•  1786
    Voluntary Imagination: A Fine-Grained Analysis
    Review 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
  •  864
    Adding 4.0241 to TLP
    In 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
  •  87
    Modal Meinongianism: Conceiving the Impossible
    In 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.
  •  1618
    Modal Meinongianism and Object Theory
    with Filippo Casati, Naoya Fujikawa, and Graham Priest
    Australasian 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
  •  1649
    Simple Hyperintensional Belief Revision
    Erkenntnis 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
  •  2629
    The Fundamental Problem of Logical Omniscience
    Journal 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
  •  2326
    Negation on the Australian Plan
    Journal 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
  •  1336
    The Logic of Fast and Slow Thinking
    Erkenntnis 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
  •  2480
    Truth in Fiction, Impossible Worlds, and Belief Revision
    Australasian 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.
  •  12
    Inconsistency in Ceteris Paribus Imagination
    In 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
  •  226
    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
  •  188
    Taming the runabout imagination ticket
    Synthese 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.
  •  2117
    Knowability Relative to Information
    Mind 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
  •  2241
    Aboutness in Imagination
    Philosophical 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
  •  90
    Modal Meinongianism and Actuality
    Humana 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
  •  78
    Un'interpretazione analitica della dialettica hegeliana
    Iride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 17 (3): 569-592. 2004.
  • Dialettica come semantica
    Epistemologia 26 (1): 5-44. 2003.
  •  14
    Modus Tollerns. Kant, Hegel e la critica della nozione logica di sostanza
    Giornale di Metafisica 25 (2): 287-304. 2003.
  • Quale barba per il rasoio di ockham?: Problemi del riduzionismo metafisico
    with Enrico Bellinelli
    Divus Thomas 110 (2): 9-28. 2007.
  •  1733
    Williamson on Counterpossibles
    Journal 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.
  •  270
    There is a principle in things, about which we cannot be deceived, but must always, on the contrary, recognize the truth – viz. that the same thing cannot at one and the same time be and not be": with these words of the Metaphysics, Aristotle introduced the Law of Non-Contradiction, which was to become the most authoritative principle in the history of Western thought. However, things have recently changed, and nowadays various philosophers, called dialetheists, claim that this Law does not hold…Read more
  •  110
    I take into account Ferraris’ attempt at reversing the traditional order of explanation going from thought to language and writing, as exposed in Documentalità. The reversal is supposed to provide a new ontology of social objects that dispenses with Searle’s notion of (collective) intentionality. The book’s motto is «[social] object = written act». What does that identity sign mean? Given that social objects are not identical with documents taken as mere material objects, they must be identical …Read more
  •  2295
    Modal Meinongianism and Characterization
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 90 (1): 183-200. 2014.
    In this paper we reply to arguments of Kroon (“Characterization and Existence in Modal Meinongianism”. Grazer Philosophische Studien 86, 23–34) to the effect that Modal Meinongianism cannot do justice to Meinongian claims such as that the golden mountain is golden, and that it does not exist.
  •  203
    Berto’s highly readable and lucid guide introduces students and the interested reader to Gödel’s celebrated _Incompleteness Theorem_, and discusses some of the most famous - and infamous - claims arising from Gödel's arguments. Offers a clear understanding of this difficult subject by presenting each of the key steps of the _Theorem_ in separate chapters Discusses interpretations of the _Theorem_ made by celebrated contemporary thinkers Sheds light on the wider extra-mathematical and philosophic…Read more
  •  3953
    A logic is called 'paraconsistent' if it rejects the rule called 'ex contradictione quodlibet', according to which any conclusion follows from inconsistent premises. While logicians have proposed many technically developed paraconsistent logical systems and contemporary philosophers like Graham Priest have advanced the view that some contradictions can be true, and advocated a paraconsistent logic to deal with them, until recent times these systems have been little understood by philosophers. Th…Read more
  •  2232
    Impossible Worlds and the Logic of Imagination
    Erkenntnis 82 (6): 1277-1297. 2017.
    I want to model a finite, fallible cognitive agent who imagines that p in the sense of mentally representing a scenario—a configuration of objects and properties—correctly described by p. I propose to capture imagination, so understood, via variably strict world quantifiers, in a modal framework including both possible and so-called impossible worlds. The latter secure lack of classical logical closure for the relevant mental states, while the variability of strictness captures how the agent imp…Read more