H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE -- I VERBALI: MO

 

Catalogue Raisonné of J. L. Speranza’s Publications – H. P. Grice e J. L. Speranza: La Conversazione – I Verbali: MO

 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Mocenigo: la ragione conversazionale e la filosofia italiana Filippo Mocenigo (Venezia, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale. Grice’s reason-governed pragmatics and Mocenigo’s Venetian “Institutiones” converge on the same insight from opposite directions: Mocenigo tries to modernize the Lyceum by making the norms of discourse explicit and teachable (from term to proposition to syllogism, with rhetoric and ethos as civic disciplines), while Grice tries to explain how ordinary talk already works because participants tacitly conform to rational constraints that make speaker-meaning recoverable beyond the literal dictum. Where Mocenigo emphasizes the enthymeme as the bridge between strict inference and public persuasion, Grice’s conversational implicature is a kindred bridge: a licensed inference that is not formally stated but is nonetheless rationally calculable given shared assumptions about cooperation, relevance, and evidential responsibility. The contrast is equally instructive: Mocenigo’s “civile conversazione” is institutional and partly one-way, aimed at forming citizens through a stable logic of discourse for governance and law, whereas Grice’s model is interactional and reparative, showing how hearers infer what is meant precisely when utterances are incomplete, elliptical, or strategically indirect. Put together, they yield a unified picture in which communicatio is both moral and logical: credibility and character (ethos) are not mere ornaments but conditions for warranted uptake, and the rational structure of discourse is what lets a community treat talk as a civic bond rather than as mere noise or manipulation. In that sense Mocenigo supplies the Renaissance pedagogy of the very norms Grice later theorizes at the micro-level: the “rules” are not primarily rules of grammar or etiquette, but constraints on reasonable inference that allow discourse to be at once persuasive, truth-aimed, and publicly accountable. Grice: “In Italy, ‘philosopher’ does NOT mean ‘analysit of ordinary-language’!” -- The  Institutiones of M.  serve as a systematic exposition of the philosophy of the Lycaeum – that the Italians spell ‘lizio’ --, specifically designed to modernise and structure the ancient concepts of logic, rhetoric, and communication for a Renaissance audience. M.'s Institutiones is part of a broader Renaissance tradition of "institutional" writing — works intended to establish foundational principles of a discipline. The treatise typically follows the Organon, of the Lyceum, organizing knowledge from a simple term to a complex syllogism. It aims to provide a framework that bridges the gap between theoretical logic and the practical application of language – civile conversazione -- in civil life. While focusing on logic, it integrates elements of rhetoric and ethics, viewing communication not just as a technical skill but as a moral responsibility of the citizen.  M. develops the model of the ‘lizio’ by shifting it from a strictly "utterer-centric" oral tradition to a more comprehensive "logic of discourse" suitable for written and institutional communication.  M. emphasises the unity between Logic (Logos), Rhetoric (Pathos), and Grammar, refining Aristotle's view that communication is a tool for revealing truth rather than just persuading an addressee. The Enthymeme as a Link: He focuses on the enthymeme, a rhetorical syllogism, as the primary bridge between formal logic and public communication, allowing complex philosophical truths to be communicated effectively to a non-expert addressee. Civil Communication: He develops the concept of comunicatio as a civic bond. While communication in the ‘lizio’ is often one-way (utterer to passive addressee), M.’s treatise frames it as an essential component of social institutionalization, where shared logical structures allow for stable governance and legal order. M. expands on Ethos by linking the utterer’s s credibility. flosofia naturale, filosofia transnaturale, metaphysical philosophy. Grice: Mocenigo, mi ha sempre affascinato il modo in cui le Institutiones del Lizio abbiano modernizzato la logica e la comunicazione. Lei ritiene che il modello della "civile conversazione" possa ancora essere un ponte tra filosofia e vita quotidiana nella nostra epoca? Mocenigo: Caro Grice, assolutamente sì! La civile conversazione è, secondo me, il cuore pulsante del vivere sociale. La filosofia non deve rimanere confinata tra le mura accademiche; proprio come nelle Institutiones, il discorso razionale e il dialogo etico plasmano il cittadino e la società. È nella comunicazione che la logica diventa concretezza e responsabilità morale. Grice: Concordo pienamente! L’Enthymeme che lei valorizza, quel sillogismo retorico, secondo me rappresenta il punto d’incontro tra il pensiero preciso e la capacità di persuadere con eleganza. Non trova che oggi, più che mai, occorra educare alla logica del discorso, anche fuori dalla retorica classica? Mocenigo: Senza dubbio, Grice. Dalla logica alle emozioni, la comunicazione è il filo che tiene insieme la trama civile. L’Enthymeme permette di portare la verità filosofica al grande pubblico, senza perdere rigore, ma adattando il linguaggio. Credo che il compito del filosofo sia proprio quello di rendere la conversazione una pratica di giustizia e di coesione sociale, un ponte tra ragione e umanità. Mocenigo, Filippo (1780). Lettere familiari. Venezia: Pasquali. Filippo Mocenigo (Venezia, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale. Grice’s reason-governed pragmatics and Mocenigo’s Venetian “Institutiones” converge on the same insight from opposite directions: Mocenigo tries to modernize the Lyceum by making the norms of discourse explicit and teachable (from term to proposition to syllogism, with rhetoric and ethos as civic disciplines), while Grice tries to explain how ordinary talk already works because participants tacitly conform to rational constraints that make speaker-meaning recoverable beyond the literal dictum. Where Mocenigo emphasizes the enthymeme as the bridge between strict inference and public persuasion, Grice’s conversational implicature is a kindred bridge: a licensed inference that is not formally stated but is nonetheless rationally calculable given shared assumptions about cooperation, relevance, and evidential responsibility. The contrast is equally instructive: Mocenigo’s “civile conversazione” is institutional and partly one-way, aimed at forming citizens through a stable logic of discourse for governance and law, whereas Grice’s model is interactional and reparative, showing how hearers infer what is meant precisely when utterances are incomplete, elliptical, or strategically indirect. Put together, they yield a unified picture in which communicatio is both moral and logical: credibility and character (ethos) are not mere ornaments but conditions for warranted uptake, and the rational structure of discourse is what lets a community treat talk as a civic bond rather than as mere noise or manipulation. In that sense Mocenigo supplies the Renaissance pedagogy of the very norms Grice later theorizes at the micro-level: the “rules” are not primarily rules of grammar or etiquette, but constraints on reasonable inference that allow discourse to be at once persuasive, truth-aimed, and publicly accountable. Grice: “In Italy, ‘philosopher’ does NOT mean ‘analysit of ordinary-language’!” -- The  Institutiones of M.  serve as a systematic exposition of the philosophy of the Lycaeum – that the Italians spell ‘lizio’ --, specifically designed to modernise and structure the ancient concepts of logic, rhetoric, and communication for a Renaissance audience. M.'s Institutiones is part of a broader Renaissance tradition of "institutional" writing — works intended to establish foundational principles of a discipline. The treatise typically follows the Organon, of the Lyceum, organizing knowledge from a simple term to a complex syllogism. It aims to provide a framework that bridges the gap between theoretical logic and the practical application of language – civile conversazione -- in civil life. While focusing on logic, it integrates elements of rhetoric and ethics, viewing communication not just as a technical skill but as a moral responsibility of the citizen.  M. develops the model of the ‘lizio’ by shifting it from a strictly "utterer-centric" oral tradition to a more comprehensive "logic of discourse" suitable for written and institutional communication.  M. emphasises the unity between Logic (Logos), Rhetoric (Pathos), and Grammar, refining Aristotle's view that communication is a tool for revealing truth rather than just persuading an addressee. The Enthymeme as a Link: He focuses on the enthymeme, a rhetorical syllogism, as the primary bridge between formal logic and public communication, allowing complex philosophical truths to be communicated effectively to a non-expert addressee. Civil Communication: He develops the concept of comunicatio as a civic bond. While communication in the ‘lizio’ is often one-way (utterer to passive addressee), M.’s treatise frames it as an essential component of social institutionalization, where shared logical structures allow for stable governance and legal order. M. expands on Ethos by linking the utterer’s s credibility. flosofia naturale, filosofia transnaturale, metaphysical philosophy. Grice: Mocenigo, mi ha sempre affascinato il modo in cui le Institutiones del Lizio abbiano modernizzato la logica e la comunicazione. Lei ritiene che il modello della "civile conversazione" possa ancora essere un ponte tra filosofia e vita quotidiana nella nostra epoca? Mocenigo: Caro Grice, assolutamente sì! La civile conversazione è, secondo me, il cuore pulsante del vivere sociale. La filosofia non deve rimanere confinata tra le mura accademiche; proprio come nelle Institutiones, il discorso razionale e il dialogo etico plasmano il cittadino e la società. È nella comunicazione che la logica diventa concretezza e responsabilità morale. Grice: Concordo pienamente! L’Enthymeme che lei valorizza, quel sillogismo retorico, secondo me rappresenta il punto d’incontro tra il pensiero preciso e la capacità di persuadere con eleganza. Non trova che oggi, più che mai, occorra educare alla logica del discorso, anche fuori dalla retorica classica? Mocenigo: Senza dubbio, Grice. Dalla logica alle emozioni, la comunicazione è il filo che tiene insieme la trama civile. L’Enthymeme permette di portare la verità filosofica al grande pubblico, senza perdere rigore, ma adattando il linguaggio. Credo che il compito del filosofo sia proprio quello di rendere la conversazione una pratica di giustizia e di coesione sociale, un ponte tra ragione e umanità. Mocenigo, Filippo (1780). Lettere familiari. Venezia: Pasquali.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Moderato: la ragione conversazionale -- da Crotone a Roma

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Modio: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del disonore sessuale, la filosofia del Tevere Giovanni Battista Modio (Santa Severina, Crotone, Calabria): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del disonore sessuale, la filosofia del Tevere. Grice’s reason-governed account of conversational meaning helps recast Giovanni Battista Modio’s Roman-and-Calabrian world as a pragmatics laboratory: Modio’s dialogic writing (notably Il convito, and his Tevere treatise) trades on the fact that social talk about honor, marriage, and sexual reputation is rarely carried by the dictum alone, but by what an informed audience can be counted on to infer from hints, proverbs, and the management of what is sayable in polite company. In Gricean terms, Modio’s favourite materials—banter at a convivio, carnival looseness in Rome, and the circulation of proverbial wisdom—are precisely the contexts in which implicature becomes a civil technology: speakers protect face, signal complicity, and distribute blame or ridicule while staying just this side of explicit accusation. The “river philosophy” motif sharpens the comparison because a river can function like context itself: it carries deposits, rumours, and half-said things downstream, so that meaning becomes a public current rather than a private intention; Grice’s contribution is to explain how that current is nonetheless reason-governed, since hearers recover what is meant by presuming relevance, proportion, and strategic restraint. Modio’s proverbial punchlines (e.g., “anzi corna che croci”) illustrate the same mechanism as a compact, culturally preloaded move: it says little, but it triggers a large inferential package about norms, consolation, and the acceptable framing of misfortune. Read this way, Modio’s “philosophy of the Tiber” and Grice’s “logic of conversation” converge on one point: in morally charged domains, what counts as communicated is often what is left unsaid but made recoverable by shared rational expectations, so that wit and indirection are not decorative extras but the very medium through which a community keeps its meanings intelligible without making them dangerously explicit. Grice: “Only in Italy a philosopher writes a treatise on a river – although the Isis would not be out of place for some Magdalenite!” – Grice: “His convito is a jewel!” – Seguace di Neri. Originario di Santa Severina, borgo collinare della Calabria Ulteriore, è avviato agli studi di filosofia presso l'Archiginnasio di Napoli. In seguito passa a Roma, dove si avviò agli studi in medicina divenendo allievo di Fusconi. M. frequenta gl’ambienti accademici, dove entra in contatto con alcuni dei maggiori esponenti di spicco di quell'epoca come Molza e Tolomei.  Pubblica la sua prima opera letteraria più famosa dal titolo I”l convito; overo, del peso della moglie: un dialogo diegetico” (Roma, Bressani) -- ambientato a Roma durante il carnevale della città capitolina, in cui viene trattato il tema delle corna durante un convivio presieduto dall'allora vescovo di Piacenza Trivulzio e a cui parteciparono anche Gambara, Marmitta, Benci, Selvago, Raineri e Cesario. E altresì grande estimatore degli saggi di Piccolomini.  Durante la stesura in lingua volgare di un Operetta de’ Sogni, si ammala di febbre altissima. Si spense dopo qualche giorno a Roma, nella tenuta di palazzo Ricci in via Giulia.  Altri saggi: “Il Tevere, dove si ragiona in generale della natura di tutte le acque, et in particolare di quella del fiume di Roma” (Roma, Luchini) “Origine del proverbio che si suol dire "anzi corna che croci" (Roma, A. degli Antonii,” Jacopone da Todi, I Cantici del beato Iacopone da Todi, con diligenza ristampati, con la gionta di alcuni discorsi sopra di essi e con la vita sua nuovamente posta in luce” (Roma, Salviano). Prospetto autore, su edit16.iccu.. Modio, Il Tevere, cit., c. 45r  Anno di pubblicazione della medesima opera. G. Cassiani, Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. amore, sesso. Grice: Modio, devo confessarle che mi ha sempre incuriosito il suo celebre convito romano. Ma secondo lei, tra il Tevere e il Tamigi, quale fiume porterebbe via più segreti amorosi? Modio: Caro Grice, il Tevere ha sentito talmente tanti sospiri e pettegolezzi che ormai scorre con leggerezza tra una confidenza e l’altra. Ma attenzione: tra le sue onde, un orecchio allenato può ancora sentire il tintinnio delle famose “corna” di Roma! Grice: Ah, la sua filosofia della conversazione è davvero unica! Da noi a Oxford, al massimo si discute del peso delle tazze da tè, mai di quello delle mogli. Forse dovremmo importare qualche proverbio calabrese sulla vita matrimoniale. Modio: Lo dica pure ai suoi colleghi: “meglio le corna che la croce!” In fondo, caro Grice, la conversazione civile serve proprio a questo: a ridere insieme, anche delle nostre piccole disavventure d’amore. Perché come si dice dalle mie parti, tra il serio e il faceto, scorre sempre il fiume della saggezza! Modio, Giovanni Battista (1586). Historia de’ Saraceni. Venezia: Ziletti.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Mondin: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell ritorno dell’angelo, la semantica filosofica, la semantica pel sistema G, interpretazione e validità Padre Battista Mondin, S. X. (Monte di Malo, Vicenza, Veneto): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale dell ritorno dell’angelo, la semantica filosofica, la semantica pel sistema G, interpretazione e validità. M. (born at Monte di Malo, in the Vicenza area) can be read as a systematic counterpart to Grice’s anti-systematic but deeply rule-sensitive pragmatics: where Grice explains conversational meaning by appeal to defeasible maxims and the hearer’s rational reconstruction of what a speaker intends, Mondin treats interpretation and validity as topics that invite explicit architecture—definitions, taxonomies, and a mapped “system” in which semantic questions can be located and assessed. The contrast in your passage (Oxford’s suspicion of chairs, treatises, and “philosophy of language” as a field versus the Italian comfort with manuals and encyclopedic ordering) becomes Gricean in itself: Grice’s point is that conversational rationality works precisely because it is mostly implicit, carried by shared expectations rather than by announced rules, whereas Mondin’s Thomist-influenced temperament (Aquinas as model) tries to make those expectations explicit, stable, and teachable across domains, including theology. The “angelology” motif sharpens the comparison because angels are, in medieval and scholastic thought, paradigms of intellect and message-bearing: they are a literalization of the idea that meaning travels via intention and uptake, so Mondin’s seriousness about angels can be recast as seriousness about the metaphysics of communication, while Grice’s quip deflates the metaphysics back into pragmatic method—how we actually succeed, in real talk, at getting one another to see what we mean. Finally, the pizza/“semantics of the margherita” joke usefully dramatizes Grice’s central distinction between conventional meaning and occasion-meaning: even if a term or sign has a stable “value,” what it communicates shifts with context and audience, and Mondin’s preference for agreement between philosophy and theology echoes Grice’s cooperative core—meaning and understanding depend on a shared rational orientation, whether the interlocutors are dons in Oxford, Thomists in Rome, or (as the joke has it) angels crossing a bridge and still managing to be understood. Grice: “I thank God that we at Oxford don’t systematise philosophy as they do in Bologna, with things such as the chair in ‘Filosofia della lingua.’ It is true that some Oxonian philosophers HAVE written tracts on ‘the philosophy of language’ – such as Blackburn – but they were NEVER taken seriously. Myself, I did my part in my seminars, which myself being a university lecturer, were in theory ‘open to any member of the university’ – including most of my enemies!” Grice: “Trust an Aquino to provide a systematic philosophy! Mind, I’ve been called a systematic philosopher, too! At Oxford, we are very familiar with angels – but only M. takes angeologia seriously! Trust an Italian! Ponte Sant’Angelo comes to mind!” Dottore di Filosofia e Religione a Harvard. È stato decano della Facoltà di Filosofia presso la Pontificia Università Urbaniana di Roma. M. membro della Congregazione dei Missionari Saveriani. Nei suoi studi, le principali figure di riferimento sono state AQUINO e Tillich, da cui ha tratto l'ideale di un accordo e di un mutuo sostegno tra filosofia e teologia.  “Etica, Etica e politica, Filosofia, Antropologia filosofica, Manuale di filosofia sistematica, La Metafisica di Aquino e i suoi interpreti,” “Storia dell'antropologia filosofica” Antropologia filosofica e filosofia della cultura e dell'educazione; “Epistemologia e cosmologia; “Logica, semantica e gnoseologia; Ontologia e metafisica Storia della metafisica, Storia della metafisica, Storia della metafisica, “Ermeneutica, metafisica, analogia in Aquino; Storia della filosofia medievale Dizionario enciclopedico di filosofia, teologia e morale Il sistema filosofico di Aquino glossario filosofico, going through the dictionary, linguistic botanizing. Grice: Mondin, lei che ha dato dignità agli angeli nella filosofia, mi dica: sono davvero sistematici o ogni tanto fanno qualche deviazione spontanea? Mondin: Caro Grice, gli angeli sono più sistematici di quanto sembri, ma ogni tanto si concedono una passeggiata tra i ponti di Roma, giusto per ricordarci che anche la filosofia ha bisogno di un po’ di leggerezza! Grice: A Oxford, la leggerezza è rara: abbiamo più nemici che angeli! Però confesso che mi piacerebbe vedere un angelo filosofare sul senso della pizza. Secondo lei, esiste una semantica della margherita? Mondin: La semantica della margherita? Certo! Il suo valore è universale, ma la sua interpretazione cambia da Vicenza a Napoli. L’importante è che, tra filosofia e teologia, si trovi sempre un accordo... almeno sulla mozzarella! Mondin, Battista (1963). Ordinazione. Pavia. Piacenza

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Monferrato: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – la scuola di Casale Monferrato Giovanni da Casale Monferrato (Casale Monerrato, Alessandria, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s model of reason-governed conversational meaning (where what is meant is often an implicature rationally recoverable from what is said plus shared norms) fits Giovanni da Casale Monferrato remarkably well once you treat medieval “scientific-theological” exposition as a disciplined conversational practice rather than as mere treatise-writing. In the Quaestio de velocitate motus alterationis, Giovanni’s contrast between uniform and difform qualities (the rectangle versus the triangle as graphical encodings of change) is a way of making inferential commitments explicit: the diagram does not merely illustrate, it guides the reader toward licensed conclusions about rates of alteration, just as Grice’s maxims guide a hearer toward licensed conclusions about speaker-meaning. Your pizza-and-oven joke then becomes a Gricean diagnostic: we can move from a geometric model of “hotness” to a practical claim about cooking only if we assume cooperation and relevance, i.e., that the speaker is offering the right kind of information for the hearer’s purposes; otherwise the audience is left to compute implicatures (perhaps the point is methodological, not culinary). Giovanni’s medieval scholastic setting also parallels Grice’s emphasis on rational reconstruction: quaestiones are structured dialogues with an imagined opponent, so progress depends on anticipating what a reasonable interlocutor would infer, object, or demand as clarification—exactly the inferential sensitivity Grice theorizes under the Cooperative Principle. Finally, the passage’s contrast between “inanimate bodies” and “animate bodies” (not guided missiles) aligns with Grice’s central distinction between mere causal sequences and reason-responsive agency: for Giovanni, motion can be modelled; for Grice, conversation can be modelled; but in both cases the model matters because it captures a form of intelligibility—patterns that are not just observed, but are treated as answerable to reasons, and therefore as things we can interpret, correct, and coordinate with others. Autore di opere di teologia e scienza e legato pontificio. Entra nell'ordine francescano nella provincia genovese. Docente presso lo studio francescano di Assisi. Compone il saggio. “Quaestio de velocitate motus alterationis, Venezia. In esso presenta un'analisi grafica del movimento dei corpi uniformemente accelerati. La sua attività di insegnamento in fisica matematica influenza gli studiosi che operarono a Padova e Galilei che ri-propose idee simili. ‘Giovanni da Casale’, Treccani. Filosofia Filosofo del XIV secolo Teologi italiani Storia della scienza. Grice: “Casali dicusses the velocity of motion of alternation. He wisely remarks that if one takes the example of the quality of hotness, one may conceive of a UNI-FORM hotness throughout – ‘just as a rectangular parallelolgram is formed between two equidistant lines, such that any part you wish is equally wide with another. ‘Let there be throughout a UNIFORMLY DIFFORM hotness, such that it is a triangle!” corpi inanimati, corpi animati, inerzia, un corpo animato non e un missile guidato – Grice. La liberta dei corpi animati, uniform, uniformly difform, difformly difform.  