Università della Svizzera italiana

Qualitative properties and relations

Plate, Jan

In: Philosophical studies, 2021, p. 26

This paper is concerned with two concepts of qualitativeness that apply to intensional entities (i.e., properties, relations, and states of affairs). I propose an account of pure qualitativeness that largely follows the traditional understanding established by Carnap, and try to shed light on its ontological presuppositions. On this account, an intensional entity is purely qualitative iff it...

Università della Svizzera italiana

The strong arm of the law : a unified account of necessary and contingent laws of nature

Hirèche, Salim ; Linnemann, Niels ; Michels, Robert ; Vogt, Lisa

In: Synthese, 2021, no. 199, p. 10211–10252

A common feature of all standard theories of the laws of nature is that they are ‘absolutist’: They take laws to be either all metaphysically necessary or all contingent. Science, however, gives us reason to think that there are laws of both kinds, suggesting that standard theories should make way for ‘non-absolutist’ alternatives: theories which accommodate laws of both modal statuses....

Università della Svizzera italiana

Humean supervenience and tripartite entanglement relations

Lorenzetti, Lorenzo

In: Axiomathes, 2020, p. 15 p

It has been argued that Humean Supervenience (HS) is threatened by the existence of quantum entanglement relations. The most conservative strategy for defending HS is to add the problematic entanglement relations to the supervenience basis, alongside spatiotemporal relations. In this paper, I’m going to argue against this strategy by showing how certain particular cases of tripartite ...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Kyosei : An example of cultural keyword argumentatively exploited in corporate reporting discourse

Filimon, Agatha Ioana

In: Studies in communication sciences, 2009, vol. 9, no. 2, p. 131-151

By means of a relevant example, this paper shows the appropriateness of the theoretical construct of argumentative keyword proposed by Rigotti & Rocci (2005) in relation to an emergent discourse genre: top management’s letters to stakeholders appearing in the introduction to corporate social responsibility/sustainability reports. Analyzing a text fragment extracted from a recent ...