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Amirhossein Kiani

Positions

Grad Assistant-Teaching

Faculty of Arts , Department of Philosophy

Contact information

Background

CV

Biography

My primary research interests are broadly related to Metaphysics and Philosophical Logic. More specifically, I work on the interconnections of issues having to do with fundamentality (e.g., fact and entity grounding, essence and ontological dependence), the granularity of relational entities (e.g., propositions and properties) and various type systems (e.g., simple, ramified, polymorphic).

My secondary, recently growing research interests concern the Philosophy of AI, IT Ethics and the Philosophy of Mind.

In my spare time, I'm usually found doing a Boolean combination of the following activities: cooking, coding, playing with my cat, and watching movies.

Projects

[Title removed for anonymous review]

In this paper I explore the notion of entity grounding, its motivations and formalization. I, in particular, explore various formal systems to capture the notion and argue that the best systems to accommodate it are ramified type theories, i.e., ones that provision propositions to come in certain infinite hierarchies.

This is part of a larger project comprised of several other papers that explore the interconnections of various notions of ground, structured relational entities and ramified type theory.


Ramified Types and Metaphysical Structure (in progress)

I argue that implementing ramified type theory can avoid paradoxes of grain such as the Russell-Myhill inconsistency result, and hence the Russellian highly structured propositions can be safely adopted in the presence of ramified types in the background. This is part of a larger project comprised of several other papers that explore the interconnections of various notions of ground, structured relational entities and ramified type theory.

Feel free to contact me for the latest draft.


Ramification and Ground: Towards a Unified Predicative Solution to Puzzles of Quantificational Ground (in progress)

I argue that ramified type theory can provide a unified solution to a cluster of puzzles of quantificational ground that emerged in recent metaphysics. This is part of a larger project comprised of several other papers that explore the interconnections of various notions of ground, structured relational entities and ramified type theory.

Feel free to contact me for the latest draft.


[Title removed for anonymous review]

In this paper I propose a puzzle of qualification aboutness and explore some responses to it.


Categorematicity and Type-Insensitive Relations: Towards Polymorphic Metaphysics and Beyond (in progress)

I argue for and explore implementations of certain metaphysical notions (such as existence and grounding) through the lens of most recent type theories and against the commonly endorsed weak systems such as simple type theory (higher-order logic).

Feel free to contact me for the latest draft.


[Title removed for anonymous review]

I argue that, unlike what might be believed, Ted Sider's notion of logical fundamentality doesn't necessarily underlie an inconsistency of the logic of ground recently explored by Isac Wilhelm.


Structured Propositions and a Semantics for Unrestricted Impure Logics of Ground

*This paper is published in Synthese: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-023-04114-5

ABSTRACT: I show that the assumption of highly structured propositions can be leveraged to provide a unified semantics for various propositional logics of impure ground in a very expressive and flexible way. It is shown, in particular, that the induced models are capable of capturing an infinitude of grounding facts that follow from unrestricted logics of ground, but, due to certain artificial restrictions, are left unaccounted for by the existing semantics in the literature. It is also shown that our models, unlike the ones in the literature, are easily extendable to capture certain distinct views about iterated as well as identity grounding.


Large Language Models and Alien Structures (in progress)

In this paper, I explore some of the ramifications of the recently emerged Large Langauge Models in the Philosophy of Language and Metaphysics.

Awards

  • Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarship (AGES) - International (CA$15000), University of Calgary. 2021
  • Department of Philosophy Graduate Essay Award (CA$2500), Department of Philosophy, University of Calgary. 2021
  • Alberta Graduate Excellence Scholarship (AGES) - International (CA$15000), University of Calgary. 2020