Massimiliano Carrara
Biographic Data
| ID | 1290818 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Massimiliano Carrara |
| GIVEN NAMES | Massimiliano |
| FAMILY NAME | Carrara |
| SIGNATURE | CARRARA M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Padua |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3509-1585 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Introduction to the special issue: Impossibility: philosophy, history, logic
This special issue is devoted to the topic of impossibility. It contains ten contributions by fourteen authors. The papers approach the topic from one of three main perspectives – historical, conceptual, or logical – and have been organized into three corresponding sections. Below, we provide a summary of each paper. Before doing so, we offer a brief overview of some of the philosophical and logical reasons why impossibility has historically prov…
Mereomodal partialhood and fractional counting
When we count, we often count fractions, too. We contend that fractional counting involves partial entities, which are merely possible parts of entities of the counted kind. The size of these possible parts is measured with respect to the size of a possible member of that kind. Therefore, partialhood is mereomodal, and the logical form of fractional counting claims includes mereological predicates, modal operators, and a measurement functor. Diff…
Paraconsistent Belief Revision: An Algebraic Investigation
This paper offers a logico-algebraic investigation of AGM belief revision based on the logic of paradox ( $$\mathrm {LP}$$ LP ). First, we define a concrete belief revision operator for $$\mathrm {LP}$$ LP , proving that it satisfies a generalised version of the traditional AGM postulates. Moreover, we investigate to what extent the Levi and Harper identities, in their classical formulation, can be applied to a paraconsistent account of revision.…
Impossibilities without impossibilia
Circumstantialists already have a logical semantics for impossibilities.They expand their logical space of possible worlds by adding impossible worlds.These are impossible circumstances serving as indices of evaluation, at which impossibilities are true.A variant of circumstantialism, namely modal Meinongianism (noneism), adds impossible objects as well.These are socalled incomplete objects that are necessarily non-existent.The opposite of circum…
On the non-substantiality of logic: A case study
One of the goals of the natural sciences– for example biology– is to provide new information about certain phenomena with previously unknown nature. Their contribution to our knowledge is substantial. From this perspective, logic is seemingly not substantial. Sometimes, logic’s insubstantiality is taken for granted while explaining the alleged insubstantiality of other notions. For example, according to truth deflationism, truth is a non-substant…
Self-Effacing Reasons and Epistemic Constraints: Some Lessons from the Knowability Paradox
A minimal constraint on normative reasons seems to be that if some fact is a reason for an agent to φ (act, believe, or feel), the agent could come to know that fact. This constraint is threatened by a well-known type of counterexamples. Self-effacing reasons are facts that intuitively constitute reasons for an agent to φ, but that if they were to become known, they would cease to be reasons for that agent. The challenge posed by self-effacing re…
Patient Similarity in the Era of Precision Medicine: A Philosophical Analysis
How to be a compatibilist in metaphysics: The epistemic strategy
Conflicts between our best philosophical theories (BPTs) and our common beliefs are widespread. For example, if eliminativism is our BPT, then our BPT conflicts with common beliefs about the existence of middle-sized composite artifacts. ‘Compatibilism’ is the name usually given to a theoretical attitude, according to which, in the case of a conflict between BPT and a common belief P, we should try to find a reconciliation. The two major variants…
Thin objects: An overview
In Thin objects: an abstractionist account (Oxford University Press, 2018), Øystein Linnebo claims that ‘mathematical objects are thin in the sense that very little is required for their existence’. Linnebo articulates his view in an abstractionist manner: according to Linnebo, the truth of the right‐hand side of a Fregean abstraction principle, which states that two items stand in a given equivalence relation, is sufficient for the truth of its …
From thin objects to thin concepts
In this short paper we consider Linnebo's thin/thick dichotomy: first, we show that it does not overlap with the very common one between abstract/concrete objects; second, on the basis of some difficulties with the distinction, we propose, as a possible way out, to move from thin/thick objects to thin/thick concepts
On Cotnoir’s two notions of proper parthood
A.J. Cotnoir has argued that we should distinguish between two notions of proper parthood: outstripped part and non-identical part. Outstripped parthood is an asymmetric relation, but non-identical parthood is not. We argue, first, that the intuitions Cotnoir uses to motivate these notions do not always give the right verdict; and, second, that systematic reasons for distinguishing these two notions of parthood have further counter-intuitive cons…
