•  1
    An experimental study on the ontology of relations
    Synthese 203 (art. 75): 1-21. 2024.
    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 relat…Read more
  • Aquinas and the Varieties of Dependence
    Dialectica. forthcoming.
    I wish to prove in this article that Thomas Aquinas was a metaontological pluralist, i.e., that he held that there are many, non-equivalent and irreducible dependence relations in the universe. In this respect, I shall focus on Aquinas' doctrine of the four causes and on the dependence relationships between matter and form in material substances. Subsequently, I shall also reconstruct Aquinas' doctrines by explicitly appealing to metaontological pluralism. I shall explore two routes towards Aqui…Read more
  •  9
    Special Issue on Sin and Vice (edited book)
    TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology. 2023.
  •  6
    Editorial: Sin and Vice
    TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology 7 (2): 1-6. 2023.
  •  22
    The good and the powers
    Analytic Philosophy 1-30. 2023.
    Neo-Aristotelian views of goodness hold that the goodness of something is strictly connected with its goal(s). In this article, I shall present a power-based, Neo-Aristotelian view of goodness. I shall claim that there are certain powers (i.e., Goodness-Conferring Powers, or GC-powers in short) that confer goodness upon their bearers and upon the resulting actions. And I shall suggest that GC-powers are strongly teleological tendencies. In Section 1, I shall present the kernel of Neo-Aristotelia…Read more
  •  17
    The Composition of Naïve Powers
    In Christopher J. Austin, Anna Marmodoro & Andrea Roselli (eds.), Powers, Parts and Wholes: Essays on the Mereology of Powers, Routledge. pp. 185-205. 2023.
    What this chapter labels "the naïve view of powers" roughly holds that there is a strict correspondence between powers, their bearers, manifestations and activations, on one hand, and causal processes and their causes and effects, on the other hand. The naïve view of powers seems to run afoul of the possibility that powers compose. Therefore, most power theorists are inclined to reject it. This chapter develops an account of the composition of powers that can actually preserve the naïve view of …Read more
  •  31
    In Defense of Irreducible Relations
    Argumenta 8 (2): 387-405. 2023.
    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 t…Read more
  •  28
    Causes Versus Background Conditions: A Double Negation Account
    Axiomathes Global Philosophy 33 (1). 2023.
    I shall present in this article a double negation account of the distinction between causes and background conditions. Such an account will be based on the idea that, unlike causes, background conditions allow for certain effects by way of double prevention. In Section 1 I shall introduce objective and non-objective theories of the causes-background conditions distinction and I shall discuss and reject some non-objective theories. In Section 2 I shall examine some existing objective theories and…Read more
  •  43
    Events and Modes
    Metaphysica 24 (1): 71-99. 2023.
    I shall refine in this article Jaegwon Kim's theory of events by appealing to modes, i.e., particular properties that also depend on their 'bearers' for their identity. Events will turn out to be occurrent modes, i.e., relational modes having further modes and times as their relata. In Section 1 I shall briefly present Kim's theory and some difficulties that affect it. In Section 2, after having made some preliminary assumptions on modes and universals, I shall introduce occurrent modes. In Sect…Read more
  •  69
    Relationism and the Problem of Order
    Acta Analytica 38 (2): 245-273. 2023.
    Relationism holds that objects entirely depend on relations or that they must be eliminated in favour of the latter. In this article, I raise a problem for relationism. I argue that relationism cannot account for the order in which non-symmetrical relations apply to their relata. In Section 1, I introduce some concepts in the ontology of relations and define relationism. In Section 2, I present the Problem of Order for non-symmetrical relations, after distinguishing it from the Problem of Differ…Read more
  •  38
    Powers, Probabilities, and Tendencies
    Philosophia 50 (4): 2035-2067. 2022.
    In this article, I aim at showing how powers may ground different types of probability in the universe. In Section 1 I single out several dimensions along which the probability of something can be determined. Each of such dimensions can be further specified at the type-level or at the token-level. In Section 2 I introduce some metaphysical assumptions about powers. In Section 3 I show how powers can ground single-case probabilities and frequency-probabilities in a deterministic setting. Later on…Read more
  •  28
    How Ficta Depend
    Esercizi Filosofici 16 (1): 3-25. 2021.
    I shall elaborate in this article on the connection between ficta and metaontological pluralism, i.e., the view according to which there are irreducibly many dependence relations. More precisely, I shall consider the main tenets of an artifactualist theory of ficta and show how they can be expressed from the standpoint of a pluralist theory of dependence that accepts irreducibly many Respect-of-Dependence relations (in short, RD-relations). In Section 2, I shall introduce the artifactualist theo…Read more
  •  13
    Respects of Dependence and Symmetry
    Studia Neoaristotelica 18 (1): 31-68. 2021.
    In this article I discuss several apparent counterexamples to the asymmetry of ontological dependence. These counterexamples were introduced in discussions about grounding, but they can affect every theory of ontological dependence. I show that, if one adopts metaontological pluralism (i.e., the view according to which there are many dependence relations), one has some advantages when it comes to defending the asymmetry of dependence. In Section 1, I introduce metaontological pluralism and my ow…Read more
  •  22
    Bill, Bowl, and Ball. A Tale of Disjunctive Properties
    Studium Philosophicum. forthcoming.
    The existence of disjunctive properties has been put in question by many philosophers. In this article, I shall offer an argument for the existence of such properties. I shall show that they are required in order to ground certain objective and unique resemblances between things. In Section 1, I develop the argument by presenting a toy example involving three entities: a red fish (Bill), a glass and round fish bowl (Bowl), and a red ball (Ball). In Section 2, I deal with two strategies to rebut …Read more
  •  42
    A Brighter Shade of Categoricalism
    Axiomathes 32 (6): 1213-1242. 2022.
    Categoricalism is a doctrine about properties according to which the dispositional aspects of properties are not essential to them. In opposition to categoricalism, dispositionalism holds that the dispositional aspects of properties are essential to them. In this article, I shall construct a new version of categoricalism that should be favoured over the other existing versions: Semi-Necessitarian Categoricalism. In Section 2 I shall elaborate on the distinction between categoricalism and disposi…Read more
  •  86
    Bare Particulars, Modes, and the Varieties of Dependence
    Erkenntnis 88 (4): 1593-1620. 2023.
    Within some ontological theories, bare or thin particulars are the “kernel” of ordinary substances and they are supposed to clarify some key features of the latter, including their nature. In this article, I wish to offer a new theory of bare particulars, based on an interpretation of properties as modes and on a new reading of the dependence relations holding among entities in terms of respects of dependence. In Section 1, I shall introduce bare particulars, modes and respects of dependence. In…Read more
  • Arte, Bellezza e giudizio
    with Roger Scruton
    Philosophical News 3. 2011.
  •  18
    Attualismo, pluralismo ontologico e meinonghismo
    Rivista di Estetica 59 149-162. 2015.
    In questo articolo, prendo in considerazione i vantaggi e i problemi connessi all’accettazione del pluralismo ontologico di J. Turner e K. Mcdaniel, vale a dire, della tesi secondo la quale vi sarebbero diversi modi di essere (o di esistere) che sono più fondamentali rispetto dall’essere (o all’esistenza) in generale. Nella prima sezione, esamino due problemi per gli attualisti, cioè quei filosofi che affermano che non ci sono entità che non esistono. Nella seconda sezione, valuto i vantaggi del…Read more
  •  50
    Masks, interferers, finks, reverse finks, and mimickers are troublesome for powers metaphysics insofar as the latter concedes that there are powers with essential stimuli/activation conditions. In this article, I aim at offering a novel approach for solving this problem. In Section 1, I shall present the problem; and in Section 2, I shall briefly show how it also arises within non‐reductive views of powers. Subsequently, in Section 3, I shall examine the failure of the ceteris paribus solution. …Read more
  •  86
    The Holy Trinity and the Ontology of Relations
    Sophia 60 (1): 173-191. 2019.
    I reconsider in this article the problem of the Holy Trinity from the standpoint of some recent theories of the ontology of relations. After having presented the problem and after having introduced some basic ontological concepts, I shall briefly dwell on the ontology of non-symmetrical relations and on the O-Roles theory suggested by Francesco Orilia. Afterwards, I shall develop my own solution to the problem of the Holy Trinity by exploring the status of Intratrinitarian relations and of divin…Read more
  •  49
    Intrinsic and Extrinsic Modes
    Metaphysica 22 (2): 223-249. 2021.
    I offer in this article an account of the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties based on the ontology of modes. Modes are particular properties that directly depend for their identity on their "bearers". In Section 1, I shall introduce the ontology of modes. In Section 2, I shall examine the problem of distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic properties by considering another, related problem: that of distinguishing between internal and external relations. In Section 3, I …Read more
  •  98
    Mechanisms and Relations
    Erkenntnis 86 (1): 95-111. 2021.
    Mechanisms are organized collections of objects and activities that underlie certain phenomena/behaviours. In this article, I shall argue that the organizations of mechanisms should be thought of as external relations, namely, as relations that do not entirely depend on their relata’s existence, nor on their natures, nor on their intrinsic properties. After having introduced in the first two sections mechanisms and the ontology of relations, I shall analyse the organizations of mechanisms along …Read more
  •  48
    Spatial Relations Are External
    Acta Analytica 36 (3): 341-355. 2021.
    The thesis I wish to argue for in this article is that spatial relations such as occupying and being 1 km distant from are external. In the “Section 1” section, I shall introduce the distinction between external and internal relations and some other basic concepts in the ontology of relations. Afterwards, in the subsequent sections, I shall deal with different theories of space: substantivalism and relationism ; the spatial property theory ; super-substantivalism and super-relationism ; and spat…Read more
  •  101
    Emergent Powers
    Topoi 39 (5): 1031-1044. 2020.
    I shall introduce at the beginning of the paper a characterization of strong ontological emergence. According to it, roughly, something strongly emerges from some other thing iff the former depends in some respect on the latter and it some independent of it in some other respect. Afterwards, I shall present my own formulation of strong emergence, which is based on the distinction between the mere possession and the activation of a causal power. Causal powers are the entities to be primarily take…Read more
  •  40
    Functional Powers
    In Ludger Jansen & Petter Sandstad (eds.), Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation, Routledge. pp. 124-148. 2021.
    I introduce functional powers, i.e., causal powers that play the role of functions. In the first section, I characterize functions and present some desiderata for a good theory of functions. In the second section, I make some assumptions about the ontology of powers, teleology and structures-that will be helpful in order to ground my account of functional powers. In the third section, sixteen different types of functional powers are examined. All such types of functional powers will exhaustively…Read more
  •  5
    Naturalism (Almost) Self-defeated
    Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 61 135-139. 2018.
    In this paper, I shall try to present and defend some arguments against naturalistic evolutionism that are partly inspired by A. Plantinga’s well-known evolutionary argument against naturalism. I give two different characterizations of naturalistic evolutionism: according to the first, it is the view for which, for every human activity, that activity is governed by adaptive functions and nothing else ; according to second, it is the view for which, for most human activities, those activities are…Read more