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64Making It Explicit (review)Philosophical Review 106 (3): 437-441. 1997.In developing his alternative, Brandom starts from a version of inferential-role semantics according to which an assertion's content is constituted by its place in a field of inferential relations. It is because we have "an independent theoretical grip on the notion of an inference", and of its goodness or badness, that we are able to attain a notion of content that is prior to any of the representational concepts. He stresses that the relevant assessment of inferences is not whether they are lo…Read more
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54Structures and Categories for the Representation of MeaningPhilosophical Review 105 (2): 264. 1996.Review of Timothy Potts, *Structures and Categories for the Representation of Meaning* (CUP).
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52Reply to Øystein Linnebo and Stewart ShapiroInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (7): 842-858. 2019.ABSTRACTIn reply to Linnebo, I defend my analysis of Tait's argument against the use of classical logic in set theory, and make some preliminary comments on Linnebo's new argument for the same conclusion. I then turn to Shapiro's discussion of intuitionistic analysis and of Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis. I contend that we can make sense of intuitionistic analysis, but only by attaching deviant meanings to the connectives. Whether anyone can make sense of SIA is open to doubt: doing so would invo…Read more
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52When I was a student in the mid-1980s, Donald Davidson loomed larger over the philosophical scene than any other living thinker. His writings figured prominentl.
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49In defence of PKFSynthese 201 (2): 1-21. 2023.I advance arguments in favour of PKF as an articulation of a central sense of the predicate ‘true’, and show how it illuminates the relationship between that sense and the ‘external’ notion of truth found in such claims as ‘An utterance of the Liar Sentence does not say anything, and so is not true’.
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47Truth and the determination of content: Variations on themes from frege’sGrazer Philosophische Studien 82 (1): 1-48. 2011.
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46Donald Davidson and the Mirror of MeaningPhilosophical Quarterly 45 (178): 136. 1995.Review of J.E. Malpas, *Donald Davidson and the Mirror of Meaning* (CUP)
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44Making it Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment (review)Philosophical Review 106 (3): 437. 1997.In developing his alternative, Brandom starts from a version of inferential-role semantics according to which an assertion's content is constituted by its place in a field of inferential relations. It is because we have "an independent theoretical grip on the notion of an inference", and of its goodness or badness, that we are able to attain a notion of content that is prior to any of the representational concepts. He stresses that the relevant assessment of inferences is not whether they are lo…Read more
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38The Boundary Stones of Thought: An Essay in the Philosophy of LogicOxford University Press. 2015.Classical logic has been attacked by adherents of rival, anti-realist logical systems: Ian Rumfitt comes to its defence. He considers the nature of logic, and how to arbitrate between different logics. He argues that classical logic may dispense with the principle of bivalence, and may thus be liberated from the dead hand of classical semantics.
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35Brouwer Wittgenstein on the Infinite and the Law of Excluded MiddleGrazer Philosophische Studien 89 (1): 93-108. 2014.
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31Truth, Marks of Truth, and ConditionalsPhilosophy 97 (3): 295-320. 2022.This essay assesses the account of truth presented in Wiggins's 2002 paper ‘An indefinibilist cum normative view of truth and the marks of truth'. I agree with Wiggins that we should seek, not to define truth, but to elucidate it by unfolding its connections with other basic notions. However, I give reasons for preferring an elucidation based on Ramsey's account of truth to Wiggins's Tarski-inspired approach. I also cast doubt on Wiggins's thesis that convergence is a mark of truth, arguing inst…Read more
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28Logic and ExistenceAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 73 151-203. 1999.[Ian Rumfitt] Frege's logicism in the philosophy of arithmetic consisted, au fond, in the claim that in justifying basic arithmetical axioms a thinker need appeal only to methods and principles which he already needs to appeal in order to justify paradigmatically logical truths and paradigmatically logical forms of inference. Using ideas of Gentzen to spell out what these methods and principles might include, I sketch a strategy for vindicating this logicist claim for the special case of the ari…Read more
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26What is Logic?In Zsolt Novák & András Simonyi (eds.), Truth, reference, and realism, Central European University Press. pp. 125-176. 2010.
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21Dummett LaudatioIn Michael Frauchiger (ed.), Truth, Meaning, Justification, and Reality: Themes From Dummett, De Gruyter. pp. 13-24. 2017.
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18Prospects for JustificationismIn Michael Frauchiger (ed.), Truth, Meaning, Justification, and Reality: Themes From Dummett, De Gruyter. pp. 123-152. 2017.
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18The vagaries of paraphrase: a reply to Holton on the counting problemAnalysis 56 (4): 246-250. 1996.Peer Reviewed.
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9Against HarmonyIn Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley. 2017.This chapter concerns that harmony is a particular relationship between the introduction rule and the elimination rule for a given connective. The Harmony Thesis says that a connective is defective unless its associated introduction and elimination rules are in harmony. It also says that a connective is defective if the logical principles which regulate its use go beyond a pair of harmonious introduction and elimination rules. The chapter scrutinizes the most influential arguments which have bee…Read more
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6Infinitesimals, Nations, and PersonsPhilosophy 94 (4): 513-528. 2019.I compare three sorts of case in which philosophers have argued that we cannot assert the Law of Excluded Middle for statements of identity. Adherents of Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis deny that Excluded Middle holds for statements saying that an infinitesimal is identical with zero. Derek Parfit contended that, in certain sci-fi scenarios, the Law does not hold for some statements of personal identity. He also claimed that it fails for the statement ‘England in 1065 was the same nation as Englan…Read more
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5Meaning and understandingIn Frank Jackson & Michael Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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3Plural terms: another variety of referring expression?In José Luis Bermúdez (ed.), Thought, Reference, and Experience: Themes From the Philosophy of Gareth Evans, Clarendon Press. 2005.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Mathematics |
20th Century Philosophy |