The first months of the year 2016 witnessed two great losses for the international philosophical community. In February 19th and March 13th, respectively, Umberto Eco and Hilary Putnam died, leaving a void whose real depth and breadth will only be revealed by the years to come.

The Editorial Board of Argumenta decided to pay a tribute to both, in one of the best ways available in circumstances like this—yielding the floor to them, as it were. Following a suggestion by Carlo Penco, in what follows you can find the transcription of the talk Umberto Eco gave at the Round Table that rounded off the 6th National Conference of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy—held in 2004 at the University of Genova. We warmly thank Richard Davies for editing the English version of the transcription, and hope that both the English and the Italian versions will manage to convey that fine sense of humour which was one of the chief features of Eco’s personality.

As to Hilary Putnam, when he first was told about the launch of a new journal in analytic philosophy, he immediately agreed to contribute an article. His article titled Reading Rosenzweig’s Little Book was then ready to be issued some months ago, but had to wait for the present issue—which is actually the second one of the inaugural volume of Argumenta. Now its appearance takes on a new light, and not only because it marks a further development and clarification of ideas put forward in his book Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life. Together with Putnam’s piece, the reader will find the articles of four other distinguished philosophers who kindly submitted their papers to welcome a newly born journal. We heartily thank all of them for what we take to be an important mark of encouragement.

Moreover, this second issue of the inaugural volume features the first special issue of the journal: New Trends in Philosophy of Mind and Epistemology, edited by Maria Cristina Amoretti and Francesca Ervas. We are convinced that this special issue adds greatly to the quality of the volume as a whole.

The reply Diego Marconi has written in response to some passages in the article by Peter Hacker which appeared in the first issue, concludes the volume.

As usual, all the articles appearing in Argumenta are freely accessible and freely downloadable; once again, we are very grateful to the colleagues who acted as referees.

Buona lettura!

Massimo Dell’Utri
Editor