Editor's Introduction

The issue is a result of the research programme about ‘The problem of indeterminacy. Meaning, knowledge, action’ (‘Il problema dell’indeterminatezza. Significato, conoscenza, azione’, PRIN 2015, national coordinator Luigi Perissinotto). The project was developed by a Cagliari research team that worked on the indeterminacy problem concerning the linguistic, conceptual and interpretative mechanisms actively involved in the construction of the images of the past. These concepts and other themes were the subject of a conference in May 2019. The outcomes are now mostly presented in this number. The great questions of representation, fancy, figurative languages, image (as a form shaping matter and not merely reproducing a given structure) and time (and the relationship amongst past, present and future) are preeminently but not exclusively linked to the past as it is investigated by historians (past human actions and resulting chains of events)..

The meaning of meaning-fallibilism

Much discussion of meaning by philosophers over the last 300 years has been predicated on a Cartesian first-person authority (i.e. ‘infallibilism’) with respect to what one’s terms mean. However this has problems making sense of the way the meanings of scientific terms develop, an increase in scientific knowledge over and above scientists’ ability to quantify over new entities. Although a recent conspicuous embrace of rigid designation has broken up traditional meaning-infallibilism to some extent, this new dimension to the meaning of terms such as ‘water’ is yet to receive a principled epistemological undergirding (beyond the deliverances of ‘intuition’ with respect to certain somewhat unusual possible worlds). Charles Peirce’s distinctive, naturalistic philosophy of language is mined to provide a more thoroughly fallibilist, and thus more realist, approach to meaning, with the requisite epistemology. Both his pragmatism and his triadic account of representation, it is argued, produce an original approach to meaning, analysing it in processual rather than objectual terms, and opening a distinction between ‘meaning for us’, the meaning a term has at any given time for any given community and ‘meaning simpliciter’, the way use of a given term develops over time (often due to a posteriori input from the world which is unable to be anticipated in advance). This account provocatively undermines a certain distinction between ‘semantics’ and ‘ontology’ which is often taken for granted in discussions of realism

The formalist roots of Stanley Fish's and E.D. Hirsch's hermeneutics

The paper investigates the extent to which Stanley Fish’s constructivism and E.D. Hirsch’s hermeneutics are similar in their assumptions and program. Although it is commonly accepted that they constitute polar opposites of literary theory, Fish and Hirsch are embedded in the theoretical discourse of New Criticism’s approach to literary studies and develop in a form of critique of the formalist stance. The problems they encounter and the way they approach literary texts are shaped by formalist assumptions that eventually lead to serious discrepancies between their postulated theory and practice. Both theories of interpretation seem to be operating within a similar framework of ideas which determines their understanding of the problems regarding literary studies as well as their solutions. What appears to be even more important is that the ‘‘textual” theoretical framework itself causes serious problems for both programmes of literary hermeneutics

Agamben, Hegel, and the State of Exception

span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial"In his account of the state of exception, Agamben repeatedly relies upon what Hegel would have called emWesenslogik/em or #39;transcendental thinking#39;. Because of this reliance, the state of exception appears in Agamben#39;s account as the hidden ground of modern liberal democracies. When conceived as such a ground, it appears to be a condition of possibility that inexorably persists in the modern state. Moreover, within the state of exception all juridical order is suspended, leaving no normative or juridical criteria on the basis of which to decide what the structure of any emergent political order should look like. This means that from the state of exception we can just as easily land in a totalitarian as we can in a liberal democratic or democratic socialist state. Without such criteria - lacking due to the total suspension characterizing the state of exception - Agamben#39;s own alignment with Benjaminian revolutionary messianism over Schmittian authoritarianism is arbitrary, and he leaves us with no basis for making any such decision ourselves. Drawing upon Hegel#39;s dialectic of freedom and his critique of transcendental thought, this paper argues that within the state of exception there is an implicit logic that points the way out of it. Furthermore, it does so in such a way that the state of exception is neither annexed by the structure of a predetermined juridical order along the lines proposed by Schmitt on the one hand nor posited it as a transcendental structure underlying or always preceding modern liberal democracies on the other. This alternative is overlooked by Agamben precisely because of his own insistence upon conceiving of the state of exception in a transcendent way./spa

