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792What is the Logic of Propositional Identity?Logic and Logical Philosophy 15 (1): 3-15. 2006.Propositional identity is not expressed by a predicate. So its logic is not given by the ordinary first order axioms for identity. What are the logical axioms governing this concept, then? Some axioms in addition to those proposed by Arthur Prior are proposed.
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916What’s So Special About Sentences?Communication and Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly Journal 28 (4): 409-25. 1995.This paper is a discussion of Frege's maxim that it is only in the context of a sentence that a word has a meaning. Quine reads the maxim as saying that the sentence is the fundamental unit of significance. Dummett rejects this as a truism. But it is not a truism since it stands in opposition to a conception of meaning held by John Locke and others. The maxim denies that a word has a sense independently of any sentence in which it occurs. Dummett says this denial is inconsistent with the fact th…Read more
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185Does scientific realism entail mathematical realism?Facta Philosophica 5 (1): 173-182. 2003.Hilary Putnam suggests that the essence of the realist conception of mathematics is that the statements of mathematics are objective so that the true ones are objectively true. An argument for mathematical realism, thus conceived, is implicit in Putnam's writing. The first premise is that within currently accepted science there are objective truths. Next is the premise that some of these statements logically imply statements of pure mathematics. The conclusion drawn is that some statements of pu…Read more
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Chapter 9: Thesis TwoPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 90 241-253. 2006.
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183The Province of LogicAnalysis 36 (1): 47-48. 1975.Quine criticizes Strawson’s account of the province of logic. Robert Hadley proposes a refutation of Quine. This paper proposes a refutation of Hadley.
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Chapter 5: Existence, Number, and RealismPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 90 129-155. 2006.
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754Strawson on CategoriesJournal of Critical Analysis 7 (3): 83-88. 1978.A type theory constructed with reference to a particular language will associate with each monadic predicate P of that language a class of individuals C(P) of which it is categorically significant to predicate P (or which P spans, for short). The extension of P is a subset of C(P), which is a subset of the language’s universe of discourse. The set C(P) is a category discriminated by the language. The relation 'is spanned by the same predicates as' divides the language’s universe of discourse int…Read more
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19Replies to CommentariesPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 90 (1): 369-386. 2006.
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163A defense of mill on other mindsDialectica 57 (3). 2003.This paper seeks to explain why the argument from analogy seems strong to an analogist such as Mill and weak to the skeptic. The inference from observed behavior to the existence of feelings, sensations, etc., in other subjects is justified, but its justification depends on taking observed behavior and feelings, sensations, and so on, to be not merely correlated, but connected. It is claimed that this is what Mill had in mind.
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899Are All Tautologies True?Logique Et Analyse 125 (25): 3-14. 1989.The paper asks: are all tautologies true in a language with truth-value gaps? It answers that they are not. No tautology is false, of course, but not all are true. It also contends that not all contradictions are false in a language with truth-value gaps, though none are true.
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342Propositions and eternal sentencesMind 77 (308): 537-542. 1968.Two different uses of ‘proposition’ are distinguished: the meaning of an eternal sentence is distinguished from that which can be asserted, believed, conjectured, and so on. It is argued that, in the second sense of ‘proposition’, it is not the case that every proposition can be expressed by an eternal sentence.
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197Paradox and Semantical CorrectnessAnalysis 39 (4): 166-169. 1979.In a series of papers R. L. Martin propounds a theory for dealing with the semantical paradoxes. This paper is a criticism of that theory.
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113Quine's relativismRatio 3 (2): 142-149. 1990.A doctrine that occurs intermittently in Quine’s work is that there is no extra-theoretic truth. This paper explores this doctrine, and argues that on its best interpretation it is inconsistent with three views Quine also accepts: bivalence, mathematical Platonism, and the disquotational account of truth.
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University of Nebraska, LincolnRetired faculty
Lincoln, Nebraska, United States of America