From Logic to Metaphysics: Intentionality and Levels of Reality

The above considerations have paved the way to the last phase of the Agazzian metaphysical reflection. From the end of the Nineties up to now, indeed, Agazzi significantly shifts the focus of his metaphysical reflection towards his never repu­diated “first love”, i.e.

First of all, indeed, we find, above all in On the criteria for establishing the ontological status of different entities (1997) and partially also in the already men­tioned Metaphysical and scientific realism (2002), as well as in Idealization, intel­lectual intuition, interpretation and ontology in science (2007), a strong defense of realism and therefore of the ontological scope of scientific theories, which here is made even more detailed and precise, by adding to the previous arguments a care­ful examination of the objections coming from logic and philosophy of language, which, as we know, represent the privileged point of view of modern epistemology. Firstly, Agazzi notes that

the founder of modern semantics, i.e. Gottlob Frege, had already distinguished the sense of a linguistic expression (Sinn) from its reference (Bedeutung). Therefore, we can safely continue to say that the task of semantics is the study of meaning, provided we recognize that meaning articulates itself into two different (though interconnected) aspects: sense and reference, and, moreover, that the criteria for assigning meaning are different from the criteria for assigning reference. We must, in other words, keep faithful to a three-level semantics: the level of the sign (the linguistic expression), the level of the sense (what is meant by the sign), and the level of the referent (the object about which the sense is predi­cated). Unfortunately, this has often been forgotten by many semantical theories of our century, that have been typically two level semantics.

Now, «intentional states may happen to be directed towards abstract objects “encoding” certain properties, even when there are no physical objects “exempli­fying” these properties» (Agazzi 1997b: 42), which represent their sense, which, therefore, can exist also without a referent. It follows that «we should attribute a particular kind of existence (let us call it, e.g., intentional existence) to the abstract objects, without equating it with the physical existence of other objects» (Agazzi 1997b: 42). Therefore, although scientific objects are, so to speak, «clipped out of things» (Agazzi 1997b: 43), nonetheless they do not coincide with them, which instead represent their referents, since «a thing [...] does not encode any property, but may exemplify many properties» (Agazzi 1997b: 44). Indeed,

a thing is a “potentially infinite bunch of objects”, meaning by this that a thing may be considered under potentially infinite points of view, and in such a way be also consid­ered as endowed with potentially infinite properties. But exactly for this reason it would be arbitrary to say that a thing is totally characterized by any particular set of properties (which is the proper meaning of “encoding”) (Agazzi 1997b: 44),

as happens, instead, in the case of abstract objects. However, this does not mean that scientific theories are not true and that their objects do not correspond to any­thing real, since the correspondence between them and the things which exemplify their properties can always be established through suitable referential procedures (cf. Agazzi 1997b: 51). But this means, in turn, that not only the objects which directly correspond to the physical world are real, but also those which «are the referents of true sentences, which are recognized as true on the basis of theoreti­cal considerations and arguments» (Agazzi 1997b: 55).

criteria for truth, and we are actually recognizing that, in the case of empirical or “fac­tual” knowledge, they play the role of fundamental criteria. This does not simply mean that they are sufficient for granting truth immediately, but this also means that it is through these criteria that truth is so to speak “injected” in the discourse of empirical sciences, whose theoretical tools would never be able by themselves to produce any sentence having referential purport (Agazzi 1997b: 55).

This allow us also to solve the old problem of the distinction between theoretical and factual statements: the latter, indeed, do not differ, as it has been maintained, neither for being “absolutely simple”, nor for being “purely empirical”, nor for any other logical aspect, nor even «from the point of view of the sense [.] The point of discrimination is that a factual statement is, in addition to having a sense, also directly referential» (Agazzi 2007: 313), where the key word is “directly”, since we have just seen that all true statements are referential.

However, from our point of view the most important point of the above reason­ing is that it allows Agazzi to get to the bottom of the problem (already sketched in Temi e problemi and partially carried on in Scienza e fede) of establishing what kind of reality corresponds to the referents, which may be different depend­ing on the different kind of theories and, more generally, on the different kind of discourses, so recovering «the traditional thesis of the “analogical” meaning of being, which goes back already to Aristotle» (Agazzi 1997b: 41). Indeed, «deter­mining further this kind of reality amounts to assigning an ontological status to these objects» (Agazzi 1997b: 55) and from what we have said above it follows that «this status is entirely determined by the criteria of referentiality through which a given science (but in general a given discourse) recognizes its data, or immediately true sentences» (Agazzi 1997b: 55).

if these criteria are the reading of a literary text, the ontological status of the objects is that of characters in a novel, or in a poem; if these criteria are the reconstruction of a dream, the corresponding objects are particular psychic states; if these criteria are simply mathe­matical calculations, these objects are only mathematical constructions, etc. (Agazzi 1997b: 55).^[169]

Also these referents are “real”, indeed, not less than physical objects, although in a different way, since, according to the fundamental and never forgotten teaching of Bontadini, «“real” is what is “different from nothing”» (Agazzi 1997b: 41).^[170]

Agazzi deepens further the logical side of this topic especially in Logic, truth and ontology (2004) and then, in a more technical form, in Consistency, truth and ontology (2011), thus showing firstly the inescapable ontological commitment of logic, since «logic cannot be disconnected from truth, but truth in turn cannot be disconnected from ontology» (Agazzi 2004: 42). It is true, indeed, that the validity of logical laws is independent of any particular model, but this is not to indicate the disconnection from ontology as such, but rather «a transition from regional ontologies^[171] [typical of the individual sciences] to general ontology» (Agazzi 2004: 14). Just for this reason logical laws are neither “tautological”, nor “empty”, nor “meaningless”, as it is usually maintained: «on the contrary, they are more properly considered as “always true”, and this does not mean “true in no model” but “true in whatever model”» (Agazzi 2004: 14).

multiplicity [...] mirrors the fact that correct arguments, that is, truth-preserving argu­ments, are applied with different modulations according to the different ontological regions where they are applied and this confirms that logic is inevitably ontologically sen­sitive (Agazzi 2004: 23).

This not only makes evident the existence of a strict relationship between logic and metaphysics taken in the first sense, i.e. as the science of the most univer­sal features of reality, but it also shows that the latter is much richer and complex than it was traditionally believed. But even metaphysics in a strict sense, i.e. taken as the science of the suprasensible, receives from logic a further legitimation. Metaphysics indeed cannot attain, by its nature,

an immediate truth. It might be possible only as a form of truth by argument, that is, as a truth that can be attained as a logical consequence of already attained truth. In the sci­ences we have plenty of examples of such a way of proceeding [.] and this happens because we use logical tools that are general in the said ontological domain and their application is not restricted to the observable parts of that domain (Agazzi 2004: 24).

Now, analogously, passing from regional ontologies to the general one,

if, by using [.] general arguments and general ontological principles, we can correctly infer from the consideration of empirically true sentences certain true propositions of a non-empirical character, we must say that the entities to which these true propositions refer really exist, despite not being endowed with certain ontologically particular features (such as that of being perceivable through the senses).

In this way, the same result that in the first phase of the Agazzian metaphysical reflection had been achieved by reasoning on the concepts and the method of sci­ence, it is now achieved also by reasoning on the laws of logic. What is common to the two ways of reasoning is still the fact of making emerge the legitimacy of metaphysics from the inside of those which are usually considered its worst ene­mies, which at the end of the Agazzian reasoning turn out to be its best allies.

Finally, Agazzi focuses his attention on one in particular of the many “kinds of reality” he has identified so far, which is of a very special importance for meta­physics: that of thinking. He starts by claiming the full reality and irreducibility of the entia rationis, which we have already partially spoken of, since a clear example of them is represented just by the objects of scientific theories, whose non-empiri- cal nature has been convincingly demonstrated by Agazzi in the above mentioned essays. However, he develops a more systematical discussion of the whole issue in Thought and ontology (1997), where firstly he clarifies that «thinking is a bipolar activity; one pole being the thinking subject’s mind, and the other pole being that which is thought» (Agazzi 1997a: 13). Therefore, thought is the “content” of think­ing, i.e. that «towards which this activity is intentionally oriented» (Agazzi 1997a: 15). Thought, in turn, has as his object “external” reality. Now,

if external and internal are not meant according to a naive pictorial-spatial characteriza­tion [...], this would oblige us to say that, while thinking and thought are distinct but not different (since they share the same mental nature), reality and thinking (or thought) are different (they do not have the same nature) (Agazzi 1997a: 16).^[172]

On the other hand, being different from nothing, both thinking and thought are “something”, and so are real: but such a reality has, precisely, a different nature with respect to material reality. In this way it turns out to be demonstrated also the second of those “contents of knowledge which are few in number, but of immense value”, i.e. «the existence of a spiritual dimension in the human being» (Agazzi 1983: 152),^[173] about which in Scienza e fede Agazzi had only said that “maybe” it is demonstrable. And, once again, the key has turned out to be intentionality.

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