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, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

-born philosopher who is

John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...

Professor of

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. 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 accor ...

and received his PhD in philosophy from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

. Varzi is also

Bruno Kessler Bruno Kessler (17 February 1924, in Peio – 19 March 1991, in Trento) was an Italian politician. He served as List of Presidents of Trentino, President of the Autonomous Province of Trento from 1960 to 1973. He was the father of Giovanni Kessle ...

Honorary Professor at the

and, since 2017, Visiting Professor at the

University of Italian Switzerland A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

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 philosophical ...

(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" is ...

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 supervalu ...

, paraconsistency, formal semantics) and

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

(mainly

mereology In logic, philosophy and related fields, mereology ( (root: , ''mere-'', 'part') and the suffix ''-logy'', 'study, discussion, science') is the study of parts and the wholes they form. Whereas set theory is founded on the membership relation bet ...

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 bet ...

, 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 ev ...

, 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), ...

and persistence through

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

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

common sense ''Common Sense'' is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political argu ...

and

naive physics Naivety (also spelled naïvety), naiveness, or naïveté is the state of being naive. It refers to an apparent or actual lack of experience and sophistication, often describing a neglect of pragmatism in favor of moral idealism. A ''naïve'' may b ...

. 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 at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universalsthings th ...

- 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'') combines an online encyclopedia of philosophy with peer-reviewed publication of original papers in philosophy, freely accessible to Internet users. It is maintained by Stanford University. Eac ...

''. 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 Grand Prix driver. Career Born in Galliate, province of Novara (Piedmont), Achille Varzi was the son of a textile manufacturer. As a young man, he was a successful motorcycle ra ...

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

Work

Books

See also

References

External links