IR theory, historical materialism, and the false promise of international historical sociology

The three-decades old call for an inter-disciplinary rapprochement between IR Theory and Historical Sociology, starting in the context of the post-positivist debate in the 1980s, has generated a proliferating repertory of contending paradigms within the field of IR, including Neo-Weberian, Post-Structuralist, and Constructivist approaches. Within the Marxist literature, this project comprises an equally rich and diverse set of theoretical traditions, including World-Systems Theory, Neo-Gramscian IR/IPE, the Amsterdam School, Political Marxism, Neo-Leninism, and Postcolonial Theory. More recently, a “third wave” of approaches has been announced from within the field of IR, suggesting to move the dialogue from inter-disciplinarity towards an integrated super-discipline of International Historical Sociology (IHS). This proposition has been most persistently advanced by advocates of the theory of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD), claiming to constitute a universal, unitary and sociological theory of IR. This article charts the intellectual trajectory of this ongoing IR/HS dialogue. It moves from a critique of Neo-Weberianism to a critique of UCD against the background of the original promise of the turn in IR to Historical Sociology: the supersession of the prevailing rationalism, structuralism, and positivism in extant mainstream IR approaches through the mobilization of alternative and non-positivistic traditions in the social sciences. This critique will be performed by setting UCD in dialogue with Political Marxism. By anchoring both approaches at opposite ends on the spectrum of Marxist conceptions of social science – respectively the scientistic and the historicist - the argument is that UCD reneges on the promise of Historical Sociology for IR by re-aligning, first by default and now by design, with the meta-theoretical premises of Neo-Realism. This is most visibly expressed in the articulation of a deductive-nomological covering law, leading towards acute conceptual and ontological anachronisms, premised on the radical de-historicisation of the fields of ontology, conceptuality and disciplinarity. This includes the semantic neutering and hyper-abstract re-articulation of the very category, which in IR’s self-perception lends legitimacy to its claim of disciplinary distinctiveness: the international. The article concludes by suggesting that an understanding of Marxism as a historicist social science subverts all calls for the construction of grand theories and, a fortiori, a unitary super-discipline of IHS, premised on a set of universal, space-time indifferent, and abstract categories that hold across the spectrum of world history. In contrast, recovering the historicist credentials of Marxism demands a constant temporalisation and specification of the fields of ontology, agency, conceptuality and disciplinarity. The objective is to lay the foundations for a historicist social science of geopolitics

Shaping Translation: A View from Terminology Research

This article discusses translation-oriented terminology over a time frame that is more or less congruent with META’s life span. Against the backdrop of the place of terminology in shaping professional issues in translation, we initially describe some stages in the process by which terminology has acquired institutional identity in translator training programmes and constituted its knowledge base. We then suggest a framework that seeks to show how theory construction in terminology has contributed to a better understanding of technical texts and their translation. A final section similarly illustrates how this overarching theoretical scheme has driven, or is at least consistent with, products and methods in the translation sector of the so-called language industries.Cet article aborde la terminologie dans l’optique de la traduction (profession, pratique, théorie) durant les cinquante dernières années - période correspondant à la vie de META. Après avoir esquissé ce que le profil contemporain du traducteur doit à la terminologie, l’article examine à tour de rôle: (a) les étapes dans la constitution de cette science des termes, (b) comment cette science a acquis droit de cité dans les programmes de formation des traducteurs, (c) le cadre explicatif contemporain qu’elle propose pour rendre compte des textes techniques et de leur traduction, (d) les retombées de ce cadre pour les secteurs des industries de la langue qui se justifient largement par rapport à la traduction

