•  30
    The Nature of Logic (edited book)
    . 1999.
    This volume aims to offer an up-to-date indication of the on-going debate on the nature of logic. The focus is on questions pertaining to the existence and individuation of clear boundaries delineating the concerns of logic: What is their distinctive character? What makes logic a subject of its own, separate from (and generally in the background of) the concerns of other disciplines? What is it for an expression to be a logical constant? Or, perhaps equivalently, what is it for an operation or a…Read more
  •  71
    A critical survey of the main metaphysical theories concerning the nature of material objects (substratum theories, bundle theories, substance theories, stuff theories) and their identity conditions, both synchronic (monist vs. pluralist theories) and diachronic (three-dimensionalism, four-dimensionalism, sequentialism).
  •  17
    Speaking of events (edited book)
    with James Higginbotham and Fabio Pianesi
    Oxford University Press. 2000.
    The idea that an adequate semantics of ordinary language calls for some theory of events has sparked considerable debate among linguists and philosophers. On the one hand, so many linguistic phenomena appear to be explained if (and, according to some authors, only if) we make room for logical forms in which reference to or quantification over events is explicitly featured. Examples include nominalization, adverbial modification, tense and aspect, plurals, and singular causal statements. On the o…Read more
  •  112
    Reasoning about Space: The Hole Story
    Logic and Logical Philosophy 4 (n/a): 3-39. 1996.
    This is a revised and extended version of the formal theory of holes outlined in the Appendix to the book "Holes and Other Superficialities". The first part summarizes the basic framework (ontology, mereology, topology, morphology). The second part emphasizes its relevance to spatial reasoning and to the semantics of spatial prepositions in natural language. In particular, I discuss the semantics of ‘in’ and provide an account of such fallacious arguments as “There is a hole in the sheet. The sh…Read more
  •  417
    Vagueness, Indiscernibility, and Pragmatics: Comments on Burns
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 33 (S1): 49-62. 1995.
    In ‘Something to Do with Vagueness ...’, Linda Burns defends an analogy between the informational and the borderline-case variety of vagueness. She argues that the latter is in fact less extraordinary and less disastrous than people in the tradition of Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright have told us. However, her account involves presuppositions that cannot be taken for granted. Here is to take a closer look at some of these presuppositions and argue hat they may—when left unguarded—undermine mu…Read more
  •  69
    Il denaro è un'opera d'arte (o quasi)
    Quaderni Dell’Associazione Per Lo Sviluppo Degli Studi di Banca E Borsa 24. 2007.
    What is money? Paraphrasing Goodman, I say that’s the wrong question to ask. The right question is, When is money? And to get the answer, Searle’s general formula for social objects (X couns as Y in context C) is fine, as long as you give it a different reading
  •  82
    On Location: Aristotle's Concept of Place (review)
    with Elena Casetta
    Dialectica 59 (1). 2005.
    Benjamin Morison, On Location: Aristotle’s Concept of Place, Oxford University Press, 2002, 202pp, $45.00, ISBN 0199247919.
  •  67
    Promiscuous Endurantism and Diachronic Vagueness
    American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2): 181-189. 2007.
    According to a popular line of reasoning, diachronic vagueness creates a problem for the endurantist conception of persistence. Some authors have replied that this line of reasoning is inconclusive, since the endurantist can subscribe to a principle of Diachronic Unrestricted Composition (DUC) that is perfectly parallel to the principle required by the perdurantist’s semantic account. I object that the endurantist should better avoid DUC. And I argue that even DUC, if accepted, would fail to pro…Read more
  •  51
    Che cosa ci facciamo qui?
    In Sandro Montalto (ed.), Umberto Eco: l’uomo che sapeva troppo, Edizioni Ets. 2007.
    A short dialogue around the question of whether the thoughts expressed by the characters of an historical novel belong to the characters or to the author.
  •  81
    Vaghezza e ontologia
    In Maurizio Ferraris (ed.), Storia dell'ontologia, Bompiani. 2008.
    On the opposition between de re and de dicto conceptions of vagueness, with special reference to their bearing on the tasks of ontology.
  •  14
    On Doing Ontology without Metaphysics
    Philosophical Perspectives 25 (1): 407-423. 2011.