Grice: Caro Monferrato, mi dica: se la velocità del caldo può essere rappresentata come un triangolo, allora la pizza in forno segue una parabola o diventa una retta? Ho bisogno di una risposta scientifica, ma non troppo calda! Monferrato: Paul, in Piemonte diciamo che la pizza, se troppo calda, va mangiata con calma e con filosofia. L’importante è non confondere il moto accelerato della mozzarella con quello dell’appetito; la scienza insegna, ma la fame decide! Grice: Ecco la saggezza piemontese! Se invece di pizza fosse una discussione, lei preferirebbe un moto uniforme o difforme? Glielo chiedo, perché a Oxford, spesso si finisce in curva anche quando si parte dritti! Monferrato: A Casale Monferrato si dice che una conversazione ben fatta è come un corpo animato: non è un missile guidato, ma sa sempre dove andare. Uniforme quando si ride, difforme quando si discute... purché non si finisca arrosto, come una pizza troppo scientifica! Monferrato, Giovanni da Casale (1478). Sermones. Venezia: Johannes de Colonia.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Montanari (Bagnacavallo). Filosofo italiano. Bagnacavallo, presso Ravenna, Ravenna, Emilia-Romana.  Giuseppe Ignazio Montanari (Bagnacavallo, Ravenna, Emilia-Romagna). Grice’s theory of reason-governed conversational meaning pairs surprisingly well with Giuseppe Ignazio Montanari because Montanari stands at the intersection of rhetoric, prudence, and public intelligibility: trained in seminarian and aristocratic eloquence, then active as a teacher and prolific writer, he works in precisely the space where meaning is not just what is asserted but what can be responsibly inferred by an audience under shared norms. On a Gricean reading, Montanari’s rhetorical formation supplies the “craft” side of cooperation: speakers design utterances for uptake, calibrating how much to say, when to be indirect, and how to let hearers supply the rest—i.e., implicature as a disciplined economy rather than as mere flourish. The biographical note about his politically cautious posture during the Romagnol unrest is especially Gricean: when explicit commitment is risky, communication migrates into what can be suggested without being stated, so deference, petitions, and professions of patriotism can function as strategically placed conversational moves whose point is carried by what they invite the competent hearer to conclude. Even his scientific title, Osservazioni astronomiche (Bologna, 1740), can be used as an analogy for Grice’s pragmatics: observation reports are thin on theory but rich in inferential potential—readers recover significance by assuming the observer is methodical and sincere, much as Grice’s hearer assumes cooperation and then computes what is meant beyond the literal. In short, Montanari provides a historically concrete picture of how conversational reason operates in educated Italian practice: rhetoric teaches how to make meaning public, prudence teaches when to let implication carry the communicative load, and the audience’s rational expectations supply the bridge from dictum to what is understood. Nasce da Lorenzo e Barbara Biancoli -- cfr. lettera a Vaccolini, Pesaro. Inizia a studiare nel seminario di Faenza, dove si sono formati letterati famosi come Monti e Strocchi. Tuttavia, problemi di salute indussero i genitori a trasferirlo a Ravenna, presso il collegio dei nobili, dove gli è maestro di eloquenza Farini ed ha per compagno Mordani, al quale resta legato d'amicizia per tutta la vita.  Dopo aver perso la madre -- il padre s’è intanto risposato --, completa gli studi tra Bologna e Roma, laureandosi in diritto. Subito dopo ottenne la cattedra di umanità e retorica al ginnasio di Solarolo, dove resta quattro anni e sposa Mainardi. A quest’epoca risalgono le sue prime prove letterarie -- Rime sacre, Faenza, che Betti preferiva agli Inni sacri del Manzoni --, d’ispirazione cristiana, come molta della sua non rimarchevole produzione successiva che pure in qualche caso ottenne giudizi favorevoli dai contemporanei.  Spinto dall’illustre letterato e amico di famiglia Borghesi, concorse per la cattedra a Savignano ottenendola. Già in questa fase M. si rivela scrittore dalla vena facile e prolifica, rivolgendo i propri interessi a quattro filoni fondamentali: opere di retorica, traduzioni dal latino, brevi biografie e opere di argomento religioso. I moti in Romagna non videro in prima fila M., che però, «sebbene un po’ copertamente, dev’essere stato del numero» -- Pierini. Portano a questa conclusione alcune professioni di patriottismo dello stesso M. e la domanda che indirizzò al vescovo di Rimini per essere riammesso all’insegnamento. Tuttavia l’atteggiamento assai prudente di M., preoccupato di conservare l’impiego e mantenere agli studi i cinque figli, non consente di conoscere le sue autentiche idee politiche. Se, d’una parte, sembra talora aderire ai moti liberali -- v. un carme a Mordani, cit. in Polenta -- , dall’altra mostra in pubblico un atteggiamento deferente verso le autorità ecclesiastiche, delle quali cerca spesso l'aiuto e la protezione. Grice: Caro Montanari, tu che da Bagnacavallo sei finito a fare osservazioni astronomiche a Bologna, dimmi: quando scrivi “ho visto una stella”, lo dici o lo impliciti per modestia da seminario? Montanari: Paul, in Romagna s’impara presto che tra dire e dire troppo c’è di mezzo la cattedra, quindi l’astronomo parla poco e lascia il cielo fare il resto. Grice: Ah, allora la tua Osservazioni astronomiche è un manuale di implicature: poche parole, molte costellazioni, e il lettore cooperativo si arrangi. Montanari: Esatto, e se qualcuno mi chiede prove, gli rispondo che anche le stelle hanno cinque figli da mantenere: non possono brillare a comando. Montanari, Giuseppe Ignazio (1740). Osservazioni astronomiche. Bologna: Lelio dalla Volpe.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Montanari: la ragione conversazionale -- filosofia italiana –  (Roma). Filosofo italiano. Cf  Mazzino Montanari. Massino Montanari.  

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Montani: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale e il debito del segno – implicatura riflessiva – la scuola di Teramo 

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Montinari: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del sovrumano – torna a Surriento.  Mazzino Montinari: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale del sovrumano – torna a Surriento. Montinari is a natural counterpart to Grice because both make interpretation answerable to reasons rather than to aura: Grice explains how hearers rationally recover speaker-meaning by assuming cooperative norms and then calculating implicatures, while Montinari’s critical Nietzsche scholarship shows how readers recover authorial sense only by disciplined constraints on what can legitimately be inferred from notebooks, variants, and editorial interventions. The famous Montinari–Colli demolition of “The Will to Power” as Nietzsche’s putative authored book is, in Gricean terms, an exposure of a massive illegitimate implicature generated by paratext and institutional authority: an editorial compilation was made to look like a single intended communicative act, inviting readers to attribute to Nietzsche a global thesis and architectonic plan he did not in fact “mean” to put forward in that form. Montinari’s philological work functions like Grice’s maxim-governed pragmatics: it distinguishes what is explicitly in the evidence (dated fragments, contextual notes, manuscript layers) from what later readers are tempted to supply as “what he really meant,” and it insists that inferences must be licensed by reliable uptake conditions rather than by wishful system-building. Your passage’s political-cultural frame (culture as the remaining force against institutional assimilation and commodification of protest) also fits Grice’s core point that rationality is social and procedural: meaning is stabilized by shared practices, and when institutions manipulate the available context, they also steer what implicatures become “natural.” Finally, the Sorrento/Turin joke captures a serious methodological parallel: for Grice, the deepest work of meaning happens in what is left unsaid but responsibly recoverable; for Montinari, Nietzsche’s “overman” and other grand motifs survive not as slogans but as interpretive tasks that require resisting premature closure—treating the archive not as a monolithic message but as a field in which only some implications are warranted, and where the critic’s virtue is to keep inference tethered to reason. Grice: “We don’t study Nietzsche at Oxford, but they do, at Cambridge! If I were asked to identify the main difference between the Italian philosopher and the Oxonian philosopher is that the Italian philosopher takes Nietzsche seriously! But then he lived at Torino!” Nelle istituzioni esistenti, sostenute da immani forze di produzione e di distruzione, viene assimilata e mercificata ogni e qualsiasi protesta, persino quella dei Lumpen, ogni tentativo di lasciare la «nave dei folli». Se il metodo di Nietzsche può ancora aiutarci, allora l'unica forza che ci è rimasta è quella della cultura, della ragione.»  Considerato uno dei massimi editori e interpreti di Nietzsche. Ha definitivamente dimostrato che Nietzsche non ha mai scritto un'opera dal titolo “La volontà di Potenza” e che le cinque diverse compilazioni che la sorella del filosofo e altri editori dilettanti hanno pubblicato sotto questo titolo sono testi del tutto inaffidabili per comprendere il pensiero di Nietzsche. Si era formato a Pisa presso la quale si laureò con I movimenti ereticali a Lucca. Caduto il fascismo, divenne un attivista del Partito comunista, presso il quale si occupava della traduzione di scritti dal tedesco. Mentre visitava la Germani a Est per motivi di ricerca, fu testimone della rivolta. Successivamente, in seguito alla repressione della Rivoluzione ungherese del 1956, si allontanò dall'ortodossia marxista e dalla carriera nel partito. Mantenne tuttavia la sua iscrizione al PCI, e rimase fedele agli ideali del socialismo. Collabora con le Edizioni Rinascita, e per un anno fu direttore dell'omonima libreria in Roma. Dopo averne rivisto la raccolta di opere e manoscritti in Weimar, Colli e M. decisero di iniziarne una nuova edizione critica. Essa divenne lo standard per gli studiosi, e fu pubblicata in da Adelphi. Per questo lavoro fu preziosa la sia abilità nel decifrare la scrittura a mano (praticamente incomprensibile) di Nietzsche, fino a quel momento trascritta solo da "Gast“ (Köselitz).  L’implicatura di Nietzsche. (Michaelmas, late 1948; St John’s SCR; Grice and Colvin) Colvin was new enough to the place that one still had to decide whether to call him “Colvin” or “that new chap who knows what every chapel window cost”. I made a point of calling him Colvin, because it has the right clean consonants and because new fellows, like new buildings, should be greeted with the minimal ornament. He found me in the SCR with a thin Italian typescript balanced on the arm of a chair, as if I were trying to make foreign paper look like an Oxford habit. What’s that, Grice. You look as if you’re reading an index. More or less. It’s a title, really. A title in Italian. You’re getting continental. Only in the way the Bodley is continental: it remains where it is and accumulates. Colvin took the sheet with the quick, quiet confidence of a man who has spent his life taking other people’s documents away from them. La questione della Riforma protestante in Lucca, he read. Yes. That’s a thesis. So I’m told. And Lucca is a very deliberate choice. Deliberate how. Deliberate in the historian’s sense. Lucca is small enough to be local, and awkward enough to be revealing. Which decade. November 1949. Colvin looked faintly pleased, as if I’d just confirmed the date of a moulding. November. Exactly. And who wrote it. Mazzino Montinari. Colvin repeated the name once. Not admiration, not yet. Just filing. Where’s he writing it. Pisa. Scuola Normale. Normale, Colvin said. So, not abnormal. Normale Superiore. Colvin smiled. Superiore. Oxford would never dare print that. I’m glad you appreciate the politics of adjectives. Colvin sat down. He was not a philosopher, but he had that historian’s way of sitting as if he might, at any moment, produce a receipt. And why are you reading a Tuscan thesis-title in St John’s. Because the phrase that accompanies it is irresistible. Listen to this: after a year of philosophical studies, he “moved to history” under Cantimori. Moved. Yes. Moved. Passive. As if History came round with a