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Preprint Jul 2026

Beyond Epistemia: Epistemic Schizologia and Large Language Models as Techno-Semiotic Machines

Quattrociocchi and colleagues warn that the fluent outputs of large language models may allow linguistic plausibility to substitute for epistemic evaluation, producing the condition they call *Epistemia*: the experience of possessing knowledge without undertaking the practices through which judgment would ordinarily be warranted. This article accepts that diagnosis but challenges its explanatory framework, which compares an embodied, socially situated human knower with an isolated generative model thereby locating epistemic legitimacy in capacities internal to autonomous agents. Drawing on Carlo Sini's philosophy of practices, writing, signs, and technics, we propose instead to understand a large language model (LLM) as a *techno-semiotic machine* that automates a phase of written semiosis by producing plausible linguistic configurations from the sedimented archive of human writing. From this perspective, *Epistemia* is one consequence of a broader phenomenon that we call *epistemic schizologia*: the socio-technical cleavage between signs as linguistically accomplished expressions and signs as moments within socially embedded circuits of interpretation, evidence, criticism, verification, and responsibility. This cleavage is reinforced by *eikotic closure*, through which a plausible continuation is presented with the finality of an epistemic result, and by algorithmic authority and epistemic self-misrecognition. The relevant unit is therefore not the model alone but the complete practice in which generated inscriptions are prompted, interpreted, verified, contested, used, and made consequential. This reframing preserves the distinction between linguistic production and responsible understanding while grounding a design programme centred on inspectable genealogy, contestability, distributed responsibility, epistemic agency, and the evaluation of hybrid human--AIpractices.

F. Cabitza, G. Colombo · 0 citations
Sep 2026

MATHEMATICAL-SEMANTIC MODEL OF CONVERSATIONAL MEANING: INTENTIONALITY, IMPLICATURE, AND PRAGMATIC SPACE IN ODIA

Meaning constitutes the foundation of language, shaping both its structure and interpretation. Among its various dimensions, conversational meaning is central, arising not solely from lexical content but from the interaction of speaker intention, context, and pragmatic function. Unlike literal meaning, which is relatively stable and context-independent, conversational meaning is dynamic, indeterminate, and constructed through interpretive processes. Drawing on the theoretical contributions of H. P. Grice, J. L. Austin, and Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, this study explores how meaning emerges at the interface of lexical semantics and contextual relevance. It distinguishes between direct conversational meaning, expressed through metaphor, metonymy, presupposition, and politeness strategies, and cognitive conversational meaning, which relies on inference, implicature, irony, and suggestion. The study identifies a theoretical gap: the lack of a formal model to explain how conversational meaning is systematically generated. To address this, it proposes a mathematical-semantic framework based on linear principles that maps lexical meaning onto contextual interpretations. Conversational meaning is modeled as a structured interaction among context, intention, and discourse structure. This approach integrates semantic and pragmatic dimensions, offering implications for linguistic theory, natural language processing, and cognitive science by enabling structured analysis of ambiguity and interpretive variation.

S. K. Lenka · 0 citations

There is No Spoon: Existential Presupposition in Large Language Models

It is found that while all models show sensitivity to existential presupposition across syntactic embeddings, determiner types and contextual cues, their behaviour differs markedly in strength and systematicity, with NLI-fine-tuned autoregressive models exhibiting the most coherent and stable projection patterns.

Marie-Léontine Wörgötter, Shikai Lai, Sebastian Schuster · 0 citations
Jul 2026

Living, Formal, Dead: Why Not All Language Claims Are Based on Linguistic Dispositions

Language is a crucial instrument in creating the social realm – and at the same time, it is an important part of this realm and thus calls out for a social ontological analysis. This article explores the wide and diverse ground such an ontological analysis needs to cover, and argues that language is a transcategorial phenomenon, i.e., that it covers various ontological categories. Among other aspects, I follow Ferdinand de Saussure in distinguishing individual linguistic competences, abstract language systems, and their concretizations in oral or written linguistic performances. While some argue that language is always an aggregate of linguistic competences, I argue that ontological primacy among these aspects varies according to which variety of language is to be analysed: for living languages, individual linguistic competences are the ultimate authority, but for formal languages the abstract systems of rules, and for dead languages the corpus of surviving linguistic performances.

Ludger Jansen · 0 citations
2026

Four concepts of permission

This paper examines the concept of permission within the set-theoretical approach to the logical theory of normative systems. Drawing on Alchourrón and Bulygin’s expressive conception of norms, and Žarnić’s formal reconstruction of von Wright’s later deontic logic, the study argues that the standard interpretation of permission as the derogation of a command fails to capture its pragmatic function. Building on a distinction between prescriptive and descriptive uses of deontic language, the paper develops an alternative reinterpretation of the set-theoretical framework in which permission is treated as an autonomous prescriptive speech act. Within this model, the relations among obligation, prohibition, and permission are expressed through two sets—commanded and permitted act-propositions—and then two perfection properties of ideal normative systems are identified—inner consistency and relational consistency. Finally, the analysis reveals that the notion of permission is even more ambiguous than the literature has so far acknowledged, distinguishing four types—normative, weak (negative), unilateral positive, and bilateral positive—and shows that the principle “Obligation implies permission” is valid only under specific interpretations of positive permission.

Andrea Barca · 0 citations