There is overlap in letters: A mereological definition of word types
Classical mereology seems unable to characterise the identity conditions of word types. For example, the same letter types ordered differently result in different word types; but mereological fusions of the same letters are identical, regardless of the order of the letters. We show, however, that by combining classical mereology with plural logic one can give a definition of word types that satisfies the identity criteria of word types. This mean…
Teaching & Learning Guide for: On the Semantics of Artifactual Kind Terms
Artifacts shape our life-world in several significant ways: We rarely (if ever) find ourselves in a situation in which no artifact is around. Most of the time, we are surrounded by a vast number of these objects, such as tables, chairs, pencils, coffee cups, computers, books, paintings, cars, houses, and so on. We use them to communicate, bridge distances, express ourselves, preserve memories and knowledge, gain aesthetic experiences, simplify ev…
Are Identities Unexplainable? Towards a Non‐causal Contrastive Explanation of Identities
Can an identity be the proper subject of an explanation? A popular stance, albeit not one often argued for, gives a negative answer to this question. Building from a contentious passage from Jaegwon Kim in this direction, we reconstruct an argument to the conclusion that identities, to the extent in which they are necessary, cannot be explained. The notion of contrastive explanation, characterized as difference‐seeking, will be crucial for this a…
Contingent composition as identity
We don’t know we don’t know: Asserting ignorance
Mereology and Identity
On the semantics of artifactual kind terms
What kind of reference (if any) do terms such as "pencil," "chair," "television," and so on have? On the matter, a debate between directly referential theorists and descriptivist theorists is open. It is largely acknowledged that natural kind terms (such as "water," "gold," "tiger," etc.) are directly referential expressions (cf. Putnam, 1975). That is, they are expressions whose reference is determined by their referents' nature, independent of …
Identity criteria: An epistemic path to conceptual grounding
Unity and Plurality: Logic, Philosophy, and Linguistics
Unity and Plurality' presents novel ways of thinking about plurality while casting new light on the interconnections among the logical, philosophical, and linguistic aspects of plurals. The volume brings together new work on the logic and ontology of plurality and on the semantics of plurals in natural language. Plural reference, the view that definite plurals such as 'the students' refer to several entities at once (the individual students), is …
Individuals, Essence and Identity: Themes of Analytic Metaphysics
The design stance and its artefacts
In this paper we disambiguate the design stance as proposed by Daniel C. Dennett, focusing on its application to technical artefacts. Analysing Dennett’s work and developing his approach towards interpreting entities, we show that there are two ways of spelling out the design stance, one that presuppose also adopting Dennett’s intentional stance for describing a designing agent, and a second that does not. We argue against taking one of these way…
Why Knowledge Should Not Be Typed: An Argument against the Type Solution to the Knowability Paradox
The Knowability Paradox is a logical argument to the effect that, if there are truths not actually known, then there are unknowable truths. Recently, Alexander Paseau and Bernard Linsky have independently suggested a possible way to counter this argument by typing knowledge. In this article, we argue against their proposal that if one abstracts from other possible independent considerations supporting reasons for typing knowledge and considers th…
Two Conceptions of Technical Malfunction
The topic of this paper is the notion of technical (as opposed to biological) malfunction. It is shown how to form the property being a malfunctioning F from the property F and the property modifier malfunctioning (a mapping taking a property to a property). We present two interpretations of malfunctioning . Both interpretations agree that a malfunctioning F lacks the dispositional property of functioning as an F . However, its subsective interpr…
The fine-grained metaphysics of artifactual and biological functional kinds
In this paper we consider the emerging position in metaphysics that artifact functions characterize real kinds of artifacts. We analyze how it can circumvent an objection by David Wiggins ( Sameness and substance renewed , 2001, 87) and then argue that this position, in comparison to expert judgments, amounts to an interesting fine-grained metaphysics: taking artifact functions as (part of the) essences of artifacts leads to distinctions between …
On the semantics of artifactual kind terms
What kind of reference (if any) do terms such as "pencil," "chair," "television," and so on have? On the matter, a debate between directly referential theorists and descriptivist theorists is open. It is largely acknowledged that natural kind terms (such as "water," "gold," "tiger," etc.) are directly referential expressions (cf. Putnam, 1975). That is, they are expressions whose reference is determined by their referents' nature, independent of …