    According to a certain familiar way of dividing up the business of philosophy, ontology is concerned with the question of what entities exist (a task that is often identified with that of drafting a “complete inventory” of the universe) whereas metaphysics seeks to explain, of those entities, what they are (i.e., to specify the “ultimate nature” of the items included in the inventory). This distinction carries with it a natural thought, namely, that ontology is in some way prior to metaphysics. …Read more
  •  118
    Boundaries, Conventions, and Realism
    In Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & Matthew H. Slater (eds.), Carving nature at its joints: natural kinds in metaphysics and science, Mit Press. 2011.
    Are there any bona fide boundaries, i.e., boundaries that carve at the joints? Or is any boundary —hence any object—the result of a fiat articulation reflecting our cognitive biases and our so-cial practices and conventions? Does the choice between these two options amount to a choice between realism and wholesome relativism?
  •  78
    The Talk I Was Supposed to Give…
    In Andrea Bottani & Richard Davies (eds.), Modes of Existence: Papers in Ontology and Philosophical Logic, Ontos Verlag. 2006.
    Assuming that events form a genuine ontological category, shall we say that a good inventory of the world ought to include “negative” events—failures, omissions, things that didn’t happen—along with positive ones? I argue that we shouldn’t. Talk of non-occurring events is like talk of non-existing objects and should not be taken at face value. We often speak as though there were such things, but deep down we want our words to be interpreted in such a way as to avoid serious ontological commitmen…Read more
  •  367
    Formal Theories of Parthood
    In Claudio Calosi & Pierluigi Graziani (eds.), Mereology and the Sciences: Parts and Wholes in the Contemporary Scientific Context, Springer Verlag. 2014.
    A compact overview of the main formal theories of parthood and of their mutual relationships, up to Classical Extensional Mereology. Written as an Appendix to the other essays included in the volume.
  •  5
    Niveles de realidad y descripciones del mundo
    Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin 4 (5): 29--49. 2015.
    [ES] Aquí articulo y luego defiendo las dos afirmaciones siguientes: que es un error pensar que la estructura del mundo debe reflejar la estructura de las teorías por las cuales lo representamos, y por medio de las cuales tratamos de descifrarlo, simplemente porque estas teorías parecen funcionar; entre las consecuencias más lamentables de este error está la tendencia generalizada a pensar que debe haber una pluralidad de realidades, o varios niveles diferentes e irreductibles de una realidad es…Read more
  •  33
    Truth and values: essays for Hans Herzberger (edited book)
    with Jamie Tappenden and William Seager
    University of Calgary Press. 2011.
    A selection of essays dedicated to Hans Herzberger with affection and gratitude for both his profound work and his lasting example. Contributors: I. Levi (on whether and how a rational agent should be seen as a maximizer of some cognitive value), C. Normore (on medieval accounts of logical validity), J. P. Tappenden (on the local influences on Frege's doctrines), A. Urquhart (on the inexpressible), A. C. Varzi (on dimensionality and the sense of possibility), and S. Yablo (on content and carving…Read more
  •  197
    A discussion of some philosophical themes in the Terminator film series, including: the possibility of time travel, backward causation, the difference between changing the past/future and affecting it, the difference between determinism and fatalism, and how such issues depend on the underlying philosophy of time (eternism vs. presentism vs. the growing-block theory).
  •  5
    Foreword
    The Monist 83 (3): 319-320. 2000.
    Some entities—perhaps all entities—have spatial parts, parts whose spatial location does not coincide with that of the whole. My hands are spatial parts of my body in this sense, and from my window I can only see part of the parade, not all of it. Some entities have temporal parts, too, or so we are inclined to say. The first inning is a temporal part of a ball game in this sense—it occupies a shorter stretch of time, and much more will have to happen before the game is over.
  •  31
    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
  •  34
    Schaum's Outline of Logic
    McGraw-Hill. 1998.
    An introductory textbook in logic, covering the syntax and semantics of propositional logic (including proof techniques and refutation trees), the syntax and semantics of predicate logic (including proof techniques and refutation trees), inductive logic, the probability calculus, the analysis of fallacies, and further developments in formal logic including the theory of descriptions, higher-order logics, modal logic, and formal arithmetic. Features over 500 problems with complete solutions.
  •  61
    Supervaluationism and Paraconsistency
    In Diderik Batens, Chris Mortensen, Graham Priest & Jean Paul Van Bendegem (eds.), Frontiers in Paraconsistent Logic, Research Studies Press. 2000.
    Since its first appearance in 1966, the notion of a supervaluation has been regarded by many as a powerful tool for dealing with semantic gaps. Only recently, however, applications to semantic gluts have also been considered. In previous work I proposed a general framework exploiting the intrinsic gap/glut duality. Here I also examine an alternative account where gaps and gluts are treated on a par: although they reflect opposite situations, the semantic upshot is the same in both cases--the val…Read more
  •  1355
    Review of Susan Haack, Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic: Beyond the Formalism (review)
    Philosophical Review 107 (3): 468-471. 1998.
    Book information: Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic: Beyond The Formalism. By SUSAN HAACK. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Pp. xxvi, 291.
  •  63
    An introduction to Kripke’s semantics for propositional and quantified modal logic (with special reference to its historical development from the original 1959 version to the extended versions of 1963 and 1965) and to his theory of truth.
  •  59
    Che cosa c’è e che cos’è
    Nous. Postille Su Pensieri 1. 2003.
    A philosophical exchange broadly inspired by the characters of Berkeley’s Three Dialogues. Hylas is the realist philosopher: the view he stands up for reflects a robust metaphysic that is reassuringly close to common sense, grounded on the twofold persuasion that the world comes structured into entities of various kinds and at various levels and that it is the task of philosophy, if not of science generally, to “bring to light” that structure. Philonous, by contrast, is the anti-realist philosop…Read more
  •  626
    Perdurantism, Universalism and Quantifiers
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2): 208-215. 2003.
    I argue that the conjunction of perdurantism (the view that objects are temporally extended) and universalism (the thesis that any old class of things has a mereological fusion) gives rise to undesired complications when combined with certain plausible assumptions concerning the semantics of tensed statements
  •  56
    Complementary Sentential Logics
    Bulletin of the Section of Logic 19 (4): 112-116. 1990.
    It is shown that a complete axiomatization of classical non-tautologies can be obtained by taking F (falsehood) as the sole axiom along with the two inference rules: (i) if A is a substitution instance of B, then A |– B; and (ii) if A is obtained from B by replacement of equivalent sentences, then A |– B (counting as equivalent the pairs {T, ~F}, {F, F&F}, {F, F&T}, {F, T&F}, {T, T&T}). Since the set of tautologies is also specifiable by purely syntactic means, the resulting picture gives an imp…Read more
  •  64
    Words and Objects
    In Andrea Bottani, Massimiliano Carrara & Daniele Giaretta (eds.), Individuals, Essence, and Identity. Themes of Analytic Metaphysics, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2002.
    A lot of work in metaphysics relies on linguistic analysis and intuitions. Do we want to know what sort of things there are or could be? Then let’s see what sort of things there must be in order for what we truthfully say to be true. Do we want to see whether x is distinct from y? Then let’s see whether there is any statement that is true of x but not of y. And so on. In this paper I argue that this way of proceeding is full of traps and is bound to be pretty useless unless we already have a goo…Read more
  •  50
    Introduction: Philosophical Issues in Geography
    Topoi 20 (2): 119-130. 2001.
    An outline of the wealth of philosophical material that hides behind the flat world of geographic maps, with special reference to (i) the centrality of the boundary concept, (ii) the problem of vagueness, and (iii) the metaphysical question (if such there be) of the identity and persistence conditions of geographic entities. Serves as an introduction to the special issue of "Topoi" (20:2, 2001) on the Philosophy of Geography.
  •  234
    Back to Black
    Ratio 29 (1): 1-10. 2016.
    This is a brief sequel to Max Black 's classic dialogue on the Identity of Indiscernibles. Interlocutor A defends the bundle theory by endorsing the view according to which Black 's world does not contain two indiscernible spheres but rather a single, bi-located sphere. His opponent, B, objects that A cannot distinguish such a world from a world with a single, uniquely located sphere, hence that the view in question adds nothing to A's original response to Black 's challenge. A is simply denying…Read more
  •  6
    On the Interplay between Logic and Metaphysics
    Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations 8 13-36. 2009.
    On the one hand, logic has (or ought to have) nothing to do with metaphysics; it ought to have nothing to do with questions concerning what there is, or whether there is anything at all. On the other hand, metaphysics can hardly get off the ground without the help of logical analysis; to be is to be a truth-maker, and the search for truth-makers requires that we lay open the logical structure of our language. So something’s gotta give: either logical analysis is metaphysically biased, or metaphy…Read more