van. Colvin gave a small laugh, and I felt I had done my welcoming duty. Tutors do that, he said. They rearrange people. But there’s the point that annoys me. He “moves from philosophy to history” and then he graduates in Filosofia della storia. Colvin blinked once, politely, the way historians do when a philosopher has made the category mistake that he thinks is a discovery. So he moved from philosophy to philosophy. Exactly. That’s your complaint. It is. “Philosophy of X” is not a proper transfer, in my view. It is philosophy wearing an X as a hat and calling it travel. Colvin handed the paper back. Historians would call it specialization. Philosophers call it evasion. Or, Colvin said, they call it a way of smuggling method into a subject that would otherwise be all wind. That’s better. Now we’re talking. But you’re still annoyed. Because the wording invites a silly inference. “Moved to history” sounds like exile. “Filosofia della storia” sounds like he never left the house. And what do you think actually happened. I think Cantimori taught him to treat texts as evidence, not incense. And a philosopher who learns that is dangerous to everybody’s grand theories. Colvin looked at me as if he were deciding whether I had just praised a historian or insulted him. So you’re reading it because you want to borrow Cantimori’s discipline. I’m reading it because I want to move Montinari back. Back to philosophy. Back to where he belongs, but with the historian’s conscience installed. If he’s clever, he’ll stop people making Nietzsche mean what later editors want him to mean. Colvin nodded, as if the words editor and evidence had been enough to make him feel at home. That, he said, is at least a respectable reason to read a title. It’s an Oxford reason, too. Colvin stood up, as if concluding a small inspection. Well, he said, if you’re going to welcome me by talking about archives and editorial mischief, you’ve chosen correctly. I was beginning to fear I’d have to pretend to enjoy metaphysics. You’ll still have to pretend. Yes, but now I know what sort of pretending we can do together. As he went out, I noticed the small victory: not that I’d made him laugh, but that I’d made a historian tolerate a philosopher’s pedantry about a phrase. And that is as close as Oxford ever comes to inter-faculty friendship: a shared irritation at someone else’s wording. Grice: Caro Montinari, lo confesso: a Oxford, Nietzsche è come il caffè decaffeinato, c’è ma nessuno lo prende davvero sul serio. A Cambridge invece pare che lo sorseggino a tutte le ore! Tu che lo conosci per davvero, dimmi: il “sovrumano” si trova prima o dopo la fermata di Sorrento? Montinari: Paul, a Sorrento si trova solo il limoncello. Per il sovrumano bisogna passare per Torino, magari sotto la pioggia, con una valigia piena di manoscritti indecifrabili. E comunque, ti avviso: “La volontà di potenza” te la serve solo la sorella di Nietzsche, ma il conto lo paghi tu! Grice: Ah, e pensare che noi inglesi ci accontentiamo del “common sense”! Quando provo a leggere Nietzsche, mi sembra di salire sulla famosa nave dei folli. Ma dimmi, è vero che per capire i suoi appunti bisogna decifrarli come le lettere di un medico in pensione? Montinari: Esattamente! Solo che nel caso di Nietzsche la calligrafia peggiora col pensiero, non con l’età. Se vuoi, la prossima volta ti porto una lente d’ingrandimento e un dizionario di implicature conversazionali: vedrai che insieme riusciremo almeno a trovare la dedica, se non il significato! Montinari, Mazzino  (1949). La questione della Riforma protestante in Lucca. Pisa.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Monte: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – la prospettiva e la filosofia della percezione  Guidobaldo de’marchesi Del Monte (Pesaro, Marche): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale – la prospettiva e la filosofia della percezione. Guidobaldo del Monte (1545–1607), the Marquis of Montebaroccio from the Pesaro–Urbino world, is a particularly good match for Grice because his most famous intellectual moves—on mechanics, balance, and perspective—are exercises in making implicit structure explicit, much as Grice treats conversation as a rational practice whose “hidden” rules become visible when a speaker’s move would otherwise look puzzling. Del Monte’s work in statics and in the equilibrium controversy is methodological: he forces the reader to see which assumptions are doing the work, which idealizations are permitted, and which inferences are licensed; Grice’s Cooperative Principle and maxims play an analogous role at the level of talk, explaining how hearers are entitled to move from what is said to what is meant by presuming a disciplined economy of reasons. The perspective theme strengthens the parallel: Del Monte treats seeing as standpoint-dependent but still rule-governed (a lawful transformation from viewpoint to appearance), and Grice treats understanding as context-dependent but still rule-governed (a lawful transformation from utterance to implicature). In both cases, the point is not that meaning or perception is subjective, but that it is systematically recoverable because agents share methods—geometrical in Del Monte’s case, conversational-rational in Grice’s—by which different “angles” can be coordinated into a stable objectivity. That is why an Oxford fascination with perception (Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia) can be recast, in your Pesaro frame, as a continuation of Del Monte’s insight: what matters is not merely what is given to the senses (or to the ears), but the publicly intelligible procedures by which we justify moving from appearances (or words) to the reality we take ourselves to be tracking. Grice: “For some resason – most likely due to the empiricist tradition prevalent in these islands, the philosophy of perception is quite popular at Oxford. Our moral professor of philosophy, Austin, spent most of his terms teaching it – “Sense and sensibilia”!” Grice: “I like to illustrate a ‘scientific revolution’ with Del Monte’s refutation on the equilibrium controversy, since it involves a lot of analyticity that only a philosopher can digest!” -- essential Italian philosopher. Il marchese Guidubaldo Bourbon Del Monte (Pesaro), filosoMecanicorum liber, Suo padre, Ranieri, originario da un famiglia benestante di Urbino, discendente dalla schiatta dei Bourbon del Monte Santa Maria, fu notato per il suo ruolo bellico e fu autore di due libri sull'architettura militare. Il duca di Urbino, Guidobaldo II della Rovere, gli attribuì, per meriti, il titolo di Marchese del Monte, dunque la famiglia divenne nobile solo un generazione prima di Guidobaldo. Alla morte del padre, ottenne il titolo di Marchese. Studia matematica a Padova. Mentre era lì, strinse una grande amicizia con Tasso. Combatté nel conflitto in Ungheria, tra l'impero degli Asburgo e l'Impero Ottomano. Al termine della guerra, torna nella sua tenuta a Mombaroccio, vicino Urbino, dove passava i giorni studiando matematica, meccanica, astronomia e ottica. Studia matematica con l'aiuto di Commandino. Divenne amico di Baldi, che fu anch'esso studente di Commandino. Ispettore delle fortificazioni del Granducato di Toscana. Grice: “There possibly is no equivalent to perspective for the other senses. Prospettiva, as the Italians call it. They are obsessed with it. Consider the human body. Consider Apollo del Belvedere – it is not just a body perceiving another body, there is a perspectival side to it!” Giambattista del Monte. Guido Ubaldo de’ marchesi Del Monte; Guidobaldo Del Monte. Monte. Keywords: implicature, perspective in statuary.  Grice: Caro Monte, sai, a Oxford la filosofia della percezione è sempre stata un terreno fertile di dibattito. Austin ci ha abituati a ragionare su “Sense and sensibilia”, ma mi colpisce come in Italia la prospettiva sia così centrale. Tu che hai riflettuto a lungo su questo tema, come pensi che la prospettiva arricchisca la nostra comprensione del vedere? Monte: Grazie, Paul! Per noi italiani, la prospettiva non è solo una tecnica pittorica, ma una vera e propria filosofia del percepire. Credo che la prospettiva ci insegni quanto ogni punto di vista sia unico e imprescindibile per cogliere l’armonia del mondo. La percezione, in fondo, è sempre un dialogo tra ciò che vediamo e il modo in cui ci poniamo di fronte alla realtà. Grice: Interessante, Monte! È come se la prospettiva diventasse una metafora della conversazione stessa: ognuno porta il suo sguardo, la sua posizione, e solo dal confronto nasce comprensione autentica. Non credi che anche nella statua, come nell’arte del dialogo, sia il mutare del punto di vista a generare nuovi significati? Monte: Assolutamente! Basta pensare all’Apollo del Belvedere: se lo osservi da una sola angolazione, rischi di perderne la bellezza. Così è anche nel pensiero: solo accogliendo la molteplicità dei punti di vista possiamo sperare di avvicinarci alla verità. Dopotutto, come dice il proverbio, “ogni testa è un piccolo mondo”. Monte, Guidobaldo Del (1577). Mechanica. Pesaro: Bartolomeo Oliverio.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Grice e Morandi Giovanni Morandi (Firenze, Toscana)

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Morandi – la lingua di Firenze – filosofia italiana –  (Firenze). Abstract. Grice: “At Oxford, ‘rule’ has a meaning that was adopted by Austin, and therefore, disadopted by me! Luigi Morandi (Todi, Perugia, Umbria): la lingua di Firenze. Giovanni Morandi’s philological attention to “rules of Florentine” (in the tradition of early grammars, vocabularies, and the recovery of documents like the grammatichetta often associated with Lorenzo il Magnifico) pairs well with Grice because it highlights the difference between rules as codified norms of a language and rules as rational constraints on intelligible interaction. Grice’s “conversational rules” are not grammar-book prescriptions but defeasible principles that hearers use to make sense of what speakers are doing—principles whose force is shown precisely when a speaker appears to deviate and the audience repairs the deviation by deriving an implicature. Morandi’s historical-linguistic project supplies the background against which that repair becomes possible: a stabilized lexicon, a sense of correct formation, and a culturally legible normativity (Florence as an emblem of stylistic discipline) that makes departures noticeable and therefore interpretable. In the Oxford–Florence contrast of your passage, “rule” itself becomes a pragmatic test case: a term can shift from legal-regulative (regula, rule of law) to game-regulative (a move should follow a move) to conversationally regulative (maxims guiding uptake), and Grice’s point is that what matters is not which sense is “in the dictionary” but which rational expectations participants are entitled to mobilize in context. Morandi’s insistence that the life of a language lies in the dialectic of norm and exception then converges with Grice’s central claim: conversational meaning is reason-governed because exceptions are not mere breakdowns but data—signals that invite principled inference—so that the most revealing “rules” of talk are those that can be bent, flouted, or reinterpreted while still remaining mutually intelligible. Grice: “At Oxford, ‘rule’ has a meaning that was adopted by Austin, and therefore, disadopted by me! – Cicerone should know better – REGVLA – from ‘reign’ – the rule of law. In my “Logic and Conversation” I occasionally and informally refer to the ‘conversational rule’ of the ‘conversational game’, i. e. the rule that states which ‘conversational mve’ should follow which!” Trabalza cita. REGOLE DELLA LINGUA FIORENTINA C ["kabalza. A quanto dico del notevolissimo documento che qui esce pella prima volta alla luce, sono in grado, per speciale favore usatomi dal mio illustre maestro ed amico senatore Morandi, d’aggiungere alcune notizie di grande importanza storica, anticipando le conclusioni a cui egli è giunto, com'è suo costume, dopo largo e profondo studio, e che illustra col noto suo magistero di dottrina e di stile in un saporitissimo saggio. Nella Antologia M. segnala l'importanza della grammatichetta vaticana, narrando le vicende del manoscritto; e poiché egli stesso m'esorta a pubblicarlo per intero, annunzia fin d'allora ch'io la mette come appendice ad ogni grammatica razionale o ragionata. Continuando però le sue indagini con rigore