Wittgenstein e il naturalismo

The paper is concerned with Wittgenstein’s attitudes towards various forms of naturalism. On the one hand, Wittgenstein’s anti-naturalism is based on the idea that there is a deep divide between science and philosophy. The paper argues that such a methodological claim cannot be criticized by resorting to Quine’s attack to analyticity, for the Wittgensteinian notion of a grammatical rule is different from the Carnapian notion of an analytical proposition. Though, at the same time, the paper underlines that Wittgenstein’s conception of grammar is the core of the so-called “linguistic doctrine of necessity”, which has been strongly criticized by Kripke. On the other hand, Wittgenstein’s naturalism is based on notions such as “form of life” and “general facts of nature”. The paper shows that such a view is motivated by anti-foundationalist and non intellectualistic biases, and is mainly characterized by a peculiar attention to the normative dimension of human behaviour and activities

7. Two Quantitative Researches in the History of Philosophy. Some Down-to-Earth and Uphazard Methodological Reflections

In this paper we are going to put forth some methodological reflections on two different investigations we conducted in the context of the DR2 research group. Such investigations were our first serious attempts at applying distant reading techniques and more in general quantitative methods to the history of philosophy. Our reflections are rather down-to-earth, and they have their roots in the context of the actual research activity, with its practical difficulties, stratagems and questions left unanswered. In this sense they do not concern lofty questions of principle, to be established a priori and with a normative attitude. A sketchy preliminary presentation of the two researches is in order as a basis for the methodological remarks

Distant Reading and the Problem of Operationalization

The paper focuses on the role of operationalization (i.e., the building of models and the setting down of rules of annotation) in quantitative research in the humanities, and especially in the history of ideas. On the one hand, the presence of fully explicit annotation rules and fully operationalized concepts allows one to formulate claims that are clearly verifiable, or falsifiable, or in any case testable. On the other hand, full operationalization seems to have some controversial aspects: is it practically feasible? Is verifiability what we always want to achieve in the humanities? Are operationalized concepts semantically “well-anchored”?The paper focuses on the role of operationalization (i.e., the building of models and the setting down of rules of annotation) in quantitative research in the humanities, and especially in the history of ideas. On the one hand, the presence of fully explicit annotation rules and fully operationalized concepts allows one to formulate claims that are clearly verifiable, or falsifiable, or in any case testable. On the other hand, full operationalization seems to have some controversial aspects: is it practically feasible? Is verifiability what we always want to achieve in the humanities? Are operationalized concepts semantically “well-anchored”