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33Truth and values: essays for Hans Herzberger (edited book)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
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198È successo tra qualche annoIn Armando Massarenti (ed.), Stramaledettamente logico: esercizi di filosofia su pellicola, Laterza. 2009.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).
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5ForewordThe 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.
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31A 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
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34Schaum's Outline of LogicMcGraw-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.
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396Supervaluationism 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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1213Review 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.
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373Kripke: modalità e veritàIn Andrea Borghini (ed.), Il genio compreso: la filosofia di Saul Kripke, Carocci. 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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393Che cosa c’è e che cos’èNous. 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
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634Perdurantism, Universalism and QuantifiersAustralasian 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
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251Complementary Sentential LogicsBulletin 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
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387Words 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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