Online research in philosophy

to appear in A. Coliva (ed.), Manuale di filosofia analitica, Roma: Carocci.

Rivista di estetica, 32:2 (2007), 109-127.

to appear in The Philosophical Quarterly.

to appear in J. E. Adler and L. Rips (eds.), Reasoning: Studies in Human Inference and Its Foundations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

in Marco Aiello, Ian E. Pratt-Hartmann, and Johan van Benthem (eds.), Handbook of Spatial Logics, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2007, pp. 945-1038.

Amidst many discussions on super-valuational algebras and their philosophical applications — on which I was writing my dissertation — Hans and I once paused to ponder the mystical experience of the square. I mean A Square, the hero of Flatland. I mean that perfectly two-dimensional being, with no depth whatsoever, citizen of an equally two-dimensional depthless world, who one day had the good fortune of receiving a visit from a Sphere. What's more, he had the fortune of being able to (...) visit, albeit briefly, the undreamt-of three-dimensional world his guest came from — which is to say, our three-dimensional world. He visited and experienced our world before falling back for all eternity into the total flatness of .. (shrink)

According to a certain, familiar way of dividing up the business of philosophy, made popular by Quine, ontology is concerned with the question of what there is (a task that is often identified with that of drafting a “complete inventory” of the universe) whereas metaphysics is concerned with the question of what it is (i.e., with the task of specifying the “ultimate nature” of the items included in the inventory).1 For instance, a thesis to the effect that there are such (...) things as colors or virtues would strictly speaking belong to ontology, whereas it would pertain to metaphysics proper to establish whether such entities are Platonic forms, Aristotelian universals, tropes, moments, or what have you. Likewise, it would fall within the scope of ontology to determine whether, when we speak of Sherlock Holmes, of the natural numbers, or of Sebastian’s walks in Bologna, we are speaking of things that truly belong to the furniture of the universe, but it would be a further metaphysical task to say something precise in regard to the ultimate make-up of those things, if such there be—for instance, that Sherlock Holmes is a theoretical artifact, that numbers are abstract individuals, that walks are property exemplifications, and so on. Of course, this view is all but universal among philosophers. There are many other, different ways of understanding the terms ‘ontology’ and ‘metaphysics’, some of which can certainly claim a respectable pedigree. For example, it is also common to think of ontology as a proper part of metaphysics—that part that has to do with what there is2—and there are even philosophers who use those terms in a way that is the exact opposite of the one I have just offered.3 But never mind; I am not interested in defending the view or in criticizing it, as very little depends on it. I am citing it just to fix a certain distinction and to settle on a terminology. The question I wish to address concerns the relationship between the distinction—the relationship between ontology understood as the study of what there is and metaphysics understood as the study of what it is.. (shrink)

Remember the story of the most-most? It’s the story of that club in New York where people are the most of every type. There is the hairiest bald man and the baldest hairy man; the shortest giant and the tallest dwarf; the smartest idiot and the stupidest wise man. They are all there, including honest thieves and crippled acrobats. On Saturday night they have a party, eat, drink, dance. Then they have a contest. “And if you can tell the hairiest (...) bald man from the baldest hairy man—we are told—you get a prize.”. (shrink)

1. Universalism (also known as Conjunctivism, or Collectivism) is the thesis that mereological composition is unrestricted. More precisely: (U) Any non-empty collection of things has a fusion, i.e., something that has all those things as parts and has no part that is disjoint from each of them.1 Extensionalism is the thesis that sameness of composition is sufficient for identity. More precisely: (E) No two things have exactly the same proper parts (unless they are atomic, i.e., have no proper parts at (...) all). Clearly these two theses are not equivalent. They are, however, more closely related than one might think. For while (E) does not entail (U), the converse entailment holds —or so I will argue. More precisely, the entailment holds as long as it is agreed that the following postulates are constitutive of the meaning of ‘part’: (1) Transitivity: Any part of any part of a thing is itself part of that thing. (2) Supplementation: Whenever a thing has a proper part, it has at least another part that is disjoint from the first. 2. One way to establish the entailment can be extracted from two results of Simons (1987: 29ff), which concern a set of postulates logically equivalent to (1) and (2). The first is that such postulates license the derivation of (E) from the following strengthening of (2): (3) Strong Supplementation: Whenever a thing is not part of another, the first has at least a part that is disjoint from the the second. 1 I write ‘is disjoint from’ as shorthand for ‘has no parts in common with’. I will also write ‘overlaps’ for ‘has parts in common with’ and ‘is a proper part of’ for ‘is part of, but not identical to’. (shrink)

We think of a boundary whenever we think of an entity demarcated from its surroundings. There is a boundary (a surface) demarcating the interior of a sphere from its exterior; there is a boundary (a border) separating Maryland and Pennsylvania. Sometimes the exact location of a boundary is unclear or otherwise controversial (as when you try to trace out the margins of Mount Everest, or even the boundary of your own body). Sometimes the boundary lies skew to any physical discontinuity (...) or qualitative differentiation (as with the border of Wyoming, or the boundary between the upper and lower halves of a homogeneous sphere). But whether sharp or blurry, natural or artificial, for every object there appears to be a boundary that marks it off from the rest of the world. Events, too, have boundaries — at least temporal boundaries. Our lives are bounded by our births and by our deaths; the soccer game began at 3pm sharp and ended with the referee's final whistle at 4:45pm. And it is sometimes suggested that abstract entities, such as concepts or sets, have boundaries of their own. Whether all this boundary talk is coherent, however, and whether it reflects the structure of the world or the organizing activity of our intellect, are matters of deep philosophical controversy. (shrink)

Holes are an interesting case-study for ontologists and epistemologists. Naive, untutored descriptions of the world treat holes as objects of reference, on a par with ordinary material objects. (‘There are as many holes in the cheese as there are cookies in the tin.’) And we often appeal to holes to account for causal interactions, or to explain the occurrence of certain events. (‘The water ran out because of the hole in the bucket.’) Hence there is..

to appear in The Philosophical Quarterly.

This issue of The Monist is devoted to the metaphysics of lesser kinds, which is to say those kinds of entity that are not generally recognized as occupying a prominent position in the categorial structure of the world. Why bother? We offer two sorts of reason. The first is methodological. In mathematics, it is common practice to study certain functions (for instance) by considering limit cases: What if x = 0? What if x is larger than any assigned value? Physics, (...) too, often studies the (idealized) initial and boundary conditions of a given system: What would happen in the case of a perfect sphere, or a perfectly black body? In the cognitive sciences, research often thrives on the analysis of cognitive errors, perceptual illusions, brain pathologies. Also in logic one can learn a lot by studying special, anomalous scenarios such as those exhibited by the paradoxes: it is unlikely that we actually find ourselves in a soritical context, or in a liar-like situation, but the fact that we might—or simply the fact that we can conceive of such a possibility—is important enough to deserve careful consideration. In short, the odd, the unfamiliar, the extra-ordinary, the limit cases are perfectly at home in scientific and more broadly intellectual discourse at various levels, where they can be fruitfully engaged in a sophisticated way (witness the existence of specific confining and managing strategies for dealing with them); and they are important precisely because they instruct us concerning the normal, the obvious, and the paradigmatic. The same goes for metaphysics, we submit. Although its major concern is, naturally, with such core entities as substances, properties, or hunks of solid matter, a lot may be learned by paying attention to those limit cases where we find ourselves dealing with entities of much lesser kinds, whether real or putative. (shrink)

The following is a transcript of what might very well have been five telephone conversations between Michael Jordan and former Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson. The conversations took place in early March 1995, just before the announcement of MJ’s comeback after a year spent pursuing baseball.

1. According to a popular line of reasoning, vagueness creates a problem for the endurantist conception of persistence.1 Assuming that ordinary material objects can undergo some mereological change without thereby ceasing to exist, just how much change they can tolerate appears to be a vague matter. Surely a cat—Tibbles—can lose a few body cells, but surely it cannot lose too many of them, so it seems that we are bound to be faced with “borderline cases” in which we are unsure (...) what to say. For a perdurantist, such considerations pose no serious threat. If ordinary objects are things that persist through time by having a different temporal part at each moment at which they exist, just as they extend over space by having a different spatial part at each place at which they are found, then the borderline cases can be explained in familiar semantic terms: our linguistic practices are not precise enough to determine the exact temporal extent of the referent of such expressions as ‘Tibbles’ or ‘that cat’, just as they are not precise enough to determine the exact spatial extent of the referent of expressions such as ‘Everest’ or ‘that mountain’. By contrast, the endurantist would seem to be committed to a different account. If ordinary objects are things that persist through time by being wholly present at each moment at which they exist, and if it is indeterminate whether a certain number of body cells suffices to constitute a whole cat, then the borderline cases correspond to times at which it is indeterminate whether a cat exists at all. To the extent that our expressions for existence are not capable of harboring semantic vagueness (e.g., because they belong to our logical vocabulary), this means that the endurantist can only regard the borderline cases as a sign of epistemic or ontic vagueness—a problem. (shrink)

If we adopt a supervaluational semantics for vagueness, what sort of logic results? As it turns out, the answer depends crucially on how the standard notion of validity as truth preservation is recast. There are several ways of doing this within a supervaluational framework, the main alternative being between 'global' construals (e.g. an argument is valid if and only if it preserves truth-under-all-precisifications) and 'local' construals (an argument is valid if and only if, under all precisifications, it preserves truth). The (...) former alternative is by far more popular, but I argue in favour of the latter, for (i) it does not suffer from a number of serious objections, and (ii) it makes it possible to restore global validity as a defined notion. (shrink)

The following is a transcript of what might very well have been five telephone conversa- tions between Michael Jordan and former Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson in early March 1995, just before the announcement of MJ’s comeback after a year spent pursu- ing a baseball career.

Most event-referring expressions are vague it is utterly difficult, if not impossible, to specify the exact spatiotemporal location of an event from the words that we use to refer to it. We argue that in spite of certain prima facie obstacles, such vagueness can be given a purely semantic (broadly supervaluational) account.

Part-whole theories, or mereologies (from the Greek word µ ρος, meaning: “share”, “portion”, or “part”), form a central chapter of metaphysics throughout its history. Their roots can be traced back to the earliest days of philosophy, beginning with the Pre-Socratics. It is plausible to hold that Parmenides argues that there can be no parts, thus everything there is is one whole; and Zeno argues for his striking paradoxes on the assumption that there are parts (whether spatial or temporal ones). Democritus (...) introduces the idea that everything consists of atoms (literally: “indivisibles”) which are themselves simple, i.e., partless; Anaxagoras, on the other hand, maintains that everything consists of basic stuffs which are infinitely and homogeneously divisible: any portion of such a stuff is the same sort of stuff, and any portion, no matter how small, can be divided into further such portions. Sophisticated analyses in terms of parts and wholes figure prominently in the writings of Plato (especially in the Phaedo, Republic, Theaetetus, Par- menides, Timaeus, and Philebus) and Aristotle (most notably in the Metaphysics. (shrink)

Most event-referring expressions are vague: it is utterly difficult, if not impossible, to specify the exact spatiotemporal location of an event from the words that we use to refer to it. We argue that in spite of certain prima facie obstacles, such vagueness can be given a purely semantic (broadly supervaluational) account.

This issue of The Monist is devoted to the metaphysics of lesser kinds, which is to say those kinds of entity that are not generally recognized as occupying a prominent position in the categorial structure of the world. Why bother? We offer two sorts of reason.

It is common lore that standard, Kripke-style semantics for quantified modal logic is incompatible with the view that no individual may belong to more than one possible world, a view that seems to require a counterpart-theoretic semantics instead. Strictly speaking, however, this thought is wrong-headed. This note explains why.

Peter Simons has argued that the expression ‘the universe’ is not a genuine singular term: it can name neither a single, completely encompassing individual, nor a collection of individuals. (It is, rather, a semantically plural term standing equally for every existing object.) I offer reasons for resisting Simons’s arguments on both scores.

If the question is: what is to be done for philosophy?, then it calls for a political answer and I have little to say besides the obvious. If the question is: what is to be done in philosophy?, then I’m stuck. Drawing up a list of to-do’s and not-to-do’s would not, I think, be a good way to honor the general conception of philosophy that inspired Topoi throughout these years, and that I deeply share.

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?

On the difficulty of extracting the logical form of a seemingly simple sentence such as ‘If Andy went to the movie then Beth went too, but only if she found a taxi cab’, with some morals and questions on the nature of the difficulty.

