Antonio Lizzadri

This paper aims to examine the relevance of Bontadini’s analysis of «Contemporaryism». Bontadini introduced this historical-philosophical category to denote that contemporary philosophy is primarily characterized by a strong anti-metaphysical perspective on knowledge and experience...

This paper presents an interpretation of the early thought of Putnam about a priori knowledge, after Quine’s Two Dogmas of Empiricism. While Quine’s rejection of the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements and his epistemological holism involved the denial of a priori knowledge, this paper will show how, according to Putnam, they are coherent, underlining the epistemological value of pragmatic and extra-theoretical warrented assertibility criteria in the justification of empirical and formal scientific theories...

The paper provides an interpretation of Putnam’s ontological pluralism as articulated in the Philosophical Papers and The Meaning and the Moral Sciences, with respect especially to Quine’s ontological relativity. The model-theoretic argument is usually taken to support an anti-realist ontological view analogous to Quine’s, on which determining the meaning of words univocally is impossible. Contrary to this view, the paper argues that Putnam’s criticism of the indeterminacy of translation shows that the rejection of metaphysical realism does not amount to an anti-realist view...