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1787Voluntary Imagination: A Fine-Grained AnalysisReview of Symbolic Logic 2 362-387. 2020.We study imagination as reality-oriented mental simulation (ROMS): the activity of simulating nonactual scenarios in one’s mind, to investigate what would happen if they were realized. Three connected questions concerning ROMS are: What is the logic, if there is one, of such an activity? How can we gain new knowledge via it? What is voluntary in it and what is not? We address them by building a list of core features of imagination as ROMS, drawing on research in cognitive psychology and the phil…Read more
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872Adding 4.0241 to TLPIn Gabriele M. Mras, Paul Weingartner & Bernhard Ritter (eds.), Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics: Proceedings of the 41st International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium, De Gruyter. pp. 415-428. 2018.Tractatus 4.024 inspired the dominant semantics of our time: truth-conditional semantics. Such semantics is focused on possible worlds: the content of p is the set of worlds where p is true. It has become increasingly clear that such an account is, at best, defective: we need an ‘independent factor in meaning, constrained but not determined by truth-conditions’ (Yablo 2014, p. 2), because sentences can be differently true at the same possible worlds. I suggest a missing comment which, had it bee…Read more
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87Modal Meinongianism: Conceiving the ImpossibleIn Can Başkent & Thomas Macaulay Ferguson (eds.), Graham Priest on Dialetheism and Paraconsistency, Springer Verlag. pp. 3-19. 2019.Modal Meinongianism—the version of Meinongianism invented by Graham Priest—presupposes that we can think about absolute impossibilities. I defend the view that we can, by tidying up a couple of loose ends in Priest’s arguments to this effect from his book Towards Non-Being.
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1625Modal Meinongianism and Object TheoryAustralasian Journal of Logic 17 (1): 1-21. 2020.We reply to various arguments by Otavio Bueno and Edward Zalta (‘Object Theory and Modal Meinongianism’) against Modal Meinongianism, including that it presupposes, but cannot maintain, a unique denotation for names of fictional characters, and that it is not generalizable to higher-order objects. We individuate the crucial difference between Modal Meinongianism and Object Theory in the former’s resorting to an apparatus of worlds, possible and impossible, for the representational purposes for w…Read more
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1650Simple Hyperintensional Belief RevisionErkenntnis 84 (3): 559-575. 2018.I present a possible worlds semantics for a hyperintensional belief revision operator, which reduces the logical idealization of cognitive agents affecting similar operators in doxastic and epistemic logics, as well as in standard AGM belief revision theory. (Revised) belief states are not closed under classical logical consequence; revising by inconsistent information does not perforce lead to trivialization; and revision can be subject to ‘framing effects’: logically or necessarily equivalent …Read more
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2634The Fundamental Problem of Logical OmniscienceJournal of Philosophical Logic 49 (4): 727-766. 2020.We propose a solution to the problem of logical omniscience in what we take to be its fundamental version: as concerning arbitrary agents and the knowledge attitude per se. Our logic of knowledge is a spin-off from a general theory of thick content, whereby the content of a sentence has two components: an intension, taking care of truth conditions; and a topic, taking care of subject matter. We present a list of plausible logical validities and invalidities for the logic of knowledge per se for …Read more
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2331Negation on the Australian PlanJournal of Philosophical Logic 48 (6): 1119-1144. 2019.We present and defend the Australian Plan semantics for negation. This is a comprehensive account, suitable for a variety of different logics. It is based on two ideas. The first is that negation is an exclusion-expressing device: we utter negations to express incompatibilities. The second is that, because incompatibility is modal, negation is a modal operator as well. It can, then, be modelled as a quantifier over points in frames, restricted by accessibility relations representing compatibilit…Read more
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1338The Logic of Fast and Slow ThinkingErkenntnis 86 (3): 733-762. 2019.We present a framework for epistemic logic, modeling the logical aspects of System 1 and System 2 cognitive processes, as per dual process theories of reasoning. The framework combines non-normal worlds semantics with the techniques of Dynamic Epistemic Logic. It models non-logically-omniscient, but moderately rational agents: their System 1 makes fast sense of incoming information by integrating it on the basis of their background knowledge and beliefs. Their System 2 allows them to slowly, ste…Read more
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2490Truth in Fiction, Impossible Worlds, and Belief RevisionAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (1): 178-193. 2019.We present a theory of truth in fiction that improves on Lewis's [1978] ‘Analysis 2’ in two ways. First, we expand Lewis's possible worlds apparatus by adding non-normal or impossible worlds. Second, we model truth in fiction as belief revision via ideas from dynamic epistemic logic. We explain the major objections raised against Lewis's original view and show that our theory overcomes them.
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12Inconsistency in Ceteris Paribus ImaginationIn Peter Verdée & Holger Andreas (eds.), Logical Studies of Paraconsistent Reasoning in Science and Mathematics, Springer Verlag. pp. 47-63. 2016.I propose to model imagination as a ceteris paribus modal operator: a variably strict world quantifier in a modal framework including both possible and so-called non-normal or impossible worlds. The latter secure lack of closure under classical logical consequence for the relevant mental states, while the variability of strictness captures how the agent imports information from actuality in the imagined non-actual scenarios. The proposed formal semantics models how a conceiving agent can imagine…Read more
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229Counting the Particles: Entity and Identity in the Philosophy of PhysicsMetaphysica 18 (1): 69-89. 2017.I would like to attack a certain view: The view that the concept of identity can fail to apply to some things although, for some positive integer n, we have n of them. The idea of entities without self-identity is seriously entertained in the philosophy of quantum mechanics. It is so pervasive that it has been labelled the Received View. I introduce the Received View in Section 1. In Section 2 I explain what I mean by entity, and I argue that supporters of the Received View should agree with my …Read more
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188Taming the runabout imagination ticketSynthese 1 (Suppl 8): 2029-2043. 2018.This research is published within the project ‘The Logic of Conceivability’, funded by the European Research Council, Grant Number 681404.
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2117Knowability Relative to InformationMind 130 (517): 1-33. 2018.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 (‘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 knowledge t…Read more
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2242Aboutness 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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90Modal 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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78Un'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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47Some 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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1736Williamson 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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150Guest 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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Scenari dell’impossibile. La contraddizione nel pensiero contemporaneo (edited book)Il Poligrafo. 2007.
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3012Absolute 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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772The 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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365Modal 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 Russellian…Read more
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2395Is 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
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 |