Papers by Massimiliano Carrara
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL …, Jan 1, 1994
Principles of Knowledge …, Jan 1, 1994
Ontological and Epistemological Investigations, 2014
Between Logic and Reality, 2011
Identity criteria are used to confer ontological respectability: Only entities with clearly deter... more Identity criteria are used to confer ontological respectability: Only entities with clearly determined identity criteria are ontologically ac-ceptable. From a logical point of view, identity criteria should mirror the identity relation in being reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive. However, this ...
Biology & Philosophy, 2000
In our paper, we propose a relativisticand metaphysically neutral identity criterionfor biologica... more In our paper, we propose a relativisticand metaphysically neutral identity criterionfor biological entities. We start from thecriterion of genidentity proposed by K. Lewinand H. Reichenbach. Then we enrich it to renderit more philosophical powerful and so capableof dealing with the real transformations thatoccur in the extremely variegated biologicalworld.
Identity criteria are used to confer ontological respectability: Only entities with clearly deter... more Identity criteria are used to confer ontological respectability: Only entities with clearly determined identity criteria are ontologically acceptable. From a logical point of view, identity criteria should mirror the identity relation in being reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive. However, this logical constraint is only rarely met. More precisely, in some cases, the relation representing the identity condition fails to be transitive. We consider the proposals given so far to give logical adequacy to inadequate identity conditions. We focus on the most refined proposal and expand its formal framework by taking into account two further aspects that we consider essential in the application of identity criteria to obtain logical adequacy: contexts and granular levels.
Priest’s dialetheism is the view that some sentences, called dialetheias, are both true and false... more Priest’s dialetheism is the view that some sentences, called dialetheias, are both true and false. A crucial problem of dialetheism is that of avoiding trivialism, i.e. the consequence that all sentences are dialetheias. In the present paper we want to discuss Priest’s strategy for avoiding Curry’s paradox, from which trivialism follows. Besides, we will formulate a new version of Curry’s paradox, using a notion of naïve deducibility, which, in our opinion, should be accepted by Priest himself.
Questa bibliografia ragionata si compone di otto voci: logica filosofica e filosofia della logica... more Questa bibliografia ragionata si compone di otto voci: logica filosofica e filosofia della logica, identità, esistenza, verità, modalità, fatti, condizionali e vaghezza. Ciascuna voce è organizzata in due parti: nella prima si trova una rassegna (quanto più informata ed esaustiva) del tema, nella seconda sono stati selezionati e recensiti dei lavori che consideriamo particolarmente rilevanti (privilegiando le opere pubblicate più recentemente). Lo scopo è quello di fornire al lettore un utile strumento o, se non altro, degli spunti per approfondire alcuni dei temi fondamentali della logica filosofica.
Formalizing the ontological commitment of a logical language means offering a way to specify the ... more Formalizing the ontological commitment of a logical language means offering a way to specify the intended meaning of its vocabulary by constraining the set of its models, giving explicit information about the intended nature of the modelling primitives and their a priori relationships. We present here a formal definition of ontological commitment which aims to capture the very basic ontological assumptions about the intended domain, related to issues such as identity and internal structure. To tackle such issues, a modal framework endowed with mereo-topological primitives has been adopted. The paper is mostly based on a revisitation of philosophical (and linguistic) literature in the perspective of knowledge representation. 1 Introduction First order logic is notoriously neutral with respect to ontological choices: when a logical language is used with the purpose of modelling a particular aspect of reality, the set M of all its models is usually much larger than the set M i of the i...
This paper has been done in the framework of a collaboration with LADSEB-CNR
The aim of this paper is to refine, integrate and apply the methodology of OntoClean. Three aspec... more The aim of this paper is to refine, integrate and apply the methodology of OntoClean. Three aspects are taken into account; two of them concern main ideas of OntoClean, the third one is a study of a particular important application. The first section deals with the topic of identity: formal constraints on identity criteria, com-patibility and identity among identity criteria. The second section deals with rigidity, dependence and existence. The final section investigates how meta-property criteria can be applied to the notion of artifact.
Formalizing the ontological commitment of a logical lan- guage means offering a way to specify th... more Formalizing the ontological commitment of a logical lan- guage means offering a way to specify the intended meaning of its vocabulary by constraining the set of its models, giv- ing explicit information about the intended nature of the modelling primitives and their a priori relationships. We present here a formal definition of ontological commitment which aims to capture the very basic ontological assump- tions about the intended domain, related to issues such as identity and internal structure. To tackle such issues, a modal framework endowed with mereo-topological primi- tives has been adopted. The paper is mostly based on a re- visitation of philosophical (and linguistic) literature in the perspective of knowledge representation.
Logique et Analyse
Dialetheism holds the thesis that certain sentences are dialetheias, i.e. both true and false, an... more Dialetheism holds the thesis that certain sentences are dialetheias, i.e. both true and false, and devises several strategies for avoiding trivialism, the (classical) consequence that all sentences are true. Two such strategies are aimed at invalidating one of the most direct arguments for trivialism, viz. Curry's Paradox: a proof that you will win the lottery, a proof that only resorts to naive truth-principles, Conditional Proof (CP), modus ponens (MPP) and the standardly accepted structural rules. The first strategy simply consists in observing that the most well-known dialetheist logic, sometimes referred to as the Logic of Paradox (LP), invalidates MPP. The second strategy consists in rather taking one of the primary senses of 'if' to be captured by an entailment connective which does not validate CP. We argue that both strategies are problematic.
Nicholas Rescher, in The Limits of Science (1984), argued that: «perfected science is a mirage; c... more Nicholas Rescher, in The Limits of Science (1984), argued that: «perfected science is a mirage; complete knowledge a chimera» . He reached the above conclusion from a logical argument known as Fitch’s Paradox of Knowability. The argument, starting from the assumption that every truth is knowable, proves that every truth is also actually known and, given that some true propositions are not actually known, it concludes, by modus tollens, that there are unknowable truths. Prima facie, this argument seems to seriously narrow our epistemic possibilities and to constitute a limit for knowledge (included scientific knowledge). Rescher’s above quoted conclusion follows the same sort of reasoning. Recently, Bernard Linsky exploited a possible way to block the argument employing a type-distinction of knowledge. If the Knowability paradox is blocked, then Rescher’s conclusion cannot be drawn. After an introduction to the paradox, we suggest, in our paper, a possible way of justifying a type-so...
The Knowability Paradox is a logical argument that, starting from the plainly innocent assumption... more The Knowability Paradox is a logical argument that, starting from the plainly innocent assumption that every true proposition is knowable, reaches the strong conclusion that every true proposition is known; i.e. if there are unknown truths, there are unknowable truths. The paradox has been considered a problem for every theory assuming the Knowability Principle, according to which all truths are knowable and, in particular, for semantic anti-realist theories. A well known criticism to the Knowability Paradox is the so called restriction strategy. It bounds the scope of the universal quantification in (KP) to a set of formulas whose logical form avoids the paradoxical conclusion. Specifically, Tennant suggests to restrict the quantifier in (KP) to propositions whose knowledge is provably inconsistent. He calls them Anti-Cartesian propositions and distinguished them in three kinds. In this paper we will not be concerned with the soundness of the restriction proposal and the criticisms...
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Papers by Massimiliano Carrara