Marco Santambrogio

What do we see in a mirror? There is an ongoing debate over whether mirrors present us with images of objects or whether we see, through the mirror, the objects themselves. Roberto Casati has recently argued that there is a categorical difference between images and mirror reflections. His argument depends on the observation that mirrors, but not pa...

What do we see in a mirror? There is an ongoing debate whether mirrors present us with images of objects or whether we see, through the mirror, the objects themselves. Roberto Casati has recently argued that there is a categorical difference between images and mirror-reflections. His argument depends on the observation that mirrors, but not paintin...

A rational subject who believes that a = b, and also believes that j(a), cannot at the same time disbelieve that j(b), i.e. believe that not-j(b). John Searle points out that no such constraint holds for desire and some other propositional attitudes. Which ones, exactly? Where is the divide located and what determines it? These are no minor questio...

According to neo-Russellianism, in a sentence such as John believes that Mont Blanc is 4000 m high, any other proper name co-referring with Mont Blanc can be substituted for it without any change in the proposition expressed. Prima facie, our practice of translation shows that this cannot be correct. We will then show that neo-Russellians have a wa...

Whether or not the analytic/continental divide in philosophy is tenable in theory, it certainly was very conspicuous in Italy in the second half of the last century. Moreover, there appears to be no reason to think that the scenario is going to change much in the future. Unlike present day analytic philosophers, Italian continental philosophers thi...

Philosophers have given many different answers to the question, What is the meaning of life? Eugenio Lecaldano surveys a number of them and points out that most are flawed, for various reasons. In particular, he rejects subjectivism, according to which the meaning of any particular life for a subject entirely depends on the subject's feelings of sa...

Kevin Mulligan has defended the view that perception is necessary for proper names to refer to spatiotemporal objects and, if the disjunctivist account of perceptual content is accepted, then the category of object-dependent singular terms must also be accepted, and proper names belong to it. I intend to take a different, more direct, route to reac...

Beginning with Frege, modern logic has completely changed our views on the perennial problem of universals. In fact, as traditionally understood, universals have almost completely disappeared from logic. Their peculiar nature was mainly due to the fact that they were at the same time both subjects and predicates: it was thought that “homo” refers t...

In order to know what a belief is, we need to know when it is appropriate to say that two subjects (or the same subject at two different times) believe(s) the same or entertain the same thought. This is not entirely straightforward. Consider for instance 1. Tom thinks that he himself is the smartest and Tim believes the same 2. In 2001, Bill believ...