Wittgenstein’s Creed: Mythology and Axiomatic Systems

The paper describes a syntagmatic structure shared by axiomatic systems and creeds. In particular, the structure is based on the repetition of syntagm containing a modal operator (“I believe”), a name, and several descriptions. These syntagms should not be confused with empirical sentences. Rather, drawing on Wittgenstein, they can be compared to hinge statements: linguistic games that determine individual identity and weltbild. The rendering explicit of hinge statements in an axiomatic system generates orthodoxy and heresies, philosophical and political conflicts. The presence of this structure in a subset of religious and scientific discourses implies a bidirectional transfer of values between them. On one hand, it proves that religious discourse can be as rational as philosophical and scientific ones (there is logos in the mythos); on the other hand, axiomatic scientific discourse projects noological categories onto reality, producing a cosmos (there is mythos in the logos). Axiomatic expositions of scientific knowledge use the same modal operators as cosmogonic myths and imply a subject who believes in the resulting cosmology. The expression of these beliefs is not addressed to a transcendent entity; it instead asserts the belonging of the subject to a community based on the socio-semiotic sharing of the credit

On the Juridical Relevance of the Phenomenological Notion of Person in Max Scheler and Edith Stein

The paper presents a semiotic interpretation of the phenomenological debate on the notion of person, focusing in particular on Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, and Edith Stein. The semiotic interpretation lets us identify the categories that orient the debate: collective/individual and subject/object. As we will see, the phenomenological analysis of the relation between person and social units such as the community, the association, and the mass shows similarities to contemporary socio-semiotic models. The difference between community, association, and mass provides an explanation for the establishment of legal systems. The notion of person we inherit from phenomenology can also be useful in facing juridical problems raised by the use of non-human decision-makers such as machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence applications

Beneath Thy Protection: Portrait of the Holy Virgin as a semantic operator

Starting from the third century, many songs, prayers, and icons testify to the way the Virgin Mary – Mother of God – has been attributed the role of protecting the community. Examples include the Akhathist hymn traditionally dated to the siege of Constantinople (626), the Polish anthem “Bogurodzica”, associated with the battle of Grunwald (1410), the icon of Częstochowa that protected Poland from the Swedish invasion (1655), and numerous others. The role of menace is embodied by different enemies: infidels, heretics, or atheists. The Virgin watches over the frontier between two cultural spaces: the inside and the outside of the semiosphere. A case study will provide insight into the function played by the Madonna at the border: the Madonna of the Rocciamelone, the highest sanctuary in Europe, founded by the crusader knight Rotharius (1358). A bronze statue of the Virgin was placed in the sanctuary in 1899. A small corpus of pastoral letters written by blessed Edoardo Rosaz, bishop of Susa (Piedmont), expresses the hope that the Virgin will protect Catholics from liberal heresy. Plastic oppositions such as top/bottom, resulting from the relationship between the Virgin and the landscape, are used to manifest abstract oppositions such as reason/passion, order/disorder, and Church/revolution. This homologation helps us understand how the Virgin, placed in upper space, embodies knowledge and cognition: she becomes a lookout, allowing a transfer of values from the semantic field of war to the religious one. The Virgin guards the border of the semiosphere, the border dividing the self from the other. Her function is the semiotization of incoming materials, transforming external non-communication into information and meaning. This article thus considers the Virgin as a semantic operator inverting the values of liberal discourse into information stored in Catholic cultural space. A mathematical model of the function played by the Virgin will be presented in the terms of quantum computing

Enunciation and topic/comment structure: the offensive replies to Pope Francis' tweets

Sentiment analysis is an automatised technique of analysis aimed to measure the â polarityâ and the â subjectivityâ of large corpora of messages. The case study of the present paper consists of a selection of Pope Francisâ tweets on ecological, social, religious themes and the relative polemic replies. In the degree of agreement/disagreement in response to a tweet, the referential function is not relevant; the emotive and conative functions prevail. The political strategies aimed at corroborating or refuting claims in terms of â fact checkingâ seem not relevant to these forms of communication based on personal enunciation, on the relation between the two simulacra â meâ and â youâ , and on the manifestation of one's own comment with respect to a topic. Furthermore, the techniques aimed at detecting the presence of hate speeches to apply, possibly, a precautionary censorship are lexical-sensitive, and fail to consider the context in which words co-occur. Finally, the paper presents a technique of analysis based on quantum information retrieval which can provide new insights on the relation between hashtag, address sign, topic, and reply

Modelli di santità nella Commedia: il caso di Pier Damiani

The paper focuses on the canto XXI of Paradise. In particular, the construction of the cosmological landscape and its superimposition on the level of ethical reading will be examined in order to reconstruct the semiotics of the world (Greimas 1966) of Dante’s time. For this purpose, the theory of sign production will be used (Eco 1975). Attention will also be paid to the figure of Pier Damiani as a model of holiness proposed by Dante, deepening its ethical-political implications