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14Can negative existentials be referentially vindicated?Lingua E Stile 29 397-419. 1994.In The Theory of Objects, Alexius Meinong used true negative existentials to argue in favour of non-existent objects: in order to assert veridically that an object O does not exist, one has to refer to O itself1. From Bertrand Russell's "On Denoting" onwards, it has become a commonplace to say that this argument does not work. For every sentence apparently concerning non-existents one can provide a paraphrase which eliminates the singular term contained in it and therefore dispels the illusion o…Read more
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14Intenzionalità, normatività e riferimentoRivista di Estetica 34 (34-36): 163-180. 2007.Che cos’hanno a che fare tra loro un filosofo che, a partire da Wittgenstein, ha sviluppato una teoria di impianto naturalista e che cerca di conciliare una prospettiva individualistica con una tendenzialmente socioesternista della competenza semantica, una teoria che studi di psicologia cognitiva e di neuroscienze si stanno incaricando di inverare, e un altro che, a partire dallo stesso Wittgenstein, ha sviluppato una concezione antinaturalista tanto dell’intenzionalità quanto della normativ...
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13Yet another Theory of the Metaphysical Difference between Genuine Perceptions and HallucinationsGrazer Philosophische Studien 97 (2): 245-270. 2020.In this article, first of all, the author wants to show that a new justification can be provided for the idea, originally maintained in the disjunctivist camp, that genuine perceptions and hallucinations are metaphysically different kinds of mental states, independently of the fact that they all are perceptual experiences. For even if they share their phenomenal character and their representational content is put aside for the purpose of their metaphysical individuation, as some conjunctivists m…Read more
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13A syncretistic ontology of fictional beingsIn T. Koblizek, P. Kot'atko & M. Pokorny (eds.), Text + Work: The Menard Case, Litteraria Pragensia. pp. 89-108. 2013.In the camp of the believers in fictional entities, two main paradigms nowadays face each other: the neo-Meinongian and the artifactualist.1 Both parties agree on the idea that ficta are abstract entities, i.e. things that exist (at least in the actual world) even though in a non-spatiotemporal way. Yet according to the former paradigm, ficta are entities of a Platonic sort: either sets of properties (or at least ‘one-one’ correlates of such sets) or generic objects. According to the latter para…Read more
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12Che cosa socialmente c’èRivista di Estetica 50 377-389. 2012.Maurizio Ferraris’ theory on social entities presents many interesting analogies with artefactualist theories on fictional entities. Like artefactualism, however, it probably needs some integration. As Ferraris himself acknowledges, mere dependence on subjects does not by itself qualify an entity as social. Moreover, the very same definition of a social entity as an inscribed (social) act seems to yield merely necessary, but not sufficient, identity conditions for such an entity. To my mind, wha…Read more
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12How Fictional Works Are Related to Fictional EntitiesDialectica 57 (2): 225-238. 2003.The paper attempts at yielding a language‐independent argument in favour of fictional entities, that is, an argument providing genuinely ontological reasons in favour of such entities. According to this argument, ficta are indispensable insofar as they are involved in the identity conditions of semantically‐based entities we ordinarily accept, i.e. fictional works. It will also be evaluated to what extent this argument is close to other arguments recently provided to the same purpose.
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11Russell e l'abbandono del suo meinonghianesimo nascostoRivista di Estetica 32 (32): 93-107. 2006.In questo paper cercherò di mostrare che la visione tradizionale del mutamento da parte di Russell della sua teoria delle descrizioni definite negli anni che vanno dai Principles of Mathematics del 1903 a «On Denoting» del 1905, visione secondo cui Russell produce una nuova teoria delle descrizioni (anche) per liberarsi dagli impegni ontologici manifesti di stampo meinonghiano ad entità inesistenti connessi alla sua precedente teoria delle descrizioni, non è convincente, perché le due teorie...
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11Oggetti fittizi: lo stato dell'arteIride: Filosofia e Discussione Pubblica 17 (1): 177-188. 2004.
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11Towards Non‐being. The Logic And Metaphysics of Intentionality – By G. PriestDialectica 62 (4): 557-561. 2008.
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10Why the Computational Account of Rule‐Following Cannot Rule out the Grammatical AccountEuropean Journal of Philosophy 9 (1): 82-104. 2001.
