Dissertation by Valerio Buonomo
In my dissertation I analyse the existence of any criterion for personal identity over time, focu... more In my dissertation I analyse the existence of any criterion for personal identity over time, focusing on a particular approach about how we persist, the so called "Anti-Criterialism," which properly denies the existence of any informative (i.e. non-tautological), necessary and sufficient condition constituting people's diachronic identity. Hence, before seeking any particular criterion of personal identity over time, I suggest wondering whether or not any criterion of this kind might be at least possible. The dissertation might be divided into three parts.
Conference and Seminars Organization by Valerio Buonomo
Among the topics discussed: task of metaphysics and metametaphysics, the ontology of categories a... more Among the topics discussed: task of metaphysics and metametaphysics, the ontology of categories and ordinary objects, the nature of material composition and grounding, the essence of relations and order, the analysis of causation, emergence, and time, and the connections between common sense, science, and truthmakers.
Talks by Valerio Buonomo
Do numbers exist? Within the debate between realism and anti-realism in philosophy of mathematics... more Do numbers exist? Within the debate between realism and anti-realism in philosophy of mathematics, the Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument (IA) is broadly considered as one of the best argument for Platonism, the philosophical doctrine holding that mathematical entities exist independently from our knowledge. Deriving the ontological commitment to mathematical entities from the fact that they are indispensable to our best scientific theories, the IA claims for the existence of mathematical entities remaining metaphysically neutral on what kind of entities they are (such as numbers, sets, functions). Nevertheless, even though the IA appears as a very strong argument when considered within a Quinean quantificational account of existence, it is usually taken to be irrelevant as soon as referred to somewhat different metaphysical account. The main goal of the talk is to explore the Indispensability Argument and assess its problems to supporting a Platonist position within some non-Quinean meta-ontological account, which are widely discussed within the contemporary debate, namely the ontological approaches supported by Fine (2001, 2009) and by Schaffer (2009). Hence, we will try to advance some reasonable reviewed versions of the Indispensability Argument, and we will evaluate whether in this way it might still work even outside of the standard Quinean quantification view, representing then a good argument for the existence of mathematical entities.
This paper defends an innovative perdurantist solution to the problem of personal persistence, ba... more This paper defends an innovative perdurantist solution to the problem of personal persistence, based on the application of a Quinean strategy to the definition of the constitutive conditions of personal identity over time. I argue that there is no unique ontological condition of personal persistence but, by appealing to an unreducible plurality of framework-dependent criteria of identity, I avoid conventionalism. My view has the advantage of perdurantist-conventionalist accounts of solving some well-known puzzles of identity (such as fission and graduality), but avoids the worries associated with the latter, namely the so-called "problem of the many" and the semantic reduction of the persistence question.
Reviews by Valerio Buonomo
Metaphysica, 2016
Book review of the collection Personal Identity. Complex or Simple? edited by Georg Gasser and Ma... more Book review of the collection Personal Identity. Complex or Simple? edited by Georg Gasser and Matthias Stefan (2012)
Papers by Valerio Buonomo
The Persistence of Persons, 2018
Draft [final version in The Persistence of Persons. Studies in the metaphysics of personal identi... more Draft [final version in The Persistence of Persons. Studies in the metaphysics of personal identity over time (2018), V. Buonomo (ed.), Neunkirchen-Seelscheid: Editiones Scholasticae: pp. 7-18)
American Philosophical Quarterly, 2018
My aim in this paper is to discuss the logical form of exemplification. In order to achieve this ... more My aim in this paper is to discuss the logical form of exemplification. In order to achieve this goal I analyze three views on the logical form of exemplification, namely logical realism, metalinguistic expressivism, and logical eliminativism. I start by examining the account advanced by Bergmann [1960], according to which the logical form of exemplification is represented by the juxtaposition of logical signs in a sentence. Then I consider two alternatives to Bergmann's realism, namely Sellars' metalinguistic expressivism [1962], according to which exemplification is a quasi-semantical relation that is accounted for at a meta-linguistic level; and Cumpa's molecular theory of exemplification [2014a] – which I will call logical eliminativism – according to which exemplification is an eliminable constituent of facts. I conclude that neither the account advanced by Sellars nor the one provided by Cumpa is preferable to Bergmann's account of the logical form of exemplification, while offering a defense of the latter.
Philosophical Inquiries, 2018
Our aim in this paper is to present a quantitative approach to history of late analytic philosoph... more Our aim in this paper is to present a quantitative approach to history of late analytic philosophy. In the first section, we focus on methodological issues. We discuss the relation between history of philosophy and metaphilosophy, distinguish between qualitative and quantitative history of philosophy, and present the theoretical framework we choose for a quantitative study of late analytic philosophy, namely scientometrics and citation analysis. In the second section, we discuss the results of our method. We present a list of high-impact authors in late analytic philosophy, and we analyze the evolution of the field in the light of citational networks (science maps) generated by VOSviewer. Finally, we propose several lines for further research.
The Persistence of Persons, 2018
In this paper we shall argue for the view that personal identity over time is constituted by cont... more In this paper we shall argue for the view that personal identity over time is constituted by continuity of phenomenology. Following recent terminology, we call this view the phenomenal account of personal persistence. In Section 2, we bring to the fore its main advantages and disadvantages. Section 3 will focus on a thought experiment involving identity over time in a time travel scenario, and in Section 4 we argue that the phenomenal account, unlike other mentalistic approaches, has the resources to cope with the thought experiment, thereby offering an indirect argument in support of this view. Finally, in Section 5 we will deal with objections and replies.
Synthese, 2017
In a recent paper, Cumpa (Am Philos Q 51(4): 319–324, 2014) argues that a scientific turn in meta... more In a recent paper, Cumpa (Am Philos Q 51(4): 319–324, 2014) argues that a scientific turn in metaphysics requires the acceptance of a materialist criterion of fundamentality, according to which the most fundamental metaphysical category is the one that provides us with a reconciliation of the ordinary world and the physical universe. He concludes that the dominant category of substance cannot be the most fundamental category, for it does not satisfy this criterion of fundamentality. The most fundamental category is instead the category of fact. Although convincing, the defense of factualism over substantialism offered by Cumpa takes into account the case of classical physics without considering the physical universe of quantum mechanics. My aim in this paper is to offer a completion to Cumpa's factualist approach. To achieve my aim, I show that substances cannot provide a satisfactory account of the relationship between the ordinary world and the physical universe even in the case of quantum mechanics, whereas a factualist approach does.
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Dissertation by Valerio Buonomo
Conference and Seminars Organization by Valerio Buonomo
Talks by Valerio Buonomo
Reviews by Valerio Buonomo
Papers by Valerio Buonomo