…escaping even from the elementary empirical treating – discernment and observation – is revealed and demonstrated. This peculiar nature requires, accordingly, a specific meta-cognitive dealing for positing it as ’empirical…
Knowledge Ascription and the Psychological Consequences of Changing Stakes
…interests. Need-for-closure plays an important role in determining whether one has a settled belief; it also influences the accuracy of one’s cognition. Given these effects, it is a mistake to…
Alief in Action (and Reaction)
Abstract: I introduce and argue for the importance of a cognitive state that I call alief. An alief is, to a reasonable approximation, an innate or habitual propensity to respond…
Philosophical thought experiments, intuitions, and cognitive equilibrium
Summary: Drawing on literature from the dual-processing tradition in psychology, this paper tries to explain why contemplation of an imaginary particular may have cognitive and motivational effects that differ from…
On the metaphysics of quantum mechanics
Abstract: Many solutions have been proposed for solving the problem of macroscopic superpositions of wave function ontology. A possible solution is to assume that, while the wave function provides the…
Spin: All is not what it seems
Abstract: Spin is typically thought to be a fundamental property of the electron and other elementary particles. Although it is defined as an internal angular momentum much of our understanding…
Truth in Virtue of Meaning: A Defence of the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction
…philosophy of language. Tools have been refined, confusions cleared up, and most significantly, many philosophers now accept a view of language – semantic externalism – on which it is possible…
Logical Pluralism
Description: Survey article on logical pluralism. The article is divided into three main parts: i) in the first one the author presents the main arguments for logical pluralism with respect…
What are Degrees of Belief?
…probability calculus. Correspondingly, a natural way to argue for probabilism is: i) to give an account of what degrees of belief are, and then ii) to show that those things…
Logical Quantifiers
Abstract: This article offers a logical, linguistic, and philosophical account of modern quantification theory. Contrasting the standard approach to quantifiers (according to which logical quantifiers are defined by enumeration) with…