Natural and Artifactual Objects in Contemporary Metaphysics. Exercises in Analytic Ontology

The papers that make up the volume are aimed at contextualising, elucidating, interrogating and applying a distinction that is at the cutting edge of many investigations in recent philosophy. This is the distinction between the bona fide objects that are differentiated from their surroundings by some natural discontinuity and the fiat objects whose contours are fixed by some determination or stipulation laid down by one or more minds. From the dawn of the Western philosophical tradition (but also, for instance, in some schools of Buddhist thought) down to the most recent debates in the ontology of the social world and in the philosophy of biology, similar distinctions have had an enduring role to play in the search to discriminate between what does and what does not depend on our conventions and conceptual schemes. Keeping technicalities to the minimum, the book should be of interest to students of contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science. Contents 0. Carving Nature at the Joints Richard Davies (University of Bergamo) 1. Mental acts, externalism and fiat objects: an Ockhamist solution Riccardo Fedriga (University of Bologna) 2. Is the World really a World of Objects? A Note on Quinean Ontology Antonio Rainone (“L’Orientale” University of Naples) 3. Spatial Fictionalism. A Solution of the Grounding Problem Nicola Piras (University of Sassari) 4. Talking about Properties: A Couple of Doubts about Hofweber’s Internalist View Elisa Paganini (State University of Milan) 5. The Eye of the Needle: Seeing Holes Clotilde Calabi (State University of Milan) 6. Bona Fideness of Material Entities and their Boundaries Lars Vogt (University of Bonn) 7. A Conceptualist View in the Metaphysics of Species Ciro De Florio & Aldo Frigerio (both Catholic University of Milan) 8. Artifacts and fiat objects: two families apart? Massimiliano Carrara & Marzia Soavi (both University of Padua) 9. The Semantics of Artifactual Words Marco Santambrogio (University of Parma) 10. Are linguistic objects fiat or bona fide? An ancient proposal Maddalena Bonelli (University of Bergamo) 11. Leibniz’s principle and psycho-neural identity Andrea Bottani & Alfredo Paternoster (both University of Bergamo) 12. Do we exist? Mereological nihilism, collective thinking and dualism Alfredo Tomasetta (University School for Advanced Studies IUSS, Pavia) Index of Names and Principal Subject