The so-called "argument from vagueness", the clearest formulation of which is to be found in Ted Sider’s book Four-dimensionalism, is arguably the most powerful and innovative argument recently offered in support of the view that objects are four-dimensional perdurants. The argument is defective--I submit--and in a number of ways that is worth looking into. But each "defect" corresponds to a model of change that is independently problematic and that can hardly be built into the common-sense picture of the world. So (...) once all the gaps of the argument are filled in, the three-dimensionalist is left with the burden of a response that cannot rely on a passive plea for common sense. The argument is not a threat to common sense as such; it is a threat to the three-dimensionalist faithfulness to common sense. (shrink)

A rejoinder to G. Hull’s reply to my Mind 2003. Hull argues that Sorensen’s purported proof that ‘vague’ is vague--which I defended against certain familiar objections--fails. He offers three reasons: (i) the vagueness exhibited by Sorensen’s sorites is just the vagueness of ‘small’; (ii) the general assumption underlying the proof, to the effect that predicates which possess borderline cases are vague, is mistaken; (iii) the conclusion of the proof is unacceptable, for it is possible to create Sorensen-type sorites even for (...) predicates that are paradigmatically precise. I argue that each of these points involves fallacious reasoning. (shrink)

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.

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.

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.

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.

The paper outlines a model-theoretic framework for investigating and comparing a variety of mereotopological theories. In the first part we consider different ways of characterizing a mereotopology with respect to (i) the intended interpretation of the connection primitive, and (ii) the composition of the admissible domains of quantification (e.g., whether or not they include boundary elements). The second part extends this study by considering two further dimensions along which different patterns of topological connection can be classified – the strength of (...) the connection and its multiplicity. (shrink)

In ‘Towards a Solution to the Sorites Paradox’, Graham Priest gives us a new account of the sorites based on fuzzy logic. The novelty lies in the suggestion that truth-value assignments should themselves be treated as fuzzy objects, i.e., objects about which we can make fuzzy identity statements. I argue that Priest’s solution does not have the explanatory force that Priest advocates. That is, it does not explain why we find the existence of a cut-off point counter-intuitive. I also argue (...) that this sort of explanation calls for a general theory that goes beyond the special case of linguistic vagueness, for the phenomenon is at bottom not linguistic. (shrink)

R. Sorensen’s argument to the effect that ’vague’ is a vague predicate has been used by D. Hyde to infer that vague predicates suffer from higher-order vagueness. M. Tye has objected (convincingly) that this is too strong: all that follows from Sorensen’s result is that there are some border border cases, but not necessarily border border cases of every vague predicate. I argue that this is still too strong: Sorensen’s proof presupposes the existence of border border cases, hence cannot be (...) used to establish that fact on pain of circularity. (shrink)

Standard lore has it that a proper name is a temporally rigid designator. It picks out the same entity at every time at which it picks out an entity at all. If the entity in question is an enduring continuant then we know what this means, though we are also stuck with a host of metaphysical puzzles concerning endurance itself. If the entity in question is a perdurant then the rigidity claim is trivial, though one is left wondering how it (...) is that different speakers ever manage to pick out one and the same entity when a host of suitable, overlapping candidates are available. But what if the entity in question is neither a continuant nor a perdurant? What if the things we talk about in ordinary language are time-bound entities that cannot truly be said to persist through time, or stage sequences whose unity resides exclusively in our minds--like the “waves” at the stadium or the characters of a cartoon? In such cases the rigidity claim can’t be right and a counterpart-theoretic semantics seems required. Is that bad? I say it isn’t. And it had better not be, if that turns out to be the best metaphysical option we have. (shrink)

The history of evolution is a history of development from less to more complex organisms. This growth in complexity of organisms goes hand in hand with a concurrent growth in complexity of environments and of organism-environment relations. It is a concern with this latter aspect of evolutionary development that motivates the present paper. We begin by outlining a theory of organism-environment relations. We then show that the theory can be applied to a range of different sorts of cases, both biological (...) and non-biological, in which objects are lodged or housed within specific environments, or niches. Biological science is interested in types—for example in genotypes, phenotypes, and environment types—in regularities that can serve as the basis for the formulation of laws or general principles. Types, however, can exist only through their corresponding tokens. Our theory of token environments is meant to plug this gap and to provide a first step towards a general theory of causally relevant spatial volumes. (shrink)

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 settle on the minimal logic T0 corresponding to the common core shared by all competitors. That would be a way of resisting relativism, as long as one is willing to redraw the bounds of logic accordingly. However, such a minimal theory T0 may be empty if the syntax of L contains no special ingredients the interpretation of which is independent of the specification of the relevant L-models. And generally--I argue--this is indeed the case. (shrink)

Some forms of analytic reconstructivism take natural language (and common sense at large) to be ontologically opaque: ordinary sentences must be suitably rewritten or paraphrased before questions of ontological commitment may be raised. Other forms of reconstructivism take the commitment of ordinary language at face value, but regard it as metaphysically misleading: common-sense objects exist, but they are not what we normally think they are. This paper is an attempt to clarify and critically assess some common limits of these two (...) reconstructivist strategies. (shrink)

Dear ‘Time Machine’ Research Group; if in order to travel to the past one has to have been there already, and if one can only do what has already been done, then why build a time machine in the first place? À quoi bon l'effort?

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, hunting, breeding, nesting, grooming) in the life of an organism or group of organisms. This spatial notion of environment can be drawn closer to biological and ecological science by taking account of the pertinent physical attributes realized within given spatial regions. (shrink)

Some forms of analytic reconstructivism take natural language (and common sense at large) to be ontologically opaque: ordinary sentences must be suitably rewritten or paraphrased before questions of ontological commitment may be raised. Other forms of reconstructivism take the commitment of ordinary language at face value, but regard it as metaphysically misleading: common-sense objects exist, but they are not what we normally think they are. This paper is an attempt to clarify and critically assess some common limits of these two (...) reconstructivist strategies. (shrink)

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 concept of a counterpart (...) and to derive the standard postulates governing that concept) in terms of the theory of modal occurrents. Finally, I argue that this reconstruction allows us to view the indeterminacy of our modal intuitions as being part and parcel with the indeterminacy of our criteria for individuating modal occurrents, and that this indeterminacy is naturally explained in terms of linguistic (as opposed to ontic) vagueness. (shrink)

Dear "Time Machine" Research Group: if in order to travel to the past one has to have been there already, and if one can only do what has already been done, then why build a time machine in the first place? À quoi bon l’effort?

Some have argued that the vagueness exhibited by geographic names and descriptions such as ''Albuquerque,'' ''the Outback,'' or ''Mount Everest'' is ultimately ontological: these terms are vague because they refer to vague objects , objects with fuzzy boundaries. I take the opposite stand and hold the view that geographic vagueness is exclusively semantic, or conceptual at large. There is no such thing as a vague mountain. Rather, there are many things where we conceive a mountain to be, each with its (...) precise boundary, and when we say ''Everest'' we are just being vague as to which thing we are referring to. This paper defends this view against some plausible objections. (shrink)

Peirce once complained about the existence of nearly a hundred different definitions of logic. That was 1901—before the publication of the Prin- cipia and all that followed; before the tremendous growth of non-classical logics in the second half of this century and before the impressive development of logical calculi in various areas of computer science. If there were a hundred definitions then, today there are a hundred different theories, each of which stems from a different way of answering the question: (...) What is logic? (shrink)

The Paradox of the Question’ Ned Markosian tells a tale in which philosophers have a chance to ask an angel a question of their choice. What should they ask to make the most of their unique opportunity? Ted Sider has suggested asking: What is the true proposition (or one of the true propositions) that would be most beneficial for us to be told? I think we can do much better than that.

Your left and right hands are now touching each other. This could have been otherwise; but could your hands not be attached to the rest of your body? Sue is now putting the doughnut on the coffe table. She could have left it in the box; but could she have left only the hole in the box? Could her doughnut be holeless? Could it have two holes instead? Could the doughnut have a different hole than the one it has? Some (...) spatial facts seem tainted by necessity. This is problematic, since spatial facts are a paradigm of contingency. But the intermingling of space and modality may be surprisingly intricate. To a degree this is already visible in the part-whole structure of extended bodies. Parthood, itself a prima facie extrinsic relation, has an uncertain modal status. And questions about the necessity or the contingency of spatial facts and relations seem to run parallel to questions about the necessity or the contingency of parthood relations. Consider: Could an object have different parts than the ones it has? Common sense has an easy, affirmative answer to this question. However, 1 there are philosophers who, pressed by the need to overcome difficult conundrums concerning the identity of spatio-temporal particulars, have cast doubts on the adequacy of the common-sense answer. In recent years, for instance, Roderick Chisholm [1973, 1975, 1976] has defended the radical view that a true individual can neither gain nor lose parts, so that each single part is essential to it—a view that has come to be known as mereological es- sentialism. (shrink)

In recent years the idea that an adequate semantics of ordinary language calls for some theory of events has sparked considerable debate among linguists and philosophers. Speaking of Events offers a vivid and up-to-date indication of this debate, with emphasis precisely on the interplay between linguistic applications and philosophical implications. Each chapter has been written expressly for this volume by leading authors in the field, including Nicholas Asher, Pier Marco Bertinetto, Johannes Brandl, Denis Delfitto, Regine Eckardt, James Higginbotham, Alessandro Lenci, (...) Terence Parsons, Alice ter Meulen, and Henk Verkuyl. (shrink)

The cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words vastly underestimates the expressive power of many pictures and diagrams. In this note we show that even a simple map such as the outline of Manhattan Island, accompanied by a pointer marking North, implies a vast infinity of true statements.

Consider John, the moon, a lump of cheese. These are objects possessed of divisible bulk. They can be divided, in reality or in thought, into spatially extended parts. They have interiors. They also have boundaries, which we can think of (roughly) asinfinitely thin extremal slices. The boundary of the moon is its surface. The boundary of John is the surface of his skin. But what of inner boundaries, the boundaries of the interior parts of things? There are many genuine two-dimensional (...) (sphere- and torus-like) boundaries within the interior of John's body in virtue of the differentiation of this body into organs, cells, and so on. Imagine, however, a spherical ball made of some perfectly homogeneous prime matter. If the possession by an object of genuine inner boundaries presupposes either some interior spatial discontinuity or qualitative heterogeneity, then there is a sense in which there are no boundaries to be acknowledged within the interior of such an object at all. (shrink)

According to the cliché a picture is worth a thousand words. But this is a canard, for it vastly underestimates the expressive power of many pictures and diagrams. In this note we show that even a simple map such as the outline of Manhattan Island, accompanied by a pointer marking North, implies a vast infinity of statements–including a vast infinity of true statements.

Considering topology as an extension of mereology, this paper analyses topological variants of mereological essentialism (the thesis that an object could not have different parts than the ones it has). In particular, we examine de dicto and de re versions of two theses: (i) that an object cannot change its external connections (e.g., adjacent objects cannot be separated), and (ii) that an object cannot change its topological genus (e.g., a doughnut cannot turn into a sphere). Stronger forms of structural essentialism, (...) such as morphological essentialism (an object cannot change shape) and locative essentialism (an object cannot change position) are also examined. (shrink)

A plausible thought about vagueness is that it involves semantic incompleteness. To say that a predicate is vague is to say (at the very least) that its extension is incompletely specified. Where there is incomplete specification of extension there is indeterminacy, an indeterminacy between various ways in which the specification of the predicate might be completed or sharpened. In this paper we show that this idea is bound to founder by presenting an argument to the effect that there are vague (...) predicates which cannot be sharpened in such a way as to meet certain basic constraints (of penumbral connection and public accessibility) that must be imposed on the very notion of a sharpening. (shrink)

We tend to talk about (refer to, quantify over) parts in the same way in which we talk about whole objects. Yet a part is not something to be included in an inventory of the world over and above the whole to which it belongs, and a whole is not something to be included in the inventory over and above its constituent parts. This paper is an attempt to clarify a way of dealing with this tension which may be labeled (...) the Minimalist View: An element in the field of a part-whole relation is to be included in an inventory of the world if and only if it does not overlap any distinct element that is itself included in the inventory. (shrink)

The concept of niche (setting, context, habitat, environment) has been little studied by ontologists, in spite of its wide application in a variety of disciplines from evolutionary biology to economics. What follows is a first formal theory of this concept, a theory of the relations between objects and their niches. The theory builds upon existing work on mereology, topology, and the theory of spatial location as tools of formal ontology. It is illustrated above all by means of simple biological examples, (...) but the concept of niche should be understood as being, like concepts such as part, boundary, and location, a structural concept that is applicable in principle to a wide range of different domains. (shrink)

In this book Roberto Casati and Achille C. Varzi address some of the fundamental issues in the philosophy of spatial representation.

