•  69
    The Bound State Answer to the Special Composition Question
    Philosophy of Science 89 (3): 486-503. 2022.
    This paper provides the first thorough assessment of a physics-based answer, the Bound State Answer, to the Special Composition Question. According to the BSA some objects compose something if they are in a common bound state. The reasons to endorse such an answer, in particular, motivations coming from empirical adequacy and conservativeness, precision, simplicity, and parsimony, are critically addressed. I then go on to compare the BSA to other moderate answers to the SCQ and consider whether …Read more
  •  66
    Inheriting harmony
    Analysis 82 (1): 23-32. 2022.
    Supersubstantivalism, the view that material objects are identical to their locations, has recently been defended in metaphysics and philosophy of physics. One of the most powerful arguments in its favour is the so-called argument from harmony. There is a certain harmony between material objects and their locations. Necessarily, if material object x is located at a spherical region, x is spherical. Necessarily, if material object x is located at region r, any part of x is located at a part of r.…Read more
  •  63
    Arrows, Balls and the Metaphysics of Motion
    Axiomathes 24 (4): 499-515. 2014.
    The arrow paradox is an argument purported to show that objects do not really move. The two main metaphysics of motion, the At–At theory of motion and velocity primitivism, solve the paradox differently. It is argued that neither solution is completely satisfactory. In particular it is contended that there are no decisive arguments in favor of the claim that velocity as it is constructed in the At–At theory is a truly instantaneous property, which is a crucial assumption to solve the paradox. If…Read more
  •  59
    Quantum relational indeterminacy
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 71 (C): 158-169. 2020.
  •  59
    Pre-Socratic Discrete Kinematics
    Disputatio 5 (35): 21-31. 2013.
    Calosi-Fano_Pre-socratic-discrete-kinematics2
  •  52
    There Are No Saints, Or: Quantum Multilocation
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 1-20. forthcoming.
    Multilocation – the notion of an object being at two places – is a central notion in metaphysics. According to a widespread view, multilocation is problematic but metaphysically possible. In effect, it has been claimed that in a quantum world, multilocation is not simply possible but actual. This article provides a new argument against the latter claim: there is no quantum multilocation.
  •  49
    Composition, identity, and emergence
    Logic and Logical Philosophy 25 (3): 429-443. 2016.
    Composition as Identity is the thesis that a whole is, strictly and literally, identical to its parts, considered collectively. McDaniel [2008] argues against CAI in that it prohibits emergent properties. Recently Sider [2014] exploited the resources of plural logic and extensional mereology to undermine McDaniel’s argument. He shows that CAI identifies extensionally equivalent pluralities – he calls it the Collapse Principle – and then shows how this identification rescues CAI from the emergent…Read more
  •  44
    Extended Simples, Unextended Complexes
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 52 (2): 643-668. 2023.
    Both extended simples and unextended complexes have been extensively discussed and widely used in metaphysics and philosophy of physics. However, the characterizations of such notions are not entirely satisfactory inasmuch as they rely on a mereological notion of extension that is too simplistic. According to such a mereological notion, being extended boils down to having a mereologically complex exact location. In this paper, I make a detailed plea to supplement this notion of extension with a …Read more
  •  43
    Atoms, combs, syllables and organisms
    Philosophical Studies 180 (7): 1995-2024. 2023.
    Mereological atomism is the thesis that everything is ultimately composed of atomic parts, i.e., parts without proper parts. Typically, this thesis is characterized by an axiom stating that everything has atomic parts. The present paper argues that the success of this standard characterization depends on how the notions of sum and composition are defined. In particular, we put forward a novel definition of mereological sum that: (i) is not equivalent to existing definitions in the literature, if…Read more
  •  43
    Physics and Metaphysics
    Humana Mente 4 (13). 2018.
    It is notoriously difficult to define Metaphysics1, its content, its method, its language, its scope. Thus I will not even try an attempt here. I will rest content to point out some widely held characterizations. A long and highly influential tradition maintains that Metaphysics is the study of being qua being. It is concerned with what there is, what kind of things are the things that there are, what properties do they have, how they are related. In this sense Metaphysics deals with the more ge…Read more
  •  41
    Solving a Mereological Puzzle
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 7 (4): 271-277. 2018.
    There is an interesting puzzle about the interaction between mereology, topology, and dependence. It is not only interesting in and on itself, but also reveals subtleties about the aforementioned interaction that have gone unnoticed. The puzzle has it that the following plausible claims are jointly inconsistent: wholes depend on their parts; boundaries are parts; boundaries depend on the whole they are part of. In the paper, I first argue that claims – are not as a matter of fact inconsitent ins…Read more
  •  40
    There are famously two main metaphysics of persistence, namely three and four-dimensionalism. Both yield a particular solution to the so called puzzle of change. I argue that typical three-dimensionalist solutions to the puzzle face insurmountable difficulties even in the simplest relativistic setting, that of Minkowski spacetime.
  •  38
    On the Contingency of Universalism
    Erkenntnis 88 (5): 1-15. 2021.
    The paper presents different arguments against the necessity of mereological universalism. First, it argues that they are examples of a much more general argumentative structure. It then contends that some of these arguments cannot be resisted by distinguishing different variants of universalism that have been recently proposed in the literature—in contrast with recent suggestions to the contrary. Finally, it provides different ways to resist such contingentist arguments on behalf of universalis…Read more
  •  38
    The general-relativistic case for super-substantivalism
    with Patrick M. Duerr
    Synthese 199 (5-6): 13789-13822. 2021.
    Super-substantivalism (of the type we’ll consider) roughly comprises two core tenets: (1) the physical properties which we attribute to matter (e.g. charge or mass) can be attributed to spacetime directly, with no need for matter as an extraneous carrier “on top of” spacetime; (2) spacetime is more fundamental than (ontologically prior to) matter. In the present paper, we revisit a recent argument in favour of super-substantivalism, based on General Relativity. A critique is offered that highlig…Read more
  •  38
    An elegant universe
    Synthese 197 (11): 4767-4782. 2020.
    David Lewis famously endorsed Unrestricted Composition. His defense of such a controversial principle builds on the alleged innocence of mereology. This innocence defense has come under different attacks in the last decades. In this paper I pursue another line of defense, that stems from some early remarks by van Inwagen. I argue that Unrestricted Composition leads to a better metaphysics. In particular I provide new arguments for the following claims: Unrestricted Composition entails extensiona…Read more
  •  36
    Quantum modal indeterminacy
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 95 (C): 177-184. 2022.
  •  33
    There Are No Saints
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 99 (1): 30-49. 2022.
    Multilocation – the notion of an object being 18756735_00000147_text.pdfat two places – is a central notion in metaphysics. According to a widespread view, multilocation is problematic but metaphysically possible. In effect, it has been claimed that in a quantum world, multilocation is not simply possible but actual. This article provides a new argument against the latter claim: there is no quantum multilocation.
  •  31
    Determinables, location, and indeterminacy
    Synthese 198 (5): 4191-4204. 2019.
    Discussions about determinables and determinates, on the one hand, and discussions about (formal) theories of location, on the other, have thus far proceeded without any visible interaction, in substantive mutual neglect. This paper aims to remedy this situation of neglect. It explicitly relates (theories of) determinables and (theories of) location. First, I argue that some well known principles of location turn out to be instances of principles relating determinables and determinates. Building…Read more
  •  29
    Universalism and extensionalism revisited
    Synthese 201 (3): 1-18. 2023.
    We present a new notion of mereological sum that is inequivalent to extant ones in the literature and does not fall prey to reasonable complaints that can be raised against some such notions. In light of this notion, we then revisit the relation between mereological universalism and extensionalism. In particular we argue that Varzi’s claim to the point that universalism entails extensionalism is justified only insofar as one sticks to Varzi’s notion of sum. In effect, we distinguish different ve…Read more
  •  28
    A scholarly annotated epic poem on the pitfalls and tribulations of “good philosophizing”. Divided into twenty-eight cantos (in medieval Italian hendecasyllabic terza rima), the poem tells of an allegorical journey through the downward spiral of the philosophers’ hell, where all sorts of thinkers are punished for their faults and mistakes, in the endeavor to reach a way out of the condition of intellectual impasse in which the narrator has found himself. The affinities with Dante’s Inferno are a…Read more
  •  25
    This volume is the first systematic and thorough attempt to investigate the relation and the possible applications of mereology to contemporary science. It gathers contributions from leading scholars in the field and covers a wide range of scientific theories and practices such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering. Throughout the volume, a variety of foundational issues are investigated both from the formal and the empirical point of view. The first secti…Read more
  •  25
    Gappy, glutty, glappy
    Synthese 199 (3-4): 11305-11321. 2021.
    According to the Determinable Based Account of metaphysical indeterminacy, there is MI when there is an indeterminate state of affairs, roughly a state of affairs in which a constituent object x has a determinable property but fails to have a unique determinate of that determinable. There are different ways in which x might have a determinable but no unique determinate: x has no determinate—gappy MI, or x has more than one determinate—glutty MI. Talk of determinables and determinates is usually …Read more
  •  23
    According to Relational Quantum Mechanics the wave function \ is considered neither a concrete physical item evolving in spacetime, nor an object representing the absolute state of a certain quantum system. In this interpretative framework, \ is defined as a computational device encoding observers’ information; hence, RQM offers a somewhat epistemic view of the wave function. This perspective seems to be at odds with the PBR theorem, a formal result excluding that wave functions represent knowle…Read more
  •  15
    Interpreting Quantum Entanglement: Steps towards Coherentist Quantum Mechanics
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (3): 865-891. 2021.
    We put forward a new, ‘coherentist’ account of quantum entanglement, according to which entangled systems are characterized by symmetric relations of ontological dependence among the component particles. We compare this coherentist viewpoint with the two most popular alternatives currently on offer—structuralism and holism—and argue that it is essentially different from, and preferable to, both. In the course of this article, we point out how coherentism might be extended beyond the case of enta…Read more
  •  15
    On the Contingency of Universalism
    Erkenntnis 88 (5): 1997-2011. 2023.
    The paper presents different arguments against the necessity of mereological universalism. First, it argues that they are examples of a much more general argumentative structure. It then contends that some of these arguments cannot be resisted by distinguishing different variants of universalism that have been recently proposed in the literature—in contrast with recent suggestions to the contrary. Finally, it provides different ways to resist such contingentist arguments on behalf of universalis…Read more
  •  13
  •  7
    By(e) enduring? An answer to Wasserman
    Synthese 202 (4): 1-12. 2023.
    According to a recent argument due to Wasserman, endurantism does not qualify as an explanatory theory of persistence inasmuch as it either provides a circular account of persistence facts or merely rejects the perdurantist’s explanation of such facts. This paper challenges Wasserman’s conclusions by pointing out that an endurantist answer to his complaint is available thanks to the locational notions of persistence provided in the work of Gilmore, Parsons, Balashov among others. It then gives d…Read more
  •  7
    La fondazione della conoscenza nell’estetica di Croce: una lettura ‘analitica’
    Annali Del Dipartimento di Filosofia 14 107-131. 2008.
    I interpret the first part of Croce’s Estetica as an example of ageneral foundational argument about knowledge. I argue thatCroce uses correctly this very general argumentative structure.I argue that this foundational attempt could not be read neitheras a trascendental nor a reductionist attempt. I suggest that thevery best way to look at it is to be found in Croce’s later works.I then conclude with some problems that arises within the foundational context.Keywords: knowledge, foundationalism, i…Read more
  •  1
    No Time for (No) Change
    In Alessandra Campo & Simone Gozzano (eds.), Einstein Vs. Bergson: An Enduring Quarrel on Time, De Gruyter. pp. 301-330. 2021.