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The Bounds of Logic: A Generalized ViewpointBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (4): 1078-1083. 1991.
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432Truth and Scientific ChangeJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 48 (3): 371-394. 2017.The paper seeks to answer two new questions about truth and scientific change: What lessons does the phenomenon of scientific change teach us about the nature of truth? What light do recent developments in the theory of truth, incorporating these lessons, throw on problems arising from the prevalence of scientific change, specifically, the problem of pessimistic meta-induction?
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315Lessons on Truth from KantAnalytic Philosophy 58 (3): 171-201. 2017.Kant is known for having said relatively little about truth in Critique of Pure Reason. Nevertheless, there are important lessons to be learned from this work about truth, lessons that apply to the contemporary debate on the nature and structure of truth and its theory. In this paper I suggest two such lessons. The first lesson concerns the structure of a substantive theory of truth as contrasted with a deflationist theory; the second concerns the structure of a correspondence theory of truth. T…Read more
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52Johannes L. Brandl and Peter Sullivan (eds) new essays on the philosophy of Michael Dummett (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (1): 185-189. 2001.
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27A Characterization of Logical Constants Is PossibleTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 18 (2): 189-198. 2010....
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8Review: D. M. Gabbay, What is a Logical System? (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 61 (4): 1396-1400. 1996.
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73Functional pluralismPhilosophical Books 46 (4): 311-330. 2005.This is a critique of Michael P. Lynch’s functional pluralism with respect to truth. The paper is sympathetic to Lynch’s overall approach to truth, but is critical of (i) his platitudinous characterization of the general principles of truth, (ii) his excessive pluralism with respect to the “realizers” of truth, (iii) his treatment of atomic truth, and (iv) his analysis of “mixed” logical inferences. The paper concludes with a proposal for a functional pluralism that puts greater emphasis on the …Read more
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Logical TermsIn D. M. Borchert (ed.), Supplement to the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Macmillan. pp. 317-319. 1996.
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642The Bounds of Logic: A Generalized ViewpointMIT Press. 1991.The Bounds of Logic presents a new philosophical theory of the scope and nature of logic based on critical analysis of the principles underlying modern Tarskian logic and inspired by mathematical and linguistic development. Extracting central philosophical ideas from Tarski’s early work in semantics, Sher questions whether these are fully realized by the standard first-order system. The answer lays the foundation for a new, broader conception of logic. By generally characterizing logical terms, …Read more
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93Partially-ordered (branching) generalized quantifiers: A general definitionJournal of Philosophical Logic 26 (1): 1-43. 1997.Following Henkin's discovery of partially-ordered (branching) quantification (POQ) with standard quantifiers in 1959, philosophers of language have attempted to extend his definition to POQ with generalized quantifiers. In this paper I propose a general definition of POQ with 1-place generalized quantifiers of the simplest kind: namely, predicative, or "cardinality" quantifiers, e.g., "most", "few", "finitely many", "exactly α", where α is any cardinal, etc. The definition is obtained in a serie…Read more
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353Is logic in the mind or in the world?Synthese 181 (2). 2011.The paper presents an outline of a unified answer to five questions concerning logic: (1) Is logic in the mind or in the world? (2) Does logic need a foundation? What is the main obstacle to a foundation for logic? Can it be overcome? (3) How does logic work? What does logical form represent? Are logical constants referential? (4) Is there a criterion of logicality? (5) What is the relation between logic and mathematics?
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40Book Review: Jody Azzouni. Tracking Reason: Proof, Consequence, and Truth (review)Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 50 (1): 97-117. 2009.
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The Logical Roots of IndeterminacyIn G. Sher & R. Tieszen (eds.), Between Logic and Intuition: Essays in Honor of Charles Parsons, . pp. 491-524. 1999.
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121Truth, Logical Structure, and CompositionalitySynthese 126 (1-2): 195-219. 2001.In this paper I examine a cluster of concepts relevant to the methodology of truth theories: 'informative definition', 'recursive method', 'semantic structure', 'logical form', 'compositionality', etc. The interrelations between these concepts, I will try to show, are more intricate and multi-dimensional than commonly assumed.
