Roberto Casati

Achille Varzi

Achille C. Varzi

Why do mirrors seem to invert left and right but not up and down? How do we know whether strawberries taste the same for everyone? Where is it written that we must observe the law, and if it is not written, why should we observe it? What if we could swap brains-or the rest of our bodies? Insurmountable Simplicities is filled with captivating and inventive stories, dialogues, and epistolary exchanges that illuminate the many philosophical conundrums of everyday life. Clear, concise, and intellectually engaging, this internationally acclaimed book covers a range of themes, such as personal identity, causality and responsibility, fortune, the nature of things, the paradoxes of time and space, and the interplay between logic and language, and brilliantly demonstrates that the beauty of philosophy resides in its engagement with the simplicities of the world, insurmountable as they might initially appear.

Thirty-Nine Philosophical Conundrums

Insurmountable Simplicities

storie di allucinazioni e miopie filosofiche

Il mondo messo a fuoco

Assistant Professor of Philosophy Achille C Varzi

Thinking about space is thinking about spatial things. The table is on the carpet; hence the carpet is under the table. The vase is in the box; hence the box is not in the vase. But what does it mean for an object to be somewhere? How are objects tied to the space they occupy? In this book Roberto Casati and Achille C. Varzi address some of the fundamental issues in the philosophy of spatial representation. Their starting point is an analysis of the interplay between mereology (the study of part/whole relations), topology (the study of spatial continuity and compactness), and the theory of spatial location proper. This leads to a unified framework for spatial representation understood quite broadly as a theory of the representation of spatial entities. The framework is then tested against some classical metaphysical questions such as: Are parts essential to their wholes? Is spatial co-location a sufficient criterion of identity? What (if anything) distinguishes material objects from events and other spatial entities? The concluding chapters deal with applications to topics as diverse as the logical analysis of movement and the semantics of maps.

The Structures of Spatial Representation

Parts and Places

100 storie filosofiche fulminanti, semplicemente diaboliche, costruite per sorprenderci e mettere in scacco le nostre certezze. Dopo il successo internazionale di Semplicità insormontabili, Casati e Varzi tornano a sfidarci con i loro racconti. La filosofia è una sfida incessante a riconoscere la straordinaria complessità del mondo che ci circonda, a partire dalle cose più semplici. Qual è la differenza tra la mano destra e la sinistra? Tornerà mai un momento come questo? Come fa un'attrice a fingere una morte finta? Il mosaico dipende dalla posizione delle tessere; ma sarebbe lo stesso mosaico se si scambiassero fra loro due tessere uguali? Nelle pagine di questo libro, Lei, Lui, l'indomabile Ficcanaso e altri nuovi personaggi, tra cui il Flippamondi e la Gatta Parlante, si cimentano con queste e molte altre domande. A guidarli non è il desiderio di semplificare ciò che è complesso, come in molti libri della nostra epoca, ma lo sguardo indagatore su ciò che sembra semplice e invece non lo è. Sul filo dei loro dialoghi ci si ritrova a scoprire che il bello della filosofia sta proprio in questo: fare i conti con ogni semplicità, anche quando ci appare assolutamente insormontabile. I due autori collaborano da molti anni. Il loro Semplicità insormontabili. 39 storie filosofiche (per i nostri tipi, 2004) ha dato vita all'omonima rubrica settimanale sull'inserto domenicale del "Sole 24 Ore".

100 nuove storie filosofiche

Semplicemente diaboliche

Laure Vieu

Just as ontology developed over the centuries as part of philosophy, so in recent years ontology has become intertwined with the development of the information sciences. Researchers in such areas as artificial intelligence, formal and computational linguistics, biomedical informatics, conceptual modeling, knowledge engineering and information retrieval have come to realize that a solid foundation for their research calls for serious work in ontology, understood as a general theory of the types of entities and relations that make up their respective domains of inquiry. In all these areas, attention has started to focus on the content of information rather than on just the formats and languages in terms of which information is represented. A clear example of this development is provided by the many initiatives growing up around the project of the Semantic Web. And as the need for integrating research in these different fields arises, so does the realization that strong principles for building well-founded ontologies might provide significant advantages over ad hoc, case-based solutions. The tools of Formal Ontology address precisely these needs, but a real effort is required in order to apply such philosophical tools to the domain of Information Systems. Reciprocally, research in the information science raises specific ontological questions which call for further philosophical investigations.

Proceedings of the Third International Conference (FOIS-2004)

Formal Ontology in Information Systems

A guidare Casati e Varzi non è il desiderio di semplificare ciò che è complesso, ma lo sguardo indagatore su ciò che sembra semplice e invece non lo è. "Il Sole 24 Ore" La filosofia è una sfida incessante a riconoscere la straordinaria complessità del mondo che ci circonda, a partire dalle cose più semplici. Qual è la differenza tra la mano destra e la sinistra? Tornerà mai un momento come questo? Come fa un'attrice a fingere una morte finta? Il mosaico dipende dalla posizione delle tessere; ma sarebbe lo stesso mosaico se si scambiassero fra loro due tessere uguali? Il bello della filosofia sta proprio in questo: fare i conti con ogni semplicità, anche quando ci appare assolutamente insormontabile.

"This is an exciting epistemological experiment. It is wonderful to see how intelligent philosophers can take a modest concept, such as that of the hole, as a starting point for an immense and brilliant exercise.... The writing is delightful." -- Valentino Braitenberg, Director, Max-Planck-Institut fü r Biologische Kybernetick "The idea of "Holes and Other Superficialities" is wonderfully counterintuitive: The authors want us to think of absences as full-fledged cognitive entities. The book describes a grand variety of holes -- holes in doughnuts, tunnels through blocks, flowing gaps in regularly-spaced flowerbed, and hundreds more. There are an enormous number of beautifully-rendered illustrations of every imaginable (and often never-before-imagined) type of hole....The overlap with philosophical issues of every sort is marvelous, and the authors have a delightful sense of humor." -- Douglas Hofstadter, author of "Gö del, Escher, Bach" This fascinating investigation on the borderlines of metaphysics, everyday geometry, and the theory of perception seeks to answer two basic questions: Do holes really exist? And if so, what are they? Holes are among entities that down-to-earth philosophers would like to expel from their ontological inventory. Casati and Varzi argue in favor of their existence and explore the consequences of this unorthodox approach -- odd as these might appear. They examine the ontology of holes, their geometry, their part-whole relations, their identity, their causal role, and the ways we perceive them. A Bradford Book

Achille C. Varzi

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