Francesco Orilia

There is an ongoing debate on the ontology of relations, which features four main competing approaches: directionalism, positionalism, anti-positionalism, and primitivism. This paper focuses on a particular version of positionalism, namely role positionalism, and proposes the results of an experimental philosophy research concerning aspects of it. We tested the intuitions of ordinary subjects regarding the inter-relational generality of the roles typically assumed for spatial and kinematic relations, namely source, destination, theme, location. According to a 2014 paper by Orilia, this generality is rather wide, as it encompasses relations of temporal order, causation, quantitative order, transaction, possession, and parthood. Our findings do not support this proposal, except for parthood, and, in a limited way, for temporal order. We also tested the intuitions of ordinary subjects regarding the contrast between the pro-converses option, according to which non-symmetric relations split into distinct converse relations, and the anti-converses option, according to which non-symmetric relations have no distinct converses. Although traditionally positionalism is associated to the latter option, in recent works by Orilia role positionalism is associated to the former option for at least some relations, while remaining anchored to the latter option for other relations. Our findings support this mixed line to some extent, but not quite in the way suggested by Orilia in such works.

We distinguish three debates within current analytic philosophy of time: a first one regarding the passage of time, where static and dynamic views oppose each other; a second one concerning the existence or non-existence of temporal entities, where presentism and eternalism are main contenders; a third one about permanence, where the conflict is between permanentism and temporarism. We then consider how Severino's Parmenidean view may be related to such debates and argue that it is best viewed as a kind of temporarist static eternalism.

Temporal ontology is the philosophical debate on the existence of the past and the future. It features a three-way confrontation between supporters of presentism (the present exists, the past and the future do not), pastism (the past and the present exist, the future does not), and eternalism (the past, the present, and the future all exist). Most philosophers engaged in this debate believe that presentism is much more in agreement with common sense than the rival views; moreover, most of them believe that being in agreement with common sense is epistemically valuable for a philosophical view. We studied experimentally non-experts’ ideas pertaining to the domain of temporal ontology, i.e., as we called it, common-sense temporal ontology, focusing on the Italian population. We found that a non-overwhelming majority of participants (~64%) favoured presentism, while two significant minorities favoured pastism (~19%) and eternalism (~17%). We think that our findings provide some support, albeit weaker than expected, for the view that presentism is more in agreement with common sense than the rival positions.

Downward causation plays a fundamental role in many theories of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. It is strictly connected with many topics in philosophy, including but not limited to: emergence, mental causation, the nature of causation, the nature of causal powers and dispositions, laws of nature, and the possibility of ontological and epistemic reductions. _Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation_ brings together experts from different fields—including William Bechtel, Stewart Clark and Tom Lancaster, Carl Gillett, John Heil, Robin F. Hendry, Max Kistler, Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum—who delve into classic and unexplored lines of philosophical inquiry related to downward causation. It critically assesses the possibility of downward causation given different ontological assumptions and explores the connection between downward causation and the metaphysics of causation and dispositions. Finally, it presents different cases of downward causation in empirical fields such as physics, chemistry, biology and the neurosciences. This volume is both a useful introduction and a collection of original contributions on this fascinating and hotly debated philosophical topic.

The late Hector-Neri Castañeda, the Mahlon Powell Professor of Philosophy at Indiana University, and founding editor of Noûs, has deeply influenced current analytic philosophy with diverse contributions, including guise theory, the theory of indicators and quasi-indicators, and the proposition/practition theory. This volume collects 15 papers--for the most part previously unpublished--in ontology, philosophy of language, cognitive science, and related areas by ex-students of Professor Castañeda, most of whom are now well-known researchers or even distinguished scholars. The authors share the conviction that Castañeda's work must continue to be explored and that his philosophical methodology must continue to be applied in an effort to further illuminate all the issues that he so deeply investigated. The topics covered by the contributions include intensional contexts, possible worlds, quasi-indicators, guise theory, property theory, Russell's substitutional theory of propositions, event theory, the adverbial theory of mental attitudes, existentialist ontology, and Plato's, Leibniz's, Kant's, and Peirce's ontologies. An introduction by the editors relates all these themes to Castañeda's philosophical interests and methodology.