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201Introduction and Commentary on Jennifer Hornsby's "Truth: The Identity Theory"Aristotelian Society 1 204-213. 2013.Jennifer Hornsby’s 1997 paper, ‘Truth: The Identity Theory’, has been highly influential in making the identity theory of truth a viable option in contemporary philosophy. In this introduction and commentary I focus on what distinguishes her theory and its methodology from the correspondence theory and the ‘substantivist’ methodology, and on other issues that have not been widely discussed in earlier commentaries yet are central to the current debate on truth.
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134Review of Stanley Peters and Dag Westerståhl: Quantifiers in Language and Logic (review)Journal of Philosophy 107 (2): 103-112. 2010.
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225Forms of correspondence: the intricate route from thought to realityIn Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen & Cory Wright (eds.), Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates, Oxford University Press. pp. 157--179. 2012.The paper delineates a new approach to truth that falls under the category of “Pluralism within the bounds of correspondence”, and illustrates it with respect to mathematical truth. Mathematical truth, like all other truths, is based on correspondence, but the route of mathematical correspondence differs from other routes of correspondence in (i) connecting mathematical truths to a special aspect of reality, namely, its formal aspect, and (ii) doing so in a complex, indirect way, rather than in …Read more
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182A characterization of logical constants is possibleTheoria 18 (2): 189-198. 2003.The paper argues that a philosophically informative and mathematically precise characterization is possible by (i) describing a particular proposal for such a characterization, (ii) showing that certain criticisms of this proposal are incorrect, and (iii) discussing the general issue of what a characterization of logical constants aims at achieving
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Semantics and LogicIn Shalom Lappin (ed.), The handbook of contemporary semantic theory, Blackwell Reference. pp. 509-535. 1996.
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110The foundational problem of logicBulletin of Symbolic Logic 19 (2): 145-198. 2013.The construction of a systematic philosophical foundation for logic is a notoriously difficult problem. In Part One I suggest that the problem is in large part methodological, having to do with the common philosophical conception of “providing a foundation”. I offer an alternative to the common methodology which combines a strong foundational requirement with the use of non-traditional, holistic tools to achieve this result. In Part Two I delineate an outline of a foundation for logic, employing…Read more
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19Book Review: Protocols, Truth and Convention (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 35 (1): 153-155. 1997.The continuing philosophical interest in the famous 'Protocol Sentence Debate' in the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists is, to a large measure, due to the focus on the epistemological issues in the dispute, and the neglect of differences among the leading players in their philosophical views of logic and language. In Protocols, Truth and Convention , the current understanding of the debate is advanced by developing the contemporaneous views of logic and language held by the principal disputan…Read more
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116Did Tarski commit "Tarski's fallacy"?Journal of Symbolic Logic 61 (2): 653-686. 1996.In his 1936 paper,On the Concept of Logical Consequence, Tarski introduced the celebrated definition oflogical consequence: “The sentenceσfollows logicallyfrom the sentences of the class Γ if and only if every model of the class Γ is also a model of the sentenceσ.” [55, p. 417] This definition, Tarski said, is based on two very basic intuitions, “essential for the proper concept of consequence” [55, p. 415] and reflecting common linguistic usage: “Consider any class Γ of sentences and a sentence…Read more
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Truth, the Liar, and Tarski's SemanticsIn D. Jacquette (ed.), A Companion to Philosophical Logic, Blackwell. pp. 145-163. 2002.
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104Tarski's thesisIn Douglas Patterson (ed.), New essays on Tarski and philosophy, Oxford University Press. pp. 300--339. 2008.
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46Logical Consequence: An Epistemic OutlookThe Monist 85 (4): 555-579. 2002.In this paper I present an outline of a model of knowledge that complements, and is complemented by, my the conception of logic delineated in The Bounds of Logic. The Bounds of Logic had as its goal a critical, systematic and constructive understanding of logic. As such it aimed at maximum neutrality vis-a-vis epistemic, metaphysical and meta-mathematical controversies. But a conception of logic does not exist in a vacuum. Eventually our goal is to produce an account of logic that answers the ne…Read more
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752Truth as a normative modality of cognitive actsIn Dirk Greimann & Geo Siegwart (eds.), Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language, Routledge. pp. 280-306. 2007.Attention to the conversational role of alethic terms seems to dominate, and even sometimes exhaust, many contemporary analyses of the nature of truth. Yet, because truth plays a role in judgment and assertion regardless of whether alethic terms are expressly used, such analyses cannot be comprehensive or fully adequate. A more general analysis of the nature of truth is therefore required – one which continues to explain the significance of truth independently of the role alethic terms play in d…Read more
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