Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy
Nicolò D'Agruma
I earned my Bachelor’s degree at University Vita-Salute San Raffaele (UniSR) in Milan in 2018, defending my thesis on the philosophy of science of Popper and Lakatos. I earned my Master’s degree at UniSR as well, defending in 2020 my thesis on the experimental studies on the reference of proper names under the supervision of Professor Andrea Sereni (IUSS Pavia). During my Master I was a visiting student in 2019-2020 at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
In 2021 I started my PhD in Philosophy at UniSR under the supervision of Bianca Cepollaro (UniSR) and Filippo Domaneschi (University of Genoa), and I also am part of a co-tutorship agreement with University of Barcelona, where I am a PhD student in the Cognitive Science and Language PhD Course (Analytic Philosophy division) under the supervision of Genoveva Martí. I am currently continuing the research which I have first started with my Master Thesis.
In my research, I experimentally test laypeople’s linguistic usage, as opposed to philosophers’ referential intuitions, in order to try and answer the following questions: do proper names and natural-kind terms refer causally-historically or descriptively? If they do not refer purely causally-historically or purely descriptively, what are the factors which prompt people to use them in one way or the other? Should we conceptualize this variability in the usage as semantic or as pragmatic? If the difference is semantic, does this show that these terms are systemically ambiguous or that they instantiate an hybrid meaning (embedding both a causal-historical and a descriptivist element)? I am a believer in the paramount importance of the experimental methods to appropriately deal with these questions.
When I am not busy with my beloved Philosophy studies, I really enjoy playing football with my friends in my free time – I most enjoy playing as a playmaker in the midfield.
In 2021 I started my PhD in Philosophy at UniSR under the supervision of Bianca Cepollaro (UniSR) and Filippo Domaneschi (University of Genoa), and I also am part of a co-tutorship agreement with University of Barcelona, where I am a PhD student in the Cognitive Science and Language PhD Course (Analytic Philosophy division) under the supervision of Genoveva Martí. I am currently continuing the research which I have first started with my Master Thesis.
In my research, I experimentally test laypeople’s linguistic usage, as opposed to philosophers’ referential intuitions, in order to try and answer the following questions: do proper names and natural-kind terms refer causally-historically or descriptively? If they do not refer purely causally-historically or purely descriptively, what are the factors which prompt people to use them in one way or the other? Should we conceptualize this variability in the usage as semantic or as pragmatic? If the difference is semantic, does this show that these terms are systemically ambiguous or that they instantiate an hybrid meaning (embedding both a causal-historical and a descriptivist element)? I am a believer in the paramount importance of the experimental methods to appropriately deal with these questions.
When I am not busy with my beloved Philosophy studies, I really enjoy playing football with my friends in my free time – I most enjoy playing as a playmaker in the midfield.
Selection of Publications
Nicolò D'Agruma. 2023
From the epistemic perspectives in experimental semantics to the ambiguity of proper names: Is the inference warranted? A critical notice of Jincai Li's The referential mechanism of proper names
Mind and Language, 38(4), 2023, 1138–1146.Nicolò D'Agruma. 2022
Riferimento dei nomi propri e filosofia sperimentale
APhEx. Portale italiano di filosofia analitica, 25, 2022