Creationism and evolution

In Tower of Babel, Robert Pennock wrote that “defenders of evolution would help their case immeasurably if they would reassure their audience that morality, purpose, and meaning are not lost by accepting the truth of evolution.” We first consider the thesis that the creationists’ movement exploits moral concerns to spread its ideas against the theory of evolution. We analyze their arguments and possible reasons why they are easily accepted. Creationists usually employ two contradictive strategies to expose the purported moral degradation that comes with accepting the theory of evolution. On the one hand they claim that evolutionary theory is immoral. On the other hand creationists think of evolutionary theory as amoral. Both objections come naturally in a monotheistic view. But we can find similar conclusions about the supposed moral aspects of evolution in non-religiously inspired discussions. Meanwhile, the creationism-evolution debate mainly focuses — understandably — on what constitutes good science. We consider the need for moral reassurance and analyze reassuring arguments from philosophers. Philosophers may stress that science does not prescribe and is therefore not immoral, but this reaction opens the door for the objection of amorality that evolution — as a naturalistic world view at least — supposedly endorses. We consider that the topic of morality and its relation to the acceptance of evolution may need more empirical research

Naturalism, Norms, and Intentionality: The Substitutionary Aspects of Mental Representations

Naturalistic philosophical theories of semantic content, such as the influential ones proposed by Fodor, Dretske, and Millikan, on which I focus, are typically judged on whether they account for the differences between a semantic relation and a more naturally fundamental relation, such as a causal or an informational relation. One of the apparent differences is that a semantic relation, between a symbol and something else, has better and worse ways of being instantiated, which is to say that the semantic relation seems to be normatively determined. But these theorists have also tended to identify the semantic relation with one of those naturally more fundamental relations which isn’t normatively determined, adding a theory of content determinacy to a metaphysical account of the relation. I argue that because these theorists take this approach to explaining semantic content, their theories tend to have internal contradictions. These theorists need to explain the apparent normative determination in a way that is consistent with their claim that a semantic relation is a naturally fundamental relation that is not at all normative. Thus, Millikan, for example, posits a purposive function as the determinant, but a function which she claims is only descriptively, or objectively, normative. I argue, though, that this function turns out to be prescriptively normative, and that her metaphysical claims about the nature of a semantic relation conflict with her account of the purposive m function. I propose an alternative naturalistic strategy, one that takes naturalistic methodology rather than ontology as the starting point in an explanation of semantic content, and one that can therefore afford to accept the role of prescriptive norms in determining this content. A philosophical naturalist takes for granted not just what scientific theories say, but the methods scientists use, including the use of explanatory models. These models have substitutionary aspects, which I argue are crucial to the intentionality of mental symbols in general and which aren’t addressed by the other three theorists. I provide, then, a naturalistic, noncircular account of how a mental symbol’s standing in for something else is determined by prescriptive norms

The conception of human nature in modern political thought : with special reference to the work of Charles Taylor

[From the introduction:]This thesis will analyse and advocate a 'contextualist' reading of human nature. By reference to the work of Charles Taylor it will be argued that Modern conceptions of human nature are (to echo Nietzsche) 'dead'. This is to attack the suggestion that a conception of human nature may be understood in an ahistorical, universalist, abstract or 'unencumbered' sense. A conception of human nature must, of necessity, it will be argued, be understood in a more dynamic and 'local' sense. It is the suggestion of this thesis that human nature must be understood in a sense akin to the existential notion of 'facticity', or as possessing a degree of 'determinacy'. While human nature is 'encumbered' by its 'situation' in time and geographical location it is not however wholly determined. An individual's existence is co-determined by individual choice, the individual's history, and by Nature. Human nature must be recognised to have a facticity, to exist at a certain point in history, in a certain country, to be encumbered by countless other emotional ties, friendships, and loyalties. This 'embedded' conception of human nature is delineated and explored through Taylor's conception of human nature as an 'interspatial epiphany', and is to be preferred to the unencumbered sense of interspatial epiphany that might be seen to be offered by some forms of existentialism. Such existentialist thought is not as astutely located or embedded as Taylor's thought, and suffers from what Taylor terms 'existential heroism', a focus on choice making rather than on the background of encumberment.While the notion of a universal conception of human nature must be abandoned, as the individual is now seen as 'located' temporally, and spatially, it is still possible to draw some (very) modest generalisations about the nature of individuals. This exploration proceeds by generating a 'thick description' of the selfs particular, but ultimately contingent, connections and affiliations. (Such a located description is seen as superior by Taylor, to thin, mechanistic, scientific and neurological descriptions of human agency.