The ecological literature distinguishes between two ways of conceiving a “niche” (habitat, ecotope, biotope, microlandscape) [22, 39]. On the one hand, there is the traditional functional conception of a niche as the role or position enjoyed by an organism or population within an ecological community. As C. Elton [14] famously put it, “When an ecologist says ‘there goes a badger’ he should include in his thoughts some definite idea of the animal’s place in the community to which it belongs, just (...) as if he had said ‘there goes the vicar’.” The world of niches might, in this sense, be viewed as a giant evolutionary hotel, some of whose rooms are occupied (by organisms which have evolved to fill them), some of whose rooms are for a variety of reasons unoccupied but can become occupied in the future. On the other hand, there is the environmental conception advanced by G. E. Hutchinson [19] and R. Lewontin [21]. On this second conception, a niche is thought of as the hypervolume defined by the limiting values of all environmental variables relevant to the survival of a given species. A niche is not a mere location, but a location in space that is defined additionally by a specific constellation of ecological parameters such as degree of slope, exposure to sunlight, soil fertility, foliage density, and so on. It is, we might say, an ecological context. The purpose of this paper is to outline a formal theory of this notion. Our account expands on the theory put forward in [30], which builds upon certain fundamental notions and principles of mereology, topology, and the theory of spatial location. We focus on niche tokens, which is to say on the environmental niche determined by a given organism or population of organisms in a given place, and we aim to be more explicit than is customary in the ecological literature as concerns the.. (shrink)

The concept of niche (setting, context, habitat, environment) has been little studied by ontologists, in spite of its wide application in a variety of disciplines from evolutionary biology to economics. What follows is a first formal theory of this concept, a theory of the relations between objects and their niches. The theory builds upon existing work on mereology, topology, and the theory of spatial location as tools of formal ontology. It will be illustrated above all by means of simple biological (...) examples, but the concept of niche should be understood as being, like concepts such as part, boundary, and location, a structural concept that is applicable in principle to a wide range of different domains. (shrink)

What is logic? What makes it a subject in its own right, separate from (and in the background of) the concerns of other disciplines? What is the distinctive character of a logical term or operation? The wealth of technical developments in all areas of logic in recent years has not diminished the need of serious philosophical reflection on the nature of logic, and indeed there is a growing gap between the logician's work and the philosopher's urge to understand the scope (...) of that work. The aim of this collection is to offer material toward filling that gap. (shrink)

The concept of niche (setting, context, habitat, environment) has been little studied by ontologists, in spite of its wide application in a variety of disciplines from evolutionary biology to economics. What follows is a first formal theory of this concept, a theory of the relations between objects and their niches. The theory builds upon existing work on mereology, topology, and the theory of spatial location as tools of formal ontology. It is illustrated above all by means of simple biological examples, (...) but the concept of niche should be understood as being, like concepts such as part, boundary, and location, a structural concept that is applicable in principle to a wide range of different domains. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with certain ontological issues in the foundations of geographic representation. It sets out what these basic issues are, describes the tools needed to deal with them, and draws some implications for a general theory of spatial representation. Our approach has ramifications in the domains of mereology, topology, and the theory of location, and the question of the interaction of these three domains within a unified spatial representation theory is addressed. In the final part we also consider (...) the idea of non-standard geographies, which may be associated with geography under a classical conception in the same sense in which non-standard logics are associated with classical logic. (shrink)

Analyses, in the simplest form assertions that aim to capture an intimate link between two concepts, are viewed since Russell's theory of definite descriptions as analyzing descriptions. Analysis therefore has to obey the laws governing definitions including some form of a Substitutivity Principle (SP). Once (SP) is accepted the road to the paradox of analysis is open. Popular reactions to the paradox involve the fundamental assumption (SV) that sentences differing only in containing an analysandum resp. an analysans express the same (...) proposition, because analysandum and analysans are the same entity. Following suggestions of Gupta and Belnap it is argued that (SV) should be rejected. (shrink)

David Lewis has argued that impossible worlds are nonsense: if there were such worlds, one would have to distinguish between the truths about their contradictory goings-on and contradictory falsehoods about them; and this--Lewis argues--is preposterous. In this paper I examine a way of resisting this argument by giving up the assumption that ‘in so-and-so world’ is a restricting modifier which passes through the truth-functional connectives The outcome is a sort of subvaluational semantics which makes a contradiction ‘A & ~A’ false (...) even when both ‘A’ and ‘~A’ are true, just as supervaluational semantics makes a tautology ‘A v ~A’ true even when neither ‘A’ nor ‘~A’ are. Connections with discussive logics and complications of the account are discussed, and some general morals are drawn. (shrink)

There are conflicting intuitions concerning the status of a boundary separating two adjacent entities (or two parts of the same entity). The boundary cannot belong to both things, for adjacency excludes overlap; and it cannot belong to neither, for nothing lies between two adjacent things. Yet how can the dilemma be avoided without assigning the boundary to one thing or the other at random? Some philosophers regard this as a reductio of the very notion of a boundary, which should accordingly (...) be treated a mere façon de parler. In this paper I resist this temptation and examine some ways of taking the puzzle at face value within a realist perspective--treating boundaries as ontologically on a par with (albeit parasitic upon) extended parts. (shrink)

Material objects, such as tables and chairs, have an intimate relationship with space. They have to be somewhere. They must possess an address at which they are found. Under this aspect, they are in good company. Events, too, such as Caesar’s death and John’s buttering of the toast, and more elusive entities, such as the surface of the table, have an address, difficult as it may be to specify. A stronger notion presents itself, though. Some entities may not only be (...) located at an address; they may also own (as it were) the place at which they are located, so as to exclude other entities from being located at the same address. Thus, for certain kinds of entities, no two tokens of the same kind can be located at the same place at the same time. This is typically the case with material objects. Likewise, no two particularized properties of the same level or degree of determinacy can be located at the same place at the same time (although particularized properties of different degree, such as the red of this table and the color of this table, can). Other entities seem to evade the restriction. Two events can be perfectly co-located without competing for their address. Or, to use a different terminology, events do not occupy the spatial region at which they are located, and can therefore share it with other events. The rotation of the Earth and the cooling down of the Earth take place at exactly the same region. Some of these facts and hypotheses have important bearings as to matters of identity. For instance, co-localization seems to be a sufficient condition for identity in the case of material objects, but not in the case of.. (shrink)

Reasoning and talking about time is to a great extent reasoning and talking about what actually happens or might happen at some time or another. This is perhaps not crucial if our concern is with abstract temporal reasoners or planners intended for specific applications, but it arguably matters for the prospects of knowledge representation and natural language semantics. The variety of the world is the variety of the things that happen, and we can’t deal with it without taking events at (...) face value (just as we cannot deal with physical bodies or masses by confining ourselves to their spatial coordinates). This is the stance we took in [11], where we argued that the notion of an event structure can be given an autonomous characterization germane to both common sense and natural language. In [12] and [13] we also showed that the formal connection between the way events are perceived to be ordered and the underlying temporal dimension is essentially that of a construction of a linear ordering from the basic formal ontological properties of a domain of events— specifically, mereological and topological properties. The purpose of this paper is to expand on this by further investigating the subtle connections between time and events. After a brief review, in the first part we shall generalize the notion of an event structure to that of a refinement structure, where various degrees of temporal granularity are accommodated. In the second part we shall then investigate how these structures can account for the context-dependence of temporal structures in natural language semantics. (shrink)

We are used to regarding actions and other events, such as Brutus’ stabbing of Caesar or the sinking of the Titanic, as occupying intervals of some underlying linearly ordered temporal dimension. This attitude is so natural and compelling that one is tempted to disregard the obvious difference between time periods and actual happenings in favor of the former: events become mere “intervals cum description”.1 On the other hand, in ordinary circumstances the point of talking about time is to talk about (...) what actually happens or might happen at some time or another. We talk about ‘now’ and ‘then’ in an effort to put some order in our description of what goes on. And since different events seem to overlap in so many different ways, a full account of their temporal relations seems to run afoul of a reductionist strategy. This raises two philosophical questions. The first is whether we can actually go beyond time, as it were, i.e., whether we can take events as bona fide entities and deal with them directly, just as we can deal with spatial entities such as physical bodies or masses without confining ourselves to their spatial representations. This is a controversial issue (though probably not as controversial as it used to be), and ties in with a number of unsettled problems concerning, e.g., the structure of causality or the definition of adequate identity and individuation criteria for events. 2 The second question is whether we can perhaps do without time, i.e., whether we can dispense with time points or intervals as an independent ontological category and focus only on actual or potential happenings, in opposition to the form of reductionism mentioned above—in short, whether we can account for the temporal dimension in terms of suitable relations among events. This is also a highly controversial issue, and relates to the classical dispute concerning relational vs. absolutist conceptions of (space and) time.3 It is this second question that we intend to focus on here.. (shrink)

In the first part we consider some difficulties that arise as we move from the analysis of spatio- temporal regions to that of their natural occupants, such as physical bodies or events. In the second part we focus on the latter and we give a refined formulation of our argument to the effect that the temporal dimension can be directly construed from a domain of events in terms of the basic mereotopological relations of parthood and boundary.

What are the relationships between an entity and the space at which it is located? And between a region of space and the events that take place there? What is the metaphysical structure of localization? What its modal status? This paper addresses some of these questions in an attempt to work out at least the main coordinates of the logical structure of localization. Our task is mostly taxonomic. But we also highlight some of the underlying structural features and we single (...) out the interactions between the notion of localization and nearby notions, such as the notions of part and whole, or of necessity and possibility. A theory of localization--we argue--is needed in order to account for the basic relations between objects and space, and runs afoul a pure part-whole theory. We also provide an axiomatization of the relation of localization and examine cases of localization involving entities different from material objects. (shrink)

In ‘Something to Do with Vagueness ...’, Linda Burns defends an analogy between the informational and the borderline-case variety of vagueness. She argues that the latter is in fact less extraordinary and less disastrous than people in the tradition of Michael Dummett and Crispin Wright have told us. However, her account involves presuppositions that cannot be taken for granted. Here is to take a closer look at some of these presuppositions and argue hat they may--when left unguarded--undermine much of Burns’ (...) general account. (shrink)

Sarà capitato anche a voi, in treno, di cercare di aprire la porta tra un vagone e l’altro con l’espressivissima maniglia e, solo dopo non esserci riusciti, di aver notato il meno eloquente pulsante sulla destra. Il fenomeno non è troppo diverso da quando, non avendo capito qualcosa, chiediamo di farci un esempio. La convinzione —falsa—che parlare possa essere surrogato dall’indicare degli oggetti nasconde l’idea –vera– che gli oggetti parlino, e che alcuni parlino meglio di altri. Per capirlo, non c’è (...) bisogno di portarsi dei fagotti per intrattenere delle conversazioni come fanno gli accademici di Lagado nei Viaggi di Gulliver. Basta liberarsi del pregiudizio secondo cui le cose sono mute, staccarci un po’ dall’attenzione ossessiva sui Soggetti, e prestare la giusta attenzione a quella realtà espressiva, evidente, infaticabile, che ci dice “sono io, sono qui”. (shrink)

Broadly understood, events are things that happen—things such as births and deaths, thunder and lightening, explosions, weddings, hiccups and hand-waves, dances, smiles, walks. Whether such things form a genuine metaphysical category is a question that has attracted the sustained interest of philosophers, especially in the second half of the 20th century. But there is little question that human perception, action, language, and thought manifest at least a prima facie commitment to entities of this sort: Pre-linguistic infants appear to be able (...) to discriminate and “count” events. The content of adult perception, especially in the auditory realm, endorses the discrimination and recognition as events of some aspects of the perceived scene. Humans (and arguably other animals) form the intention to plan and execute actions, and to bring about changes in the world. Dedicated linguistic devices (such as verb tenses and aspects, nominalization of some verbs, certain proper names) are tuned to events and event structures, as opposed to entities and structures of other sorts. Thinking about the temporal, causal, and intentional aspects of the world seems to require parsing those aspects in terms of events and their descriptions. It is not clear to what extent such commitments are to be understood as an integrated phenomenon.. (shrink)

Holes are an interesting case-study for ontologists and epistemologists. Naive, untutored descriptions of the world treat holes as objects of reference, on a par with ordinary material objects. (‘There are as many holes in the cheese as there are cookies in the tin.’) And we often appeal to holes to account for causal interactions, or to explain the occurrence of certain events. (‘The water ran out because of the hole in the bucket.’) Hence there is prima facie evidence for the (...) existence of such entities. Yet it might be argued that reference to holes is just a façon de parler, that holes are mere entia representationis, as-if entities, fictions. (shrink)

Le relazioni spaziali tra gli oggetti che ci circondano nel nostro microcosmo quotidiano o nel macroambiente delle posizioni geografiche e le proprietà spaziali di tali oggetti, come forma e dimensione, sono un soggetto di ricerca privilegiato per quei settori delle scienze cognitive che mirano a rappresentare fedelmente le competenze degli agenti umani. Gran parte del nostro comportamento è descrivibile in termini spaziali: pianifi- chiamo azioni, cerchiamo di eseguirle secondo i nostri piani (eventualmente superando ostacoli imprevisti), ne controlliamo lo svolgimento attraverso (...) un sofisticato sistema percettivo che, evidentemente, dispone di una componente non secondaria per la rappresentazione spaziale e il riconoscimento delle forme. Questi comportamenti spesso sono coadiuvati da ragionamenti e deduzioni («Se Paolo è a destra di Matteo e a sinistra di Holly, allora Holly è a destra di Matteo», «Se il cucchiaio è nella tazza e la tazza è nella credenza, il cucchiaio è nella credenza»). La stessa interpretazione del linguaggio naturale richiede un’adeguata semantica per le espressioni spaziali, presenti non solo nel lessico ma anche, significativamente, nel sistema delle preposizioni (“in”, “su”, “tra”). Allorché quindi si cerca di rendere esplicito questo complesso sistema di competenze, si vorrebbe—idealmente—fondere le diverse componenti (pianificazione, azione, percezione, ragionamento deduttivo, linguaggio naturale) in un quadro unitario e armonico. Se ci si chiede di accertare se il cucchiaio è nella credenza, abbiamo bisogno di comprendere quello che ci vien chiesto, di progettare un’azione di verifica, di osser- vare una certa relazione spaziale, di inferire una certa conclusione, e il contenuto di queste diverse competenze deve poter fluire dall’una all’altra attività mantenendosi (abbastanza) invariato. Naturalmente i contributi al progetto di una rappresentazione adeguata delle competenze spaziali vengono da settori diversi e spesso di difficile armonizzazione —logica, matematica, filosofia, psicologia della percezione, neurofisiologia, semantica (vedi l’ampia selezione di contributi in [10]).. (shrink)

Common-sense reasoning about space is, first and foremost, reasoning about things located in space. The fly is inside the glass; hence the glass is not inside the fly. The book is on the table; hence the table is under the book. Sometimes we may be talking about things going on in certain places: the concert took place in the garden; then dinner was served in the solarium. Even when we talk about “naked” (empty) regions of space—regions that are not occupied (...) by any macroscopic object and where nothing noticeable seems to be going on—we tipically do so because we are planning to move things around, or because we are thinking that certain actions or events did or should take place in certain sites as opposed to others. The sofa should go right here; the aircraft crashed right there. Spatial reasoning, whether actual or hypothetical, is typically reasoning about spatial entities of some sort. One might—and some people do—take this as a fundamental claim, meaning that spatial entities such as objects or events are fundamentally (cognitively, or perhaps even metaphysically) prior to space: there is no way to identify a region of space except by reference to what is or could be located or take place at that region. (This was, for instance, the gist of Leibniz’ contention against the Newtonian view that space is an individual entity in its own right, independently of whatever entities may inhabit it.) It is, however, even more interesting to see how far we can go in our understand-. (shrink)

On a sunny day, on the seashore, Tactic and Tictac receive their first message in a bottle. They are good at radical interpretation. They master logic pretty well too. And they have independent evidence that ‘∨’ and ‘∧’ are sentential connectives (for “disjunction” and “conjunction”, as they have learned to say). “Look, Tactic says, look at this—a disjunction!” He holds it up.

Alexandre Koyré ha scritto che Newton e la scienza che è seguita sono responsabili di aver spaccato il mondo in due: da un lato il «mondo delle qualità e delle percezioni sensibili», dall’altra il «mondo della quantità e della geometria reificata». Un confronto anche sommario tra i fatti che risultano veri per il senso comune e falsi nell’immagine scientifica (o viceversa) sembra dar ragione a Koyré e ai tanti filosofi che hanno adottato la dicotomia. Ma si tratta davvero di (...) una dicotomia reale? Il mondo del senso comune è davvero un «altro mondo» rispetto a quello delle scienze fisiche? Nelle pagine che seguono cercheremo di articolare una risposta negativa a queste domande. (shrink)

Hylas. «Veramente, la distruzion de’ frulloni e delle madie, la devastazion de’ forni, e lo scompiglio de’ fornai, non sono i mezzi più spicci per far vivere il pane; ma questa è una di quelle sottigliezze metafisiche, che una moltitudine non ci arriva.» Devo dire che il fastidio di Manzoni verso le metafisiche inconcludenti mi sembra sacrosanto. Ma soprattutto mi sembra sacrosanto il suo richiamo al buon senso, quando aggiunge che «senza essere un gran metafisico, un uomo ci arriva talvolta (...) alla prima, finch’è nuovo nella questione.. (shrink)

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 contradiction (but, at worst, to “vacuous” (...) uses of definienda). The theory is applied with varying levels of detail to a circular analysis of concepts as diverse as truth, predication, necessity, physical object, etc. The focus is on truth, and hope is expressed that a deeper understanding of the Liar and related paradoxes has been provided: “We have tried to show that once the circularity of truth is recognized, a great deal of its behavior begins to make sense. In particular, from this viewpoint, the existence of the paradoxes seems as natural as the existence of the eclipses” (p. 142). We think that this hope is fully justified, although some problems remain that future research in this field should take into account. The following assumptions constitute the typical background in which the truth paradoxes arise: (i) classical first-order logic, (ii) a language allowing for self-reference, and (iii) the “semantic” Tarskian schema: (TS) T ‘A’ ↔ A (where ‘T’ is the truth predicate, and the single quotes are a nominalization device applicable to sentences; for simplicity, we only consider homophonic versions of TS). This background can be seen as somehow part of our ordinary linguistic and conceptual background and yet, to avoid inconsistency, one or more of these assumptions must be suitably weakened. The classical, Tarskian strategy is to forbid self-reference, whereas the fixed-point approaches stemming from the work of Saul Kripke (1975) and Robert Martin and Peter Woodruff (1975) weaken the logic.. (shrink)

Temporal reference in natural language is inherently context dependent: what counts as a moment in one context may be structurally analysed in another context, and vice versa. In this note we outline a way of accounting for this phenomenon within event-based semantics.

The following is a transcript of what might very well have been five telephone conversa- tions between Michael Jordan and former Chicago Bulls coach Phil Jackson in early March 1995, just before the announcement of MJ’s comeback after a year spent pursu- ing a baseball career.

On a rather popular conception, the paradox of analysis suggests that the intersubstitutivity of analysans and analysandum should be restricted to non-psychological contexts. This is typically taken to be compatible with the idea that two sentences differing only in that one has the analysandum where the other has the analysans express exactly the same proposition. In this note we argue that this should be pondered upon in light of the view that many important ordinary concepts are circular. In particular, we (...) submit that if there are correct analyses grounding circular definitions, then we are bound to further restrict the substitutivity principle, for we must admit that it might fail even in non- psychological contexts. (shrink)

A brief review of the main philosophical problems and theories about the nature of boundaries and their place in our conceptual scheme.

A critical survey of the main philosophical theories about events and event talk, organized in three main sections: (i) Events and Other Categories (Events vs. Objects; Events vs. Facts; Events vs. Properties; Events vs. Times); (ii) Types of Events (Activities, Accomplishments, Achievements, and States; Static and Dynamic Events; Actions and Bodily Movements; Mental and Physical Events); (iii) Existence, Identity, and Indeterminacy.

A brief introduction to the main philosophical problems and theories about the nature of holes and such-like nothingnesses.

An overview of contemporary part-whole theories, with reference to both their axiomatic developments and their philosophical underpinnings.

L’ontologia è quel ramo della filosofia che, secondo una definizione oggi piuttosto diffusa, verte intorno alla domanda: “Che cosa esiste?”. Nata con Aristotele, sebbene battezzata soltanto nel XVII secolo, questa disciplina ha occupato una posizione di rilievo per tutta la storia del pensiero filosofico, e dopo un periodo di profondo ripensamento nella prima metà del XX secolo è oggi al centro di un rinnovato interesse soprattutto nell’ambito della cosiddetta filosofia analitica. Questo libro offre al lettore italiano un quadro dettagliato e (...) al tempo stesso accessibile dei temi di ricerca attualmente più discussi. La prima parte (capitoli 1 e 2) riguarda i fondamenti della disciplina, con particolare riferimento alle diverse concezioni che se ne possono avere e al problema di demarcarne il campo d’interesse rispetto a quello della metafisica in senso lato. La seconda parte (capitolo 3) offre invece una panoramica dei quesiti concreti intorno ai quali ruota gran parte del dibattito contemporaneo, indipendentemente dalle visioni di fondo e dalle metodologie di riferimento. Il volume è corredato da una scheda di approfondimento tematico e da una ricca bibliografia. (shrink)

An outline of the wealth of philosophical material that hides behind the flat world of geographic maps, with special reference to (i) the centrality of the boundary concept, (ii) the problem of vagueness, and (iii) the metaphysical question (if such there be) of the identity and persistence conditions of geographic entities.

A critical survey of the main theories about vagueness, organized in four main sections: (i) What is vagueness? (ii) Problems and paradoxes; (iii) Theories of vagueness; (iv) Vagueness and cognitive science.

Viviamo in un mondo tutt’altro che simmetrico. Luca ama Lara, ma lei lo detesta. I ricchi sfruttano i poveri e i belli deridono i brutti, mai viceversa. Chi parla non ascolta, chi ascolta non parla. Anche l’economia è asimmetrica: raramente gli agenti di mercato condividono le medesime informazioni sui beni di scambio, e mentre il venditore tende a tacere la vera natura dei propri prodotti (mai provato a comprare un’auto usata?) il compratore che fiuta l’affare non è da meno (direste (...) forse al mercante che la crosta che vuol svendervi potrebbe essere un Corot?) L’economista Joseph Stiglitz ha vinto il Nobel 2001 proprio0sulla teoria dei «macinini usati». E poi c’è la guerra, questa guerra che ci inquieta proprio per le inedite asimmetrie degli schieramenti: gli obiettivi appaiono diversi, le strategie incomparabili, i valori e principi ispiratori brutalmente dissonanti. «Contrastare la forza dell’avversario facendo leva sulle sue debolezze», diceva Sun Tzu. Ed ecco che al Pentagono ci si ritrova a riflettere sul paradosso di uno scenario strategico in cui la superiorità militare del Golia statunitense teme il colpo della fionda nemica. E si battezza la «guerra asimmetrica». (shrink)

Baba. In a way, though he didn’t credit the music to Rachmaninov, at least not initially. The original album jacket says “Words and Music by Eric Carmen”. Ali. So he committed plagiarism. I suppose that came out later, which is why Celine Dion was more careful? That’s bad. I mean, it’s bad that people steal music from the classics. Just because they’re dead? I am sure Eric Carmen would have been very upset if Celine Dion had not acknowledged her credit (...) to him. (shrink)

Some statements owe their truth (or falsity) to the way things are; others seem to owe their truth (or falsity) to the way things go. The statement (1) Lou’s hat is lovely will be true or false according to whether Lou’s hat (an object) is lovely or not. The statement (2) Lou’s lecture is boring will be true or false according to whether Lou’s lecture (an event) is boring or not. Davidson (1967) and many others have argued that this distinction (...) is central to the way we talk about the world, and that both objects and events must be included in the ontological inventory if one is to make sense of much ordinary talk (and of much philosophical talk too, e.g., talk about causation). Moreover, we often speak in such a way as to suggest—implicitly—that we are talking about events. If the statement (3) Brutus stabbed Caesar with a knife were taken to assert that a certain three-place relation obtained among Brutus, Caesar, and a knife, then it would be hard to explain why (3) entails (4) Brutus stabbed Caesar (a statement that involves a different, two-place relation). By contrast—the story goes—if we take (3) to assert that a certain event occurred (namely, a stabbing of Caesar by Brutus) and that it had a certain property (namely, of being done with a knife), then the entailment is straightforward. This is not a proof that there are such entities as events. But if we are interested in an account of how it is that certain statements mean what they mean, and if the meaning of a state- 1 ment is at least in part determined by its logical relations to other statements, then one can hardly ignore the relevance of facts such as these. This by now is standard lore. There are even some logic textbooks (e.g., Forbes 1994) that include Davidson’s event-based analysis of sentences such as (3) or (4) as part of the basic apparatus for representing logical forms, on a par with Russell’s theory of descriptions. The official advantage, in both cases, is that we may hope to capture the truth conditions of such sentences without going beyond the framework of a purely Tarskian account.. (shrink)

Il filosofo britannico Alfred North Whitehead—autore, insieme a Bertrand Russell, di quei Principia Matematica da cui è scaturita gran parte della logica del ventesimo secolo—una volta scrisse che l’intera tradizione filosofica europea potrebbe essere letta come una lunga serie di note in calce alle opere di Platone. Tra i filosofi europei vi è poi chi ha affermato che tutta l’opera di Platone potrebbe leggersi come una serie di note in calce ad Anassimandro. Quindi, per l’irresistibile transitività delle note alle note, (...) tutta la filosofia europea si ridurrebbe a un commentario di un solo autore presocratico, dei cui scritti peraltro ci è rimasta una sola frase intera. E poiché l’autore in questione era diretto discepolo di quel Talete di Mileto che molti considerano il primo vero filosofo dell’antichità, e dei cui scritti non ci resta nemmeno una frase, se ne potrebbe concludere che l’intera storia della filosofia europea non è altro che un paradossale sforzo esegetico, un esercizio di ermeneutica impossibile in cui le menti migliori si sarebbero cimentate nell’interpretazione di testi perduti o addirittura inesistenti. (shrink)

Fictionalism in ontology is a mixed bag. Here I focus on three main variants—which I label after the names of Pascal, Berkeley, and Hume—and consider their relative strengths and weaknesses with special reference to the ontology that comes with common sense. The first variant is just a version of the epistemic Wager, applied across the board. For all we know—says the Pascalian—our ordinary common-sense ontology may be a fiction. However, what goes on in that fiction matters a lot to us. (...) Indeed, that’s all that matters, so let us pretend the fiction is true and let’s continue to plan our lives accordingly. The second variant builds instead on a semantic intuition. (shrink)

L’attribuzione di un valore di verità definito a un’asserzione d’identità, sincronica o diacronica, è spesso alla base di profonde controversie filosofiche. Consideriamo i casi seguenti: (1) Dati: All’alba si vede un solo pianeta; nelle prime ore della sera si vede un solo pianeta. Domanda: Il pianeta che si vede all’alba è lo stesso che si vede di sera? (2) Dati: Luca sta visitando la chiesa; Elena sta visitando il campanile. Domanda: Luca ed Elena stanno visitando lo stesso edificio?