di metodo intorno ai primi vocabolari e alle prime grammatiche della nostra lingua, M. puo ha tra le altre cose provare che la nostra grammatichetta e molto probabilmente opera di Lorenzo il Magnifico, non certamente d’ALBERTI , com'e stato supposto; e che anche Vinci abbozza una grammatica della lingua d’Italia, dimettendone forse il pensiero, quando ha notizia, come apparisce da due suoi ricordi, della grammatichetta del magnifico. Lo studio di M. s’occupa poi distesamente dei materiali raccolti da VINCI per fare il vocabolario italiano, il latino-italiano e una specie di dizionario illustrato dell’armi Prefazione antiche, pel quale sa attingere d’una fonte classica sfuggita ai lessicografi latini suoi contemporanei. Importante. lingua, linguaggio, Alberti, storia della grammatica razionale. Corpus, late morning. The Old Quad is doing its usual trick of looking ancient while undergraduates remain young. I find Shropshire installed on a bench with a paperback-sized Italian thing, as if the sun had come out solely to assist his private education. What are you reading, Shropshire. Preparing for my Latin. That is a curious-looking Latin. It declines nicely. It is Italian, Shropshire. Italian declines too, if you bully it hard enough. Let me see. He hands it over with the air of a man offering a harmless object and hoping it will not be treated as evidence. “Stornelli ed altre poesie.” You mean you are revising your Latin by reading “stornelli”. Exactly. Masculine nominative plural. You are attempting to make an Italian plural do the work of a Latin case. It’s the -i that does it. Very classical. The -i does it the way a cap and gown “does it”. Costume does not entail citizenship. He shrugs, because shrugs are a cheap form of scepticism and therefore popular in Oxford. Read the first line, then. I want to hear how your “Latin” begins. Shropshire clears his throat and recites, with the earnestness of a man who has discovered that confidence can substitute for pronunciation. Stornelli sopra l’albero m’hanno svegliato. There you are. Stornelli. Plural. Not the verse-form, then, but the birds. Little starlings. Little noises. Little nuisances. Very morning. Exactly. And in that moment I feel the Click: not the modern click of a camera, but the older click of a word dropping into place and suddenly refusing to stay there. Stornelli: birds, yes. But also, by the title, poems. One word, two errands. You know, Shropshire, you have done something for once that is educational by accident. That’s my best sort of educational. What, the accident? The accident is your method. The education is Morandi’s title. One word, two senses; and the reader must choose, or pretend to choose, before he has any right to. He looks pleased, though I doubt he knows why. Shropshire is at his most useful when he is pleased for reasons he cannot articulate. Who is Morandi, anyway. Luigi Morandi. Italian chap. Later on he founded a biblioteca circolante. A circulating library. Yes. To circulate the stornelli, I take it. No, to circulate books. You have no proof of that. It’s what it means. And here the second click arrives, because “what it means” is precisely the phrase that always smuggles in the wrong certainty. Biblioteca circolante: in Italian, a lending library; in English, a library that goes about on little feet. Oxford has a Bodleian that stays. Morandi has a library that moves. One cannot resist. Oxford, you see, has got this backwards. Our library stays; we circulate. We circulate to the Bodleian, you mean. No, we circulate among ourselves. We circulate opinions. We circulate essay-topics. We circulate the influenza. But the Bodleian stays, like a moral principle. Corpus doesn’t, Shropshire says. Corpus is next to my bedroom. A short-diameter circle, if you want circulation. He says it as if he is proud of being a commoner who lives on his own commons, which he is. There is a tone some men have when they say “I pay for my food” that resembles virtue even when it is merely arithmetic. So you don’t bother with the Bodley. Why bother, when my library is already implicating me every night. He does not know he has said something good, which is why it is good. But tell me, Shropshire, what do you think Morandi is doing with “stornelli”. Is he naming birds or poems. Both. Both is lazy. Or clever. Clever is just laziness with a tie on. Shropshire considers this as if it were a maxim worth testing. It isn’t really the same word, though, he says. The poem-one isn’t from the bird-one. So you are going to spoil it with etymology. It’s true, though. The verse-form comes from that Provençal thing. Estorn. Yes. A poetic contest. Whereas the bird is storno. And storno is from Latin sturnus, if you want to be properly dead about it. Exactly. So the two “stornelli” are not brothers at all. They are two strangers wearing the same coat. Yes. And yet, in conversation, you treat them as brothers the moment it amuses you. Yes. That is the whole business, you see. The dictionary says: two unrelated histories. The title says: one printed form. And the reader, being a cooperative animal, supplies the bridge at once, because bridges are what readers do when authors leave gaps. So Morandi is relying on the reader to make the wrong inference. Not wrong. Useful. There are inferences that are historically false and conversationally correct. That sounds like cheating. It is civilisation. Shropshire laughs, and I realise that what I am enjoying is not the joke but the mechanism: one word, two senses, and then a third layer, the author’s invitation to pretend they are linked. The invitation is not stated; it is implied by the mere placement of the word on the cover and the birds in the first line. That is the kind of thing I cannot stop thinking about. It is not grammar; it is social reason. Shropshire takes the book back, like a man reclaiming property that has been temporarily nationalised. So I shouldn’t call it Latin. You may call it Latin if you also call the Bodleian a circulating library. Meaning: never. Meaning: only as a joke. And even then, be sure the joke circulates better than the book. He tucks Morandi away and looks satisfied, as if he has revised Latin without having suffered Latin, which is the undergraduate ideal. Minimal notes you can append (if you want) In Italian usage, “stornello” can denote the starling (as a diminutive/alternate of “storno”), but “stornello” also denotes a folk verse-form; standard etymologies usually treat the verse-form sense as separate (often traced to Occitan/Provençal “estorn”, a poetic contest) rather than derived from the bird-word. The vignette exploits the resulting “one form, two senses” as a Gricean prompt: the history may diverge, but conversational uptake happily recombines. “Biblioteca circolante” is an ordinary Italian term for a lending library; the humour depends on taking it compositionally in English as “a library that circulates”, and contrasting it with Oxford’s famously non-lending Bodleian. Grice: Caro Morandi, mi permetto di dirti che la lingua di Vadum Boum — come affettuosamente chiamo la mia università — è davvero una bestia di tutt’altra razza rispetto alla lingua di Firenze! Lì, le parole sembrano indossare abiti diversi, e le regole che guidano il “conversational game” non sono affatto quelle che Cicerone avrebbe riconosciuto. Morandi: Ah, Paul, non posso che sorridere! La lingua fiorentina, si sa, ha il pregio di una sobria eleganza e di un rigore quasi musicale. Ma non credere che sia immune da stranezze: basta leggere la grammatichetta del Magnifico o sfogliare il vocabolario di Vinci per scoprire che anche da noi ogni “regola” ha i suoi trasgressori, e il gioco della conversazione si arricchisce proprio grazie a queste variazioni. Grice: È proprio questo il bello, caro Morandi! A Vadum Boum “rule” ha assunto un significato che Austin aveva adottato, e che io, per spirito di contraddizione, ho preferito rifiutare. Ma, se ci pensi bene, nella logica della conversazione ogni regola è fatta per essere reinterpretata: il vero gioco sta nel sapere quando e come infrangere la “regola”. Morandi: Non potrei essere più d'accordo! In fondo, il nostro lavoro di filosofi e studiosi della lingua consiste proprio nel capire le regole, ma anche nel riconoscere il valore delle eccezioni. Come dice il proverbio fiorentino, “il parlar chiaro non è sempre il parlar vero”: la lingua vive una dialettica continua tra norma e creatività, ed è questo che la rende così affascinante e infinita. Morandi, Luigi (1867). Stornelli. Sanseverino Marche.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Moravia: la ragione conversazionale – personologia -- l’implicature conversazionali dei ragazzi  Sergio Moravia (Bologna, Emilia): la ragione conversazionale – personologia -- l’implicature conversazionali dei ragazzi – la scuola di Bologna. M.’s work on “personology,” the wild child, and “hidden reason” can be read as a human-sciences counterpart to Grice’s project in conversational pragmatics: both treat mindedness as something that becomes visible in patterns of intelligible conduct rather than as an occult inner glow. Grice argues that conversational meaning is reason-governed because hearers can (and normally do) reconstruct what a speaker meant by presuming rational cooperation and then deriving implicatures from what is said plus context; Moravia’s “il pungolo dell’umano” and the figure of the ragazzo selvaggio similarly dramatize how the status of “person” is not given merely by belonging to Homo sapiens but is achieved (or withheld) through entry into shared practices of sense-making—language, education, norm-following, and reciprocal recognition. That is why your “metaphysical transubstantiation” joke lands: in Gricean terms, becoming a person is becoming an agent whose behaviour is interpretable under reasons, and conversational implicature is one of the clearest signatures of that agency (the ability to mean more than one says, to understand indirectness, to play by and sometimes exploit the maxims). Moravia’s “ragione nascosta” then parallels Grice’s insistence that the most important rational work in communication is often not explicit argument but the quiet inferential labour beneath the surface—what must be supplied by a competent participant in a “universe of sense.” Finally, Moravia’s Nietzsche, as you quote him (earthbound, humane, anti-narcissistic, seeking sense beyond nihilism), fits Grice’s temperament: both resist grand metaphysical inflation in favour of the disciplined, finite achievements of understanding in ordinary life—conversation as the civil technology by which the human animal becomes, and stays, a person. Grice: “Perhaps I should have followed Moravia and called my construction routine of metaphysical transubstantiation, by which a specimen of Homo sapiens sapiens becomes a person – personologia!” Filosofo italiano. Bologna, Emilia-Romagna. Grice: “I like Moravia: he has philosophised on what makes us ‘human,’ (“il pungolo dell’umano”) – his analysis of ‘il ragazzo selvaggio’ is sublime – and he has played with ‘reason,’ hidden and strutturata – and the universi di senso with which I cannot but agree! – provided we don’t multiply them ad infinitum!” -- Grice: “I like Moravia’s idea of ‘la ragione nascosta’ – you have indeed to seek and thou shalt find!” -- “Il Nietzsche che prediligo è il Nietzsche terreno, umano, presente nel tempo. È il Nietzsche intrepido esploratore del sottosuolo dell'uomo e dei disagi della civiltà. È il Nietzsche che fertilmente e sofferentemente (non narcisisticamente) vive e pensa il nichilismo: ma per andare oltre il nichilismo. È soprattutto il Nietzsche cheneo-illuminista forse malgrado luivuole conoscere, capire, dare un (nuovo) senso alle cose.” Professore a Firenze. Allievo diGarin, si è formato in ambiente fiorentino conseguendovi la laurea in filosofia nel 1962 con tesi su Gian Domenico Romagnosi. Professore incaricato, è poi diventato ordinario di Storia della Filosofia all'Firenze. Nel corso della sua carriera, si è interessato particolarmente dell'illuminismo francese e del pensiero del Novecento, della storia e dell'epistemologia delle scienze umane, con particolare attenzione all'antropologia, la filosofia della mente e l'esistenzialismo. I suoi studi e le sue ricerche hanno aperto nuove prospettive interdisciplinari fra pensiero filosofico e scienze umane. ragazzi, personologia. Grice: Caro Moravia, se avessi seguito Bologna fino in fondo avrei chiamato la mia teoria una personologia conversazionale, dove i ragazzi diventano persone a colpi di implicature ben educate. Moravia: Paul, a Bologna i ragazzi imparano presto che la ragione è nascosta e un po’ birichina, ma se la provochi con gentilezza viene fuori a fare due chiacchiere. Grice: È proprio questo che mi diverte della tua scuola, perché la conversazione civilizza l’Homo sapiens senza bisogno di moltiplicare universi di senso come conigli metafisici. Moravia: Allora siamo d’accordo, perché anche il mio Nietzsche preferisce parlare tra umani, magari in cortile, piuttosto che fare il nichilista solitario in cattedra. Moravia, Sergio (1962). Il mito dell’uomo naturale. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Mordente: la ragione conversazionale – I know that there are infintely many stars Fabrizio Mordente (Salerno) : la ragione conversazionale – I know that there are infintely many stars. Grice’s reason-governed pragmatics can be made to meet Mordente’s infinitesimals by treating “infinite” talk as a case where what is said is systematically underdetermined and must be stabilized by conversational norms of evidence, precision, and disciplinary purpose. When Grice wonders “There are infinitely many stars—do I know that?”, he is pressing the gap between merely asserting a grand claim and being entitled to it; on a Gricean view, the hearer will normally infer (by Quantity and Quality) that a speaker who flatly says “infinitely many” is committed to having the right kind of grounds, and if those grounds are unavailable the utterance invites either retreat (“I mean very many”) or reinterpretation as rhetorical exaggeration. Mordente’s proportional compass and the Bruno–Mordente controversy over minima and commensurability illustrate the same dynamic in early modern mathematics: terms like “minimum,” “indivisible,” and “infinitesimal” are not self-interpreting; their usable content depends on what competent practitioners can reasonably infer about permitted operations (measuring, comparing, treating as commensurable) and on what counts as an acceptable justification against an Aristotelian background that allows only potential infinity. In that sense, Mordente’s “measuring a bit of infinity” becomes a pragmatic analogue of Grice’s implicature: the instrument does not merely add data, it constrains interpretation, licensing certain inferences and blocking others, so that claims about the infinitely small can function cooperatively rather than as mere metaphysical flourishes. The upshot is that both projects—Grice on conversational meaning and Mordente on mathematical minima—turn on the same rational discipline: making sure that an audience can, in principle, recover what is meant from what is offered, whether the audience is a conversational partner computing implicatures or a community of geometers deciding what “infinite” is allowed to mean within the rules of their practice. Grice: There are infinitely many stars. Do I KNOW that? There are infinitely many infinitely infinitisemials. Keywords: infinitesimal, commensurability of infinitesimals – or other. Scholars and historians of science have considered Giordano Bruno and Fabrizio Mordente's ideas on infinitesimals and commensurability in the context of the historical development of the concept, which  eventually led to Leibniz's infinitesimal calculus. The link is generally explored in the context of the historical evolution of mathematical and philosophical thought on infinity, atomism, and the continuum, rather than a direct personal or philosophical connection between the individuals themselves across different centuries.    Key points regarding the connections made by scholars: Aristotelian problem: Aristotle denied the existence of an actual infinite (both large and small) and maintained the infinite divisibility of the continuum in potentia, a standard view that Bruno explicitly challenged. The issue of commensurability was central to Euclidean geometry and Aristotelian philosophy, where quantities were generally considered commensurable or incommensurable in a specific mathematical sense. Bruno and Mordente: Bruno initially disregarded the Aristotelian distinction between mathematical and physical quantities. Influenced by his controversy with Mordente regarding the latter's proportional compass, Bruno began to argue for the existence of a physical and a mathematical minimum (atomism), making geometric objects (and thus infinitesimals) potentially determinable and commensurable, contrary to the standard Aristotelian view of continuous magnitudes. This represented a significant shift in his mathematical thinking, attempting a reform of mathematics to accommodate the infinitely small. Fabrizio Mordente. Grice: Caro Mordente, ogni volta che penso alle stelle infinite, mi viene il dubbio: le conosci tutte o ti affidi all’implicatura conversazionale? Mordente: Ah, Paul, ti dirò: tra infiniti infinitesimi e stelle, a Salerno ci si perde più facilmente che sulla Via Lattea! Ma almeno con il mio compasso proporzionale, posso cercare di misurare un po’ d’infinito… senza smarrirmi troppo! Grice: E meno male! Aristotele avrebbe detto che tutto si può dividere, ma tu e Bruno avete deciso di moltiplicare i minimi come se fossero pizzette – e ogni tanto pure commensurabili! Mordente: Paul, la filosofia italiana è così: tra una stella e un infinitesimo, la conversazione non finisce mai! Anzi, quando pensi di aver detto tutto, arriva un nuovo infinito da discutere… e magari una pizza da condividere! Mordente, Fabrizio (1584). Apud Johannem Baptistam. Venezia: Bertoni.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Morselli: la sistematicita della filosofia – la scuola di Vigevano – la filosofia della ligua – parola, ragione, segno, comunicazione  Emilio Morselli (Vigevano, Pavia, Lombardia): la sistematicita della filosofia –la filosofia della lingua – parola, ragione, segno, comunicazione.  Grice’s account of conversational meaning as reason-governed inference can be paired with Emilio Morselli’s “systematic” Lombard ambition (a dictionary mind: parola, segno, comunicazione) by treating Morselli’s lexicographic and historiographic impulse as an attempt to stabilize, in public form, the background rationalities that make talk intelligible in the first place. On Grice’s view, hearers recover what is meant by assuming cooperative rational agency and then computing implicatures from what is said plus context; in your passage, Morselli’s entries on silence (as the sceptic’s suspension of judgment) and aphasia (as loss of linguistic function) mark two limiting cases that help isolate Grice’s middle ground, where meaning is neither mere appearance nor mere noise but the product of interpretable intention under shared norms. Skeptical silence resembles Gricean conversational “withholding” at its extreme: the speaker declines commitment, yet that very refusal can still be meaningful because interlocutors rationally search for a point (the implicature of caution, parity of reasons, or methodological restraint). Aphasia, by contrast, models breakdown: when the capacity to produce usable signs collapses, the Gricean machinery cannot get traction because there is no reliable vehicle for intention-recognition, so the cooperative calculus fails. Morselli’s systematicity thus complements Grice by foregrounding the infrastructure of intelligibility—definitions, distinctions, taxonomies—while Grice explains how, even with that infrastructure, actual communication lives in the dynamic gap between dictionary-meaning and occasion-meaning: the same word (or the choice of silence) can carry different rationally recoverable implications depending on the conversational setting, the epistemic posture, and the shared expectations that make “saying less” a way of meaning more. Grice: “The Italians distinguish between Morselli and Morselli. The second wrote a ‘manuale di semejotic’ – the first did not!” Grice: “What I like about Morselli is that his is mainstream (Lombardia) and that he approached philosophy systematically. Only Morselli could conceive of a ‘dictionary’ – and he also wrote a ‘storia della filosofia’!” – Per li scettici antichi, l’afasia, Osn!:d P*%r OdMi WHMJOTECA CAPWvj|a£. dico) = Il silenzio, fllos., il tacere, è il risultato della sospensione di qualsiasi giudizio o affermazione circa la vera natura dello cose. L’uomo conosce soltanto ciò che appare, và 9aiv6jj.Eva, la pura apparenza: se si vuolo oltrepassarla, ci si trova di fronte a ragioni contrarlo e d'uguale forza; perciò il saggio, se vuol conservare l’impassibilità e l’equilibrio dell’anima (derapala), non afferma nuLa, neppure l’impossibilità della scienza. (psicol.): l’afasia ò la perdita totale o parziale dello funzioni del linguaggio. Affettivo (lat. a/Hccrc. p. 0. dolore, laeiiiìa addolorare, rallegrare) (psicol.): si dico delle modificazioni e dei modi di essere dei soggetto, dei processi essenzialmente soggettivi, come il niacore, il dolore, le emozioni, 1 sentimenti, lo passioni, io inclinazioni, che formano una dello tre grandi attività in cui si distribuisce solitamente, per comodità d’analisi, la vita psicologica, cioè l’intelligenza, il sentimento, la volontà. Affezione (affectio) (psicol.): in generale designa una disposizione, uno 0 stato, un mutamento dovuti a causo esterne o Interne, sempre con un carattere di passività. In senso più particolare esprime il piacere, il doloro e lo emozioni elementari. implicatura. Emilio Morselli.  Grice: Caro Morselli, da Vigevano alla filosofia sistematica, dimmi: il silenzio è davvero la risposta migliore quando le parole non bastano? Oppure rischiamo di diventare afasici e perderci la conversazione? Morselli: Paul, il silenzio tra gli antichi scettici era un’arte! Ma se dovessi scrivere un dizionario, forse la voce “afasia” sarebbe la più lunga: nella filosofia, tacere è più rumoroso che parlare! Grice: Allora, Morselli, se la parola è segno e la ragione è comunicazione, qual è il destino di chi si affida solo all’apparenza? Gli scettici sarebbero perfetti per una chat muta! Morselli: Paul, tra afasia e sentimenti, l’importante è mantenere l’equilibrio dell’anima. Se qualcuno ti affetta troppo, magari è solo un’affezione temporanea: in Lombardia, anche l’implicatura passa col tempo e con un buon risotto! Speranza has these two Morsellis, the first from Lombardia, the second from Modena (what comune e regione is that?) Are the relations? Yes. There are indeed two different Morselli, and they are not the same man. The first, Emilio Morselli, was born in Vigevano, in the province of Pavia, in the region of Lombardia. He was a philosopher and educator rather than a psychiatrist, and the obituary evidence ties him firmly to that Lombard setting. [archive.org], [asut.unito.it] The second, Enrico Morselli, was born in Modena. Modena is a comune and also the capital of the province of Modena, in the region of Emilia-Romagna. He is the much better-known psychiatrist, positivist, and psychical researcher. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] So the geographical answer is straightforward. Vigevano: comune in the province of Pavia, region Lombardia. [asut.unito.it] Modena: comune in the province of Modena, region Emilia-Romagna. [treccani.it] As to whether they were related, I do not see any reliable evidence in the sources presently to hand that Emilio Morselli and Enrico Morselli were members of the same immediate family. They share the surname Morselli, but that alone is not enough to infer a family relation, especially across different regional settings and quite different biographical tracks. None of the biographical notices I have found identifies them as brothers, cousins, or father and son. So the safe answer is: possible in the broad genealogical sense, unproven in the documentary sense. [archive.org], [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] The dry summary would be this. Emilio Morselli belongs to Vigevano, province of Pavia, region Lombardia. Enrico Morselli belongs to Modena, province of Modena, region Emilia-Romagna. They share a surname but are not, on the evidence currently available, demonstrably close relations. [archive.org], [asut.unito.it], [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] And one small correction to the comic line in the dialogue. “From Vigevano to systematic philosophy” fits Emilio Morselli rather well; the semeiotician, medium-investigator, and psychiatry man is Enrico Morselli of Modena. So Speranza’s taste for “the Italians distinguish between Morselli and Morselli” is entirely justified. [archive.org], [it.wikipedia.org] If you like, I can now give you a compact two-paragraph note distinguishing the two Morselli in exactly the dry register you seem to prefer. [archive.org], [it.wikipedia.org] Speranza meant to attach this below to the previous but attached something else by mistake -- so can you make a second run to check if they are related, and generationally, how apart are they? thanks - Yes — on a second run, I can sharpen the answer a little, though not enough to assert a documented family tie. The two men are clearly from different generations. Enrico Agostino Morselli was born in 1852 at Modena and died in 1929. He published Spirito e materia at the age of seventeen in 1870. [treccani.it], [en.wikipedia.org] Emilio Morselli, the Vigevano philosopher-sociologist of your passage, is attached to a later generation. The bibliographical clue you supplied — Elementi di sociologia generale in 1898 — already suggests a younger man than Enrico Agostino Morselli, and the obituary-style material places him in the later nineteenth-century Lombard academic world rather than the mid-century Modenese medical one. [it.wikipedia.org], [treccani.it] So, generationally, the safest answer is this. Enrico Agostino Morselli belongs to the 1852 generation, and Emilio Morselli appears to belong to a younger cohort active at the end of the century. That makes them not contemporaries in the strict peer sense but rather senior and junior generations, probably separated by roughly one generation, or at least by a substantial academic age-gap. [treccani.it], [it.wikipedia.org] As to whether they were related, I still do not see a reliable documentary source explicitly connecting Emilio Morselli and Enrico Agostino Morselli as brothers, cousins, uncle and nephew, or father and son. The more detailed biographical sources for Enrico Agostino Morselli give his parents as Giuseppe Morselli and Melania Saccozzi, and describe a Modenese/Correggio background; but none of the material now in hand bridges from that family line to the Vigevano Emilio Morselli. [treccani.it], [resolve.ca...bridge.org], [it.wikipedia.org] So the revised dry verdict is: They are very likely not of the same immediate generation. Enrico Agostino Morselli is the elder figure by a clear margin, born in 1852; Emilio Morselli belongs to a later Lombard generation active in the 1890s. A family relation remains possible in the broad genealogical sense, but on present evidence it is still unproven in the documentary sense. [treccani.it], [it.wikipedia.org], [resolve.ca...bridge.org] If one wanted a cautious social-historical guess rather than a proof, one might say that two educated Morselli in northern Italy, one from Modena and one from Vigevano, could perfectly well belong to more widely ramified branches of the same surname family without being close documented kin. But that is only a genealogical possibility, not a scholarly conclusion. [geni.com], [treccani.it], [resolve.ca...bridge.org] So the best compact answer is: probably one generation apart, possibly connected only at the surname level, not demonstrably close relations from the evidence now in hand. [treccani.it], [it.wikipedia.org] If you like, I can now do one more targeted pass in chat only: I can help you formulate the exact genealogical question you would need to test in Portale Antenati or parish/civil records, using Modena and Vigevano as the two anchor places.Morselli, Emilio (1898). Elementi di sociologia generale. Milano: U. Hoepli.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Morselli – metafisica e psicologia filosofica – semeiotica  Enrico Agostino Morselli (Modena)– metafisica e psicologia filosofica – semeiotica.  Morselli is a good foil for Grice because semiotics/“semeiotics” treats symptoms as signs whose significance is recovered by disciplined inference, whereas Grice’s program treats utterances as actions whose significance is recovered by disciplined inference under assumptions of rational cooperation. In your passage, the Stevenson quip (“spots only mean measles—strictly, a spot does not mean”) marks the difference between natural meaning and speaker-meaning; Morselli’s psychiatric semeiotica sits right on that boundary, since it is precisely the practice of moving from observed “spots” (symptoms, behaviors, expressive disturbances) to what they indicate, while being careful not to slide from indication to intention. Grice supplies the conceptual control: where a symptom is read as evidence (natural meaning, defeasible and diagnostically constrained), a communicative act is read as meant (non-natural meaning, intention-involving, audience-directed). The Italy/Oxford contrast then becomes methodological: early Oxford “armchair psychology” often tried to read minds from introspection and ordinary-language cues, whereas Morselli’s clinical posture treats the mind as something approached through a rule-governed interpretive practice (a semiotics of the mental) that already anticipates Grice’s key idea that interpretation is rational and norm-sensitive, not merely associative. Finally, the mediumship episodes sharpen the Gricean warning: once you start treating every sign as if it were a message, you risk over-ascribing intention and importing “implicature” where there is only evidence; Grice’s maxims (especially Quantity and Relation) explain why that temptation is powerful—humans are built to infer purpose—while Morselli’s semeiotic discipline exemplifies the counter-pressure to constrain inference by method, background knowledge, and differential diagnosis. Grice: “Stevenson, an American, states that spots only ‘mean’ measles – strictly, a spot does not mean. Italians don’t have this problem – witness Morselli and his semejotica, as he spells it!” Grice: “When I arrived at Oxford, psychology was philosophy, and philosophy was psychology – or rather, philosophers were armchair psychologists, and vice versa! I never recovered. Abstract: Grice’s intention. Occupation(s) Physician, psychical researcher Enrico Agostino Morselli is an Italian physician and psychical researcher. M. is a professor atTurin. He is best known for the publication of his influential book Suicide: An Essay on Comparative Moral Statistics claiming that suicide is primarily the result of the struggle for life and nature's evolutionary process. According to Shorter "M. is known outside of Italy for having coined the term dysmorphophobia. In Italy, he is known for the psychiatry textbook A Guide to the Semiotics of Mental Illness." M. is a eugenicist and some of his writings have been linked to scientific racialism. M. is also interested in mediumship and psychical research. He studies the medium Eusapia Palladino and concludes that some of her phenomena is genuine, being evidence for an unknown bio-psychic force present in all humans.  Selected works Science Suicide: An Essay on Comparative Moral Statistics; A Guide to the Semiotics of Mental Illness (Manuale di SEMEIOTICA [SEMEJOTICA] delle malattie mentali Psychical research  M., E. . Eusapia Paladino and the Genuineness of Her Phenomena. Annals of Psychical Science. M., Psicologia e “Spiritismo”: Impressioni e Note Critiche sui Fenomeni Medianici di Eusapia Palladino. Turin: Fratelli Bocca. References  Stark, Rodney; Bainbridge, William Sims. Religion, Deviance and Social Control. Routledge. Maj, Mario; Ferro, Anthology of Italian Psychiatric Texts. World Psychiatric Association. G: Morselli begins before most philosophers had learned to blush at the word brain. S: Or cervello, rather. G: Yes, and that is already the first nuisance. S: Because you dislike nuisance in vocabulary more than in people. G: I dislike nuisance when it masquerades as precision. S: Yet Morselli’s title is beautifully plain: Spirito e materia. Conferenza sui rapporti fra il cervello e il pensiero. G: Beautifully plain, and therefore dangerous. S: Dangerous because cervello is vernacular? G: Dangerous because plainness tempts one to think one has settled something. S: We are in 1946, not Bologna 1276. G: Oxford never knows what century it is, and Bologna never stops reminding one. S: So: cervello. Is he simply saying “brain”? G: More or less. But with a history attached. S: Cerebrum? Cerebellum? Cerebro? Cervello? Cervelletto? G: Exactly. A physician learns one set in Latin and speaks another in Italian. S: And Morselli chose the Italian. G: Because he was lecturing not to anatomists only, but to intelligent civilians and incipient spiritists. S: You are unfair to spiritists. G: I am exact about spiritists. S: Let us begin with Broca. G: Broca, yes. French, not Italian. S: And not Brocca with two c’s. G: Quite. French enough to avoid doubling consonants and to keep Paris in order. S: He localised speech in the frontal lobe. G: In the left frontal region, yes. S: So pensiero, if tied to speech, is not in the cerebellum. G: Certainly not in the cerebellum in the sense of “the little brain at the back.” S: Yet the Italian ordinary word cervello comes from cerebellum, the diminutive. G: Which delights me no end. S: Because the larger organ gets named by the little one? G: Or because language, being language, refuses to honour anatomy’s dignity. S: French does the same. G: Cerveau, yes. S: Spanish keeps cerebro for the big thing, cerebelo for the little thing. G: Which is almost too rational for a Romance language. S: So Morselli, by saying cervello, is not saying cerebellum. G: No. He is saying the ordinary Italian word for “brain.” S: Even though a physician trained in Latin at Bologna would know perfectly well the distinction. G: He would know it, and then ignore it when speaking to the public. S: So the physician says cerebrum in the lecture hall of anatomy and cervello in the conference to cultured laymen. G: Precisely. S: Then what is your complaint? G: My complaint is not with Morselli’s word. My complaint is with the hearer who thinks the word has done the theory. S: “Cervello” explains nothing. G: No more than “mind” explains anything. S: Yet Morselli connects cervello and pensiero. G: As every nineteenth-century medico-philosopher was obliged to do if he wanted to be modern. S: Is that why you call him a philosopher? G: I do. S: Many would call him merely a physician. G: Many would call Broad merely a professor, which would also be stupid. S: Broad does use “brain.” G: Broad uses brain, nervous system, traces, dispositions, feelings, yes. He inhabits the mind-body landscape without taking residence in the cortex. S: And you are influenced by Broad. G: Broad taught us all how to speak carefully about things one cannot yet prove. S: Then your “brain-trace” in Personal Identity belongs to Broad’s atmosphere. G: Entirely. S: You write: “Since this trace is usually supposed to be in the brain, I shall refer to it as a ‘brain-trace’.” G: Yes. S: Why not “cerebral trace”? G: Because I was not trying to sound learned. S: So “brain-trace” is plain English, as Morselli’s cervello is plain Italian. G: Exactly. S: Then what if I say a brain-trace is just a cerebral trace? G: You would be stupidly right and therefore philosophically unhelpful. S: Which is a kind of Oxford sin. G: It is the commonest one. S: But surely “cerebral trace” sounds more medical. G: Yes, and therefore more falsely explanatory. S: Because “cerebral” flatters the listener into thinking science has been consulted. G: Quite. S: Yet in the Causal Theory of Perception you say the philosopher may consult the neurologist for the specific causal chain. G: Yes, because I am not a neurologist. S: Retina, optic nerve, cortex, all that. G: Quite. S: And the philosopher’s business is the general conceptual role of causal connection, not the exact wiring. G: Precisely. S: So when Place and Smart later say “brain processes,” they are doing something stronger. G: Much stronger. S: And choosing “brain” on purpose. G: Yes. S: Why not “cerebral processes”? G: Because “brain” is the public noun. S: The ordinary English organ-word. G: Exactly. S: Like Morselli’s cervello. G: Very much like it, but with a different polemical use. S: Explain. G: Morselli says cervello because he is modern and medical and wants the organ in sight. S: While still speaking intelligibly to non-medics. G: Yes. S: Place and Smart say brain because they want to force