We introduce a language based upon lambda calculus with products, coproducts and strictly positive inductive types that allows the definition of recursive terms. We present the implementation (foetus) of a syntactical check that ensures that all such terms are structurally recursive, i.e., recursive calls appear only with arguments structurally smaller than the input parameters of terms conside...

The discussions which follow have the aim of giving scientific expression to a psychological problem often noticed in philosophy but not yet, as we believe, made fully precise. Our task-already intimated in the title in the employment of an unusual and therefore only partially intelligible termcan be characterized briefly as one of explaining and defining the new concept signalled by this term ...

Seventeenthand eighteenth-century discussions of the senses are often thought to contain a profound truth: some perceptible properties are secondary qualities, dispositions to produce certain sorts of experiences in perceivers. Any apparent plausibility this has often derives, we argue, from an erroneous picture of perception. The colors are typically held to be one of the clearest examples of ...

Events are not a discrete linguistic phenomenon. Different verbal and nominal predicates express different degrees of eventiveness. In this paper we analyze the qualities that contribute to the overall eventiveness of a predicate, that is, what makes a predicate an event. We provide an in-depth analysis of seven key qualities, along with experimental assessments demonstrating their contribution...

We characterize and compare four different ways of representing qualities in formal ontology. Our goal is to discuss their ontological commitments and their adequacy in applications. We also show how the frameworks here presented relate to other approaches in ontology (trope theory), in cognitive science (conceptual spaces), and in physics (International System of Units). The work we present fo...

The paper analyzes how and under which assumptions it is possible to compare (in a relationist setting and relatively to qualities) entities living in different worlds. We begin with a standard technique to construct quality kinds via an abstraction process. In the first case, the process is applied across all the possible worlds and we show that the resulting quality system has problematic con...