-
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.
-
158Logical NecessityIn Bob Hale & Aviv Hoffmann (eds.), Modality: metaphysics, logic, and epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2010.Book synopsis: The philosophy of modality investigates necessity and possibility, and related notions--are they objective features of mind-independent reality? If so, are they irreducible, or can modal facts be explained in other terms? This volume presents new work on modality by established leaders in the field and by up-and-coming philosophers. Between them, the papers address fundamental questions concerning realism and anti-realism about modality, the nature and basis of facts about what is…Read more
-
108Concepts and CountingProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (1): 41-68. 2002.Frege's analysis of Zahlangaben is expounded and evaluated.
-
127The categoricity problem and truth-value gapsAnalysis 57 (4). 1997.In his article 'Rejection' (1996), Timothy Smiley had shown how a logical system allowing rules of rejection could provide a categorical axiomatization of the classical propositional calculus. This paper shows how rules of rejection, when placed in a multiple conclusion setting, can also provide categorical axiomatizations of a range of non-classical calculi which permit truth-value gaps, among them the calculus in Smiley's own 'Sense without denotation' (1960).
-
339Savoir FaireJournal of Philosophy 100 (3): 158-166. 2003.This paper challenges the linguistic arguments Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson gave in support of their thesis that knowing how is a species of knowing that.
-
108Old Adams BuriedAnalytic Philosophy 54 (2): 157-188. 2013.I present some counterexamples to Adams's Thesis and explain how they undermine arguments that indicative conditionals cannot be truth-evaluable propositions
-
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)
-
18The vagaries of paraphrase: a reply to Holton on the counting problemAnalysis 56 (4): 246-250. 1996.Peer Reviewed.
-
633Tempered pragmatismIn Cheryl Misak & Huw Price (eds.), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century, Oup/ba. 2016.This paper assesses the prospects of a pragmatist theory of content. I begin by criticising the theory presented in D.H. Mellor’s essay ‘Successful Semantics’. I then identify problems and lacunae in the pragmatist theory of meaning sketched in Chapter 13 of Dummett’s The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. The prospects are brighter, I contend, for a tempered pragmatism, in which the theory of content is permitted to draw upon irreducible notions of truth and falsity. I sketch the shape of such a…Read more
-
47Truth and the determination of content: Variations on themes from frege’sGrazer Philosophische Studien 82 (1): 1-48. 2011.
-
198Ricky ponting and the judgesAnalysis 70 (2): 205-210. 2010.This article proposes revisions to the Laws of Cricket and to the criminal law of England. The Laws of Cricket should be revised so that an umpire may give a batsman out without having to specify precisely how he got out. The criminal law should be revised so that (e.g.) aiding and abetting a murderer is not subsumed under the crime of murder.
-
5Meaning and understandingIn Frank Jackson & Michael Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2005.
-
23
-
276
-
133On A Neglected Path to IntuitionismTopoi 31 (1): 101-109. 2012.According to Quine, in any disagreement over basic logical laws the contesting parties must mean different things by the connectives or quantifiers implicated in those laws; when a deviant logician ‘tries to deny the doctrine he only changes the subject’. The standard semantics for intuitionism offers some confirmation for this thesis, for it represents an intuitionist as attaching quite different senses to the connectives than does a classical logician. All the same, I think Quine was wrong, ev…Read more
-
244Knowledge by deductionGrazer Philosophische Studien 77 (1): 61-84. 2008.It seems beyond doubt that a thinker can come to know a conclusion by deducing it from premisses that he knows already, but philosophers have found it puzzling how a thinker could acquire knowledge in this way. Assuming a broadly externalist conception of knowledge, I explain why judgements competently deduced from known premisses are themselves knowledgeable. Assuming an exclusionary conception of judgeable content, I further explain how such judgements can be informative. (According to the exc…Read more
-
174Frege's theory of predication: An elaboration and defense, with some new applicationsPhilosophical Review 103 (4): 599-637. 1994.
-
685Vagueness and Intuitionistic LogicIn Alexander Miller (ed.), Language, Logic,and Mathematics: Themes from the Philosophy of Crispin Wright, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.In his essay ‘“Wang’s Paradox”’, Crispin Wright proposes a solution to the Sorites Paradox (in particular, the form of it he calls the ‘Paradox of Sharp Boundaries’) that involves adopting intuitionistic logic when reasoning with vague predicates. He does not give a semantic theory which accounts for the validity of intuitionistic logic (and the invalidity of stronger logics) in that area. The present essay tentatively makes good the deficiency. By applying a theorem of Tarski, it shows that …Read more
-
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.
-
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).
-
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
-
97Inference, Deduction, LogicIn John Bengson & Marc A. Moffett (eds.), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action, Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 334. 2011.
-
205Contingent existentsPhilosophy 78 (4): 461-481. 2003.Timothy Williamson has recently put forward a proof that every object exists necessarily. I show where the proof fails. My diagnosis also exposes the fallacy in A. N. Prior's argument in favour of his modal logic, Q.
-
744Against HarmonyIn Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Blackwell. forthcoming.Many prominent writers on the philosophy of logic, including Michael Dummett, Dag Prawitz, Neil Tennant, have held that the introduction and elimination rules of a logical connective must be ‘in harmony ’ if the connective is to possess a sense. This Harmony Thesis has been used to justify the choice of logic: in particular, supposed violations of it by the classical rules for negation have been the basis for arguments for switching from classical to intuitionistic logic. The Thesis has also had…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Mathematics |
20th Century Philosophy |