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• Faculty, University of Aberdeen
• Research staff, University of Venice
• Research staff, University of Notre Dame
• PhD, University of Venice, 2004.

• Metaphysics
• Logic and Philosophy of Logic
• Philosophy of Mathematics
• Philosophy of Computing and Information

• Metaphysics
• Logic and Philosophy of Logic
• Philosophy of Mathematics
• Philosophy of Computing and Information
• Philosophy of Mind

I have obtained my PhD in philosophy at the University of Venice-Ca’Foscari; two postdocs: one in theoretical philosophy at the University of Padua, one in ontology at the Sorbonne of Paris, where I have been a Chaire d'Excellence fellow at the IHPST-CNRS; and a scholarship in philosophy of mind at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA). I have lectured in ontology and metaphysics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris and at the Universities of Padua and Milan-San Raffaele; in logic and philosophy of science at the University of Venice and at the SSIS (School of Specialization for High School Professors) of Venice and Padua; I have been an invited professor at the Institut Wiener Kreis of the University of Vienna, and a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Notre Dame. I have obtained the 2010 Ca'Foscari Research Prize from my alma mater, the University of Venice-Ca' Foscari. My AOC: Continental philosophy (AOS: Hegel’s dialectics, continental rationalist philosophers); Ontology & Metaphysics (AOS: Meinongian ontology, coincident objects, ontological commitment, modal metaphysics); Philosophy of logic (AOS: logical paradoxes, paraconsistent logics, Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, impossible worlds); Philosophy of language (AOS: inferential semantics, non-standard model-theoretic semantics); and Philosophy of computation (AOS: cellular automata). My favourite philosopher is Ludwig Wittgenstein, and my favourite book is the Tractatus logico-philosophicus. I love logical paradoxes, for I think they point at ineffable truths – and I like those philosophers that don’t take themselves too seriously).

15 items found. Sort by: publication yearfirst authorviewingsaddition date Francesco Berto, Edwin Mares & Koji Tanaka (forthcoming). Paraconsistent Logic (Tentative Title). No categories Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2011). Modal Meinongianism and Fiction: The Best of Three Worlds. Philosophical Studies 152:313-35. We outline a neo-Meinongian framework labeled as Modal Meinongian Metaphysics (MMM) to account for the ontology and semantics of fictional discourse. Several competing accounts of fictional objects are originated by the fact that our talking of them mirrors incoherent intuitions: mainstream theories of fiction privilege some such intuitions, but are forced to account for others via complicated paraphrases of the relevant sentences. An ideal theory should resort to as few paraphrases as possible. In Sect. 1, we make this explicit via (...) two methodological principles, called the Minimal Revision and the Acceptability Constraint. In Sect. 2, we introduce the standard distinction between internal and external fictional discourse. In Sects. 3–5, we discuss the approaches of (traditional) Meinongianism, Fictionalism, and Realism—and their main troubles. In Sect. 6 we propose our MMM approach. This is based upon (1) a modal semantics including impossible worlds (Subsect. 6.1); (2) a qualified Comprehension Principle for objects (Subsect. 6.2); (3) a notion of existence-entailment for properties (Subsect. 6.3). In Sect. 7 we present a formal semantics for MMM based upon a representation operator. And in Sect. 8 we have a look at how MMM solves the problems of the three aforementioned theories. (shrink) Impossible Worlds in Metaphysics Nonexistent Objects in Metaphysics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation  | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org   | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2010). Impossible Worlds and Propositions: Against the Parity Thesis. Philosophical Quarterly 60 (240):471-486. Accounts of propositions as sets of possible worlds have been criticized for conflating distinct impossible propositions. In response to this problem, some have proposed to introduce impossible worlds to represent distinct impossibilities, endorsing the thesis that impossible worlds must be of the same kind; this has been called the parity thesis. I show that this thesis faces problems, and propose a hybrid account which rejects it: possible worlds are taken as concrete Lewisian worlds, and impossibilities are represented as set-theoretic constructions (...) out of them. This hybrid account (1) distinguishes many intuitively distinct impossible propositions; (2) identifies impossible propositions with extensional constructions; (3) avoids resorting to primitive modality, at least so far as Lewisian modal realism does. (shrink) Impossible Worlds in Metaphysics Propositions in Philosophy of Language Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation  | Other links: dx.doi.org blackwell-synergy.com   | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2009). Impossible Worlds. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2009). Counterpossible Conditionals in Philosophy of Language Impossible Worlds in Metaphysics Modal Logic in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Model Theory in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Possible-World Theories of Counterfactuals in Philosophy of Language Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2009). The Gödel Paradox and Wittgenstein's Reasons. Philosophia Mathematica 17 (2):208-219. An interpretation of Wittgenstein’s much criticized remarks on Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem is provided in the light of paraconsistent arithmetic: in taking Gödel’s proof as a paradoxical derivation, Wittgenstein was drawing the consequences of his deliberate rejection of the standard distinction between theory and metatheory. The reasoning behind the proof of the truth of the Gödel sentence is then performed within the formal system itself, which turns out to be inconsistent. It is shown that the features of paraconsistent arithmetics match (...) with some intuitions underlying Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, such as its strict finitism and the insistence on the decidability of any mathematical question. (shrink) Ludwig Wittgenstein in 20th Century Philosophy Philosophy of Mathematics, Miscellaneous in Philosophy of Mathematics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation  | Other links: philmat.oxfordjournals.org dx.doi.org   | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2009). There's Something About Gödel: The Complete Guide to the Incompleteness Theorem. Wiley-Blackwell. The Gödelian symphony -- Foundations and paradoxes -- This sentence is false -- The liar and Gödel -- Language and metalanguage -- The axiomatic method or how to get the non-obvious out of the obvious -- Peano's axioms -- And the unsatisfied logicists, Frege and Russell -- Bits of set theory -- The abstraction principle -- Bytes of set theory -- Properties, relations, functions, that is, sets again -- Calculating, computing, enumerating, that is, the notion of algorithm -- Taking numbers (...) as sets of sets -- It's raining paradoxes -- Cantor's diagonal argument -- Self-reference and paradoxes -- Hilbert -- Strings of symbols -- In mathematics there is no ignorabimus -- Gödel on stage -- Our first encounter with the incompleteness theorem -- And some provisos -- Gödelization, or say it with numbers! -- TNT -- The arithmetical axioms of tnt and the standard model N -- The fundamental property of formal systems -- The Gödel numbering -- And the arithmetization of syntax -- Bits of recursive arithmetic -- Making algorithms precise -- Bits of recursion theory -- Church's thesis -- The recursiveness of predicates, sets, properties, and relations -- And how it is represented in typographical number theory -- Introspection and representation -- The representability of properties, relations, and functions -- And the Gödelian loop -- I am not provable -- Proof pairs -- The property of being a theorem of TNI (is not recursive!) -- Arithmetizing substitution -- How can a TNT sentence refer to itself? -- Fixed point -- Consistency and omega-consistency -- Proving G1 -- Rosser's proof -- The unprovability of consistency and the immediate consequences of G1 and -- G2 -- Technical interlude -- Immediate consequences of G1 and G2 -- Undecidable1 and undecidable 2 -- Essential incompleteness, or the syndicate of mathematicians -- Robinson arithmetic -- How general are Gödel's results? -- Bits of turing machine -- G1 and G2 in general -- Unexpected fish in the formal net -- Supernatural numbers -- The culpability of the induction scheme -- Bits of truth (not too much of it, though) -- The world after Gödel -- Bourgeois mathematicians! : the postmodern interpretations -- What is postmodernism? -- From Gödel to Lenin -- Is biblical proof decidable? -- Speaking of the totality -- Bourgeois teachers! -- (un)interesting bifurcations -- A footnote to Plato -- Explorers in the realm of numbers -- The essence of a life -- The philosophical prejudices of our times -- From Gödel to Tarski -- Human, too human -- Mathematical faith -- I'm not crazy! -- Qualified doubts -- From gentzen to the dialectica interpretation -- Mathematicians are people of faith -- Mind versus computer : Gödel and artificial intelligence -- Is mind (just) a program? -- Seeing the truth and going outside the system -- The basic mistake -- In the haze of the transfinite -- Know thyself : Socrates and the inexhaustibility of mathematics -- Gödel versus wittgenstein and the paraconsistent interpretation -- When geniuses meet -- The implausible Wittgenstein -- There is no metamathematics -- Proof and prose -- The single argument -- But how can arithmetic be inconsistent? -- The costs and benefits of making Wittgenstein plausible. (shrink) Philosophy of Mathematics, General Works in Philosophy of Mathematics $69.68 used   $69.69 new   $94.95 direct from Amazon   Amazon page Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation  | Other links: wiley-vch.de   | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto & Massimiliano Carrara (2009). To Exist and to Count: A Note on the Minimalist View. Dialectica 63 (3):343-356. Sometimes mereologists have problems with counting. We often don't want to count the parts of maximally connected objects as full-fledged objects themselves, and