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388On Logical RelativityPhilosophical Issues 12 (1): 197-219. 2002.One logic or many? I say—many. Or rather, I say there is one logic for each way of specifying the class of all possible circumstances, or models, i.e., all ways of interpreting a given language. But because there is no unique way of doing this, I say there is no unique logic except in a relative sense. Indeed, given any two competing logical theories T1 and T2 (in the same language) one could always consider their common core, T, and settle on that theory. So, given any language L, one could set…Read more
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385Riferimento, predicazione, e cambiamentoIn Claudia Bianchi & Andrea Bottani (eds.), Significato e ontologia, Franco Angeli. 2003.This paper focuses on the semantics of statements of the form ‘x is P at t’ vis-à-vis its metaphysical underpinnings. I begin by considering four main readings, corresponding to the four basic parsings of the temporal modifier ‘at t’: (1) at-t x is P, (2) x-at-t is P, (3) x is-at-t P, and (4) x is P-at-t. Each of these readings—which correspond to different metaphysical conceptions of the nature of temporal change—is found inadequate or otherwise problematic. In the second part of the paper I th…Read more
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383Mancanze, omissioni e descrizioni negativeRivista di Estetica 32 (2): 109-127. 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
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378Complementary Logics for Classical Propositional LanguagesKriterion - Journal of Philosophy 4 (1): 20-24. 1992.In previous work, I introduced a complete axiomatization of classical non-tautologies based essentially on Łukasiewicz’s rejection method. The present paper provides a new, Hilbert-type axiomatization (along with related systems to axiomatize classical contradictions, non-contradictions, contingencies and non-contingencies respectively). This new system is mathematically less elegant, but the format of the inferential rules and the structure of the completeness proof possess some intrinsic inter…Read more
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377I confini del CervinoIn Vincenzo Fano, Gino Tarozzi & Massimo Stanzione (eds.), Prospettive della logica e della filosofia della scienza. Atti del convegno triennale della Società Italiana di Logica e Filosofia delle Scienze, Rubbettino Editore. 2001.Some philosophers have argued that the vagueness exhibited by names and descriptions such as ‘Mount Everest’, ‘Downtown Manhattan’, or ‘that cloud in the sky’ is ultimately ontological: they are vague because they refer to vague objects, objects with fuzzy boundaries. I take the opposite stand and argue for the view that all vagueness is semantic. There is no such thing as a vague mountain. Rather, there are many things where we conceive the mountain to be, each with its precise boundary, and wh…Read more
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376Words and ObjectsIn 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
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376Foreword to ''Parts and Wholes''Journal of Philosophy 103 (12): 593-596. 2006.A brief introductory note to the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy on "Parts and Wholes", setting the background for the seven papers included in the rest of the issue (by K. Fine, H. Hudson, M. Johnston, K. Koslicki, C. Normore, P. M. Simons, and P. van Inwagen).
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373Supervaluationism and ParaconsistencyIn 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
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370Review of André Gallois, Occasions of Identity: The Metaphysics of Persistence, Change, and Sameness (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (2). 2001.Book Information: Occasions of Identity: The Metaphysics of Persistence, Change, and Sameness. By André Gallois. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1998. Pp. xiii + 296. Hardback, £35.00.
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364Playing for the Same Team AgainIn Jerry L. Walls & Gregory Bassham (eds.), Basketball and Philosophy. Thinking Outside the Paint, University of Kentucky Press. 2007.How many championships have the Lakers won? Fourteen, if one counts those won in Minneapolis; nine, otherwise. Which is the correct answer? Is it even obvious that there is a correct answer? One is tempted to identify a team with its players. But teams, like ordinary objects, seem to survive gradual turnover of their parts. Suppose players from the Lakers are gradually replaced, one by one, over the years. We have the intuition that the team persists through this change, even after none of the o…Read more
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353Kripke: modalità e veritàIn Andrea Borghini (ed.), (ed.), Il genio compreso. La filosofia di Saul Kripke, Carocci Editore. 2010.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.
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350Teoria e pratica dei confiniSistemi Intelligenti 17 (3). 2005.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 social practices and conventions? Does the choice between these two options amount to a choice between realism and wholesome relativism?
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349Formal Theories of ParthoodIn 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.
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333Nothing, Everything, Something!In Fosca Mariani-Zini (ed.), The Meaning of Something: Rethinking the Logic and the Unity of Metaphysics, Springer. 2022.Universalist and nihilist answers to philosophical questions may be extreme, but they are clear enough. Aliquidist answers, by contrast, are typically caught between the Scylla of vagueness and indeterminacy and the Charybdis of ungroundedness and arbitrariness, and steering a proper middle course—saying exactly where in the middle one is going to settle—demands exceptional navigating powers. I myself tend to favor extreme answers precisely for this reason. Here, however, I consider one sense in…Read more
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321Livelli di realtà e descrizioni del mondoGiornale di Metafisica 35 (2/3). 2013.I articulate and the defend the following two claims: (i) it is a mistake to think that the structure of the world should mirror the structure of the theories by which we represent it, and through which we try to decipher it, simply because those theories appear to work; (ii) among the most deplorable consequences of this mistake is the widespread tendency to think that there must be a plurality of realities, or several different and irreducible levels of a stratified reality, merely because our…Read more
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321Del fuoco che non brucia: risposte, riflessioni, ringraziamentiIn Elena Casetta & Valeria Giardino (eds.), Mettere a Fuoco Il Mondo. Conversazioni sulla Filosofia di Achille Varzi (Special Issue of Isonomia – Epistemologica), University of Urbino. 2014.An overview of the way I picture the amorphous world we live in, built around my comments and responses to nine festschrift essays by A. Borghini (on the Fedro metaphor and the art of butchery), F. Calemi (on the predication principle and metalinguistic nominalism), C. Calosi (on the argument from mereological universalism to extensonality), E. Casetta (on the role of “monsters” in the realism/antirealism debate), V. Giardino (on inductive reasoning, spatial representation, and problem solving),…Read more
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319Vaghezza e ontologiaIn 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.
