Antonino Pennisi

Una prospettiva naturalistica sulla costruzione del consenso: i processi decisionali negli animali umani e non umani / A naturalistic view on the consensus-construction: the decision-making processes in human and non-human animals

The dynamics concerning power aroused particular attention to the social and political studies focusing, in particular, on the consensus-construction and its organization. The rhetoric of power is one the most debated issues of the sapiens political system; it represents the summa of personal and group strategies, experiences and objectives. The communication between individuals of the same rank also exists in the remaining animal world, which compares with power and consensus dynamics in a less evident way but, equally decisive. The relationships between conspecifics, especially among primates, are strongly influenced by the rank difference and the dynamics for the achievement and maintenance of consensus as confirmed by the biopolitics studies which have been reformulating a strongly deterministic view of the animal societies. Our researches are set in this context of studies to explore the power management in animal societies and the ethological “rhetoric” of consensus, which as we attempt to demonstrate here, is strongly influenced by the social capacity to mediate the conflicts and acquire a useful role in terms of social service as interpreter of the ecological rationality inspirer of the group decisions. It is in this process where the construction of the ethological context leadership happens.

Parlanti impossibili, plausibili, reali. Prospettive biolinguistiche in filosofia del linguaggio / Impossible, Possible and Real Speakers. Biolinguistic Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language

In the recent years Life Sciences have been a test in many fields that investigate specific human capacity. Cognitive science of language are animated by a debate on the role that the data coming from biology may play in the definition of mental functions. Classical cognitive science has led both to a dualism between mechanical-morphological components and psychic components (e.g. the typical chomskyan approach) and to a spasmodic search of those brain areas responsible for the “unique” capacity of human language (recursion syntax, semantic creativity, etc.) that could be called “cerebro-centrism”. In contrast with this classical paradigm, we support the idea that a “biological” perspective allows a more appropriate explanation of what language is and how it functions. In particular, by applying evolutionary developmental biology in the study of spoken language, we will show how the biological nature of the speaker could affect the type of the function. This approach can clarify some classical oppositions in the study of language evolution. The biology of the speaker, determined by all of the central and peripheral structures and social practices in which it is exercised, is the set of functional possibilities that the sapiens may present as a linguistic animal.

Another Biolinguistics History: From Aristotle to Darwin

This chapter reconstructs a possible alternative history of Chomskyan biolinguistics hinging on the embodiment of language, whose precursors are identified in Aristotle, Vico, Darwin and Broca. The recent re-reading of Aristotle, given by Franco Lo Piparo, is used to reconstruct a biolinguistics independent of the cerebrocentric hypothesis and, therefore, entirely focused on the primacy of linguistic articulation and of the relevant cognitive properties. Vico reconstructs the glottogonic dimension as the first truly linguistic evolutionary epistemology. Darwin’s position on language is critically discussed in great detail in its functionalist aspects, often influenced by Lamarckian residues. However, we emphasize the decisive importance of gradualism of structures and the populational thought as elements of an irreversible biolinguistics turn materializing in the birth of neuroscience with the discoveries of Broca’s aphasia.

The Update of the Biolinguistic Agenda

This chapter is devoted to the reconstruction of the criticisms and internal reviews of Chomskyan biolinguistics. In particular, it deals with Balari and Lorenzo’s positions, who support the often extreme acceptance of the Evo-Devo, and those of Cedric Boeckx. The latter, especially, deeply reflects the need for the pre-existence of the lexicon so that one is able to apply the computational mechanisms provided by the minimalist position.

Chomsky and Biolinguistics

This chapter describes the origin of contemporary biolinguistics. In particular, the authors discuss the philosophical and linguistic presuppositions of Chomskyan biolinguistics and his ambiguous positions on dualism and Platonism. They also analyze the Chomskyan approach to evolutionism and its criticism of the more functionalist and adaptationist aspects of Darwinism. They highlight his choice to counteract the tendency of naturalistic studies not to develop a solid theory of language.

The Last Chomsky and the Evolutionary Perspective

In this chapter, the authors discuss the developments of Chomskyan biolinguistics within the minimalist framework. In particular, they discuss the Chomskyan descriptions of sensorimotor and conceptual externalization devices and the computational processes Merge and Move. This chapter covers aspects related to the application of the minimalism-inspired revision of evolutionistic positions, starting from the saltation origin of language.

The Boundaries of Biolinguistics

In this chapter, on the basis of the previous ones, the authors discuss the limits of the applicability of biolinguistics as a Darwinian science. In particular, it excludes that biolinguistics is designed to specifically study the products of the language faculty. Since DBM deals with biological structures, we must exclude expertise in the history of grammar, syntax, vocabulary, etc., and cultural developments of the historical-natural languages from the DBM. From a functional point of view, biolinguistics should only deal with universal biological principles present in the cognitive linguistic procedures that result directly from verbal articulation. Basically, this chapter, will deal with ontogeny performance events and the pragmatic exercise of the language.

Pragmatics and Biolinguistics

In this chapter we discuss the possible applications of pragmatics to biolinguistic issues. In particular, it notes that pragmatics as a discipline is related to the absolute variability of cultural content and can be considered foreign to biolinguistics. On the contrary, as a living form of linguistic performativity – with its generation rules and stabilization of inferences that occur when speech is being produced – pragmatics becomes an essential element of biolinguistics. In particular, it highlights that there are already many pragmatic naturalistic studies that perfectly match the Darwinian approach as they reveal pre-linguistic and linguistic behaviour very similar in humans and non-human animals.

The Nature of the Species-specificity of Human Language

Beginning from the agreement between CBM and DBM on the species-specificity of human language, in this chapter the authors will discuss the strictly technical interpretation with which the evolutionary approach defines this notion and which has been much abused particularly in philosophical speculation. In particular, they connect with the notion of the origin of Lorenzian ethology to grasp the “coercive” content of the very idea of species-specificity. For Darwinian biolinguistics, the species-specificity of language is first and foremost the recognition of its biological constraints and the cognitive limitations. It follows a naturalistic linguistic philosophy emphasizing the special formatting of human linguistic cognition, as conditioned by a specific bodily language technology, and tecnomorphic characteristics of thought arising from it.

Nuovi approcci epistemologici ad una filosofia naturalistica del linguaggio

During the 20th century, the term “naturalistic” within the language’s sciences corresponded with a physicalist tendency, directing the so-called “linguistic turn” to a clearly synchronic, analytic-deductive and logical-formal paradigma. In the first period of cognitive science this tendency took the form of a theoretical approach to language in which the dualism between the mechanical-morphological components and the psychic ones fully arose. Within the computational hypotheses this theoretical solution has proved to fit completely to the distinction between hardware and software. As is well-known, these models revealed even the simplest semantic uses of language as unsuitable to explain. One of the most negative aspects of this real epistemological defeat of the most ambitious linguistic philosophy of the 20th century is that it entailed the progressive theoretical decrease of human language role within the new dominant paradigm of cognitive science. In this paper we support a different theoretical position that can place language contribution at the core of the scientific debate, while remaining within the boundaries of cognitive science’s epistemology. This can be possible if we use a different naturalistic philosophy of language, based entirely on evolutionary-developmental biology and on the fundamental concept of morphological constraints, rather than centered on physicalist stances. Moreover, we believe that our position can open to cognitive science further possibilities of application that are currently clouded by the neuroscience’s primacy and the totalizing approach of experimental methodologies