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69Meinongian Semantics GeneralizedGrazer Philosophische Studien 50 (1): 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 (e.g. one I lost), 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 …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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54What do quotation marks name? Frege's theories of quotations and that-clausesPhilosophical Studies 42 (3). 1982.
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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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49A Meinongian Analysis of Fictional ObjectsGrazer Philosophische Studien 1 (1): 73-86. 1975.This paper explores the view that there are such things as (nonexistent) fictional objects, and that we refer to such objects when we say things like "Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective", or "Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes". A theory of such objects is developed as a special application of a Meinongian Ontology.
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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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47Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of Richard Montague (review)Journal of Philosophy 72 (7): 196-203. 1975.
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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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43Spade 1988 sugges t s tha t t he r e are ac tua l l y two theo r i e s t o address t h i s ques t i o n t o , an ear l y one and a l a t e r one . 2 Most o f the presen t pape r i s a deve l o pmen t o f t h i s i dea . I sugges t tha t ear l y work by Sherwood and o the r s was a s tudy o f quan t i f i e r s : the i r semant i c s and t he e f f e c t s o f con t e x t on i n f e r e n ce s t ha t can be made f r om quan t i f i e d te rms . La te r , i n the hands o f Bur l e y and o the r s …Read more
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37Annual meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic, Anaheim, 1985Journal of Symbolic Logic 50 (4): 1094-1102. 1985.
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35Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond by Richard Routley (review)Journal of Philosophy 80 (3): 173-179. 1983.
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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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33Articulating Medieval LogicOxford University Press. 2014.Terence Parsons presents a new study of the development and continuing value of medieval logic, which expanded Aristotle's basic principles of logic in important ways. Parsons argues that the resulting system is as rich as contemporary first-order symbolic logic
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33Set Theory with Indeterminacy of IdentityNotre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 40 (4): 473-495. 1999.We presume a background theory which allows for indeterminacy of states of affairs involving objects, extending even to indeterminacy of identity between objects. A sentence reporting such an indeterminate state of affairs lacks truth-value. We extend this to a theory of sets, similar to ZFU, in which membership in, and identity between, sets may also be indeterminate
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30Modifiers and Quantifiers in Natural LanguageCanadian Journal of Philosophy 10 (sup1): 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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25Treatise on Consequences by John BuridanJournal of the History of Philosophy 54 (1): 163-164. 2016.John Buridan was the greatest of the medieval logicians. His massive logical text, the Summulae de Dialectica, has been available in a first rate English translation for well over a decade. Now it is joined by his other major logical work, the Treatise on Consequences. The translation provided here runs about a hundred pages. Chapters 1 and 3 concern consequences involving non-modal propositions, and chapters 2 and 4 concern modals. Buridan is a very clear writer, and Read has provided a transla…Read more
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21X*—Worldly Indeterminacy of IdentityProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95 (1): 171-192. 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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19Higher-order sensesIn Joseph Almog & Paolo Leonardi (eds.), The philosophy of David Kaplan, Oxford University Press. pp. 45. 2010.
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15Russell's Early Views on DenotingIn D. F. Austin (ed.), Philosophical Analysis, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 17--44. 1988.
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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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Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |