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48From a logical point of view, identity criteria should mirror the identity relation in being reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive. However, the relation representing the identity condition fails to be transitive in many cases. We consider the proposals given so far to give logical adequacy to inadequate identity conditions. We focus on the most refined proposal and expand its formal framework by taking into account two further aspects that we consider essential in the formal treatment of ident…Read more
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67Ontology for information systems: artefacts as a case studyMind and Society 7 (2): 143-156. 2008.The goal of the paper is to analyse some specific features of a very central concept for top-level ontologies for information systems: i.e. the concept of artefact. Specifically, we analyse the relation to be a copy of that is strongly linked to the notion of artefact and—as we will demonstrate—could be useful to distinguish artefacts from objects of other kinds. Firstly, we outline some intuitive and commonsensical reasons for the need of a clarification of the notion of artefact in ontologies …Read more
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32Logically Unknowable Propositions: a criticism to Tennant's three-partition of Anti-Cartesian propositionsIn P. Hanna (ed.), An Anthology of Philosophical Studies, Vol.2, Atiner. pp. 181-194. 2009.The Knowability Paradox is a logical argument that, starting from the plainly innocent assumption that every true proposition is knowable, reaches the strong conclusion that every true proposition is known; i.e. if there are unknown truths, there are unknowable truths. The paradox has been considered a problem for every theory assuming the Knowability Principle, according to which all truths are knowable and, in particular, for semantic anti-realist theories. A well known criticism to the Knowab…Read more
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521Unity and Plurality. Philosophy, Logic, and SemanticsOxford University Press. 2016.This volume brings together new work on the logic and ontology of plurality and a range of recent articles exploring novel applications to natural language semantics. The contributions in this volume in particular investigate and extend new perspectives presented by plural logic and non-standard mereology and explore their applications to a range of natural language phenomena. Contributions by P. Aquaviva, A. Arapinis, M. Carrara, P. McKay, F. Moltmann, O. Linnebo,…Read more
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25Comments on HughesDialectica 59 (4). 2005.The aim of this paper is to discuss Hughes’ formulation of three‐dimensionalism. Firstly, I observe that the linguistic data do not clearly support his formulation. Secondly, the arguments he uses to state his formulation could be disputed either on the basis of a difference between ordinary language and regimented language, or on the basis of a different notion of temporal part
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58Towards a Formal Account of Identity CriteriaIn Majda Trobok Nenad Miščević & Berislav Žarnić (eds.), Between Logic and Reality, Springer. pp. 227--242. 2012.
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37Assertions and Hypotheses: A Logical Framework for their Opposition RelationsLogic Journal of the IGPL. 2016.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
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24Preliminaries to a logic of malfunctionIn Pavel Arazim Michal Dancak (ed.), The Logica Yearbook, College Publications. pp. 33-47. 2015.
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19Grazer Philosophische Studien: International Journal for Analytic Philosophy ; GPS (edited book)Rodopi. 2006.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
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115Paradox and Logical Revision. A Short IntroductionTopoi 34 (1): 7-14. 2015.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
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14On Dialetheic EntailmentIn The Logica Yearbook 2010, . 2011.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
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62.4. Criteri d’identità e adeguatezza logicaRivista 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
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60The Knowability Paradox in the light of a Logic for PragmaticsIn 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
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132Cardinality and IdentityJournal 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
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88Relative Identity and the Number of ArtifactsTechné: 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
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61On biological identityBiology 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.
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22Two Arguments against Antirealism in Relation to Artefact KindsIn Guido Bonino, Greg Jesson & Javier Cumpa (eds.), Defending Realism: Ontological and Epistemological Investigations, De Gruyter. pp. 9-28. 2014.
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247On the ontological commitment of mereologyReview 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
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41Symposium on “Cognition and Rationality: Part II”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
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220Why Knowledge Should Not Be Typed: An Argument against the Type Solution to the Knowability ParadoxTheoria 77 (2): 180-193. 2011.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
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112To Be is to Be the Object of a Possible Act of ChoiceStudia Logica 96 (2): 289-313. 2010.Aim of the paper is to revise Boolos’ reinterpretation of second-order monadic logic in terms of plural quantification ([4], [5]) and expand it to full second order logic. Introducing the idealization of plural acts of choice, performed by a suitable team of agents, we will develop a notion of plural reference . Plural quantification will be then explained in terms of plural reference. As an application, we will sketch a structuralist reconstruction of second-order arithmetic based on the axiom …Read more
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156Artifact Categorization. Trends and ProblemsReview of Philosophy and Psychology 4 (3): 351-373. 2013.The general question (G) How do we categorize artifacts? can be subject to three different readings: an ontological, an epistemic and a semantic one. According to the ontological reading, asking (G) is equivalent to asking in virtue of what properties, if any, a certain artifact is an instance of some artifact kind: (O) What is it for an artifact a to belong to kind K? According to the epistemic reading, when we ask (G) we are investigating what properties of the object we exploit in order to de…Read more
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24Errata Corrige to “Pragmatic and dialogic interpretation of bi-intuitionism. Part I”Logic and Logical Philosophy 25 (2). 2016.
Padua, Italy
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |