Elio La Rosa, M.A.

Personal information

I am a doctoral fellow at the MCMP under the supervision of Prof. DDr. Hannes Leitgeb and Dr. Norbert Gratzl. I obtained my M.A. in Logic and Philosophy of Science in 2019 at the MCMP.

Research interests

My research focuses on various aspects of logic. During my M.A., I specialised in proof-theoretic approaches for defining non-classical logics. In particular, I worked on the hyperintensional logics N4 and HYPE. These logics capture inferences in particularly refined contexts, and are useful e.g. to model a fine-grained notion of content. In the meanwhile, I started working on Strict-Tolerant logics, substructural logics that aim at avoiding semantic paradoxes while maintaining classical validities. The mere fact that such logics can be defined has repercussions for our conception of logic itself, and stresses its reliance on some properties of the consequence relation. I am now investigating both topics at a first-order level. This requires a ‘free’ approach to quantification, i.e. one that does not presuppose a denotation for all terms in every context.

Later, I got interested in non-deterministic semantics applied to modal logics. This approach generalises truth-tables to output sets of values, and seems powerful enough to provide a common framework for normal and non-normal modal logics. This offers a different approach to intensionality than world-based semantics as well as a way to characterise phenomena of indeterminacy in logic. The latter is part of a larger project of mine aimed at capturing various aspects of indeterminacy and constitutes the main topic of my PhD research. Building on Carnap’s explicit definition of theoretical terms in science, I am working on a general way to denote contexts with the use of Epsilon Calculus. These structures seem to share some underlying properties of non-deterministic semantics, as well as offering new ways to define hyperintensional contexts in classical-based logics.

Selected publications

• De Benedetto, M. & La Rosa, E. (2024). Patches, Patchworks, and Epsilon Terms: A Neo-Carnapian Account of Theoretical Terms in Science. Journal of Philosophical Logic. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-024-09774-3.
• Pawlowski, P., & La Rosa, E. (2022). Modular non-deterministic semantics for T, TB, S4, S5 and more. Journal of Logic and Computation, 32(1), 158-171.
• Cobreros, P., La Rosa, E., & Tranchini, L. (2021). Higher-level inferences in the strong-Kleene setting: A proof-theoretic approach. Journal of Philosophical Logic, 51, 1417–1452.
• Cobreros, P., La Rosa, E., & Tranchini, L. (2021). (I can’t get no) antisatisfaction. Synthese, 198(9), 8251-8265.