Identity criteria: An epistemic path to conceptual grounding
The fine-grained metaphysics of artifactual and biological functional kinds
In this paper we consider the emerging position in metaphysics that artifact functions characterize real kinds of artifacts. We analyze how it can circumvent an objection by David Wiggins ( Sameness and substance renewed , 2001, 87) and then argue that this position, in comparison to expert judgments, amounts to an interesting fine-grained metaphysics: taking artifact functions as (part of the) essences of artifacts leads to distinctions between …
Unity and Plurality: Logic, Philosophy, and Linguistics
Unity and Plurality' presents novel ways of thinking about plurality while casting new light on the interconnections among the logical, philosophical, and linguistic aspects of plurals. The volume brings together new work on the logic and ontology of plurality and on the semantics of plurals in natural language. Plural reference, the view that definite plurals such as 'the students' refer to several entities at once (the individual students), is …
The design stance and its artefacts
In this paper we disambiguate the design stance as proposed by Daniel C. Dennett, focusing on its application to technical artefacts. Analysing Dennett’s work and developing his approach towards interpreting entities, we show that there are two ways of spelling out the design stance, one that presuppose also adopting Dennett’s intentional stance for describing a designing agent, and a second that does not. We argue against taking one of these way…
Symposium on “Cognition and Rationality: Part I”
Symposium on “Cognition and Rationality: Part II”
Ontology for information systems: Artefacts as a case study
The fine-grained metaphysics of artifactual and biological functional kinds
In this paper we consider the emerging position in metaphysics that artifact functions characterize real kinds of artifacts. We analyze how it can circumvent an objection by David Wiggins ( Sameness and substance renewed , 2001, 87) and then argue that this position, in comparison to expert judgments, amounts to an interesting fine-grained metaphysics: taking artifact functions as (part of the) essences of artifacts leads to distinctions between …
Why Knowledge Should Not Be Typed: An Argument against the Type Solution to the Knowability Paradox
The Knowability Paradox is a logical argument to the effect that, if there are truths not actually known, then there are unknowable truths. Recently, Alexander Paseau and Bernard Linsky have independently suggested a possible way to counter this argument by typing knowledge. In this article, we argue against their proposal that if one abstracts from other possible independent considerations supporting reasons for typing knowledge and considers th…
Two Conceptions of Technical Malfunction
The topic of this paper is the notion of technical (as opposed to biological) malfunction. It is shown how to form the property being a malfunctioning F from the property F and the property modifier malfunctioning (a mapping taking a property to a property). We present two interpretations of malfunctioning . Both interpretations agree that a malfunctioning F lacks the dispositional property of functioning as an F . However, its subsective interpr…
Individuals, Essence and Identity: Themes of Analytic Metaphysics
The design stance and its artefacts
In this paper we disambiguate the design stance as proposed by Daniel C. Dennett, focusing on its application to technical artefacts. Analysing Dennett’s work and developing his approach towards interpreting entities, we show that there are two ways of spelling out the design stance, one that presuppose also adopting Dennett’s intentional stance for describing a designing agent, and a second that does not. We argue against taking one of these way…
Unity and Plurality: Logic, Philosophy, and Linguistics
Unity and Plurality' presents novel ways of thinking about plurality while casting new light on the interconnections among the logical, philosophical, and linguistic aspects of plurals. The volume brings together new work on the logic and ontology of plurality and on the semantics of plurals in natural language. Plural reference, the view that definite plurals such as 'the students' refer to several entities at once (the individual students), is …
Identity criteria: An epistemic path to conceptual grounding
Are Identities Unexplainable? Towards a Non‐causal Contrastive Explanation of Identities
Can an identity be the proper subject of an explanation? A popular stance, albeit not one often argued for, gives a negative answer to this question. Building from a contentious passage from Jaegwon Kim in this direction, we reconstruct an argument to the conclusion that identities, to the extent in which they are necessary, cannot be explained. The notion of contrastive explanation, characterized as difference‐seeking, will be crucial for this a…
Contingent composition as identity
We don’t know we don’t know: Asserting ignorance
Mereology and Identity
