•  363
    Pragmatics and indexicality
    Pragmatics Microfiche 1 (4). 1975.
    A conception of pragmatics distinguishes pragmatics from semantics proper in terms of indexicality: semantics is conceived as the quest for a truth definition for languages without indexical expressions; pragmatics is conceived as a quest for a truth definition for languages with indexical expressions. I argue that indexicality is not a feature that can be used to capture anything like what Morris and Carnap had in mind.
  •  16
    Do Moral Explanations Matter?
    Philosophy Research Archives 14 137-142. 1988.
    In a recent paper Nicholas Sturgeon claims moral explanations constitute one area of disagreement between moral realists and noncognitivists. The correctness of such explanation is consistent with moral realism but not with noncognitivism. Does this difference characterize other anti-realist views? I argue that it does not. Moral relativism is a distinct anti-realist view. And the correctness of moral explanations is consistent with moral relativism.
  •  173
    True Propositions: A Reply to C.J.F. Williams
    Analysis 32 (3): 101-106. 1972.
    This paper replies to points Williams makes to his reply to Sayward’s criticism of Williams’s proposal of ‘for some p ___ states that p & p’ as an analysis of ‘___ is true’.
  •  638
    Fundamental to Quine’s philosophy of logic is the thesis that substitutional quantification does not express existence. This paper considers the content of this claim and the reasons for thinking it is true.
  • Book Reviews (review)
    Mind 100 (397): 137-139. 1991.
  •  36
    Various authors of logic texts are cited who either suggest or explicitly state that the Gödel incompleteness result shows that some unprovable sentence of arithmetic is true. Against this, the paper argues that the matter is one of philosophical controversy, that it is not a mathematical or logical issue.
  • Strawson on Categories
    Journal of Critical Analysis 7 (3): 83-88. 1978.
  •  644
    The Internal/External Question
    Grazier Philosophishe Studien 47 31-41. 1994.
    For Rudolf Carnap the question ‘Do numbers exist?’ does not have just one sense. Asked from within mathematics, it has a trivial answer that could not possibly divide philosophers of mathematics. Asked from outside of mathematics, it lacks meaning. This paper discusses Carnap ’s distinction and defends much of what he has to say
  •  92
    A conversation about numbers
    Philosophia 29 (1-4): 191-209. 2002.
    This is a dialogue in which five characters are involved. Various issues in the philosophy of mathematics are discussed. Among those issues are these: numbers as abstract objects, our knowledge of numbers as abstract objects, a proof as showing a mathematical statement to be true as opposed to the statement being true in virtue of having a proof.
  • Chapter 1: Introduction
    Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 90 35-42. 2006.
  •  124
    Prior’s Theory of Truth
    Analysis 47 (2): 83-87. 1987.
    This paper is a critical exposition of Prior’s theory of truth as expressed by the following truth locutions: (1) ‘it is true that’ prefixed to sentences; (2) ‘true proposition’; (3) true belief’, ‘true assertion’, ‘true statement’, etc.; (4) ‘true sentence’.
  •  91
    Relativism and ontology
    Philosophical Quarterly 37 (148): 278-290. 1987.
    This paper deals with the question of whether there is objectivist truth about set-theoretic matters. The dogmatist and skeptic agree that there is such truth. They disagree about whether this truth is knowable. In contrast, the relativist says there is no objective truth to be known. Two versions of relativism are distinguished in the paper. One of these versions is defended.
  •  216
    Kripke on necessity and identity
    Philosophical Papers 27 (3): 151-159. 1998.
    It may be that all that matters for the modalities, possibility and necessity, is the object named by the proper name, not which proper name names it. An influential defender of this view is Saul Kripke. Kripke’s defense is criticized in the paper.
  •  27
    A fregean principle
    History and Philosophy of Logic 19 (3): 125-135. 1998.
    Frege held that the result of applying a predicate to names lacks reference if any of the names lack reference. We defend the principle against a number of plausible objections. We put forth an account of consequence for a first-order language with identity in which the principle holds
  •  24
    Minds, substances, and capacities
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 44 (2): 213-225. 1983.
    This paper pushes to the claim that the following is Descartes’s fundamental thesis: something has self-presenting states and self-presenting states only. Were he to have established this he would have revamped our worldview in essentially the manner he wished to revamp it. From this proposition one can get an argument for the substance view of the mind in Descartes’s writings.
  •  67
    Paradox and Semantical Correctness
    Analysis 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.
  •  23
    Eternal sentences
    with Stephen H. Voss
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 54 (1). 1976.