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10Contingent and necessary identitiesActa Analytica 12 73-98. 1997.A new theory of identity statements is put forward which appeals to a basic distinction between two notions of identity, i.e. strict and loose identity. The former is the traditional necessary relation of an object with the object itself, whereas the latter is a contingent relation of reduction of some (at least two) possible unactual objects to a possible actual object. By appealing to strict identity, one can maintain that some tokenings of identity sentences express a semantic content which i…Read more
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9How to get intentionality by languageIn G. Forrai & G. Kampis (eds.), Intentionality: Past and Future, Rodopi. pp. 127-141. 2005.One is often told that sentences expressing or reporting mental states endowed with intentionality—the feature of being “directed upon” an object that some mental states possess—contain contexts that both prevent those sentences to be existentially generalized and are filled by referentially opaque occurrences of singular terms. Failure of existential generalization and referential opacity have been traditionally said to be the basic characterizations of intentionality from a linguistic point of…Read more
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9Names for Ficta, for intentionalia, and for nothingIn María José Frápolli (ed.), Saying, Meaning and Referring: Essays on François Recanati's Philosophy of Language, Palgrave-macmillan. pp. 183-197. 2007.In his Oratio Obliqua, Oratio Recta, Recanati maintains two main theses regarding meta-representational sentences embedding allegedly empty proper names. The first thesis concerns both belief sentences embedding allegedly empty names and (internal) meta-fictional sentences (i.e., sentences of the form “in the story S, p”) embedding fictional, hence again allegedly empty, names. It says that such sentences primarily have fictive truth-conditions: that is, conditions for their fictional truth. The…Read more
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8Pictorial misrepresentation without figurative mispresentationStudi di Estetica 19. 2021.As many people have underlined, as regards pictures there are at least two different layers of content. In Voltolini, these layers are: i) the figurative content of a picture, i.e., what one can see in it viz. what the picture presents; ii) the pictorial content of a picture, i.e., what the picture represents, as constrained by its figurative content. As regards ii), there undoubtedly ispictorial misrepresentation. Having the possibility of misrepresenting things is a standard condition in order…Read more
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8Did the Greeks believe in their myths?Philosophical Psychology. forthcoming.In this paper, against a new imagination-based account defended by Anna Ichino in some recent works, I defend the intuitive and traditional idea that so-called religious beliefs are indeed those doxastic attitudes that they are traditionally taken to be, i.e., bona fide beliefs. Yet I take that the objects of such beliefs amount to be different from what religious believers consciously take them to be; namely, they are mythological characters, a species of fictional characters – namely, fictiona…Read more
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7Raffigurazioni senza finzioniRivista di Estetica 40 71-83. 2009.In svariate occasioni (1973, 1990, 2002) Kendall Walton ha sostenuto una teoria della raffigurazione basata sul concetto di far finta: P raffigura (almeno) solo se per il fatto di avere un’esperienza percettiva di P, si fa finta che tale esperienza sia l’esperienza percettiva del soggetto rappresentato da P. Una conseguenza di questa teoria è che, se un individuo non sa far finta, allora ciò con cui si confronta direttamente nella percezione non è una raffigurazione per lui. Ci sono però molt...
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7Intentionality in the TractatusDisputatio 10 (18). 2021.In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein seems to appeal to the idea that thoughts manage to explain how sentences, primarily elementary sentences, can be such that their subsentential elements refer to objects. In this respect, he seems indeed to appeal to the claim that thoughts, qua endowed with not only original, but also intrinsic, intentionality, lend this intentionality to names, by transforming them into ‘names-of’, i.e., symbols endowed with intrinsic intentionality as well. Such a claim, however…Read more
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7Twofoldness and Three-Layeredness in Pictorial RepresentationEstetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 55 (1): 89. 2020.
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7From Fictionalism to Realism (edited book)Cambridge Scholars Press. 2013.In ontology, realism and anti-realism may be taken as opposite attitudes towards entities of different kinds, so that one may turn out to be a realist with respect to certain entities, and an anti-realist with respect to others. In this book, the editors focus on this controversy concerning social entities in general and fictional entities in particular, the latter often being considered nowadays as kinds of social entities. More specifically, fictionalists (those who maintain that we only make-…Read more
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6From Hegel to KaplanIn C. Penco & G. Sarbia (eds.), Alle radici della filosofia analitica, Erga. pp. 825-850. 1996.Da Hegel fino a Bradley, l'attacco idealista ad una concezione pluralistica della realtà come una credenza non suffragata dalla verità delle cose si è valso dell'argomento semantico secondo il quale le espressioni indicali, su cui da ultimo riposerebbe tutta la valenza referenziale del linguaggio, non si riferiscono a segmenti discreti del reale ma si limitano ad esprimere universali. Dal versante ontologico opposto, Russell ha guidato la reazione all'idealismo assoluto (inaugurando così uno dei…Read more
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6Possible objects and possible states of affairs in Wittgenstein's tractatusIn P. Frascolla (ed.), Tractatus logico-philosophicus: Sources, Themes, Perspectives., Università Degli Studi Della Basilicata. pp. 129-153. 2002.In one of its latest papers Timothy Williamson has drawn a distinction between two readings of the phrase "possible F", where "F" is a predicate variable: the predicative and the attributive. In what follows, on the one hand I will hold that the first reading naturally applies to the phrase "possible object", thereby supporting a moderata conception of possibilia as entities that possibly exist. Moreover, I will maintain that one such conception provides the best possible account of Tractarian o…Read more
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6Wittgensteinian watered-down qualiaIn A. Coliva & E. Picardi (eds.), Wittgenstein Today, Il Poligrafo. pp. 335-352. 2004.In this paper I want to hold that Wittgenstein’s later position on qualitative states, which sees them as triplets made out of three necessary components - stimulus, qualitative element and manifestability - allows for supervenience of such states over physical ones. Insofar as this is the case, such a position is more akin to naturalism that the one that has been recently defended by Kim, who allows for merely partial supervenience of qualia over physical states. Moreover, Wittgenstein’s concep…Read more
Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Value Theory |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Aesthetics |