we don't want to count discontinuous objects as parts of further, full-fledged objects. But whatever one takes "full-fledged object" to mean, the axioms and theorems of classical, extensional mereology commit us to the existence both of parts and of wholes – all on a par, included in the domain of quantification – and this makes mereology look counterintuitive (...) to various philosophers. In recent years, a proposal has been advanced to solve the tension between mereology and familiar ways of counting objects, under the label of Minimalist View . The Minimalist View may be summarized in the slogan: "Count x as an object iff it does not overlap with any y you have already counted as an object". The motto seems prima facie very promising but, we shall argue, when one looks at it more closely, it is not. On the contrary, the Minimalist View involves an ambiguity that can be solved in quite different directions. We argue that one resolution of the ambiguity makes it incompatible with mereology. This way, the Minimalist View can lend no support to mereology at all. We suggest that the Minimalist View can become compatible with mereology once its ambiguity is solved by interpreting it in what we call an epistemic or conceptual fashion: whereas mereology has full metaphysical import, the Minimalist View may account for our ways of selecting "conceptually salient" entities. But even once it is so disambiguated, it is doubtful that the Minimalist View can help to make mereology more palatable, for it cannot make it any more compatible with commonsensical ways of counting objects. (shrink) Mereology in Metaphysics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2008). Adynaton and Material Exclusion. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86 (2):165 – 190. Philosophical dialetheism, whose main exponent is Graham Priest, claims that some contradictions hold, are true, and it is rational to accept and assert them. Such a position is naturally portrayed as a challenge to the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). But all the classic formulations of the LNC are, in a sense, not questioned by a typical dialetheist, since she is (cheerfully) required to accept them by her own theory. The goal of this paper is to develop a formulation of the (...) Law which appears to be unquestionable, in the sense that the Priestian dialetheist is committed to accept it without also accepting something inconsistent with it, on pain of trivialism—that is to say, on pain of lapsing into the position according to which everything is the case. This will be achieved via (a) a discussion of Priest's dialetheic treatment of the notions of rejection and denial; and (b) the characterization of a negation via the primitive intuition of content exclusion. Such a result will not constitute a cheap victory for the friends of consistency. We may just learn that different things have been historically conflated under the label of 'Law of Non-Contradiction'; that dialetheists rightly attack some formulations of the Law, and orthodox logicians and philosophers have been mistaken in assimilating them to the indisputable one. (shrink) Paradoxes, Miscellaneous in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2008). Modal Meinongianism for Fictional Objects. Metaphysica 9 (2):205-218. Drawing on different suggestions from the literature, we outline a unified metaphysical framework, labeled as Modal Meinongian Metaphysics (MMM), combining Meinongian themes with a non-standard modal ontology. The MMM approach is based on (1) a comprehension principle (CP) for objects in unrestricted, but qualified form, and (2) the employment of an ontology of impossible worlds, besides possible ones. In §§1–2, we introduce the classical Meinongian metaphysics and consider two famous Russellian criticisms, namely (a) the charge of inconsistency and (b) the (...) claim that naïve Meinongianism allows one to prove that anything exists. In §3, we have impossible worlds enter the stage and provide independent justification for their use. In §4, we introduce our revised comprehension principle: our CP has no restriction on the (sets of) properties that can characterize objects, but parameterizes them to worlds, therefore having modality explicitly built into it. In §5, we propose an application of the MMM apparatus to fictional objects and defend the naturalness of our treatment against alternative approaches. Finally, in §6, we consider David Lewis’ notorious objection to impossibilia, and provide a reply to it by resorting to an ersatz account of worlds. (shrink) Impossible Worlds in Metaphysics Metaphysics, Misc in Metaphysics Nonexistent Objects in Metaphysics Ontology, Misc in Metaphysics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation  | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org   | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto & Graham Priest (2008). Dialetheism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2008). A dialetheia is a sentence, A, such that both it and its negation, ¬A, are true (we shall talk of sentences throughout this entry; but one could run the definition in terms of propositions, statements, or whatever one takes as her favourite truth-bearer: this would make little difference in the context). Assuming the fairly uncontroversial