On the semantics of artifactual kind terms
What kind of reference (if any) do terms such as "pencil," "chair," "television," and so on have? On the matter, a debate between directly referential theorists and descriptivist theorists is open. It is largely acknowledged that natural kind terms (such as "water," "gold," "tiger," etc.) are directly referential expressions (cf. Putnam, 1975). That is, they are expressions whose reference is determined by their referents' nature, independent of …
On Cotnoir’s two notions of proper parthood
A.J. Cotnoir has argued that we should distinguish between two notions of proper parthood: outstripped part and non-identical part. Outstripped parthood is an asymmetric relation, but non-identical parthood is not. We argue, first, that the intuitions Cotnoir uses to motivate these notions do not always give the right verdict; and, second, that systematic reasons for distinguishing these two notions of parthood have further counter-intuitive cons…
There is overlap in letters: A mereological definition of word types
Classical mereology seems unable to characterise the identity conditions of word types. For example, the same letter types ordered differently result in different word types; but mereological fusions of the same letters are identical, regardless of the order of the letters. We show, however, that by combining classical mereology with plural logic one can give a definition of word types that satisfies the identity criteria of word types. This mean…
Teaching & Learning Guide for: On the Semantics of Artifactual Kind Terms
Artifacts shape our life-world in several significant ways: We rarely (if ever) find ourselves in a situation in which no artifact is around. Most of the time, we are surrounded by a vast number of these objects, such as tables, chairs, pencils, coffee cups, computers, books, paintings, cars, houses, and so on. We use them to communicate, bridge distances, express ourselves, preserve memories and knowledge, gain aesthetic experiences, simplify ev…
Patient Similarity in the Era of Precision Medicine: A Philosophical Analysis
How to be a compatibilist in metaphysics: The epistemic strategy
Conflicts between our best philosophical theories (BPTs) and our common beliefs are widespread. For example, if eliminativism is our BPT, then our BPT conflicts with common beliefs about the existence of middle-sized composite artifacts. ‘Compatibilism’ is the name usually given to a theoretical attitude, according to which, in the case of a conflict between BPT and a common belief P, we should try to find a reconciliation. The two major variants…
Thin objects: An overview
In Thin objects: an abstractionist account (Oxford University Press, 2018), Øystein Linnebo claims that ‘mathematical objects are thin in the sense that very little is required for their existence’. Linnebo articulates his view in an abstractionist manner: according to Linnebo, the truth of the right‐hand side of a Fregean abstraction principle, which states that two items stand in a given equivalence relation, is sufficient for the truth of its …
From thin objects to thin concepts
In this short paper we consider Linnebo's thin/thick dichotomy: first, we show that it does not overlap with the very common one between abstract/concrete objects; second, on the basis of some difficulties with the distinction, we propose, as a possible way out, to move from thin/thick objects to thin/thick concepts
Paraconsistent Belief Revision: An Algebraic Investigation
This paper offers a logico-algebraic investigation of AGM belief revision based on the logic of paradox ( $$\mathrm {LP}$$ LP ). First, we define a concrete belief revision operator for $$\mathrm {LP}$$ LP , proving that it satisfies a generalised version of the traditional AGM postulates. Moreover, we investigate to what extent the Levi and Harper identities, in their classical formulation, can be applied to a paraconsistent account of revision.…
Impossibilities without impossibilia
Circumstantialists already have a logical semantics for impossibilities.They expand their logical space of possible worlds by adding impossible worlds.These are impossible circumstances serving as indices of evaluation, at which impossibilities are true.A variant of circumstantialism, namely modal Meinongianism (noneism), adds impossible objects as well.These are socalled incomplete objects that are necessarily non-existent.The opposite of circum…
On the non-substantiality of logic: A case study
One of the goals of the natural sciences– for example biology– is to provide new information about certain phenomena with previously unknown nature. Their contribution to our knowledge is substantial. From this perspective, logic is seemingly not substantial. Sometimes, logic’s insubstantiality is taken for granted while explaining the alleged insubstantiality of other notions. For example, according to truth deflationism, truth is a non-substant…
Philosophy (22 works) · Epistemology (21 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (13 works) · Metaphysics (11 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Philosophy of language (10 works) · Mathematics (9 works) · Philosophy of science (9 works) · Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge (8 works)