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986Knowability 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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1366Aboutness 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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39Modal 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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Quale barba per il rasoio di ockham?: Problemi del riduzionismo metafisicoDivus Thomas 110 (2): 9-28. 2007.
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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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732Williamson 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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970Coincident Entities and Question-Begging Predicates: an Issue in Meta-OntologyMetaphysica 14 (1): 1-15. 2013.Meta-ontology (in van Inwagen's sense) concerns the methodology of ontology, and a controversial meta-ontological issue is to what extent ontology can rely on linguistic analysis while establishing the furniture of the world. This paper discusses an argument advanced by some ontologists (I call them unifiers) against supporters of or coincident entities (I call them multipliers) and its meta-ontological import. Multipliers resort to Leibniz's Law to establish that spatiotemporally coincident ent…Read more
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556The Selection ProblemRevue Internationale de Philosophie 262 (4): 519-537. 2012.In 'Fiction and Fictionalism', Mark Sainsbury has recently dubbed “Selection Problem” a serious trouble for Meinongian object theories. Typically, Meinongianism has been phrased as a kind of realism on nonexistent objects : these are mind-independent things, not mental simulacra, having the properties they have independently from the activity of any cognitive agent. But how can one single out an object we have no causal acquaintance with, and which is devoid of spatiotemporal location, picking i…Read more
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717To exist and to count: A note on the minimalist viewDialectica 63 (3): 343-356. 2009.Sometimes mereologists have problems with counting. We often don't want to count the parts of maximally connected objects as full-fledged objects themselves, and we don't want to count discontinuous objects as parts of further, full-fledged objects. But whatever one takes "full-fledged object" to mean, the axioms and theorems of classical, extensional mereology commit us to the existence both of parts and of wholes – all on a par, included in the domain of quantification – and this makes mereolo…Read more
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275Meaning, Metaphysics, and ContradictionAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 43 (4): 283-297. 2006.None
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207How to Sell a Contradiction: The Logic and Metaphysics of InconsistencyCollege Publications. 2007.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
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25Buone scartoffie, cattive intenzioni: una piccola nota su DocumentalitàRivista di Estetica 50 29-35. 2012.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
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1187Modal Meinongianism and CharacterizationGrazer 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.
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35There's Something About Gdel: The Complete Guide to the Incompleteness TheoremWiley-Blackwell. 2009.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
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2182Paraconsistency: Logic and Applications (edited book)Springer. 2013.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
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984Impossible Worlds and the Logic of ImaginationErkenntnis 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
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Scenari dell’impossibile. La contraddizione nel pensiero contemporaneo (edited book)Il Poligrafo. 2007.
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69Guest 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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1607Absolute 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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438The 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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263Modal 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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1143Is 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 |