Achille C. Varzi (born May 8, 1958) is an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

-born philosopher who is

John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and Education reform, educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century. The overridi ...

Professor of

philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. He graduated from the

University of Trento The University of Trento (Italian: ''Università degli Studi di Trento'') is an Italian university located in Trento and nearby Rovereto. It has been able to achieve considerable results in didactics, research, and international relations accord ...

and received his PhD in philosophy from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

. Varzi is also Bruno Kessler Honorary Professor at the

and, since 2017, visiting professor at the University of Italian Switzerland.

Work

Varzi has made notable contributions to the fields of

philosophical logic Understood in a narrow sense, philosophical logic is the area of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. Some theorists conceive philosophic ...

(mainly

vagueness In linguistics and philosophy, a vague predicate is one which gives rise to borderline cases. For example, the English adjective "tall" is vague since it is not clearly true or false for someone of middling height. By contrast, the word " prime" ...

supervaluationism In philosophical logic, supervaluationism is a semantics for dealing with irreferential singular terms and vagueness. It allows one to apply the tautologies of propositional logic in cases where truth values are undefined. According to superva ...

paraconsistency Paraconsistent logic is a type of non-classical logic that allows for the coexistence of contradictory statements without leading to a logical explosion where anything can be proven true. Specifically, paraconsistent logic is the subfield of log ...

, formal semantics) and

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...

(mainly

mereology Mereology (; from Greek μέρος 'part' (root: μερε-, ''mere-'') and the suffix ''-logy'', 'study, discussion, science') is the philosophical study of part-whole relationships, also called ''parthood relationships''. As a branch of metaphys ...

and

mereotopology In formal ontology, a branch of metaphysics, and in ontological computer science, mereotopology is a first-order theory, embodying mereological and topological concepts, of the relations among wholes, parts, parts of parts, and the boundaries be ...

, causation,

events Event may refer to: Gatherings of people * Ceremony, an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion * Convention (meeting), a gathering of individuals engaged in some common interest * Event management, the organization of eve ...

, and issues relating to

identity Identity may refer to: * Identity document * Identity (philosophy) * Identity (social science) * Identity (mathematics) Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film * ''Identity'' (2003 film), an ...

and persistence through

time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

). His first book, ''Holes and Other Superficialities'' (1994, with Roberto Casati), was an exploration of the realist ontology of

common sense Common sense () is "knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument". As such, it is often considered to represent the basic level of sound practical judgement or know ...

and naive physics. His more recent work is inspired by a

nominalist In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are two main versions of nominalism. One denies the existence of universals—that which can be inst ...

- conventionalist stance. Varzi is currently an editor of ''

The Journal of Philosophy ''The Journal of Philosophy'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal on philosophy, founded in 1904 at Columbia University. Its stated purpose is "To publish philosophical articles of current interest and encourage the interchange of ideas, es ...

'' and an advisory editor of the ''

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (''SEP'') is a freely available online philosophy resource published and maintained by Stanford University, encompassing both an online encyclopedia of philosophy and peer-reviewed original publication ...

''. Varzi is also a prolific writer for the general public and contributes regularly to several Italian newspapers. Achille C. Varzi is a second cousin of the Italian racecar driver

Achille Varzi Achille Varzi (8 August 1904 – 1 July 1948) was an Italian racing driver. He is remembered as the winner of the 1933 Monaco Grand Prix, as well as the winner of the first Formula One Grand Prix at the 1946 Turin Grand Prix, and as the chief ...

Books

* ''Mereology'' (with A. J. Cotnoir), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. * ''I colori del bene'', Naples: Orthotes, 2015. * ''Le tribolazioni del filosofare. Comedia Metaphysica ne la quale si tratta de li errori & de le pene de l’Infero'' (with Claudio Calosi), Rome: Laterza, 2014. * ''Ontologie'', Paris, Ithaque, 2010. * ''Il mondo messo a fuoco'', Rome: Laterza, 2010. * ''Insurmountable Simplicities. Thirty-nine Philosophical Conundrums'' (with Roberto Casati), New York: Columbia University Press, 2006; also translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Greek, Chinese, Korean. * ''Il pianeta dove scomparivano le cose. Esercizi di immaginazione filosofica'' (with Roberto Casati), Torini: Einaudi, 2006. * ''Parole, oggetti, eventi e altri argomenti di metafisica'', Rome: Carocci, 2001. * ''An Essay in Universal Semantics'', Dorrecht, Kluwer, 1999. * ''Parts and Places. The Structures of Spatial Representation'' (with Roberto Casati), Boston (MA): MIT Press, 1999. * ''Theory and Problems of Logic'' (with John Nolt and Dennis Rohatyn), New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998. * ''Holes and Other Superficialities'' (with Roberto Casati), Boston (MA): MIT Press, 1994.

References

External links

Complete bibliography

Varzi's personal webpage at Columbia University

{{DEFAULTSORT:Varzi, Achille Living people Columbia University faculty 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American philosophers Analytic philosophers 20th-century Italian philosophers 21st-century Italian philosophers 1958 births University of Toronto alumni

Work

Books

See also

References

External links