At least since Russell, mainstream analytic philosophy has distinguished internal and external relations and acknowledged the existence of both. This seems in line with both the manifest and scientific images of the world. However, there is a recent deflationary trend about relations, which focuses on the truthmakers of relational statements in order to show that putative external relations are in fact internal, and that internal relations do not really exist. Lowe’s posthumous 2016 paper is a thorough presentation of this line of thought. This article critically analyzes Lowe’s arguments in that paper, and some related arguments in recent works. It finds them wanting and thus reaffirms the irreducible reality of relations.

Temporal ontology is concerned with the ontological status of the past, the present and the future, with presentism and eternalism as main contenders since the second half of the last century. In recent years several philosophers have argued that the presentism/eternalism dispute is not substantial. They have embraced, one may say, deflationism. Denying or downplaying the meaningfulness of tenseless language and wielding the so-called triviality objection have been their main argumentative tools. Other philosophers have opposed this trend, thereby holding fast to what could be named substantialism. Their leading defensive strategy has consisted in bringing to the fore tenselessness or unrestricted quantification in an attempt to resist the triviality objection. Despite this reaction, the past few years have hosted a new wave of deflationism, wherein the triviality objection and qualms about the legitimacy of tenselessness and unrestricted quantification still loom large. This paper counters this trend, by providing a new clarification of tenseless predication, unrestricted quantifiers and their role in rescuing substantialism from the triviality objection. A crucial ingredient is this: the appeal to unrestricted quantifiers and to tenseless predication are not alternative strategies, but rather two sides of the same coin, since substantialism requires quantifiers that are both tenseless and unrestricted.

This collection focuses on the ontology of space and time. It is centred on the idea that the issues typically encountered in this area must be tackled from a multifarious perspective, paying attention to both a priori and a posteriori considerations. Several experts in this area contribute to this volume: G. Landini discusses how Russell’s conception of time features in his general philosophical perspective;D. Dieks proposes a middle course between substantivalist and relationist accounts of space-time;P. Graziani argues that it is necessary to provide an account of the “synthetic procedures” implicit in the recourse to diagrams in Euclid’s Elements, while E. Mares comes to the conclusion that in Euclid’s Elements we should treat the parallel postulate as empirical and the postulate that space is continuous as a priori. M. Arsenijevi?/M. Adži? present an important formal result concerning two theories of the infinite two-dimensional continua, which sheds new light on the current dispute between gunkologists and pointilists; F. Orilia discusses two problems for presentism, one regarding the duration of the present and the other related to Zeno’s paradoxes. A. Iacona delves deep into logical matters by focusing on the so-called T×W modal frames in order to deal with the deteterminism-indeterminism controversy. D. Mancuso outlines a non-standard temporal model compatible with time travel, andV. Fano/G. Macchia discuss time travels in the light of an important foundational principle of modern cosmology, Weyl’s Principle.

Logic appears to be normative for rational belief. The thesis of the normativity of logic holds that indeed logic has such a normative status. Gilbert Harman has questioned it, thereby giving rise to what has been called “Harman's skeptical challenge”. MacFarlane has clarified that in order to answer this challenge and support the normativity of logic, one needs a “bridge principle” that appropriately connects logical entailments and norms for belief, as well as relevant desiderata for the evaluation of candidate bridge principles. Steinberger has identified a list of desiderata, on the basis of which he has proposed his own bridge principle and shown the inadequacy of previous proposals. This paper argues that Steinberger's list is in need of revision and his principle is unsatisfactory, and then puts forward a revised list of desiderata and a new bridge principle in support of the normativity of logic.

The standard account of the micro-structure of time is based on Cantor’s conception of continuity and thus views the time line as consisting of undenumerably many instants ordered by the B-theoretic earlier than relation. This may seem problematic for an A-theory of time such as presentism, according to which only what is present exists, for it seems to leave no room for the instants of a Cantorean time line. This paper defends a version of presentism that can accommodate the Cantorean conception and more generally any approach to the micro-structure of time based on durationless instants.

Un’ontologia di stati di cose come quella difesa da Armstrong, che gode di largo credito in filosofia analitica, può facilmente condurre a una nozione del sé come ente che un soggetto può cogliere direttamente, e una forma di fondazionalismo epistemologico che permette giudizi in prima persona privati e incorreggibili. A prima vista tuttavia vi è tensione tra questa combinazione di dottrine e un approccio descrittivista alla semantica degli indicali, in particolare del pronome “io”. Il fondazionalismo non è forse la teoria epistemologica maggiormente seguita e lo stesso può dirsi del descrittivismo riguardo agli indicali. Ciò nondimeno entrambe hanno i loro sostenitori e molte ragioni per farsi preferire. Vale la pena quindi di indagare se la tensione in questione è reale o solo apparente. Si argomenta a favore della seconda opzione, sfruttando la distinzione di fregeana tra il pronome “io” della comunicazione e il pronome “io” del soliloquio.

In truth theory one aims at general formal laws governing the attribution of truth to statements. Gupta’s and Belnap’s revision-theoretic approach provides various well-motivated theories of truth, in particular T* and T#, which tame the Liar and related paradoxes without a Tarskian hierarchy of languages. In property theory, one similarly aims at general formal laws governing the predication of properties. To avoid Russell’s paradox in this area a recourse to type theory is still popular, as testified by recent work in formal metaphysics by Williamson and Hale. There is a contingent Liar that has been taken to be a problem for type theory. But this is because this Liar has been presented without an explicit recourse to a truth predicate. Thus, type theory could avoid this paradox by incorporating such a predicate and accepting an appropriate theory of truth. There is however a contingent paradox of predication that more clearly undermines the viability of type theory. It is then suggested that a type-free property theory is a better option. One can pursue it, by generalizing the revision-theoretic approach to predication, as it has been done by Orilia with his system P*, based on T*. Although Gupta and Belnap do not explicitly declare a preference for T# over T*, they show that the latter has some advantages, such as the recovery of intuitively acceptable principles concerning truth and a better reconstruction of informal arguments involving this notion. A type-free system based on T# rather than T* extends these advantages to predication and thus fares better than P* in the intended applications of property theory.

Castañeda’s guise theory is a peculiarly interesting Neo-Meinongian approach, in virtue of its bundle-theoretic and anti-representationalist features. But it also has some problematic aspects. It crucially relies on a series of sameness relations, such as consubstantiation or consociation, but this list is incomplete. Moreover, guise theory is hindered by its view of the sameness relations as forms of predication alternative to what may be called, following Plantinga, standard predication. This paper thus proposes a revised version of guise theory that acknowledges two additional sameness relations and standard predication.

ABSTRACT The current analytical debate on time is full of attempts to adjudicate from a purely theoretical standpoint among competing temporal ontologies. Little attention has instead been devoted to the existential attitudes -- emotional or ethical -- that may lurk behind, or ensue from, the endorsement of one of them. Some interesting opinions have however been voiced regarding the two most prominent views in the arena, namely eternalism and presentism; it has been said that the former is nourished by a fear of death, or more generally by a desire of preservation for whatever we find precious and valuable, and that the latter is fuelled by a propensity to reap whatever fruits the present brings, as enshrined in the carpe diem motto. This paper explores such a territory by focusing on the reality of past sentience, whether joyful or painful, and on the open future. The first part contrasts the reality of past sentience that comes with eternalism with the denial of this reality that follows from presentism, and argues that from an emotional, or perhaps even moral, standpoint the latter is preferable to the former. The second part clarifies why the eternalist must renounce the open future, whereas presentism is consistent with it, and considers how its rejection or acceptance, as the case may be, could be emotionally, or even morally, significant for our conception of ourselves as free agents. The conclusion offers a tentative proposal regarding which temporal ontology is superior from an existential perspective and some ruminations on the impact that all this may have on the theoretical side of the issue.

This paper embeds a theory of proper names in a general approach to singular reference based on type‐free property theory. It is proposed that a proper name “N” is a sortal common noun whose meaning is essentially tied to the linguistic type “N”. Moreover, “N” can be singularly referring insofar as it is elliptical for a definite description of the form the “N” Following Montague, the meaning of a definite description is taken to be a property of properties. The proposed theory fulfils the major desiderata stemming from Kripke's works on proper names.

A version of Bradley's regress can be endorsed in an effort to address the problem of the unity of states of affairs or facts, thereby arriving at a doctrine that I have called fact infinitism. A consequence of it is the denial of the thesis, WF, that all chains of ontological dependence are well‐founded or grounded. Cameron has recently rejected fact infinitism by arguing that WF, albeit not necessarily true, is however contingently true. Here fact infinitism is supported by showing that Cameron's argument for the contingent truth of WF is unsuccessful.