85 research outputs found
Fragmenting Reality: An Essay on Passage, Causality and Time Travel
No full textThe growing interest in fragmentalism is one of the most exciting trends in philosophy of time and is gradually reshaping the contemporary debate. Providing an extensive interpretation of this view, Samuele Iaquinto and Giuliano Torrengo articulate a novel theory of the passage of time and argue that it is the most effective in vindicating the inherent dynamism of reality. Iaquinto and Torrengo offer the first full-range application of fragmentalism to a number of metaphysical topics, including the open future, causation, the A-theoretic interpretation of special relativity and time travel. The resulting picture, they argue, conveys the potential of a radically new understanding of time
Flow Fragmentalism
No full textIn this paper, we articulate a version of non-standard A-theory—which we call Flow Fragmentalism—in relation to its take on the issue of supervenience of truth on being. According to the Truth Supervenes on Being (TSB) Principle, the truth of past- and future-tensed propositions supervenes, respectively, on past and future facts. Since the standard presentist denies the existence of past and future entities and facts concerning them that do not obtain in the present, she seems to lack the resources to accept both past and future-tensed truths and the TSB Principle. Contrariwise, positions in philosophy of time that accept an eternalist ontology (e.g., B-theory, moving spotlight, and Fine’s and Lipman’s versions of fragmentalism) allow for a “direct” supervenience base for past- and future-tensed truths. We argue that Flow Fragmentalism constitutes a middle ground, which retains most of the advantages of both views, and allows us to articulate a novel account of the passage of time
Filosofia del Futuro : un'introduzione
No full textIl volume offre un’introduzione al contempo accessibile e rigorosa ai più recenti sviluppi di una fondamentale branca della filosofia del tempo: la filosofia del futuro. Al centro dell’attenzione sono le domande chiave del dibattito contemporaneo. Il futuro è già scritto o esistono cammini alternativi che il tempo è in grado di imboccare? Esistere significa semplicemente essere presenti o ci sono veri e propri oggetti futuri? Siamo davvero liberi di scegliere quali azioni compiere e di modificare il corso degli eventi? Il dibattito intorno alle risposte di volta in volta offerte dalla filosofia esplora un’intrigante zona d’intersezione tra metafisica, logica ed etica, e interessa discipline diverse come la fisica, la psicologia e l’economia. Gli autori offrono gli strumenti necessari per inquadrare concettualmente le domande sul futuro, introducendo tutte le nozioni tecniche in un linguaggio chiaro e intuitivo
The Invisible Thin Red Line
No full textThe aim of this paper is to argue that the adoption of an unrestricted principle of bivalence is compatible with a metaphysics that (i) denies that the future is real, (ii) adopts nomological indeterminism and (iii) exploits a branching structure to provide a semantics for future contingent claims. To this end, we elaborate what we call Flow Fragmentalism, a view inspired by Kit Fine's non-standard tense realism, according to which reality is divided up into maximally coherent collections of tensed facts. In this way, we show how to reconcile a genuinely A-theoretic branching time model with the idea that there is a branch corresponding to the thin red line, that is, the branch that will turn out to be the actual future history of the world
Materiality, parthood, and possibility
No full textThis paper offers an argument in favour of a Lewisian version of concretism that maintains both the principle of material inheritance (according to which, if all the parts of an object x are material, then x is material) and the materiality-modality link (that is, the principle that, for every x, if x is material, then x is possible)
Materiality, Parthood, and Possibility
No full textThis paper offers an argument in favour of a Lewisian version of concretism that maintains both the principle of material inheritance (according to which, if all the parts of an object x are material, then x is material) and the materiality-modality link (that is, the principle that, for every x, if x is material, then x is possible)
The ontology of discrimination
No full textDiscrimination is a social phenomenon which seems to be widespread across different societies and cultures. Examples of discrimination concerning race, class, gender, and sexual orientation are not difficult to find in contemporary western societies. In this article, the author focus on the ontological ground of this phenomenon, with particular attention to its diffuse and institutionalised forms. The author defends a broadly speaking reductionist approach, according to which the various manifestations of discrimination are grounded on the existence of the effects of “discriminatory stances” in social contexts. Discrimination may become part of the institutional sphere, either by way of bottom-up “crystallisation” of discriminatory practices, or by top-down “dilution” of institutional defaults into ordinary interactions
The moving spotlight(s)
No full textThe moving spotlight account (MS) is a view that combines an eternalist ontology and an A-theoretic metaphysics. The intuition underlying MS is that the present time is somehow privileged and experientially vivid, as if it were illuminated by a moving spotlight. According to MS-theorists, a key reason to prefer MS to B-theoretic eternalism is that our experience of time supports it. We argue that this is false. To this end, we formulate a new family of positions in the philosophy of time, which differ from MS in that, intuitively, they admit a plurality of moving spotlights. We argue that these ‘deviant’ variants of MS cannot be dismissed as conceptually incoherent, and that they are as well-supported by our experience as is MS. One of these variants, however, is consistent with the B-theory. Thus, if our experience of time supports MS, then it supports the B-theory as well
Alcune note sulla nozione di spiegazione nelle scienze e in filosofia
No full textNel 1965 il maggior fisico teorico dell'epoca annunciava, non senza ironia, che con ogni probabilità al mondo non ci fosse alcuno che comprendesse la meccanica quantistica. A distanza di oltre cinquant’anni, la citazione di Richard Feynman serve spesso da preambolo a quanti si ritengono in grado di dissipare la nebbia attorno a questa teoria. I progressi fatti in questa direzione sono comunque tali da giustificare un maggiore ottimismo. Gli studi sulla probabilità, gli approfondimenti della semantica delle teorie scientifiche, la nascita di logiche non classiche e modali, la nuova informatica quantistica e le teorie operazionali rappresentano alcuni dei traguardi che hanno permesso di rendere perspicuo il senso della teoria quantistica.L’incontro pone l’obiettivo di riflettere su questi progressi, proporre nuove strade, o indicare quali fra queste si siano invece interrotte. In altre parole, si propone di ampliare lo spazio delle nostre possibilità scientifiche e filosofiche di comprensione del mondo fisico.hen we explain something we use hypotheses, that is representations,
which we formulate on the basis of some background theory or other. What makes such
representations explanations are facts in the world. If, for instance, I can appeal to the
hypothesis that the second referee has been unfair as a way of accounting for why Claudio
is upset. and such a hypothesis is a (good) explanation if and only if the second referee
has been unfair. It follows that even if scientific theories can always be read in an instru-
mentalist sense, in using them to formulate explanatory hypotheses we often appeal,
implicitly or explicitly, to readings of them that go beyond their empirical content
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