Molti sistemi cognitivi, tra cui anche alcuni agenti artificiali, devono rappresentare lo spazio e gli oggetti spaziali per muoversi e agire in modo soddisfacente (per evitare un ostacolo, cogliere un frutto, decidere un punto dove atterrare). Nel caso degli esseri umani, la rappresentazione dello spazio ha anche un aspetto linguistico: sappiamo descrivere le relazioni spaziali o comprendere il significato di una preposizione come ‘tra’ immaginando una situazione spaziale cui essa si applichi. La rappresentazione dello spazio è pertanto un soggetto di (...) studio che occupa una posizione centrale nelle scienze cognitive. In questo articolo intendiamo proporne una ricognizione metodologica. Precisiamo subito che ci occuperemo soltanto delle rappresentazioni “distaccate” (cioè non egocentrice e non prospettiche) dello spazio in cui agisce un sistema cognitivo, rimandando a Casati e Dokic (1994) per alcuni spunti sugli altri aspetti. Lasceremo inoltre impregiudicate questioni metafisiche complesse quali l’identità tra lo spazio descritto dal senso comune e lo spazio descritto in un trattato di microfisica o di astronomia. Tenendo presenti queste limitazioni, passeremo in rassegna una serie di problemi metodologici. In alcuni casi si tratta di problemi effettivamente esemplificati nella letteratura contemporanea; in altri casi si tratta più che altro di tentazioni che hanno tuttavia alle spalle una lunga storia. L’interesse di questa ricognizione è per noi eminentemente filosofico. Ci siamo imbattuti in casi come quelli che descriviamo e che ci sono sembrati metodologicamente sospetti durante lo studio di alcune entità spaziali (buchi, eventi, unità geografiche) che costituiscono un buon banco di prova per la meto- 1 dologia della rappresentazione spaziale. I buchi, ad esempio (Casati e Varzi 1994), sono interessanti per due ragioni. In primo luogo, si può mostrare che un modello che li contempla rende conto in modo semplice e intuitivamente convincente della varietà topologica e morfologica degli oggetti ordinari, dimostrando come un’ontologia ben calibrata possa aumentare il potere descrittivo di una teoria.. (shrink)

La prima fase della carriera filosofica di Saul Kripke è legata principalmente, se non esclusivamente, ai suoi contributi in ambito logico. Si tratta di contributi che hanno avuto un impatto enorme soprattutto in due capitoli centrali di questa disciplina, la logica modale e la teoria formale della verità, con conseguenze e ramificazioni che hanno interessato un po’ tutta la filosofia analitica contemporanea. In questo capitolo cerchiamo di ricostruirne i tratti principali e di evidenziare la loro portata con particolare riferimento alla (...) filosofia del linguaggio e alla metafisica. La sezione 1 è dedicata alla logica modale. Della teoria della verità, che è un po’ più complessa, ci occupiamo nella sezione 2. (shrink)

The vocation was there and one could see its imprint on every page, regardless of Musil’s lingering misgivings about his own talent and regardless of how bored he might have been with his life as a mechanical engineering. After all, he had meanwhile gone to Berlin to study philosophy and psychology and would soon complete his doctorate, but when Meinong offered him an attractive research assistant-ship at the University of Graz, at the end of 1908, Musil decided to turn it (...) down to focus on his literary projects: “My love for artistic literature is no less than my love for science”, he explained politely. (shrink)

Il rapporto dei filosofi analitici con la metafisica è stato per lungo tempo difficile e conflittuale. In un certo senso, il movimento analitico venne inizialmente caratterizzandosi proprio in contrapposizione alla tradizione filosofica dominante dell’Ottocento, tutta assorta nell’impresa di rispondere a Kant attraverso rielaborazioni più o meno dogmatiche dell’idealismo critico. In una Cambridge in cui Bradley e McTaggart dominavano incontrastati, Moore non esitava ad accusare di miopia le teorie metafisiche «che pretendono di fornire un’agevole strada per superare le difficoltà che ostacolano (...) il cammino dell’indagine accurata»1. Russell scriveva che i grandi problemi della metafisica nascevano per la maggior parte da confusioni e fraintendimenti legati alla «cattiva grammatica»2, ovvero a un uso improprio del linguaggio e alla sua interpretazione affrettata e superficiale. E di lì a poco Carnap sarebbe giunto a dichiarare che «le presunte proposizioni della metafisica si rivelano, all’analisi logica, pseudoproposizioni».3 Più che un vero e proprio rifiuto della metafisica, tuttavia, queste manifestazioni critiche costituivano un attacco a un certo modo di fare metafisica, troppo spesso improntato all’abuso di paroloni («l’ente», «l’assoluto», «l’idea») e costrutti oscuri («il nulla nulleggia») piuttosto che alla chiarezza e al rigore argomentativo. Soprattutto rispetto ad altri campi di indagine filosofica, gli studi di metafisica dell’Ottocento e dei primi anni del Novecento erano molto distanti dagli standard di accuratezza che la svolta analitica andava imponendo ed era naturale che si finisse col mettere sotto accusa l’intera disciplina. Tut-. (shrink)

Morpheus lascia che sia Neo a decidere. Se ingerisce la pillola azzurra, la sua percezione del mondo non cambierà e la vita di Neo continuerà come sempre. Se ingerisce la pillola rossa, il mondo gli si manifesterà quale esso realmente è: una realtà che va ben al di là di quanto Neo possa anche solo lontanamente immaginare. «Pillola azzurra: fine della storia; pillola rossa: resti nel Paese delle Meraviglie e vedrai quanto è profonda la tana del bian- coniglio.» Neo fa (...) la sua scelta e l’avventura comincia. Per molti filosofi, Neo è come il prigioniero che decide di lasciare la ca- verna di Platone. Tra una vita tranquilla ma all’ombra dell’ignoranza e una vita dura ma integra, all’insegna del vero e del giusto, il virtuoso non ha indugi. Per parte nostra, non siamo certi di capire bene la portata dell’analo- gia, né la dinamica della scelta ci è mai stata chiara. Non è forse Neo, all’atto del deliberare, un soggetto in balia della Matrice? Donde la sua libertà di scelta? E donde la pillola, se il mondo di Neo è mera illusione? Per un lustro intero le nostre menti si sono arrovellate su questo dilemma, e lo spettro del paradosso ha perseguitato le nostre visioni notturne come una Sfinge che divora l’anima. Ma non tutti i dubbi sono appannaggio del maligno, ci vien detto. La pil- lola, in effetti, è semplicemente un «tracer». Fa parte di un programma di ri- cerca che si inserisce nella Matrice e interrompe il segnale portante di Neo, permettendo ai nostri hackers (veri esseri umani) di localizzarlo e inducendo la Matrice stessa a disfarsi del suo corpo (quello vero). Niente di paradossa- le in tutto ciò. Crediamo tuttavia di aver finalmente messo le mani—ne abbia- mo anzi convinzione certa—su un documento che non solo conferma la por- tata dei nostri dubbi, bensì solleva questioni impreviste e ancor più gravose. Si tratta né più né meno che del foglio illustrativo contenuto nella confezione di pillole rosse da cui Morpheus estrasse quella ingerita da Neo.. (shrink)

Una buona teoria semantica deve rendere conto del fatto che generalmente il significato di un’espressione complessa dipende dal significato delle parti. In particolare, il valore di verità di un enunciato composto dipende normalmente dal valore di verità degli enunciati che lo compongono e quindi, in ultima istanza, dal valore di verità di enunciati elementari, o «atomici». Tra questi il caso paradigmatico è costituito dagli enunciati in forma soggetto-predicato: (1) xèP, e, fortunatamente, le condizioni di verità di enunciati del genere appaiono (...) chiare e semplici: (A) Un enunciato della forma ‘x è P’ è vero se e solo se il referente del termine in posizione di soggetto, x, è nell’estensione del termine in posizione di predicato, P. Per esempio, l’enunciato (2) Alice è alta un metro è vero se e solo se il referente del nome ‘Alice’ ricade nell’estensione del sintagma aggettivale ‘alta un metro’.1 Naturalmente non mancano le complicazioni. Per esempio, può succedere che un enunciato abbia solo in apparenza la forma (1), come nel caso di.. (shrink)

The Doctrine of Potential Parts (DPP) says that undetached parts, i.e., proper parts that are connected to other parts of the same whole, are not actual entities. They are merely potential entities, entities that do not exist but would exist if they were detached from the rest. They are just aspects of the whole to which they belong, ways in which the whole could be broken down, and talk of such parts is really just talk about the modal properties of (...) the whole. DPP is rooted in some writings of Aristotle and Aquinas and has received considerable attention, in one form or other, also among contemporary philosophers, including Ingvar Johansson (2006a, 2008). Here I offer a reconstruction of this doctrine and present an argument to illustrate its hidden kinship with another, parallel but independent doctrine—the Doctrine of Potential Wholes(DPW). According to this second doctrine, disconnected wholes too, i.e., wholes that are not in one piece, count as merely potential entities, entities that do not exist though they would exist if their parts were suitably conjoined. I offer a diagnosis of the parallelism and briefly examine its bearing on Johansson’s views concerning the possibility of mereological change in the spirit of a common-sense metaphysics. (shrink)

La vaghezza è un fenomeno pervasivo del pensiero e del linguaggio ordinario. Abbiamo una buona idea di che cosa significhi dire che una persona è calva, alta, o ricca, ma a volte ci troviamo spiazzati. Alcuni uomini sono chiaramente calvi (Picasso), altri non lo sono (il conte di Montecristo), e altri ancora sono casi intermedi (Bertinotti): non c’è un numero esatto di capelli che segni il confine tra i calvi e i non-calvi. Allo stesso modo, è ridicolo supporre che vi (...) sia un’altezza precisa che segni il limite tra chi è alto e chi non lo è, o un’esatta somma di denaro che separi i ricchi dai nonricchi. Nella metafora di Frege, concetti come questi sono privi di una “frontiera precisa”.1 E ciò non vale soltanto per quei concetti che trovano espressione nella categoria grammaticale degli aggettivi: vale anche per molti concetti che corrispondono a sostantivi (qual è l’altezza minima di una montagna?), a verbi (qual è la velocità minima a cui si può correre?), e così via. Anche le espressioni di cui ci serviamo per identificare entità particolari possono essere indeterminate. Non solo è vago il nostro concet- to di montagna: sembra proprio che anche quando ci riferiamo a una montagna particolare—un oggetto al quale il concetto in questione si applica senza mezzi termini—il nostro riferimento possa risultare gravemente indeterminato. Non c’è dubbio che il Cervino sia una montagna. Ma quali sono esattamente i suoi confini spaziali? (A che punto lungo un percorso che dalla vetta conduce in pianura diremo di non essere più sul Cervino?) Quali sono i suoi confini temporali? (A che punto di un processo di corrosione diremo che il Cervino cessa di esistere?) Come ha scritto Russell, si potrebbe pensare che “tutto il linguaggio” sia vago.2 E siccome il linguaggio è lo strumento principale mediante il quale diamo espressione all’immagine che ci facciamo del mondo, si presenta una domanda di fondo.. (shrink)

Events are center stage in several fields of psychological research. There is a long tradition in the study of event perception, event recognition, event memory, event conceptualization and segmentation. There are studies devoted to the description of events in language and to their representation in the brain. There are also metapsychological studies aimed at assessing the nature of mental events or the grounding of intentional action. Outside psychology, the notion of an event plays a prominent role in various areas of (...) philosophy, from metaphysics to the philosophy of action and mind, as well as in such diverse disciplines as linguistics, literary theory, probability theory, artificial intelligence, physics, and—of course—history. This plethora of concerns and applications is indicative of the prima facie centrality of the notion of an event in our conceptual scheme, but it also gives rise to some important methodological questions. Can we identify a core notion that is preserved across disciplines? Does this notion, or some such notion, correspond to the pre-theoretical conception countenanced by common sense? Does it correspond to a genuine metaphysical category? (shrink)

Philosophy of Language Philosophy of Logic On a rather popular conception, the paradox of analysis suggests that the intersubstitutivity of analysans and analysandum should be restricted to non-psychological contexts. This is typically taken to be compatible with the idea that two sentences differing only in that one has the analysandum where the other has the analysans express exactly the same proposition. In this note we argue that this should be pondered upon in light of the view that many important ordinary (...) concepts are circular. In particular, we submit that if there are correct analyses grounding circular definitions, then we are bound to further restrict the substitutivity principle, for we must admit that it might fail even in non- psychological contexts. Show Abstract.. (shrink)

That parthood is a transitive relation is among the most basic principles of classical mereology. Alas, it is also very controversial. In a recent paper, Ingvar Johansson has put forward a novel diagnosis of the problem, along with a corresponding solution. The diagnosis is on the right track, I argue, but the solution is misleading. And once the pieces are properly put together, we end up with a reinforcement of the standard defense of transitivity on behalf of classical mereology.

Pubblicato in Gabriele Usberti (a cura di), Modi dell'oggettività, Milano: Bompiani, 2000, pp. 77–85. (Volume dedicato ad Andrea Bonomi per il suo 60mo compleanno).

If you have been driving in Europe recently, you must have had that strange feeling. You see a sign that says ‘Deutschland’, or ‘France’, or ‘España’, and just drive through. No customs barrier, no passport control—just a sign. You say ‘Ah!’ and carry on; the sign could be a hundred yards further and it would make no difference. Yet, by crossing that line you enter a different world-district, magically separated from its surroundings—you enter a region where people suddenly speak another (...) language, rely on their own authorities, share a different heritage, and struggle to solve their problems and to improve the quality of their common life. The line is there, even if you don’t see it. That sign conceals a long history, perhaps even a thread of blood, though all you see today is a spread of asphalt, souvenir shops, motels, gas stations, abandoned customs houses. It is more difficult to get that feeling as you drive across the United States of America. Most drivers feel nothing at all as they pass the border between Wyoming and Idaho, a line whose embarrassing geometric straightness says very little about its history (or says it all). Yet even here there are differences, and Idahoans are proud of their license plates just as Wyomingites are proud of their own. Such is the magic of boundary lines: they are thin, yet powerful; they separate, and thereby unite; they are invisible, yet a lot depends on them, including one’s sense of belongingness to a country, a people, a place; they are abstract, in a way, yet people take them seriously and some states expend huge sums of money and sacrifice their soldier’s lives to protect them, or to re-draw them properly. (Kashmir is one example where the drawing of boundaries—even the precise drawing of the Line of Control—is still central to the conflict.). (shrink)

Mereotopology is today regarded as a major tool for ontological analysis, and for many good reasons. There are, however, a number of open questions that call for an answer. Some are philosophical, others have direct applicative import, but all are crucial for a proper assessment of the strengths and limits of mereotopology. This paper is an attempt to put sum order in this area.

Ci imbattiamo in un confine ogni volta che pensiamo a un’entità demarcata rispetto a ciò che la circonda. C’è un confine (una superficie) che delimita l’interno di una sfera dal suo esterno; c’è un confine (una frontiera) che separa il Maryland dalla Pennsylvania. Talvolta la collocazione esatta di un confine non è chiara o è in qualche modo controversa (come quando si cerchi di tracciare i limiti del monte Everest, o il confine del nostro corpo). Talaltra il confine non corrisponde (...) a una discontinuità fisica o a una differenziazione qualitativa (come nel caso dei confini del Wyoming, o della demarcazione tra la metà superiore e la metà inferiore di una sfera omogenea). Ma, che sia netto o confuso, naturale o artificiale, sembra esservi per ogni oggetto un confine che lo separa dal resto del mondo. Anche gli eventi hanno confini, quantomeno confini temporali. Le nostre vite sono delimitate dalle nostre nascite e morti; una partita di calcio comincia alle quindici in punto e termina col fischio finale dell’arbitro alle sedici e quarantacinque. E a volte si dice che anche le entità astratte, come i concetti o gli insiemi, hanno dei propri confini. Se tutto questo parlare di confini abbia davvero un senso, e se rifletta la struttura del mondo o solo l’attività organizzatrice del nostro intelletto, è però oggetto di profonda controversia filosofica. (shrink)

There are two ways of understanding the notion of a contradiction: as a conjunction of a statement and its negation, or as a pair of statements one of which is the negation of the other. Correspondingly, there are two ways of understanding the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC), i.e., the law that says that no contradictions can be true. In this paper I offer some arguments to the effect that on the first (collective) reading LNC is non-negotiable, but on the second (...) (distributive) reading it is perfectly plausible to suppose that LNC may, in some rather special and perhaps undesirable circumstances, fail to hold. (shrink)

Eco. ...e finiamo in un dialoghetto immaginario. Umberto. Non che io abbia qualcosa in contrario, ma mi sento un po’ a disagio. Sono sempre stato una persona in carne ed ossa e ho sempre interagito, nel bene come nel male, con gente che esisteva davvero.

Hylas. «Veramente, la distruzion de’ frulloni e delle madie, la devastazion de’ forni, e lo scompiglio de’ fornai, non sono i mezzi più spicci per far vivere il pane; ma questa è una di quelle sottigliezze metafisiche, che una moltitudine non ci arriva.» Devo dire che il fastidio di Manzoni verso le metafisiche inconcludenti mi sembra sacrosanto. Ma soprattutto mi sembra sacrosanto il suo richiamo al buon senso, quando aggiunge che «senza essere un gran metafisico, un uomo ci arriva talvolta (...) alla prima, finch’è nuovo nella questione.. (shrink)

«Ci sono più cose in cielo e in terra di quante se ne sogni la tua filosofia».1 Amleto si rivolgeva ad Orazio, ma le sue parole risuonano ancora oggi come un monito severo per chiunque – e siamo in tanti – si ostini a voler costringere la meravigliosa diversità dell’universo che ci circonda entro schemi categoriali ottusi e limitati. Per la verità c’è anche il rischio opposto, come osservava Nelson Goodman: «Ci sono (...) filosofie che si sognano di cose che non stanno né in cielo né in terra»2. Tuttavia è difficile negare che le grandi rivoluzioni copernicane si verifichino proprio quando riusciamo ad ampliare i nostri orizzonti e uscire dal provincialismo ontologico che ci tiene imprigionati. Questo vale per le scoperte astronomiche (le galassie, i buchi neri) così come per quelle microscopiche (l’antimateria, i quark, le stringhe). E vale ogniqualvolta ci troviamo dinnanzi a qualcosa che non sappiamo come classificare perché ci manca la categoria, come i coloni australiani dinnanzi ai primi esemplari di quell’animale che oggi chiamiamo ornitorinco: non un mammifero, per via delle uova; non un rettile, per via del sangue caldo; non un uccello, per via delle zampe. Nessuno si era mai sognato potesse esserci una bestia siffatta, eppure eccola lì, come dice Umberto Eco citando Lesson, sdraiata «di traverso sul sentiero del metodo tassonomico per provarne la fallacia»3. (shrink)

La Legge di Non-Contraddizione (LNC) dice che nessuna contraddizione può essere vera. Ma cos’è una contraddizione? E cosa occorrerebbe perché una contraddizione fosse vera? Come ha mostrato Patrick Grim1, un rapido sguardo alla letteratura rivelerà una grande varietà di interpretazioni differenti dei termini di base e, conseguentemente, della LNC. In effetti, Grim identifica qualcosa come 240 diverse opzioni (con un conteggio prudente), e non credo occorra indugiare ulteriormente sulla combinatoria concettuale che si nasconde dietro questo comune frammento di terminologia logica. (...) Intendo tuttavia concentrarmi su una delle principali ambiguità elencate da Grim – un’ambiguità che, a mio avviso, è al cuore della questione. E intendo proporre un argomento in virtù del quale, risolvendo l’ambiguità in un certo modo, la LNC risulta non negoziabile, mentre, risolvendola in un altro modo, è perfettamente plausibile supporre che la LNC possa, in circostanze molto speciali e forse poco desiderabili, venir meno. (shrink)

In an earlier paper I introduced a complete axiomatization of classical non-tautologies based essentially on Lukasiewicz’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 interest and suggests instructive comparisons with the logic of tautologies.

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 B |- A (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 improved syntactic account of classical sentential logic. The picture can then be completed by considering related systems that prove adequate to specify the set of contradictions, the set of non-contradictions, and the set of contingencies respectively. (shrink)

In classical topology the only part of a doughnut that matters is the edible part. Here I review some good reasons for reversing the order and focusing on the hole instead. By studying the topology of the hole one can learn interesting things about the morphology of the doughnut (its shape), and by studying the morphology of the hole in turn one can learn a lot about the doughnut’s dynamic properties (its patterns of interaction with the environment). The price--of course--is (...) that one must be serious about reifying voids. (shrink)

Broadly understood, events are things that happen -- things such as births and deaths, thunder and lightening, explosions, weddings, hiccups and hand-waves, dances, smiles, walks. Whether such things form a genuine metaphysical category is a question that has attracted the sustained interest of philosophers, especially in the second half of the 20th century. But there is little question that human perception, action, language, and thought manifest at least a..

A critical review of the main themes arising out of recent literature on the semantics of ordinary event talk. The material is organized in four sections: (i) the nature of events, with emphasis on the opposition between events as particulars and events as universals; (ii) identity and indeterminacy, with emphasis on the unifier/multiplier controversy; (iii) events and logical form, with emphasis on Davidson’s treatment of the form of action sentences; (iv) linguistic applications, with emphasis on issues concerning aspectual phenomena, the (...) telicity/atelicity distinction, the treatment of statives, and temporal quantification. (shrink)

Commentare un disegno di Steinberg è per un filosofo come commentare il lavoro di un collega (e quanto diverso, quanto più gratificante che commentare le boutade illusionistiche di un Escher e la loro spessa e fumosa simbologia). Il perché non è facile da sviscerare. In parte vorremmo dire che si tratta di disegni che parlano, ma questo non ci porta molto lontano: tutti i disegni dicono qualcosa, in parte. Vorremmo forse anche dire che si tratta di disegni che danno da (...) pensare, ma anche questa caratterizzazione lascia il tempo che trova se non si offre una qualche spiegazione di come ciò avvenga. E la spiegazione rischia di essere aneddotica, di parlare più di colui che la cerca che non del disegno stesso. (shrink)

We outline 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; on the other hand on work by ecological scientists on concepts such as territory, habitat and niche.

Oggi il tavolo della cucina è sporco. Ieri il tavolo era pulito. Come è possibile, se stiamo parlando del medesimo oggetto? Come può uno stesso oggetto godere di proprietà diverse, addirittura incompatibili, come essere pulito ed essere sporco?

This is a detailed defense of the view that identity is not an eternal, necessary relation: things can be identical at one time and distinct at another; they can be identical in one world and distinct in another. The defense is judicial rather than passionate, as Gallois’s primary goal is to persuade the reader that the view is ‘at least as credible’ as its more fashionable alternatives. But Gallois also aims to show that if the view is credible then it (...) provides a better solution to a wide range of identity puzzles (the ship of Theseus, the problem of material constitution, the puzzle of amoebic fission, and the like). As it turns out, Gallois goes a long way towards establishing the truth of this conditional claim. The real issue, however, is the credibility of the view itself, and in spite of the many sophisticated and original arguments that fill the pages of the book I suspect that many readers will not change their skeptical minds. (shrink)

(Pubblicato in Prospettive della logica e della filosofia della scienza (a cura di V. Fano, G. Tarozzi, e M. Stanzione), Cosenza: Rubbettino, 2001, pp. 431–445).

In un passo di Shakespeare che i filosofi amano tanto citare, Amleto ricorda al buon Orazio che ci sono più cose in cielo e in terra di quante se ne sogni la nostra filosofia. Non è detto che avesse ragione, ma il rischio è reale ed è bene stare all’erta: anche i filosofi – e di conseguenza la scienza, se usiamo questi termini secondo il loro significato più classico – tendono a cadere vittime del proprio provincialismo, e che le loro (...) categorie siano adatte a coprire l’universo toto è piuttosto improbabile. Proprio come Marco Polo, dinnanzi ai rinoceronti di Java, non seppe fare di meglio che confonderli per unicorni; proprio come gli Aztechi, non avendo mai visto un cavallo, si accontentarono di pensare che quelli su cui sopraggiungevano i conquistadores fossero dei cervi; e proprio come i coloni australiani si trovarono in difficoltà nel classificare i primi esemplari di quell’animale che oggi chiamiamo ornitorinco (non una talpa, per via del becco; non un’anatra, per via delle quattro zampe; non un mammifero, per via delle uova; non un rettile, per via del sangue caldo) – ebbene, allo stesso modo i filosofi e la scienza tutta corrono costantemente il rischio di impelagarsi in tentativi disperati volti a schiacciare la meravigliosa diversità dell’universo che ci circonda entro schemi categoriali poveri e limitati, frutto della nostra scarsa immaginazione prima ancora che della sua razionalizzazione. (shrink)

Cominciamo da lontano. Supponiamo che un giorno ci si presenti l’occasione di poter chiedere a un oracolo onnisciente di dirci, una volta per tutte, che cosa c’è. Non sto pensando al sogno dello scienziato pigro, che vorrebbe sentirsi dire senza troppi sforzi come è fatto il mondo. Sarebbe eccessivo, e del resto non è detto che saremmo in grado di capire la risposta. (Potrebbe essere formulata nel linguaggio di una teoria scientifica che non conosciamo.) Sto semplicemente pensando all’opportunità di sentirci (...) dire che cosa c’è e che cosa non c’è, in modo da poter concentrare in nostri sforzi – quelli della ricerca scientifica come quelli un po’ più speculativi della riflessione filosofica – sullo studio delle cose reali, evitando così inutili sprechi di energie. Se, per esempio, l’oracolo ci dicesse che la fontana della giovinezza non esiste, come è probabile, faremmo bene a smettere di cercarla, così come se tempo fa ci avesse detto che il flogisto non esiste non avremmo sprecato il nostro tempo a cercare di studiarne le proprietà. E se ci dicesse che nell’universo non esistono altre forme di vita oltre a quelle esemplificate sul nostro pianeta, cosa peraltro improbabile, allora potremmo dirottare i cospicui investimenti dedicati alla loro ricerca verso obiettivi più realistici e, di conseguenza, più utili. (shrink)

La filosofia non è una scienza empirica e si regge in buona misura sull’argomenta- zione (→), cioè sulla capacità di giustificare certe affermazioni, o tesi, sulla base di altre ritenute vere. Sin dall’antichità la teoria dell’argomentazione ha pertanto occupato una posizione di rilievo nella ricerca filosofica, e già a partire da Aristotele ha contribuito a definire quel settore disciplinare che oggi chiamiamo logica (dalla parola greca logos, che significa tra l’altro ‘discorso’, ‘ragionamento’). Aristotele stesso codificò la materia in maniera sistematica, (...) secondo schemi e principi che rimasero insuperati per oltre due millenni (→ sillogistica). A partire dal XIX secolo la teoria logica subì però mutamenti profondi, grazie soprattutto all’opera del matematico inglese George Boole e del filosofo tedesco Gottlob Frege, e nel XX secolo si è assistito a sviluppi straordinari che hanno portato all’applicazione della logica non solo in filosofia ma anche in altri ambiti di ricerca (dalla linguistica al diritto sino all’informatica). (shrink)

As a theory of reasoning, logic has—or ought to have—nothing to do with metaphysics. It ought to have nothing to do with questions concerning what there is, or whether there is anything at all. It is precisely because of its metaphysical commitments that Aristotelian syllogistics, for example, was eventually deemed inadequate as a canon of pure logical reasoning. The inference from an A-form statement such as (1) All humans are mortal to the corresponding I-form statement.

Sommario: La prima parte (sezioni 1– 3) introduce il tema: qual è il senso di una indagine ontologico-formale del cosiddetto mondo del senso comune? La seconda parte (sezioni 4–6) offre una prima analisi delle categorie e soprattutto delle strut- ture ontologiche su cui impostare tale indagine. Infine, la terza parte (sezione 7) offre spunti di sviluppo e accenna ad alcuni problemi aperti, vecchi e nuovi.

[Pubblicato in Rivista di estetica 18:3 (2001), 5–7; ristampato come ‘I contesti del paradosso’ in Carlo Penco (a cura di), La svolta contestuale, Milano: McGraw-Hill Italia, 2002, pp. 267–271.].

Mereology (from the Greek μερος, ‘part’) is the theory of parthood relations: of the relations of part to whole and the relations of part to part within a whole. Its roots can be traced back to the early days of philosophy, beginning with the Presocratic atomists and continuing throughout the writings of Plato (especially the Parmenides and the Thaetetus), Aristotle (especially the Metaphysics, but also the Physics, the Topics, and De partibus animalium ), and Boethius (especially In Ciceronis Topica ). (...) Mereology has also occupied a prominent role in the writings of medieval ontologists and scholastic philosophers such as Garland the Computist, Peter Abelard, Thomas Aquinas, Raymond Lull, and Albert of Saxony, as well as in Jungius's.. (shrink)

La metafisica è quel ramo della filosofia che ha come oggetto la realtà considerata nei suoi aspetti più fondamentali e generali. L’origine del termine (letteralmente: ‘dopo’ o ‘oltre la fisica’) risale agli editori delle opere di Aristotele nel I secolo a.C., che lo usarono per classificare gli scritti dedicati a quest’argomento e ritenuti, appunto, posteriori a quelli dedicati alla fisica. L’essere si dice in molti modi, scriveva Aristotele in quelle pagine, e a questa molteplicità di significati corrispondono domini d’interesse specifici. (...) La matematica, per esempio, si occupa dell’essere sotto il profilo quantitativo, la fisica sotto il profilo naturale. La metafisica (che Aristotele chiamava ‘sapienza’ o ‘filosofia prima’) si occupa invece dell’essere nel suo complesso, considerato sotto il profilo generalissimo della sua esistenza: l’essere in quanto essere. (shrink)

Dei numerosi libri che hanno iscritto Nelson Goodman tra i giganti della filosofia del Novecento, questo può a buon diritto considerarsi il più fortunato ma anche il più difficile, il più discusso, il più scomodo. Pochi giorni dopo la sua comparsa in libreria, nell’autunno del 19781, la New York Review of Books ne pubblicò una recensione a firma di W. V. O. Quine che non esitava a definirlo «una congerie».2 Si parla di stile, di teoria della citazione, di illusioni ottiche, (...) di filosofia della natura e filosofia dell’arte. Si citano Peirce, Gombrich e Kanizsa a fianco di Kant, Dummett, Woody Allen. Si coniano neologismi («acquacentrico») quando pure esistono parole che fanno al caso («idrocentrico»). Insomma, c’è un po’ di tutto, e «la fragilità del tutto riflette la filosofia che lo tiene insieme: la dottrina secondo cui ci sono svariati mondi, nessuno dei quali onnicomprensivo»3. A Goodman la recensione non piacque e la risposta non si fece attendere. In una lettera all’Editore pubblicata due settimane dopo4, il filosofo ringraziava per la pronta recensione ma accusava il Professor Quine di aver taciuto ai lettori che il libro era da leggersi sullo sfondo delle opere che l’avevano preceduto: La struttura dell’apparenza, Fatti, finzione e previsione, I linguaggi dell’arte e Problemi e progetti.5 E assicurava che.. (shrink)

Little Johnny: “Can we be punished for something we have not done?” Mother: “Of course not!” Johnny: “Good—because I didn’t turn off the gas…” At this point Johnny smiles and thinks he got away with it. Unfortunately, his mother is smarter than he expected. “I said we cannot be punished for something we have not done”, she says, “but certainly we can be punished for not having done something”.

— Alla domanda «Che cosa esiste?» Quine rispondeva con un semplice «Tutto». Dire «tutto», però, equivale a dire nulla, a meno che non si forniscano indicazioni più dettagliate. Vogliamo sapere in che cosa consiste questo tutto, vogliamo un elenco dettagliato delle entità che vi rientrano, vogliamo una loro caratterizzazione. Il testo che segue cerca di fare il punto sulla possibilità di fornire queste indicazioni e chiarire in tal modo la questione ontologica senza avventurarsi in questioni metafisiche di portata più ampia.

Secondo la dottrina delle parti potenziali (DPP), le parti proprie connesse (ovvero, le parti proprie che sono connesse ad altre parti dello stesso intero) non sono entità attuali. Al più si tratta di entità potenziali, entità che esisterebbero solo se venissero separate dall’intero a cui appartengono1. Ciò non significa che la DPP escluda che una parte propria possa godere di esistenza attuale: la dottrina non mette in discussione lo statuto ontologico di quelle parti che si qualificano indipendentemente come oggetti ordinari. (...) Mary e il suo gatto, Tibbles, fanno parte della loro somma mereologica – ne sono parti proprie – e ciononostante la DPP ne riconosce l’esistenza, come è ovvio. Piuttosto, ciò che la DPP nega è l’esistenza di parti proprie come la mano sinistra di Mary, o la coda di Tibbles. Secondo questa dottrina, entità siffatte (alle quali pure siamo soliti fare riferimento) non possiedono quel carattere cosale che caratterizza i cittadini di questo mondo, come Mary e Tibbles, poiché una porzione del loro confine è di tipo fiat: è il risultato di una demarcazione puramente immaginaria. Per questo motivo, quindi, entità siffatte non vanno incluse nell’inventario del mondo. Una mano o una coda esistono solo in potentia e l’unico modo per conferir loro esistenza attuale è quello di separarle dagli interi a cui appartengono. (shrink)

Le relazioni spaziali tra gli oggetti che ci circondano nel nostro microcosmo quotidiano o nel macroambiente delle posizioni geografiche e le proprietà spaziali di tali oggetti, come forma e dimensione, sono un soggetto di ricerca privilegiato per quei settori delle scienze cognitive che mirano a rappresentare fedelmente le competenze degli agenti umani. Gran parte del nostro comportamento è descrivibile in termini spaziali: pianifi- chiamo azioni, cerchiamo di eseguirle secondo i nostri piani (eventualmente superando ostacoli imprevisti), ne controlliamo lo svolgimento attraverso (...) un sofisticato sistema percettivo che, evidentemente, dispone di una componente non secondaria per la rappresentazione spaziale e il riconoscimento delle forme. Questi comportamenti spesso sono coadiuvati da ragionamenti e deduzioni («Se Paolo è a destra di Matteo e a sinistra di Holly, allora Holly è a destra di Matteo», «Se il cucchiaio è nella tazza e la tazza è nella credenza, il cucchiaio è nella credenza»). La stessa interpretazione del linguaggio naturale richiede un’adeguata semantica per le espressioni spaziali, presenti non solo nel lessico ma anche, significativamente, nel sistema delle preposizioni (“in”, “su”, “tra”). Allorché quindi si cerca di rendere esplicito questo complesso sistema di competenze, si vorrebbe—idealmente—fondere le diverse componenti (pianificazione, azione, percezione, ragionamento deduttivo, linguaggio naturale) in un quadro unitario e armonico. Se ci si chiede di accertare se il cucchiaio è nella credenza, abbiamo bisogno di comprendere quello che ci vien chiesto, di progettare un’azione di verifica, di osser- vare una certa relazione spaziale, di inferire una certa conclusione, e il contenuto di queste diverse competenze deve poter fluire dall’una all’altra attività mantenendosi (abbastanza) invariato. (shrink)

Geography presents interesting and intricate trade-offs between empirical data and demands, on the one hand, and deep philosophical issues (from ontology to political philosophy), on the other. What is a geographic entity? What is the relationship between a geographic entity and a physical territory? Can a geographic entity survive without a territory or without definite borders? Can it survive radical changes in its territory? Are there clear-cut identity criteria for geographic categories? This paper serves as an introduction to a special (...) issue of Topoi whose aim is to go a first step towards a better understanding of these questions and of their implications for the theory of the geographic world. (shrink)

We can see mereology as a theory of parthood and topology as a theory of wholeness. How can these be combined to obtain a unified theory of parts and wholes? This paper examines various non-equivalent ways of pursuing this task, with specific reference to its relevance to spatio-temporal reasoning. In particular, three main strategies are compared: (i) mereology and topology as two independent (though mutually related) chapters; (ii) mereology as a general theory subsuming topology; (iii) topology as a general theory (...) subsuming mereology. Some more speculative strategies and directions for further research are also considered. (shrink)

The first part summarizes the basic framework (ontology, mereology, topology, morphology). The second part emphasizes its relevance to spatial reasoning and to the semantics of spatial prepositions in natural language. In particular, I discuss the semantics of ‘in’ and provide an account of such fallacious arguments as "There is a hole in the sheet. The sheet is in the drawer. Ergo *there is a hole in the drawer".

In the first part we generalize the notion of an event structure to that of a refinement structure, where various degrees of temporal granularity are accommodated. In the second part we investigate how these structures can account for the context-dependence of temporal structures in natural language.

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 value of (...) some expressions is not uniquely defined. Other strategies for generalizing supervaluations are considered and some comparative facts are discussed. (shrink)

Secondo una terminologia oggi piuttosto diffusa, l’ontologia si occuperebbe di stabilire che cosa c’è, ovvero di redigere una sorta di inventario di tutto l’esistente, mentre la metafisica si occuperebbe di stabilire che cos’è quello che c’è, ovvero di specificare la natura degli articoli inclusi nell’inventario 1. Per esempio, la tesi in base alla quale esistono entità come i colori o le virtù competerebbe all’ontologia, mentre rientrerebbe nei compiti della metafisica stabilire se queste entità siano forme platoniche, universali aristotelici, accidenti individuali, (...) tropi, e così via. Allo stesso modo, spetterebbe all’ontologia determinare se quando parliamo di Pinocchio, dei numeri naturali, delle passeggiate di Sebastian o dello stile Biedermeier stiamo parlando di cose che esistono o sono esistite davvero, ma sarebbe la metafisica a dirci qualcosa di preciso in merito ai loro tratti salienti, per esempio che Pinocchio è un concetto individuale, che i numeri sono oggetti astratti, che le passeggiate sono eventi irripetibili estesi nello spazio e nel tempo, e così via. (shrink)

Roberto Cordeschi, La scoperta dell’artificiale. Psicologia, filosofia e macchine intorno alla cibernetica, Milano, Masson–Dunod, 1998, pp. 320, Lit 34.000.

Ordinary reasoning about space--we argue--is first and foremost reasoning about things or events located in space. Accordingly, any theory concerned with the construction of a general model of our spatial competence must be grounded on a general account of the sort of entities that may enter into the scope of the theory. Moreover, on the methodological side the emphasis on spatial entities (as opposed to purely geometrical items such as points or regions) calls for a reexamination of the conceptual categories (...) required for this task. Here we offer some examples of what this amounts to, of the difficulties involved, and of the main directions along which spatial theories should be developed so as to combine formal sophistication with some affinity with common sense. (shrink)

Figura (Un cerchio rosso acceso. Petulante). Eccomi. Mi vedono tutti? Sono qui. Attenzione. Osservatemi bene. Da questa parte prego... Un attimo di attenzione. Anche lei, in terza fila. Guardi di qua..

C’è una logica sola? Io dico di no. O meglio, dico che c’è una logica sola per ogni modo di specificare in maniera esaustiva la classe delle situazioni logicamente possibili, cioè la classe dei modelli del linguaggio; ma poiché non c’è un unico modo di specificare questa classe, dico che non c’è un’unica logica se non in un senso relativo. Naturalmente, dato un linguaggio L e due diverse teorie logiche T1 e T2 per L, si può sempre considerare il nucleo (...) comune a entrambe le teorie, cioè l’insieme dei principi su cui entrambe le teorie concordano. In generale, si potrebbe quindi associare a L la logica minima T0 corrispondente al nucleo comune a tutte le teorie in competizione. Tale teoria sarebbe definita in maniera univoca e consentirebbe di evitare conclusioni di natura relativista, ammesso che si sia disposti a restringere opportunamente i confini della logica. (T0 sarebbe ovviamente una teoria molto debole.) Tuttavia è anche possibile che queste teoria minima T0 risulti vuota se la sintassi di L non contiene alcun ingrediente la cui interpretazione sia indipendente dalla specificazione dei modelli di L. In quanto segue cercherò di dimostrare che le cose stanno proprio così, e userò questo risultato per difendere una concezione della logica convenzionalista e—quindi—relativista. (shrink)

A dialogue among statements that try to explain to each other the mechanisms and peculiarities of self-referential assertions and--particularly--of their context-dependence.

The history of evolution is a history of development from less to more complex organisms. This growth in complexity of organisms goes hand in hand with a concurrent growth in complexity of environments and of organism-environment relations. It is a concern with this latter aspect of evolutionary development that motivates the present paper. We develop a formal theory of organism-environment relations and we show that the theory can be applied to a range of different sorts of cases, both biological and (...) non-biological, in which objects are lodged or housed within specific environments or niches. Where biological science is interested in types (in regularities which can serve as the basis for the formulation of laws or general principles), the framework here presented draws on the idea that types (for example genotypes, phenotypes--and niche types) exist only through their corresponding tokens. (shrink)

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 contradiction (but, at worst, to “vacuous” (...) uses of definienda). The theory is applied with varying levels of detail to a circular analysis of concepts as diverse as truth, predication, necessity, physical object, etc. The focus is on truth, and hope is expressed that a deeper understanding of the Liar and related paradoxes has been provided: “We have tried to show that once the circularity of truth is recognized, a great deal of its behavior begins to make sense. In particular, from this viewpoint, the existence of the paradoxes seems as natural as the existence of the eclipses” (p. 142). We think that this hope is fully justified, although some problems remain that future research in this field should take into account. (shrink)

Classically, truth and falsehood are opposite, and so are logical truth and logical falsehood. In this paper we imagine a situation in which the opposition is so pervasive in the language we use as to threaten the very possibility of telling truth from falsehood. The example exploits a suggestion of Ramsey’s to the effect that negation can be expressed simply by writing the negated sentence upside down. The difference between ‘p’ and ‘~~p’ disappears, the principle of double negation becomes trivial, (...) and the truth/falsehood opposition is up for grabs. Our moral is that this indeterminacy undermines the idea of inferential role semantics. (shrink)

Temporal reference in natural language is inherently context dependent: what counts as a moment in one context may be structurally analysed in another context, and vice versa. In this note we show how the mereotopological apparatus developed elsewhere allows one to account for this phenomenon within the framework of event-based semantics.

Chi viene da fuori prima o poi si imbatterà nel cartello. Potrebbe essere cento metri piu in là e non cambierebbe nulla. Ma è lì. È lì perché è lì che Torino comincia (o finisce, per chi venisse da dentro). Uno dice «Ah» e tira dritto. Eppure in quel cartello conficcato nel terreno si nasconde una lunga storia; nel varcare quella linea di confine si entra in uno spazio nuovo al cui interno, magicamente separati da tutto il resto, ci si (...) chiama torinesi—si parla la stessa lingua, ci si affida alle stesse autorità, ci si batte per risolvere gli stessi problemi e migliorare la qualità di una vita in comune. I confini sono fatti così: sono linee sottili ma potenti; linee che, separando, uniscono; linee definitore che spesso non riusciamo a vedere perché non risiedono nelle cose, ma solo nei segni a matita dei cartografi e nei vomeri immaginari degli amministratori, e dalle quali tuttavia dipende il nostro senso di appartenenza a un luogo; linee per le quali, ahimè, a volte si è anche combattuto, sebbene oggi scompaiano sempre più nella confusione delle tangenziali, dei cavalcavia, dei raccordi, delle rotatorie, delle serpentesche circonvoluzioni che svaniscono tra zone industriali, aree di residua campagna, retroscena di distributori invecchiati male. (shrink)

A b s t r a c t . This paper presents the outline of a formal ontology of contexts. More specifically, it deals with the ontology of ecological contexts (niches, habitats, environments, ambients) and of the relations between organisms, niches, and the spatial regions they occupy. The first part sets out the basic conceptual background. The second part outlines a semi-formal theory which builds upon notions and principles of mereology, topology, and the theory of spatial location.

There are two natural ways of thinking about negation: (i) as a form of complementation and (ii) as an operation of reversal, or inversion (to deny that p is to say that things are "the other way around"). A variety of techniques exist to model conception (i), from Euler and Venn diagrams to Boolean algebras. Conception (ii), by contrast, has not been given comparable attention. In this note we outline a twofold geometric proposal, where the inversion metaphor is understoood as (...) involving a rotation o a reflection, respectively. These two options are equivalent in classical two-valued logic but they differ significantly in many-valued logics. Here we show that they correspond to two basic sorts of negation operators— Posts and Kleenes—and we provide a simple group-theoretic argument demonstrating their generative power. (shrink)

… I am not giving it. I am sorry. I changed my mind and I am giving this talk instead—if everything works out as planned. But you may wonder: What is that it that I am not giving? What am I referring to when I apologize for not giving the talk I was supposed to give? Never mind the content of that talk— I can always give you a summary of what I meant to say, if you wish. Indeed, I (...) might even decide to give a talk with that content on a different occasion. The content, however, is not the talk, and if I gave a talk with that content on a different occasion I would not, on my reckoning, give the talk I was supposed to give. For the talk I was supposed to give is something that was supposed to take place today, and that is not going to happen. Hence the worry: How can we talk about it? How can we talk about events that fail to occur? Let us assume Davidson was right in urging that events form a genuine metaphysical category, on a par with material objects.1 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? (shrink)

Standardly, one says that vagueness arises whenever a concept or linguistic expression admits of borderline cases of application. A predicate such as ‘bald’, for example, is vague because there can be situations in which it is indeterminate whether or not it applies to (a name of) a certain object. Some people are clearly bald (Picasso), some are clearly not bald (the count of Montecristo), and some are borderline cases—our concept of baldness and our linguistic practices do not specify any exact (...) number of hairs that marks the boundary between the bald and the non-bald. Similarly, a singular term such as ‘Mount Everest’ is vague because there is no determinate way of tracing the geographical limits of its referent. Some rocks are clearly part of Everest and some are clearly not, but some rocks enjoy a borderline status. (shrink)

This paper gives an extended presentation of the treatment of variable-binding operators adumbrated in earlier works. 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 class of models as the only "admissible" interpretation structures (for a given (...) language). (shrink)

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 good idea of what sort of things there are, and of how we are going to count them. (shrink)

There are two main ways, philosophically, of characterizing the business of ontology, and it is good practice to try and keep them separate. On one account, made popular by Quine, ontology is concerned with the question of what there is. Since to say that there are things that are not would be selfcontradictory, Quine famously pronounced that such a question can be answered in a single word—‘Everything’. However, to say ‘Everything’ is to say nothing. It is merely to say that (...) there is what there is, unless one goes on to specify the population of the domain over which one quantifies—and here there is plenty of room for disagreement. You may think that ‘everything’ covers particulars as well as universals, I may think that it only covers the former; you may think that the domain includes abstract particulars along with concrete ones, I may think that it only includes the latter; and so on. Exactly how such disagreements can be framed is itself a rather intricate question, as is the question of how one goes about figuring out one’s own views on such matters. But some way or other we all have beliefs of this sort, at least as soon as we start philosophizing about the world, and to work out such beliefs is to engage in ontological inquiries. The other way of characterizing ontology stems from a different concern, and made its way into our times through Brentano and his pupils. On this second account, the task of ontology is not to specify what there is but, rather, to lay bare the formal structure of all there is, whatever it is. Regardless of whether our domain of quantification includes universals along with particulars, abstract entities along with concrete ones, and so on, it must exibit some general features and obey some general laws, and the task of ontology would be to figure out such features and laws. For instance, it would pertain to the task of ontology to assert that every entity, no matter what it is, is self-identical, or that no entity can consist of a single proper part, or that some entity can depend on another only if the latter does not depend on the former.. (shrink)

As a theory of reasoning, logic has—or ought to have—nothing to do with metaphysics. It ought to have nothing to do with questions concerning what there is, or whether there is anything at all. It is precisely because of its metaphysical commitments that Aristotelian syllogistics, for example, was eventually deemed inadequate as a canon of pure logical reasoning. The inference from an A-form statement such as (1) All humans are mortal to the corresponding I-form statement, (2) Some humans are mortal, (...) is syllogistically valid. But it depends on the existence of humans beings and should not, therefore, count as valid as a matter of pure logic. (It depends on the existence of human beings because, in a world with no such beings, (2) would be false whereas (1) would be true, although vacuously.) Likewise, modern quantification theory1 has been found inadequate insofar as it sanctions as valid the inference from a universal statement such as (3) Everything is mortal to the corresponding existential statement (4) Something is mortal, whose truth-conditions, unlike those of (3), appear to clash with the metaphysical possibility that there is nothing at all. It also sanctions as valid the inference from (3) to any of its substitution instances, such as.. (shrink)

Events are center stage in several fields of psychological research. There is a long tradition in the study of event perception, event recognition, event memory, event conceptualization and segmentation. There are studies devoted to the description of events in language and to their representation in the brain. There are also metapsychological studies aimed at assessing the nature of mental events or the grounding of intentional action. Outside psychology, the notion of an event plays a prominent role in various areas of (...) philosophy, from metaphysics to the philosophy of action and mind, as well as in such diverse disciplines as linguistics, literary theory, probability theory, artificial intelligence, physics, and—of course—history. This plethora of concerns and applications is indicative of the prima facie centrality of the notion of an event in our conceptual scheme, but it also gives rise to some important methodological questions. Can we identify a core notion that is preserved across disciplines? Does this notion, or some such notion, correspond to the pre-theoretical conception countenanced by common sense? Does it correspond to a genuine metaphysical category? (shrink)

Abstract. As a general theory of reasoning—and as a general theory of what holds true under every possible circumstance—logic is supposed to be ontologically neutral. It ought to have nothing to do with questions concerning what there is, or whether there is anything at all. It is for this reason that traditional Aristotelian logic, with its tacit existential presuppositions, was eventually deemed inadequate as a canon of pure logic. And it is for this reason that modern quantification theory, too, with (...) its residue of existentially loaded theorems and patterns of inference, has been claimed to suffer from a defect of logical purity. The law of non-contradiction rules out certain circumstances as impossible—circumstances in which a statement is both true and false, or perhaps circumstances where something both is and is not the case. Is this to be regarded as a further ontological bias? (shrink)