    The paper argues that two apparently attractive conceptions of an eternal sentence are defective. An alternative conception is presented which the authors think allows greater insight into the nature of semantic concepts.
  •  63
    System relativism
    Ratio 1 (2): 163-175. 1988.
    The fundamental thought of moral relativism is set out as follows: moral criteria, derived from overall moral points of view, are used to derive particular moral judgments. Thus such a judgment might be correct relative to one overall moral point of view and incorrect relative to another. The evaluation of an overall moral point of view does not involve the application of moral criteria. Rather, the evaluation of a morality takes us outside the province of morality. The result of sharpening this…Read more
  •  34
    Geach on Generalization
    Dialogue 41 (2): 221-. 2002.
    There are plausible objections to substitutional construals of generalization. But these objections do not apply to a substitutional construal of generalization proposed by Peter Geach several years ago. This paper examines Geach’s conception.
  •  116
    Moral relativism and deontic logic
    Synthese 85 (1). 1990.
    If a native of India asserts "Killing cattle is wrong" and a Nebraskan asserts "Killing cattle is not wrong", and both judgments agree with their respective moralities and both moralities are internally consistent, then the moral relativist says both judgments are fully correct. At this point relativism bifurcates. One branch which we call content relativism denies that the two people are contradicting each other. The idea is that the content of a moral judgment is a function of the overall mora…Read more
  •  106
    The Tree Theory and Isomorphism
    Analysis 41 (1): 6-11. 1980.
    A main thesis of Fred Sommers' type theory, is that an isomorphism exists between any natural language and the categories discriminated by that language. Here the author gives an explanation of what this claim comes to. And then it is argued that, so understood, the claim is incompatible with Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory. Finally, it is argued against trying to salvage the isomorphism thesis by appealing to some other set theory.
  •  44
    Can a language have indenumerably many expressions?
    History and Philosophy of Logic 4 (1-2): 73-82. 1983.
    A common assumption among philosophers is that every language has at most denumerably many expressions. This assumption plays a prominent role in many philosophical arguments. Recently formal systems with indenumerably many elements have been developed. These systems are similar to the more familiar denumerable first-order languages. This similarity makes it appear that the assumption is false. We argue that the assumption is true
  •  43
    A Conversation about Numbers and Knowledge
    American Philosophical Quarterly 39 (3): 275-287. 2002.
    This is a dialogue in the philosophy of mathematics. The dialogue descends from the confident assertion that there are infinitely many numbers to an unresolved bewilderment about how we can know there are any numbers at all. At every turn the dialogue brings us only to realize more fully how little is clear to us in our thinking about mathematics.
  •  25
    Two philosophical theories, mathematical Platonism and nominalism, are the background of six dialogues in this book. There are five characters in these dialogues: three are nominalists; the fourth is a Platonist; the main character is somewhat skeptical on most issues in the philosophy of mathematics, and is particularly skeptical regarding the two background theories.
  •  105
    Expressions and Tokens
    Analysis 41 (4): 181-187. 1981.
    The purpose of this paper is to uncover and correct several confusions about expressions, tokens and the relations between them that crop up in even highly sophisticated writing about language and logic.
  •  18
    Steiner versus Wittgenstein: Remarks on Differing Views of Mathematical Truth
    Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 20 (3): 347-352. 2010.
    Mark Steiner criticizes some remarks Wittgenstein makes about Gödel. Steiner takes Wittgenstein to be disputing a mathematical result. The paper argues that Wittgenstein does no such thing. The contrast between the realist and the demonstrativist concerning mathematical truth is examined. Wittgenstein is held to side with neither camp. Rather, his point is that a realist argument is inconclusive.
  •  43
    Theories of truth and semantical primitives
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 6 (1). 1977.
    Robert cummins has recently attacked this line of argument: if p is a semantically primitive predicate of a first order language l, then p requires its own clause in the definition of satisfaction integral to a definition of truth of l. thus if l has infinitely many such p, the satisfaction clause cannot be completed and truth for l will remain undefined. against this cummins argues that a single clause in a general base theory for l can specify satisfaction conditions for even infinitely many s…Read more
  •  341
    Applying the concept of pain
    Iyyun 52 (July): 290-300. 2003.
    This paper reaches the conclusion that, while there are ordinary cases in which the pretending possibility is reasonable, these cases always contain some element that makes it reasonable. This will be the element we ask for when we ask why pretending possibility is raised. Knowledge that someone else is in pain is a matter of eliminating the proposed element or neutralizing its pain-negating aspect.
  • Chapter 8: Thesis One
    Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 90 215-240. 2006.