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51Afterthoughts on mass termsSynthese 31 (3-4). 1975.This is a short note indicating how I would revise an earlier paper ("an analysis of mass terms and amount terms," "foundations of language", Volume 6, Number 3, 1970) in the light of criticisms that have been made of it
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46On the consistency of the first-order portion of Frege's logical systemNotre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 28 (1): 161-168. 1987.
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257Bhartrhari on what cannot be saidPhilosophy East and West 51 (4): 525-534. 2001.Bhartṛhari claims that certain things cannot be signified--for example, the signification relation itself. Hans and Radhika Herzberger assert that Bhartṛhari's claim about signification can be validated by an appeal to twentieth-century results in set theory. This appeal is unpersuasive in establishing this view, but arguments akin to the semantic paradoxes (such as the "liar" paradox) come much closer. Unfortunately, these arguments are equally telling against another of his views: that the tha…Read more
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55Underlying states and time travelIn Achille Varzi, James Higginbotham & Fabio Pianesi (eds.), Speaking of Events, Oxford University Press. 2000.I begin by sketching a theory about the semantics of verbs in event sentences, and the evidence on which that theory is based. In the second section, I discuss the evidence for extending that theory to state sentences, including copulative sentences with adjectives and nouns; the evidence for this extension of the theory is not very good. In the third section, I discuss new evidence based on considerations of talk about time travel; that evidence is apparently quite good. I conclude with a probl…Read more
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10The Treatise on Univocation is an early work on the fallacy called univocation. This fallacy is a kind of ambiguity due to the shifted reference of words in a sentence when the ambiguity does not fall under the well-known Aristotelian kinds (equivocation, composition and division, . . .). Examples include the shift of reference of common terms due to tense and modality; e.g. the shift whereby the reference of 'giraffe' is extended to past or future giraffes when the tense of the sentence 'A gira…Read more
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13Meinong und die GegenstandstheorieGrazer Philosophische Studien 50 145-161. 1995.It is tempting to think that Meinong overlooked the "specific/nonspecific" distinction. For example, 'I am looking for a grey horse' may either mean that there is a specific horse I am looking for, or just that I am grey-horse-seeking. The former reading, and not the latter, requires for its truth that there be a grey horse. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether it is defensible to maintain Meinong's theory here: to take nonspecific reading of any verb concerning a possibly non-exi…Read more
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34Indeterminacy of Identity of Objects: An Exercise in Metaphysical AestheticsIn A. Orenstein & Petr Kotatko (eds.), Knowledge, Language and Logic: Questions for Quine, Kluwer Academic Print On Demand. pp. 213--224. 2000.
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154Events in the Semantics of English: A Study in Subatomic SemanticsMIT Press. 1990.This extended investigation of the semantics of event (and state) sentences in their various forms is a major contribution to the semantics of natural language, simultaneously encompassing important issues in linguistics, philosophy, and logic. It develops the view that the logical forms of simple English sentences typically contain quantification over events or states and shows how this view can account for a wide variety of semantic phenomena. Focusing on the structure of meaning in English se…Read more
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101Anaphoric pronouns in very late medieval supposition theoryLinguistics and Philosophy 17 (5). 1994.This paper arose from an attempt to determine how the very late medieval1 supposition theorists treated anaphoric pronouns, pronouns whose significance is derivative from their antecedents. Modern researches into pronouns were stimulated in part by the problem of "donkey sentences" discussed by Geach 1962 in a section explaining what is wrong with medieval supposition theory. So there is some interest in seeing exactly what the medieval account comes to, especially if it turns out, as I suspect,…Read more
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138The progressive in English: Events, states and processes (review)Linguistics and Philosophy 12 (2). 1989.This paper has two goals. The first is to formulate an adequate account of the semantics of the progressive aspect in English: the semantics of Agatha is making a cake, as opposed to Agatha makes a cake. This account presupposes a version of the so-called Aristotelian classification of verbs in English into EVENT, PROCESS and STATE verbs. The second goal of this paper is to refine this classification so as to account for the infamous category switch problem, the problem of how it is that modific…Read more
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158Supposition as Quantification versus Supposition as Global Quantificational EffectTopoi 16 (1): 41-63. 1997.This paper follows up a suggestion by Paul Vincent Spade that there were two Medieval theories of the modes of personal supposition. I suggest that early work by Sherwood and others was a study of quantifiers: their semantics and the effects of context on inferences that can be made from quantified terms. Later, in the hands of Burley and others, it changed into a study of something else, a study of what I call global quantificational effect. For example, although the quantifier in ‘¬∀xPx’ is un…Read more
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11Modifiers and Quantifiers in Natural LanguageCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 6 (n/a): 29-60. 1980.This paper has two parts. In part I, I review two older accounts of the logical forms of modifiers, and suggest that they may be combined with each other so as to yield a theory that is better than either of its parts taken singly. Part of this theory involves the idea that certain sentences refer to events, states, or processes; Part II of this paper shows how to use this idea to account for tenses and temporal adverbials, and offers a new account of ordinary language quantification.
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48The doctrine of distributionHistory and Philosophy of Logic 27 (1): 59-74. 2006.Peter Geach describes the 'doctrine of distribution' as the view that a term is distributed if it refers to everything that it denotes, and undistributed if it refers to only some of the things that it denotes. He argues that the notion, so explained, is incoherent. He claims that the doctrine of distribution originates from a degenerate use of the notion of ?distributive supposition? in medieval supposition theory sometime in the 16th century. This paper proposes instead that the doctrine of di…Read more
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15Cresswell M. J.. The interpretation of some Lewis systems of modal logic. The Australasian journal of philosophy, vol. 45 , pp. 198–206 (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 37 (2): 417-418. 1972.
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54What do quotation marks name? Frege's theories of quotations and that-clausesPhilosophical Studies 42 (3). 1982.
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149True ContradictionsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (3). 1990.In In Contradiction, Graham Priest shows, as clearly as anything like this can be shown, that it is coherent to maintain that some sentences can be both true and false at the same time. As a consequence, some contradictions are true, and an appreciation of this possibility advances our understanding of the nature of logic and language.
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308Nonexistent ObjectsYale University Press. 1980.In this book Terence Parsons revives the older tradition of taking such objects at face value. Using various modern techniques from logic and the philosophy of language, he formulates a metaphysical theory of nonexistent objects. The theory is given a formalization in symbolism rich enough to contain definite descriptions, modal operators, and epistemic contexts, and the book includes a discussion which relates the formalized theory explicitly to English.
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14II*—Underlying States in the Semantical Analysis of EnglishProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 88 (1): 13-30. 1988.Terence Parsons; II*—Underlying States in the Semantical Analysis of English, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 13.
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79Worldly Indeterminacy of IdentityProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95. 1995.Terence Parsons, Peter Woodruff; X*—Worldly Indeterminacy of Identity, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 171–192
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Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |