University of Padua
Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology
PhD, 1998
Padua, Italy
  •  60
    Towards a Formal Account of Identity Criteria
    with Silvia Gaio
    In Majda Trobok Nenad Miščević & Berislav Žarnić (eds.), Between Logic and Reality, Springer. pp. 227--242. 2012.
  •  37
    Following the speech act theory, we take hypotheses and assertions as linguistic acts with different illocutionary forces. We assume that a hypothesis is justified if there is at least a scintilla of evidence for the truth of its propositional content, while an assertion is justified when there is conclusive evidence that its propositional content is true. Here we extend the logical treatment for assertions given by Dalla Pozza and Garola (1995, Erkenntnis, 43, 81–109) by outlining a pragmatic l…Read more
  •  20
    This special issue of GPS collects 11 papers (and a long introduction), by leading philosophers and young researchers, which tackle more or less from close the topic of propositions by trying to provide the reader with a cross-section of the ongoing debate in this area. The raised issues range over the semantics, the ontology, the epistemology, and the philosophy of mathematics and stimulate the reader to reflect on crucial problems such as the following: are propositions objects? In the positiv…Read more
  •  20
    Recensioni / Reviews
    with Jan Woleński, Roberto Poli, Luigi Dappiano, and Sandro Bertoni
    Axiomathes 5 (2-3): 415-435. 1994.
  •  25
    Preliminaries to a logic of malfunction
    In Pavel Arazim Michal Dancak (ed.), The Logica Yearbook, College Publications. pp. 33-47. 2015.
  •  14
    The entailment connective is introduced by Priest (2006b). It aims to capture, in a dialetheically acceptable way, the informal notion of logical consequence. This connective does not “fall foul” of Curry’s Paradox by invalidating an inference rule called “Absorption” (or “Contraction”) and the classical logical theorem called “Assertion”. In this paper we show that the semantics of entailment, given by Priest in terms of possible worlds, is inadequate. In particular, we will argue that Priest’s…Read more
  •  118
    Logical orthodoxy has it that classical first-order logic, or some extension thereof, provides the right extension of the logical consequence relation. However, together with naïve but intuitive principles about semantic notions such as truth, denotation, satisfaction, and possibly validity and other naïve logical properties, classical logic quickly leads to inconsistency, and indeed triviality. At least since the publication of Kripke’s Outline of a theory of truth , an increasingly popular dia…Read more
  •  1
    Individuals, Essence and Identity (edited book)
    with P. Giaretta and Andrea Bottani
    Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2001.
  •  7
    2.4. Criteri d’identità e adeguatezza logica
    with Silvia Gaio
    Rivista di Estetica 49 141-160. 2012.
    Aim of the paper is to make some steps towards a formal characterization of identity criteria. First of all, we analyse some logical requirements identity criteria are supposed to satisfy and observe that some commonly used identity criteria fail to meet some of them. We focus in particular on the equivalence requirement. We consider then the proposals which have been given so far and aimed at providing logical adequacy to non-equivalent identity conditions. To this purpose, we analyse Williamso…Read more
  •  60
    The Knowability Paradox in the light of a Logic for Pragmatics
    In Roberto Ciuni, Heinrich Wansing & Caroline Willkommen (eds.), Recent Trends in Philosophical Logic (Proceedings of Trends in Logic XI), Springer. pp. 47-58. 2014.
    The Knowability Paradox is a logical argument showing that if all truths are knowable in principle, then all truths are, in fact, known. Many strategies have been suggested in order to avoid the paradoxical conclusion. A family of solutions –ncalled logical revision – has been proposed to solve the paradox, revising the logic underneath, with an intuitionistic revision included. In this paper, we focus on so-called revisionary solutions to the paradox – solutions that put the blame on the underl…Read more
  •  139
    Cardinality and Identity
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 36 (5): 539-556. 2007.
    P.T. Geach has maintained (see, e.g., Geach (1967/1968)) that identity (as well as dissimilarity) is always relative to a general term. According to him, the notion of absolute identity has to be abandoned and replaced by a multiplicity of relative identity relations for which Leibniz's Law - which says that if two objects are identical they have the same properties - does not hold. For Geach relative identity is at least as good as Frege's cardinality thesis which he takes to be strictly connec…Read more
  •  90
    Relative Identity and the Number of Artifacts
    Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 13 (2): 108-122. 2009.
    Relativists maintain that identity is always relative to a general term. According to them, the notion of absolute identity has to be abandoned and replaced by a multiplicity of relative identity relations for which Leibniz’s Law does not hold. For relativists RI is at least as good as the Fregean cardinality thesis, which contends that an ascription of cardinality is always relative to a concept specifying what, in any specific case, counts as a unit. The same train of thought on cardinality an…Read more
  •  65
    On biological identity
    with Giovanni Boniolo
    Biology and Philosophy 19 (3): 443-457. 2004.
    In our paper, we propose a relativisticand metaphysically neutral identity criterionfor biological entities. We start from thecriterion of genidentity proposed by K. Lewinand H. Reichenbach. Then we enrich it to renderit more philosophical powerful and so capableof dealing with the real transformations thatoccur in the extremely variegated biologicalworld.
  •  250
    On the ontological commitment of mereology
    Review of Symbolic Logic 2 (1): 164-174. 2009.
    In Parts of Classes (1991) and Mathematics Is Megethology (1993) David Lewis defends both the innocence of plural quantification and of mereology. However, he himself claims that the innocence of mereology is different from that of plural reference, where reference to some objects does not require the existence of a single entity picking them out as a whole. In the case of plural quantification . Instead, in the mereological case: (Lewis, 1991, p. 87). The aim of the paper is to argue that one—a…Read more
  •  23
    Two Arguments against Antirealism in Relation to Artefact Kinds
    with Marzia Soavi and Silvia Gaio
    In Guido Bonino, Greg Jesson & Javier Cumpa (eds.), Defending Realism: Ontological and Epistemological Investigations, De Gruyter. pp. 9-28. 2014.
  •  43
    Symposium on “Cognition and Rationality: Part II”
    with Paolo Cherubini and Pierdaniele Giaretta
    Mind and Society 6 (1): 35-39. 2007.
    This is an excerpt from the contentIn the introduction to part I of the symposium we stated that a rational agent could be thought of as an agent who has good reasons for its actions. In formal analyses of economic, medical, political, military and forensic decisions rationality, that is the “goodness” of those reasons, is inextricably intertwined with probability. Typically, those analyses concern decisions in a particular class of uncertain situations, namely “risky” situations, where all the …Read more
  • Modality and Tense - Kit Fine (review)
    Humana Mente 3 (8). 2009.
  •  226
    The Knowability Paradox is a logical argument to the effect that, if there are truths not actually known, then there are unknowable truths. Recently, Alexander Paseau and Bernard Linsky have independently suggested a possible way to counter this argument by typing knowledge. In this article, we argue against their proposal that if one abstracts from other possible independent considerations supporting reasons for typing knowledge and considers the motivation for a type-theoretic approach with re…Read more
  • Filosofia e logica (edited book)
    with Pierdaniele Giaretta
    Rubbettino Editore. 2004.