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6Quine's philosophy: an introductionBloomsbury Academic. 2023.W.V. Quine is one of the leading figures of 20th century analytic philosophy, and still among the most influential. But his work can be challenging and complex, and indeed often misunderstood. In this updated introduction to Quine's thought, Gary Kemp examines his seemingly disparate views as a unified whole and offers a valuable guide for anyone approaching Quine for the first time.
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355Autonomy and privacy in Wittgenstein and BeckettPhilosophy and Literature 27 (1): 164-187. 2003.No abstract available.
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72Propositions as Made of WordsErkenntnis 89 (2): 591-606. 2022.I argue that the principal roles standardly envisaged for abstract propositions can be discharged to the sentences themselves (and similarly for the meanings or senses of words). I discuss: (1) Cognitive Value: Hesperus-Phosphorus; (2) Indirect Sense and Propositional Attitudes; (3) the Paradox of Analysis; (4) the Picture Theory of the Tractatus; (5) Syntactical Diagrams and Meaning; (6) Quantifying-in. (7) Patterns of Use. I end with comparisons with related views of the territory.
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13Quine and the Kantian Problem of ObjectivityIn Robert Sinclair (ed.), Science and Sensibilia by W. V. Quine: The 1980 Immanuel Kant Lectures, Palgrave Macmillan. 2019.Did Quine respond to the Kant-like question of what makes objectivity possible? And if so, what was his answer? I think Quine did have an answer, which is in fact a central theme in his philosophy. For his epistemology was not concerned with the question whether we have knowledge of the external world. His philosophy takes for granted that physics provides the most fundamental account of reality that we have. And like many positivists including Carnap, he takes that sort of question to have a fu…Read more
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471Trust and the appreciation of artRatio 35 (2): 133-145. 2021.Does trust play a significant role in the appreciation of art? If so, how does it operate? We argue that it does, and that the mechanics of trust operate both at a general and a particular level. After outlining the general notion of ‘art-trust’—the notion sketched is consistent with most notions of trust on the market—and considering certain objections to the model proposed, we consider specific examples to show in some detail that the experience of works of art, and the attribution of art-rele…Read more
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Wittgenstein and Other Philosophers: His Influence on Historical and Contemporary Analytic Philosophers (Volume II) (edited book)Routledge. forthcoming.This edited volume includes 49 Chapters, each of which discusses the influence of a philosopher's reading of Wittgenstein in his/her philosophical works and the way such Wittgensteinian ideas have manifested themselves in those works.
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1Wittgenstein and Other Philosophers: His Influence on Historical and Contemporary Analytic Philosophers (Volume I) (edited book)Routledge. forthcoming.This edited volume includes 36 Chapters, each of which discusses the influence of a philosopher's reading of Wittgenstein in his/her philosophical works and the way such Wittgensteinian ideas have manifested themselves in those works.
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61Observation Sentences RevisitedMind 131 (523): 805-825. 2021.I argue for an alternative to Quine’s conception of observation sentences, one that better satisfies the roles Quine envisages for them, and that otherwise respects Quinean constraints. After reviewing a certain predicament Quine got into in balancing the needs of the intersubjectivity of observation sentences with his notion of the stimulus meaning of an observation sentence, I push for replacing the latter with what I call the ‘stimulus field’ of an observation sentence, a notion that remains …Read more
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23Significance of the New Logic, by W. V. QuineMind 129 (516): 1320-1327. 2020.In 1942, before his duties began in the USA Navy, W.V. Quine lectured at the Free School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo. He wrote up the lectures in Por.
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345The Artistic Expression of FeelingPhilosophia 49 (1): 315-332. 2020.In the past 60 years or so, the philosophical subject of artistic expression has generally been handled as an inquiry into the artistic expression of emotion. In my view this has led to a distortion of the relevant territory, to the artistic expression of feeling’s too often being overlooked. I explicate the emotion-feeling distinction in modern terms, and urge that the expression of feeling is too central to be waived off as outside the proper philosophical subject of artistic expression. Restr…Read more
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107Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide. 5th EditionRoutledge. 2019.Now with Venn Diagrams, expanded Extended Examples (nice work, Robert), and the latest trends in Rhetoric, post-truth etc. (nice work, Tracy).
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54In Favor of the Classical Quine on OntologyCanadian Journal of Philosophy 50 (2): 223-237. 2020.I make a Quinean case that Quine’s ontological relativity marked a wrong turn in his philosophy, that his fundamental commitments point toward the classical view of ontology that was worked out in most detail in hisWord and Object. This removes the impetus toward structuralism in his later philosophy.