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317Parts, Counterparts and Modal OccurrentsTravaux de Logique 14 (1): 151-171. 2001.The paper investigates the link between the theory of modal occurrents (where individuals are allowed to stretch across possible worlds) and Lewis’s counterpart theory (where all individuals are world-bound but have counterparts in other worlds). First I show how to interpret modal talk extensionally within the theory of modal occurrents. Then I show that the assumption that worlds be pairwise discrete is all that is needed to reconstruct the bulk of counterpart theory (i.e., to define the conce…Read more
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316Crimes and punishmentsPhilosophia 34 (4): 395-404. 2006.Every criminal act ought to be matched by a corresponding punishment, or so we may suppose, and every punishment ought to reflect a criminal act. We know how to count punishments. But how do we count crimes? In particular, how does our notion of a criminal action depend on whether the prohibited action is an activity, an accomplishment, an achievement, or a state?
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315Truth and Circular Definitions (review)Minds and Machines 6 (1). 1996.This original and enticing book provides a fresh, unifying perspective on many old and new logico-philosophical conundrums. Its basic thesis is that many concepts central in ordinary and philosophical discourse are inherently circular and thus cannot be fully understood as long as one remains within the confines of a standard theory of definitions. As an alternative, the authors develop a revision theory of definitions, which allows definitions to be circular without this giving rise to contradi…Read more
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310Nomi in crisi di identitàRivista di Estetica 38 143-156. 2008.An exchange of letters among proper names and natural-kind terms, dealing with various identity and individuation problems (rigid designation, use-mention ambiguities, translation) from their point of view.
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305Environmental MetaphysicsIn Uwe A. Meixner Meixner (ed.), Metaphysics in the Post-Metaphysical Age. Proceedings of the 22nd International Wittgenstein-Symposium, Hölder-pichler-tempsky. pp. 231-242. 2001.We propose the beginnings of a general theory of environments, of the parts or regions of space in which organisms live and move. We draw on two sources: on the one hand on recent work on the ontology of space; and on the other hand on work by ecological scientists on concepts such as territory, habitat, and niche. An environment is in first approximation a volume of space; it is a specific habitat, location, or site that is suitable or adequate for given purposes (of foraging, resting, hunti…Read more
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300Mondo-versioni e versioni del mondoIn Nelson Goodman, Vedere e costruire il mondo, Laterza. pp. 7-24. 2008.Some reflections on Nelson Goodman’s ontological pluralism (as emerging from his Ways of Worldmaking) and its influence on contemporary philosophy, taking the querelle with Quine in the columns of The New York Review of Books as a starting point.
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296The formal ontology of boundariesElectronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 5 (5). 1997.Revised version published as Barry Smith and Achille Varzi, “Fiat and Bona Fide Boundaries”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 60: 2 (March 2000), 401–420.
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293Counting the HolesAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (1): 23-27. 2004.Argle claimed that holes supervene on their material hosts, and that every truth about holes boils down to a truth about perforated things. This may well be right, assuming holes are perforations. But we still need an explicit theory of holes to do justice to the ordinary way of counting holes--or so says Cargle.
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286The Naming of FactsAnalysis 72 (2): 322-323. 2012.The naming of facts is a difficult matter / it isn’t just one of your holiday games..." A versification of a disturbing philosophical tribulation, after T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Naming of Cats’
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285The Plan of a SquareCanadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (S1): 137-144. 2011.An imaginary report of Square’s plans for a journey aimed to find out whether the topology of Flatland is sphere-like or torus-like, intended as a trubute to Hans Herzberger’s uncompromising philosophical style, courage, and passion.
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282Sulla relatività logicaIn Massimiliano Carrara & Pierdaniele Giaretta (eds.), Filosofia e logica, Rubbettino Editore. 2004.Italian translation of "On Logical Relativity" (2002), by Luca Morena.
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280Le strutture dell'ordinarioIn Luigi Lombardi Vallauri (ed.), Logos dell’essere, logos della norma, Editrice Adriatica. 1999.The general hypothesis underlying this work is that mereology (the study of the relations between an entity and its parts) and topology (understood as the study of the qualitative relations of connection and compactness) may jointly constitute adequate grounds for the formal-ontological analysis of the world of ordinary experience. The analysis focuses on certain minimal (structural) principles on the basis of which different philosophical theories may be erected.
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279Variable-Binders as FunctorsPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 40 303-19. 1995.This work gives an extended presentation of the treatment of variable-binding operators adumbrated in [3:1993d]. Illustrative examples include elementary languages with quantifiers and lambda-equipped categorial languages. Some remarks are also offered to illustrate the philosophical import of the resulting picture. Particularly, a certain conception of logic emerges from the account: the view that logics are true theories in the model-theoretic sense, i.e. the result of selecting a certain clas…Read more
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