philosophy to confront physicalism without hiding behind technical Latin. G: Exactly. S: So “sensations are brain processes” is stronger than “seeing causally depends on some brain event.” G: Much stronger. S: Ryle would hate the flavour of it. G: Ryle dislikes flavours that smell of laboratories. S: He prefers the machine to the brain. G: He prefers the ghost in the machine because the machine is a logical metaphor, not a neurological organ. S: And you? G: I prefer to know which question I am asking. S: Which today is brain-trace. G: Today, yes. S: Let me be absurd for a moment. Is a brain-trace in the cerebrum or in the cerebellum? G: If you are asking me anatomically, I refuse. S: If philosophically? G: Then the question is worse. S: Why? G: Because “brain-trace” in my argument is a placeholder for whatever persistent physical condition someone imagines mediates memory. S: Not a claim about lobe, gyrus, or nucleus. G: Precisely. S: So when you say “usually supposed to be in the brain,” you are being broad in both senses. G: Delightful. Yes. S: Then Morselli’s cervello e pensiero is similarly broad? G: Broad and broad-brush. S: Is that a criticism? G: It is a diagnosis. S: You do sound Morsellian when you put it that way. G: Heaven forbid. S: Still, by 1870 Broca is already known. G: Yes. S: So one could object to Morselli: if you mean thought in the articulate, expressive sense, say frontal cerebrum, not cervello simpliciter. G: One could object, but one would be pedantic if one took his title for a dissection report. S: So the title is public philosophy by a physician. G: Precisely. S: And perhaps that is why “pensiero” appears instead of something more technical. G: Of course. Pensiero is as public as cervello. S: Which would irritate an anatomist. G: And delight a positivist lecturer. S: Where does Wundt sit in all this? G: Wundt sits in the laboratory, timing reaction and dignifying introspection with apparatus. S: Stout? G: Stout sits in the armchair, but with far more discipline than most armchairs deserve. S: And Morselli? G: Half clinic, half philosophy, with occasional visits to mediumship. S: That sounds indecorous. G: It is indecorous and historically true. S: So why not classify him as psychiatrist and be done with it? G: Because classifications are where thinking goes to die. S: Very broad of you. G: I learned something from Broad. S: Let me try another stupidity. If a brain-trace is called a brain-trace, why not call it a thought-trace? G: Because then you would have already decided the matter in favour of idealism. S: Ah. G: Which is exactly where Geymonat, if he were here, would rap your knuckles. S: So brain-trace keeps the physical side in view. G: Yes, while still refusing to specify more than the philosopher has any right to specify. S: And “mental trace” is rejected because it is too obscure. G: In the argument, yes. S: You say it is “a very difficult one.” G: Quite. S: And then you proceed by “lack of an alternative.” G: Which is how half of philosophy gets written. S: Then suppose a clever surgeon produces the trace. G: As I say. S: You introduce the surgeon like a melodramatic villain. G: Not villain. Technician. Villainy belongs to the misuse of possibility. S: Logical versus causal possibility. G: Exactly. S: So the whole argument is really about not confusing these. G: Yes. S: And the brain is, in a sense, incidental. G: Incidental but useful. A concrete noun helps one expose an abstract confusion. S: Much as Morselli’s cervello helps stage the issue, even if it does not settle it. G: Exactly. S: Then tell me where in the brain your trace lives. G: I decline. S: Cortical? G: No answer. S: Frontal? G: No answer. S: Temporal, perhaps, since memory? G: You are turning me into a fraudulent neurologist. S: Which you are not. G: Quite. S: And yet the specialist is welcomed. G: Welcomed, consulted, and then politely left to his own evidence. S: Price would approve? G: Price approves too many things in Perception, but on this general point, yes. S: Broad, Price, you, all letting physiology in only so far. G: Because the philosopher’s danger is not ignorance of anatomy but confusion of levels. S: And Place and Smart later erase that distinction. G: Or rather reduce it. S: Would Dr Brain of Brain approve? G: Dr Brain would probably prefer a paper and a lesion to our chatter. S: Still, there was a Dr Brain who edited Brain. G: Yes, which proves that nouns sometimes appoint their own custodians. S: And Brain was a neurological journal, not a philosophical one. G: Precisely. S: So philosophy’s “brain” lagged behind medicine’s Brain. G: Nicely put. S: Then what did Morselli know that Oxford did not? G: He knew sooner that one could put brain and thought in the same title without apologising. S: Oxford apologised until the late fifties. G: More or less. S: Yet you already had your brain-trace in 1941. G: As a divertimento, yes. S: A dangerous little one. G: All divertimenti are dangerous if people take them for symphonies. S: So if I were to say to you now: “A brain-trace is like a cerebral trace,” you would answer? G: “Certainly, and a shoe is like footwear.” S: Unhelpful. G: Precisely my point. S: Then let us end with the Italians. G: Always dangerous. S: Cervello, from cerebellum. G: Yes. S: Yet not meaning cerebellum. G: Correct. S: Pensiero, broad enough to cover thought, speech, mind, intention, perhaps too much. G: Exactly. S: So Morselli’s title is anatomically loose but intellectually timely. G: That will do. S: And your own brain-trace is physiologically noncommittal but logically useful. G: Better. S: And Broca would insist that if we are talking language, we are in the frontal cerebrum, not the little brain at the back. G: Quite. S: While Ryle would say we have already been seduced by the machine. G: Yes. S: And some future Australian will tell us sensations are brain processes. G: Let him try. S: You sound resigned. G: No, merely English. S: And Morselli? philosopher or physician? G: Both, and that is why he matters. S: Who cares? G: I do.Grice: Caro Morselli, quando sono arrivato a Oxford, la psicologia era filosofia e viceversa. Ma dimmi, in Italia, le macchie significano sempre il morbillo o ogni segno ha il suo destino? Morselli: Ah Grice, da noi ogni segno si merita una sua interpretazione! La mia semeiotica delle malattie mentali ha più indizi di un romanzo giallo. Stevenson dice che le macchie “indicano” il morbillo, ma io preferisco pensare che ogni sintomo abbia una sua personalità. Grice: Allora, se un medium si presenta con una macchia, è malato o sta solo trasmettendo un messaggio dallo spirito di Palladino? Morselli: In quel caso, caro Paul, potresti ritrovarti con una diagnosi doppia: una da medico e una da spiritista! E se la macchia scompare, magari è solo l’implicatura che ha deciso di prendersi una pausa. Del resto, in Italia anche i segni si divertono a confondere i filosofi! Morselli, Enrico Agostino (1870). Spirito e materia. Conferenza sui rapporti fra il cervello e il pensiero. L’Eco delle Università.

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). ‘Grice e Motta: la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale  Emiliano Avogadro Collobiano di Vigiliano e Della Motta (Vercelli, Piemonte): la ragione conversazionale e l’implicatura conversazionale. Grice’s account of conversational meaning as reason-governed inference fits Emiliano Avogadro della Motta especially well because Motta’s intellectual life, as sketched in your passage, is built around salon-like “little academies” in Vercelli where jurists, theologians, bishops, and philosophers coordinate inquiry across disciplines and status lines—exactly the sort of mixed-audience setting in which what is meant routinely outruns what is said, and is recoverable only through shared norms of relevance, tact, and argumentative charity. On a Gricean reading, Motta’s public roles (school reformer, civic administrator, cultural founder, adviser on public instruction) make him a manager of conversational rationality in the literal sense: he engineers the conditions under which talk can function as a cooperative enterprise (who gets educated, which voices are authorized, which topics are discussable), and so he indirectly shapes which implicatures a community can reasonably draw from policy, pedagogy, and even ecclesiastical debate. The Rosmini/Serbati motif sharpens the comparison: to “examine” a thinker is not merely to refute propositions but to negotiate how a name, a school, and a doctrinal posture will be taken in the conversational economy of the time; the better surname joke itself is Gricean, because it highlights how social tone and lexical choice guide uptake beyond literal content. Even the Avogadro “fluid” pun works as a miniature model of implicature: it treats the movement of ideas through rooms and registers as a rational, inference-driven circulation, where participants track what is being suggested, conceded, bracketed, or politely left unsaid as the conversation shifts from dogma to education to civic history. In short, where Grice theorizes the norms that make meaning calculable in conversation, Motta exemplifies a historical practice of those norms in action—an elite but outward-looking conversational culture that relies on shared rational expectations to turn sparse remarks, institutional gestures, and cross-domain discussion into stable, publicly intelligible meaning. Grice: “If Mill’s claim to fame is to some his examination of Mill, Motta’s claim to fame is his examination of Rosmini – or Serbati, as I prefer to call him – better surname! --!” -- Il conte Emiliano Avogadro della M,. Nacsce dal conte Ignazio della M. e da Ifigenia Avogadro di Casanova, entrambi appartenenti a nobili famiglie di vassalli e visconti, i cui antenati risalgono a poco oltre il mille. Tra gli Avogadro vi fu anche Amedeo, inventore della legge sui fluidi. Frequenta con profitto gli studi e si laureò in utroque iure, ma proseguì lo studio in diverse aree della teologia e della filosofia, trasformando le dimore familiari in piccole accademie dove giuristi, filosofi, studiosi di diritto canonico e vescovi si riunivano, per discutere vari argomenti ed approfondire la filosofia moderna e i diversi aspetti del nascente socialismo.  Ricevette l'incarico, che già fu del padre, di riformatore degli studi del Vercellese e in un'epoca in cui si guardava ancora con diffidenza all'istruzione delle classi popolari, egli visitava ciclicamente le scuole d'ogni ordine, scegliendone accuratamente gli insegnanti, convinto che l'istruzione e l'educazione fossero un diritto di tutti e dovessero procedere simultaneamente. Assunse la carica di Consigliere di Formigliana e continuò a dedicarsi allo sviluppo culturale della natia Vercelli, ove fondò la Società di Storia Patria, per incrementare gli studi sul glorioso passato della città. Divenne membro del Consiglio Generale del Debito Pubblico e più tardi sindaco di Collobiano e “Consigliere di Sua Maestà per il pubblico insegnamento” La sua notorietà varcò i confini del Piemonte, allorché ricevette l'eccezionale invito di partecipazione alla fase preparatoria della definizione del dogma dell'Immacolata e le sue riflessioni ebbero un seguito fra alcuni importanti gesuiti, implicatura. Grice: Motta, mi dica: tra la ragione conversazionale di Vercelli e la filosofia piemontese, avete mai discusso se la legge dei fluidi di Avogadro funziona anche tra nobili e vassalli, o si rischia che i visconti evaporino? Motta: Ah, Grice, se i visconti evaporassero, resterebbe solo la implicatura! In famiglia si dice che la vera fluidità è quella delle idee: nei nostri salotti si discuteva talmente tanto che i filosofi si spostavano da una stanza all’altra senza soluzione di continuità, come molecole impazienti. Grice: E mi dica, Motta, tra una discussione sul dogma e una sull’educazione, quanti filosofi servono per cambiare una candela nella Società di Storia Patria? O si lascia tutto all’implicatura e si spera che la luce arrivi da sola? Motta: Grice, in Piemonte si preferisce la luce naturale, ma se proprio serve una candela, basta coinvolgere il conte, il vescovo, il giurista e magari anche un fluido: così si accende tutto, e si ride, perché la filosofia è un diritto di tutti—anche del buio! Motta, Emiliano Avogradro Collobiano di Vigliano e Della (1848). Rivista retrospettiva di un fatto seguito in Vercelli con osservazioni al diritto legale di libera censura. Vercelli.