avanti questo schema nella seconda parte del corso parlando di immaginazione, memoria e contesto. Ho anche provato a inquadrare tutta la questione in una cornice generalissima, buona per il significare come per l’etica, per azione, percezione, memoria, ecc, sostenendo che senza esistenza niente. La lingua cresce, come qualunque forma di vita, su ciò che c’è.

Moltissimi animali richiamano i propri conspecifici. I richiami sono fatti di gesti, di sguardi, di suoni. I suoni sono usati per lo più quando c’è un pericolo o per sedurre – parole d’amore, canti d’amore. Come una specie animale sia arrivata a parlare è una faccenda complessa, di cui se ne sa ancora troppo poco. Il mio obiettivo è indagare se c’è un’immagine della lingua più adatta a capire com’è potuto avvenire, e l’immagine che propongo è quello della lingua che nasce da uno sviluppo di capacità cognitive prelinguistiche, servendosi delle quali costituisce un nuovo sistema cognitivo.

La lingua ci differenzia, certo, ma è una capacità che si sviluppa da altre capacità e non qualcosa che viene dal cielo. Questo non esclude che siamo creature di Dio, ripeto. Semmai esclude che il mondo sia una nostra proiezione, cioè che tutto origini dal pensiero – nega cioè una posizione idealista, nel senso filosofico del termine – Fichte, Schelling, Hegel sono filosofi idealisti. Come ho appena ricordato, la posizione di Frege è più complessa, e in relazione a un’osservazione che mi è stata

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fatta ieri dopo la fine della lezione, esclude che sia il senso, inteso solo cognitivamente, a determinare il significato, bensì la natura del significato a portare in sé i tratti che il senso esprime. Ed è questa diversità che ho cercato di illustrare, in parte, fin qui.

Un modo diverso di vedere la relazione pensiero/linguaggio. Pensiero e sistemi cognitivi prelinguistici; pensiero e linguaggio. Il significato e ciò di cui parliamo. Richiami e rappresentazioni. (1) Un oggetto che sta per un altro. Rendere diversi, rendere simili. La nascita delle arti figurative secondo LBA. Dal gesto alla parola. Surrogati e appropriazioni. Le tracce delle cose, le manifestazioni del nostro interesse, le tracce del nostro interesse. Il gioco che ci lascia il caso.

Ciò che c’è. La nostra manipolazione di ciò che c’è.

Le parole sono oggetti percepibili. La nascita delle rappresentazioni (2).

Le parole sono azioni.

Le parole dirigono l’attenzione.

Non è tutto qui, certo.

Logica e filosofia del linguaggio. Qual è la logica della lingua naturale? Lingua e percezione. La filosofia della mente, e il problema della coscienza. La possibilità di guardarsi allo specchio. La possibilità di dirigere l’attenzione su di sé. Il problema della coscienza e il problema dell’attenzione. L’eminegligenza. L’incapacità di dirigere volontariamente (intenzionalmente) la propria attenzione.