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Transcendental Disagreement
No full textIn metaphysical theorizing, it is common to use primitive expressions whose function is that of denoting or being true of absolutely everything. Adapting a Scholastic term, these may be called ‘transcendentals’. Different metaphysical theories may adopt different transcendentals, the most usual candidates being ‘thing’, ‘entity’, ‘object’, ‘be’, ‘exist’, and their counterparts in various languages dead or alive. We call ‘transcendental disagreement’ any dissent between philosophical theories or traditions that may be described as a disagreement in the choice of transcendentals. Examples of transcendental disagreement include the debate about Lewis’s conception of actuality and a number of recent discussions between Meinongians and their ‘Quinean’ rivals. A case is made for the conclusion that, as such, transcendental disagreements are purely terminological in character. It is argued that transcendental dis- agreements are generally to be assessed on pragmatic rather than on metaphysical grounds. Finally, the paper makes a start in the analysis of those pragmatic grounds, which include the pursuit of univocity, fairness and ease of comparison between theories
Nothing in particular
Get PDFIn this paper, I introduce and discuss a paradox that I call “subtraction paradox”. The subtraction paradox has the same basic structure as many other puzzles involving the notion of nothingness. Roughly, the structure is this: sometimes we presuppose, when we speak, that “nothing” (“nothingness”) denotes something; however, if so, the thing denoted by “nothing”, viz., nothing, cannot be nothing (for no thing is nothing). It may be tempting to think that the subtraction paradox ultimately depends on the fact that the notion of nothingness is especially problematic. In this paper, I draw doubt on this view, showing that essentially the same paradox can be formulated with no appeal to the notion of nothingness. In the Appendix, I suggest that the paradox ultimately depends on a principle connecting facts and truths and on the possibility of (impredicative) quantification over facts. I also suggest that the paradox is a fact-based version of standard antinomies such as Cantor’s paradox
Dipendenza ontologica e personaggi fittizi
Get PDFIn Fiction and Metaphysics Amie Thomasson proposes a theory of fiction and a system of ontological categories. In the former, I shall maintain, an important role is played by a thesis that can be labelled “principle of the referentiality of characters”: If in a work of fiction references are made to a certain pre-existing entity, this entity is a character of the work (e.g., Napoleon – in flesh and blood – is a character of War and Peace). On the other hand, the category system is based on the notion of an ontological dependence, a transitive relation that subsists between, say, two entities a and b only if the existence of a implies, by necessity, the existence of b (e.g., a man depends ontologically on his parents). Here I shall claim that there is a deep tension between this category system and the principle of the referentiality of characters. Such a tension, I shall conclude, forces to a severe revision of either the theory of fiction or the ontological categorization put forward by Amie Thomasson
Predicative subject matter
Get PDFThe notions of subject matter and aboutness have been objects of considerable attention among philosophers over the last few years. Current theories of subject matter take sentences to be the primary bearers of subject matter: “sentences have aboutness properties if anything has” (Yablo, Aboutness, Princeton University Press, 2014). However, some subsentential expressions can also be thought of as being about something. Moreover, it appears that the subject matters of sentences depend in a systematic way on the aboutness properties of their subsentential components. In this paper, we focus on the question of what predicates are about. We provide an account of predicative subject matter in which subject matters are assigned to predicates in a natural way, and which can be smoothly integrated with some existing accounts of sentential subject matter. We also argue that the notion of predicative subject matter is a worthy object of study, both within the current debate on subject matter and in its own right
Fiction, Time, and Agency. An Essay on the Language and Logic of Fiction-Making
Get PDFOne of the most important, and less disputed, core features of fictional works is that they are endowed with (representational) content. And it is out of discussion that the creation of a work is a deliberate process that leads to the work, usually through a sequence of intermediates stages or drafts. Thus, it is only natural to think of fiction-making as a deliberate process leading to a certain content through a series of intermediate contents. Let us call this view the content-choice conception of fiction-making.
In this book the content-choice conception is elaborated on the background of a precise view of time and agency, that of so-called stit theory (see e.g., Belnap et al. 2001). A number of formal theories of fiction-making are formulated, which correspond to different conceptions of fiction-making and to different families of fiction.
As we shall see, the content-choice conception is deeply in- grained in the way we speak and reason about fiction, and it also plays a role in the classification of fictional works. Further- more, an adequate understanding of fiction-making helps to shed some light on a variety of intertwined linguistic and inferential phenomena. Perhaps more pointedly, it enables us to account for fiction-related fragments of language that are beyond the scope of traditional philosophical analyses of fictional discourse
Not Just a Coincidence. Conditional Counter-examples to Locke's Thesis
No full textSo-called Locke’s thesis is the view that no two things of the same kind may coincide, that is, may be completely in the same place at the same time. A number of counter-examples to this view have been proposed. In this paper, some new and arguably more convincing counter-examples to Locke’s thesis are presented. In these counter-examples, a particular entity (a string, a rope, a net, or similar) is interwoven to obtain what appears to be a distinct, thicker entity of the same kind. It is argued that anyone who subscribes to certain standard metaphysical arguments, which are generally taken for granted in the debate about Locke’s thesis, is virtually compelled to accept the counter-examples
Knowability Principle and Disjunction Property
No full textThe so-called paradox of knowability is usually regarded as questioning the principle that all truth is knowable (knowability principle). In this paper we examine the connection of the principle of knowability with other principles (epistemic versions of the disjunction property), which concern the relationships between knowledge of a disjunction and knowledge of the disjuncts, and between knowledge of an existentially quantified sentence and knowledge of one of its instances. Some epistemic versions of the disjunction property are apparently weaker than the knowability principle. Still one of them seems to have paradoxical, or at least not easily acceptable, consequences as well. This puzzling result is diagnosed as depending on the association of a strongly intensional view of propositions with the impredicative way in which they are conceived and dealt with. If correct, the diagnosis directly applies to the paradox of knowability as well
Logos in fabula. Un'indagine filosofica sui personaggi fittizi
No full textUna narrazione (o fabula) è essenzialmente logos, discorso. I discorsi sono sia entità strutturate, dotate di forma logica, sia entità ‘ancorate’ al mondo, dotate di proprietà referenziali. Ma le narrazioni hanno qualcosa in più degli altri discorsi: hanno personaggi. I personaggi letterari sono stati l’oggetto di un vasto dibattito, iniziato nell’antichità. Che cosa sono? qual è il loro statuto ontologico? quali sono le loro connessioni con l’opera e la creatività degli autori? Logos in fabula presenta i principali contributi contemporanei alla discussione, e le loro connessioni con temi centrali della filosofia del linguaggio e della logica. Il libro mira a una dissoluzione di questi problemi: la questione centrale non sarebbe la natura dei personaggi, ma quale sia il ruolo della nozione di personaggio. Secondo Giuseppe Spolaore, questo ruolo sarebbe eminentemente quello, formale, di caratterizzare la struttura di discorso piuttosto che quello, referenziale, di specificare come il discorso sia ‘ancorato’ al mondo
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