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888Knowability Relative to InformationMind 130 (517): 1-33. 2021.We present a formal semantics for epistemic logic, capturing the notion of knowability relative to information (KRI). Like Dretske, we move from the platitude that what an agent can know depends on her (empirical) information. We treat operators of the form K_AB (‘B is knowable on the basis of information A’) as variably strict quantifiers over worlds with a topic- or aboutness- preservation constraint. Variable strictness models the non-monotonicity of knowledge acquisition while allowing knowl…Read more
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1249Aboutness in ImaginationPhilosophical Studies 175 (8): 1871-1886. 2018.I present a formal theory of the logic and aboutness of imagination. Aboutness is understood as the relation between meaningful items and what they concern, as per Yablo and Fine’s works on the notion. Imagination is understood as per Chalmers’ positive conceivability: the intentional state of a subject who conceives that p by imagining a situation—a configuration of objects and properties—verifying p. So far aboutness theory has been developed mainly for linguistic representation, but it is nat…Read more
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36Modal Meinongianism and ActualityHumana Mente 6 (25). 2013.Modal Meinongianism is the most recent neo-Meinongian theory. Its main innovation consists in a Comprehension Principle which, unlike other neo-Meinongian approaches, seemingly avoids limitations on the properties that can characterize objects. However, in a recent paper A. Sauchelli has raised an objection against modal Meinongianism, to the effect that properties and relations involving reference to worlds at which they are instantiated, and specifically to the actual world or parts thereof, f…Read more
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31Un'interpretazione analitica della dialettica hegelianaIride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 17 (3): 569-592. 2004.
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9Il primo teorema di Gödel e l'indeterminabilità del riferimento (incompletezza sintattica, insaturabilità semantica)Epistemologia 27 (1): 29-54. 2004.
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26Some Topics concerning Identity and Contradiction in Philosophical LogicEpistemologia 28 (2): 219-238. 2005.National audience.
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14Modus Tollerns. Kant, Hegel e la critica della nozione logica di sostanzaGiornale di Metafisica 25 (2): 287-304. 2003.
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Quale barba per il rasoio di ockham?: Problemi del riduzionismo metafisicoDivus Thomas 110 (2): 9-28. 2007.
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685Williamson on CounterpossiblesJournal of Philosophical Logic 47 (4): 693-713. 2018.A counterpossible conditional is a counterfactual with an impossible antecedent. Common sense delivers the view that some such conditionals are true, and some are false. In recent publications, Timothy Williamson has defended the view that all are true. In this paper we defend the common sense view against Williamson’s objections.
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Scenari dell’impossibile. La contraddizione nel pensiero contemporaneo (edited book)Il Poligrafo. 2007.
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68Guest editors' introductionLogic and Logical Philosophy 19 (1-2): 5-6. 2010.A logic is said to be paraconsistent if it doesn’t license you to infer everything from a contradiction. To be precise, let |= be a relation of logical consequence. We call |= explosive if it validates the inference rule: {A,¬A} |= B for every A and B. Classical logic and most other standard logics, including intuitionist logic, are explosive. Instead of licensing you to infer everything from a contradiction, paraconsistent logic allows you to sensibly deal with the contradiction
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1545Absolute Contradiction, Dialetheism, and RevengeReview of Symbolic Logic 7 (2): 193-207. 2014.Is there a notion of contradiction—let us call it, for dramatic effect, “absolute”—making all contradictions, so understood, unacceptable also for dialetheists? It is argued in this paper that there is, and that spelling it out brings some theoretical benefits. First it gives us a foothold on undisputed ground in the methodologically difficult debate on dialetheism. Second, we can use it to express, without begging questions, the disagreement between dialetheists and their rivals on the nature o…Read more
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419The Firmest of All PrinciplesIn Channa van Dijk, Eva van der Graaf, Michiel den Haan, Rosa de Jong, Christiaan Roodenburg, Dyane Til & Deva Waal (eds.), Under Influence - Philosophical Festival Drift (2014), Omnia. pp. 82-93. 2015.