view that falsity just is the truth of negation, it can equally be claimed that a dialetheia is a sentence which is both true and false. Dialetheism in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Liar Paradox in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Logical Constants in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2007). Hegel's Dialectics as a Semantic Theory: An Analytic Reading. European Journal of Philosophy 15 (1):19–39. G. W. F. Hegel in 19th Century Philosophy Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation  | Other links: interscience.wiley.com dx.doi.org   | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2007). How to Sell a Contradiction. College Publications. There is a principle in things, about which we cannot be deceived, but must always, on the contrary, recognize the truth – viz. that the same thing cannot at one and the same time be and not be": with these words of the Metaphysics, Aristotle introduced the Law of Non-Contradiction, which was to become the most authoritative principle in the history of Western thought. However, things have recently changed, and nowadays various philosophers, called dialetheists, claim that this Law does not (...) hold unrestrictedly – that in peculiar circumstances the same thing may at the same time be and not be, and contradictions may obtain in the world. This book opens with an examination of the famous logical paradoxes that appear to speak on behalf of contradictions (e.g., the Liar paradox, the set-theoretic paradoxes such as Cantor’s and Russell’s), and of the reasons for the failure of the standard attempts to solve them. It provides, then, an introduction to paraconsistent logics – non-classical logics in which the admission of contradictions does not lead to logical chaos –, and their astonishing applications, going from inconsistent data base management to contradictory arithmetics capable of circumventing Gödel’s celebrated Incompleteness Theorem. The final part of the book discusses the philosophical motivations and difficulties of dialetheism, and shows how to extract from Aristotle’s ancient words a possible reply to the dialetheic challenge. How to Sell a Contradiction will appeal to anyone interested in non-classical logics, analytic metaphysics, and philosophy of mathematics, and especially to those who consider challenging our most entrenched beliefs the main duty of philosophical inquiry. (shrink) Dialetheism in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Logic and Philosophy of Logic, General Works in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Logical Paradoxes, Misc in Logic and Philosophy of Logic $31.16 new   $38.00 direct from Amazon   $68.00 used   Amazon page Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2007). Is Dialetheism an Idealism? The Russellian Fallacy and the Dialetheist's Dilemma. Dialectica 61 (2):235–263. In his famous work on vagueness, Russell named “fallacy of verbalism” the fallacy that consists in mistaking the properties of words for the properties of things. In this paper, I examine two (clusters of) mainstream paraconsistent logical theories – the non-adjunctive and relevant approaches –, and show that, if they are given a strongly paraconsistent or dialetheic reading, the charge of committing the Russellian Fallacy can be raised against them in a sophisticated way, by appealing to the intuitive reading of (...) their underlying semantics. The meaning of “intuitive reading” is clarified by exploiting a well-established distinction between pure and applied semantics. If the proposed arguments go through, the dialetheist or strong paraconsistentist faces the following Dilemma: either she must withdraw her claim to have exhibited true contradictions in a metaphysically robust sense – therefore, inconsistent objects and/or states of affairs that make those contradictions true; or she has to give up realism on truth, and embrace some form of anti-realistic (idealistic, or broadly constructivist) metaphysics. Sticking to the second horn of the Dilemma, though, appears to be promising: it could lead to a collapse of the very distinction, commonly held in the literature, between a weak and a strong form of paraconsistency – and this could be a welcome result for a dialetheist. (shrink) Dialetheism in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Liar Paradox in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation  | Other links: interscience.wiley.com   | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2006). Characterizing Negation to Face Dialetheism. Logique et Analyse 49 (195):241-263. Dialetheism in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Logical Constants in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Logical Pluralism in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Francesco Berto (2006). Meaning, Metaphysics, and Contradiction. American Philosophical Quarterly 43 (4):283-297. Dialetheism in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Logical Paradoxes, Misc in Logic and Philosophy of Logic Metaphysics, Misc in Metaphysics Reading list   |  Discuss  |  Edit  |  Categorize  |     My bibliography  |   Export citation  | Other links: jstor.org   | Scholar | At my library | More options ...

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