From Intensional Semantics to a New Conceptual Image of Knowledge

The mention of the relation between the semantic logos and the apophantic logos, which concluded the previous section, not only explicitly brings out again the link that connects Agazzi to the classical and fundamental Aristotelian lesson of the Organon, but once again indicates his proximity to (and at the same time also his critical distance from) the lesson of Kant, with particular reference to the break­through connected with transcendentalism.

This critical perspective draws, in particular, on Gottlob Frege’s logical reflec­tion, but it is also conscious of an older tradition of thought that goes back directly to scholastic logic.

This distinction was clearly developed by scholastic logic as a distinction between intentio and suppositio and was recovered by Frege in the distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung [...]. Hence it is far from obvious that when we offer an “interpretation” of a formal sys­tem, associating its expressions with certain referents, we give a meaning or sense to these expressions. Naturally, we can offer them meanings (senses), but this requires us to asso­ciate with them certain conceptual entities and not referents [.]. This resistance to merg­ing meaning with reference has a long tradition in the history of philosophy. It is implicit, for example, in all the criticisms of the so-called ontological argument for the existence of God, and is at the root of the Kantian demand that some “synthetic” (i.e. empirical) condi­tion must be present in order to be able to attribute the character of knowledge to a state­ment” (Agazzi 2012: 249).

Frege’s semantics lays particular stress on the objective contents of thought [the Gedanken], by means of which the conceptual plane of scientific thinking is rightly brought out fully, and is recognized as a precondition for the determination of the referents:

This is all the more true if we reflect on the fact that, according to him [Frege, ed.] refer­ents can be reached only through the sense and for this reason he attributed a sense even to proper names, which are the typical linguistic signs which have individuals as their ref­erents. But this three-level semantics lost its intermediate level already with Russell and the meaning of linguistic signs was reduced to their referents or denotations, although Russell remained Fregean in some respects. This trend was reinforced in the extensional semantics for formal systems introduced by Tarski and developed in model theory in mathematical logic” (Agazzi 2012: 250-151, italics in the text).

But, in this way, the paradoxical exit was the losing sight of the specific and autonomous (though relative) conceptual plane that always qualifies the scientific enterprise, hence precisely that component of the conceptual framework through which we can develop the very notion of the “scientific object”, as we have seen. This, however, confirms, from the point of view of Agazzi’s espistemology, the close link that always exists between the objective knowledge brought into being by scientific theories and the defence of a critical realism. For what reason? Precisely because, to quote Agazzi again,

the realist position argues that the scientific discourse has a real referent. As is well known, at least since Frege’s famous essay on Sinn and Bedeutung, which recovered dis­tinctions and concepts already widely present in the scholastic treatments of the supposi- tio and the intentio of terms, a difference exists between the meaning of a term (Frege’s Sinn), which is a content of thought expressing “what is meant” by that term, and its ref­erent or denotation (the Fregean Bedeutung), which is an object constituting “that about which” that meaning is thought or expressed. Unfortunately, such a distinction has been left unproductive by those who, for a fairly long period of time, have occupied a promi­nent position in developing theories of meaning, that is by mathematical logicians, who have quickly embraced, with regard to the interpretation of formal calculi, an extensional- ist semantics according to which the meaning of a term is the set of its referents (Agazzi 1985: 175-176).

The needs of “practicality” adopted by mathematical logicians to justify abandoning Frege’s distinction (an abandonment reinforced by the hegemony exercised by the Hilbertian formalism according to which a formal set of symbols does not possess any meaning, except that of so-called “implicit definitions”), produced an increasing separation between meaning and referent, leading to the curious (epistemological) paradox of legitimating both a discourse devoid of meaning (which then would not say anything) and a discourse devoid of referents (which then would not speak of anything).

to be a referential discourse, since it cannot be affirmed that a statement is true without admitting that it is true of something. [...] The empirical sciences make use of non-linguistic operational criteria of reference in order to grasp the referents of many of their propositions (those that directly describe experimental results), but now we can also add that the same theoretical concepts of a theory must have a ‘real’ referent (Agazzi 1985:180).