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257Modal Meinongianism for Fictional ObjectsMetaphysica 9 (2): 205-218. 2008.Drawing on different suggestions from the literature, we outline a unified metaphysical framework, labeled as Modal Meinongian Metaphysics (MMM), combining Meinongian themes with a non-standard modal ontology. The MMM approach is based on (1) a comprehension principle (CP) for objects in unrestricted, but qualified form, and (2) the employment of an ontology of impossible worlds, besides possible ones. In §§1–2, we introduce the classical Meinongian metaphysics and consider two famous Russellia…Read more
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1110Is Dialetheism an Idealism? The Russellian Fallacy and the Dialetheist’s DilemmaDialectica 61 (2). 2007.In his famous work on vagueness, Russell named “fallacy of verbalism” the fallacy that consists in mistaking the properties of words for the properties of things. In this paper, I examine two (clusters of) mainstream paraconsistent logical theories – the non-adjunctive and relevant approaches –, and show that, if they are given a strongly paraconsistent or dialetheic reading, the charge of committing the Russellian Fallacy can be raised against them in a sophisticated way, by appealing to the in…Read more
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194Cellular automataStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy -. 2012.Cellular automata (henceforth: CA) are discrete, abstract computational systems that have proved useful both as general models of complexity and as more specific representations of non-linear dynamics in a variety of scientific fields. Firstly, CA are (typically) spatially and temporally discrete: they are composed of a finite or denumerable set of homogeneous, simple units, the atoms or cells. At each time unit, the cells instantiate one of a finite set of states. They evolve in parallel at dis…Read more
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567Non-Normal Worlds and RepresentationIn Michal Peliš & Vít Punčochář (eds.), The Logica Yearbook, College Publications. 2012.World semantics for relevant logics include so-called non-normal or impossible worlds providing model-theoretic counterexamples to such irrelevant entailments as (A ∧ ¬A) → B, A → (B∨¬B), or A → (B → B). Some well-known views interpret non-normal worlds as information states. If so, they can plausibly model our ability of conceiving or representing logical impossibilities. The phenomenon is explored by combining a formal setting with philosophical discussion. I take Priest’s basic relevant logic…Read more
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1011The world is either digital or analogueSynthese 191 (3): 481-497. 2014.We address an argument by Floridi (Synthese 168(1):151–178, 2009; 2011a), to the effect that digital and analogue are not features of reality, only of modes of presentation of reality. One can therefore have an informational ontology, like Floridi’s Informational Structural Realism, without commitment to a supposedly digital or analogue world. After introducing the topic in Sect. 1, in Sect. 2 we explain what the proposition expressed by the title of our paper means. In Sect. 3, we describe Flor…Read more
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2Review (review)Hegel-Studien 39 211-214. 2005.Hegel und Russell. Logik und Ontologie im modernen und zeitgenössischen Denken.
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317DialetheismStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2018 (2018). 2008.A dialetheia is a sentence, A, such that both it and its negation, ¬A, are true (we shall talk of sentences throughout this entry; but one could run the definition in terms of propositions, statements, or whatever one takes as her favourite truth-bearer: this would make little difference in the context). Assuming the fairly uncontroversial view that falsity just is the truth of negation, it can equally be claimed that a dialetheia is a sentence which is both true and false
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1225Άδύνατον and material exclusion 1Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (2). 2008.Philosophical dialetheism, whose main exponent is Graham Priest, claims that some contradictions hold, are true, and it is rational to accept and assert them. Such a position is naturally portrayed as a challenge to the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). But all the classic formulations of the LNC are, in a sense, not questioned by a typical dialetheist, since she is (cheerfully) required to accept them by her own theory. The goal of this paper is to develop a formulation of the Law which appears t…Read more
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4628Existence as a Real Property: The Ontology of MeinongianismSynthèse Library, Springer. 2012.This book is both an introduction to and a research work on Meinongianism. “Meinongianism” is taken here, in accordance with the common philosophical jargon, as a general label for a set of theories of existence – probably the most basic notion of ontology. As an introduction, the book provides the first comprehensive survey and guide to Meinongianism and non-standard theories of existence in all their main forms. As a research work, the book exposes and develops the most up-to-date Meinongian t…Read more
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2511The gödel paradox and Wittgenstein's reasonsPhilosophia Mathematica 17 (2): 208-219. 2009.An interpretation of Wittgenstein’s much criticized remarks on Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem is provided in the light of paraconsistent arithmetic: in taking Gödel’s proof as a paradoxical derivation, Wittgenstein was drawing the consequences of his deliberate rejection of the standard distinction between theory and metatheory. The reasoning behind the proof of the truth of the Gödel sentence is then performed within the formal system itself, which turns out to be inconsistent. It is show…Read more
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61Modal Noneism: Transworld Identity, Identification, and IndividuationAustralasian Journal of Logic 11 (2). 2014.Noneism a is form of Meinongianism, proposed by Richard Routley and developed and improved by Graham Priest in his widely discussed book Towards Non-Being. Priest's noneism is based upon the double move of building a worlds semantics including impossible worlds, besides possible ones, and admitting a new comprehension principle for objects, differerent from the ones proposed in other kinds of neo-Meinongian theories, such as Parsons' and Zalta's. The new principle has no restrictions on the sets…Read more
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765Impossible WorldsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2013). 2013.It is a venerable slogan due to David Hume, and inherited by the empiricist tradition, that the impossible cannot be believed, or even conceived. In Positivismus und Realismus, Moritz Schlick claimed that, while the merely practically impossible is still conceivable, the logically impossible, such as an explicit inconsistency, is simply unthinkable. An opposite philosophical tradition, however, maintains that inconsistencies and logical impossibilities are thinkable, and sometimes believable, to…Read more
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701Conceivability and possibility: some dilemmas for HumeansSynthese 195 (6): 2697-2715. 2018.The Humean view that conceivability entails possibility can be criticized via input from cognitive psychology. A mainstream view here has it that there are two candidate codings for mental representations (one of them being, according to some, reducible to the other): the linguistic and the pictorial, the difference between the two consisting in the degree of arbitrariness of the representation relation. If the conceivability of P at issue for Humeans involves the having of a linguistic mental r…Read more
St Andrews, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
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Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Formal Epistemology |
Doxastic and Epistemic Logic |
Metaphysics |
Modality |
Metaontology |
Philosophy of Computing and Information |