Dipartimento di Filosofia e Scienze dell'Educazione

Aspects and categories In ordinary language, we often quantify over aspects, like when we say that two objects are similar under some aspects (e.g., size and color) and different under others (e.g., shape and texture). In the talk, which is based on joint work with Matteo Plebani, I outline a theory of aspects and of their linguistic expressions (which we call “categories”) that builds upon Lewis’ conception of subject matters as partitions of the logical space. Aspects and categories have received little attention, if any, in contemporary philosophy of language. I argue that this is an unfortunate overlooking, for aspects and categories (adequately understood) help shade light on a variety of linguistic and cognitive phenomena.

 

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