Precisely this recognition enables one to understand the specific function of the apophantic logos which is different from the semantic, because

the institution of the apophantic logos is characterized by the fact that, in addition to the meaning, there emerges the referent and, moreover, in such a way as not being independent of meaning. In fact the search for the referent requires a non-linguistic activity [...] which is in many cases (especially in the case of science) actually of a markedly “practical” kind, such as operatively manipulating by means of instruments, observing in appropriately created conditions, and so forth. This activity therefore consists in exploring the world and not in exploring language. [...]. The apophantic logos is there­fore one which institutes the notion of truth directly related to that of reference” (Agazzi 1985: 182, italics in the text).

This then enables one to better understand why

Each scientific discipline is presented as a discourse that intentions reality from a certain ‘point of view’, namely proposing to investigate only certain aspects or qualities of it; for that reason it selects a limited number of “predicates” and, in order to be successful in its referential effort, it associates them with some standardized operations, which we can call ‘criteria of objectification’ or ‘protocollar criteria’ or ‘criteria of referentiality’. It is these operations that ‘cut out’ the specific objects of a given science from the vast ambit of reality and, precisely because they are transactions that do not apply to anything, but to referents already identified (the ‘stuff’ of everyday experience which is practised within a certain historically determined community) and moreover subject to empirical, and not purely linguistic or intellectual, manipulations, single out specific referents that are neces­sarily real (Agazzi 1985: 188, italics in the text).

A much more complete and elaborated presentation of the theses presented here regarding the peculiar semantic and operational foundation of Agazzi’s realism is offered in Agazzi (2014), the life-work in which he has presented the global portrayal of his epistemology. We have preferred to give a documentation of these positions with reference to older publications, in order to show the continuity of the maturation of these ideas.

This overall outcome of Agazzi’s critical realism thus proves particularly attuned to other very different programmes of philosophical inquiry—for example with that of a highly original Italian philosopher like the critical empiricist Preti (on whom see Preti 2011 and Minazzi 2011), or with that of the “regional ontologies” of the phenomenology outlined by Husserl in Ideen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen Philosophic (1913)—which, however, also insisted on both the specific and fundamental conceptual dimension of the sci­entific process as well as the desirability of recovering, heuristically, but also phe­nomenologically, the fruitful scholastic doctrine of intentionality and suppositio, in order to develop a richer, more articulated, appropriate and plastic critical image of scientific knowledge.^[6]

This specific philosophical approach in Agazzi’s reflection also explains the original way in which our philosopher has always been able to engage discussions with some of the principal positions of his time, highlighting their inherent one-sidedness and also their dogmatisms. Take, for example, the problem of the historical determinacy of scientific theories or, again, the no less extensive and profound debate about the alleged “neutrality” (or non-neutrality) of scientific knowledge or, again, the debate concerning the relation between science and ethics, or also the relation between science, evolution and religion (for which, in this context, I refer only to Agazzi 1992 and Agazzi and Minazzi 2011). In all these cases, by using an approach based on general systems theory (see Agazzi 1978), Agazzi identifies the privileged comprehensive system of reference, and then takes into consideration the multiple subsystems, open and adaptive, in accordance with the systems-theoretic methodology inaugurated by Bertalanffy (1968), which he has, however, reworked in a fruitful way within his epistemologi­cal and even philosophical reflection. Therefore, while many interlocutors in these debates insist on contrapositions that constitutes a drastic and unilateral “aut/aut”, Agazzi, on the contrary, has always endeavoured to investigate critically the links of connection, relationship and coordination (i.e. “et/et”) that can (and must) be identified, always considering them as flexible and complex, mirroring in such a way the actual articulation of a real world, the tangled skein which must always be unravelled, d la Leonardo, with critical intelligence, taking into account its mul­tiple, varied and even conflicting actual components, so as to be able to hope to grasp, to again quote the genius of Vinci, any possible “threads of truth”.