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71Samesaying, propositions and radical interpretationRatio 14 (2). 2001.Davidson's paratactic account of indirect quotation preserves the apparent relational structure of indirect speech but without assuming, in the Fregean manner, that the thing said by a sayer is a proposition. I argue that this is a mistake. As has been recognised by some critics, Davidson's account suffers from analytical shortcomings which can be overcome by redeploying the paratactic strategy as a means of referring to propositions. I offer a quick and comprehensive survey of these difficultie…Read more
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49On Looking through Wollheim’s Bifocals: Depiction, Twofolded Seeing and the Trompe-l’œilBritish Journal of Aesthetics 58 (4): 435-447. 2018.Richard Wollheim was hardly alone in supposing that his account of pictorial depiction implies that a trompe-l’œil is not a depiction. I recommend removing this apparent implication by inserting a Kant-style version of aspect-perception into his account. I characterize the result as Neo-Wollheimian and retain the centrality of Wollheim’s notion of twofoldedness in the theory of depiction, but I demote it to a contingent feature of depictions and I criticize his employment of it for determining t…Read more
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68The Reference Book. By John Hawthorne and David ManleyPhilosophical Quarterly 63 (253): 827-830. 2013.© 2013 The Editors of The Philosophical QuarterlyMany moons ago, Bertrand Russell thought of reference in epistemic terms: to mean an object—to refer to it—one had to be acquainted with it; for it is ‘scarcely conceivable’ that one should judge without knowing what one is judging about. The rest of the relation between language and the world is conceived as denoting, a feature of linguistic expressions and bits of the world which crucially holds or fails to hold without affecting the reference o…Read more
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23The unity of the proposition in the later WittgensteinConceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie 96. 2010.
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33Quine, Publicity, and Pre-Established HarmonyProtoSociology 34 59-72. 2017.‘Linguistic meaning must be public’ – for Quine, here is not a statement to rest with, whether it be reckoned true or reckoned false. It calls for explication. When we do, using Quine’s words to piece together what he thought, we find that much too much is concealed by the original statement. Yes, Quine said ‘Language is a social art’; yes, he accepts behaviourism so far as linguistic meaning is concerned; yes, he broadly agrees with Wittgenstein’s anti-privacy stricture. But precisely what is b…Read more
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44Quine, by Peter HyltonMind 119 (475): 794-798. 2010.(No abstract is available for this citation)
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103II—Hyperintensional Truth ConditionsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 88 (1): 57-68. 2014.A response to certain parts of Rumfitt : I defend Davidson's project in semantics, suggest that Rumfitt's use of sentential quantification renders his definition of truth needlessly elaborate, and pose a question for Rumfitt's handling of the strengthened Liar.
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22Is Everything a Set? Quine and PythagoreanismThe Monist 100 (2): 155-166. 2017.The view, in Quine, that all there are are pure sets is presented and endorsed.
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39'Confessions of a Confirmed Extensionalist and Other Essays'; and'Quine in Dialogue'by WV QuineNotre Dame Philosophical Reviews. forthcoming.
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33Critical Thinking. A Concise GuideRevue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 194 (1): 128-128. 2001.
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1612 Modern Philosophers (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2009.Featuring essays from leading philosophical scholars, __12 Modern Philosophers__ explores the works, origins, and influences of twelve of the most important late 20th Century philosophers working in the analytic tradition. Draws on essays from well-known scholars, including Thomas Baldwin, Catherine Wilson, Adrian Moore and Lori Gruen Locates the authors and their oeuvre within the context of the discipline as a whole Considers how contemporary philosophy both draws from, and contributes to, the…Read more
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15Quine’s Criticisms of SemanticsIn Piotr Stalmaszczyk (ed.), Philosophy of Language and Linguistics: The Legacy of Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein, De Gruyter. pp. 139-160. 2014.
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1Michael Dummett, Origins of Analytical PhilosophyJournal of the History of Philosophy 33 (4): 699-699. 1995.
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26Critical notice of Alan Richardson,'Carnap's construction of the world: the Aufbau and the emergence of logical empiricism'Philosophical Books 40 (2): 89-98. 1999.
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21Wollheim, Wittgenstein, and Pictorial Representation: Seeing-as and Seeing-In (edited book)Routledge. 2016.Pictorial representation is one of the core questions in aesthetics and philosophy of art. What is a picture? How do pictures represent things? This collection of specially commissioned chapters examines the influential thesis that the core of pictorial representation is not resemblance but 'seeing-in', in particular as found in the work of Richard Wollheim. We can see a passing cloud _as_ a rabbit, but we also see a rabbit _in_ the clouds. 'Seeing-in' is an imaginative act of the kind employed …Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Aesthetics |
20th Century Philosophy |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |