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100A non-theistic cosmology and natural historyAnalysis 66 (3): 256-260. 2006.The plausibility of the theory of evolution depends on abandoning the assumption of a unique 'big bang' ex nihilo marking the beginning of the universe.
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34Kripke, Pierre and ConstantinescuThe Reasoner 1 (5): 4-5. 2007.Refutes Cristian Constantinescu's proposed solution of Kripke's puzzle about belief.
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11The Adverbial Theory of Conceptual ThoughtThe Monist 65 (3): 379-392. 1982.Romane Clark has complained of the dissimilarity between Sellars’s treatment of conceptual thought and his treatment of sense impressions. For sense impressions are intrinsic to perceptions and, on Sellars’s view, both conceptual thought and perception are species of judgment. In the first section of this paper I want to raise a converse sort of complaint: Sellars offers an ‘adverbial’ theory of sense impressions and a similar account of conceptual thought. But this similarity of treatment is no…Read more
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25Wittgenstein’s Most Important Contribution to the Philosophy of LogicIn Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Volker Munz & Annalisa Coliva (eds.), Mind, Language and Action: Proceedings of the 36th International Wittgenstein Symposium, De Gruyter. pp. 3-20. 2015.
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41Laurence Goldstein gives a straightforward and lively account of some of the central themes of Wittgenstein's writings on meaning, mind, and mathematics.
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17Mind, Machine, and Metaphor: An Essay on Artificial Intelligence and Legal ReasoningPhilosophical Books 36 (2): 134-136. 1995.
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32Scientific scotism - the emperor's new trousers or has Armstrong made some real strides?Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (1). 1983.(1983). Scientific scotism — The emperor's new trousers or has armstrong made some real strides? Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 61, No. 1, pp. 40-57
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92The development of wittgenstein's views on contradictionHistory and Philosophy of Logic 7 (1): 43-56. 1986.The views on contradiction and consistency that Wittgenstein expressed in his later writings have met with misunderstanding and almost uniform hositility. In this paper, I trace the roots of these views by attempting to show that, in his early writings, Wittgenstein accorded a ?unique status? to tautologies and contradictions, marking them off logically from genuine propositions. This is integral both to his Tractatus project of furnishing a theory of inference, and to the enterprise of explaini…Read more
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2Wittgenstein as soilIn Max Kölbel & Bernhard Weiss (eds.), Wittgenstein's Lasting Significance, Routledge. 2004.Wittgenstein likened himself to a soil distinctive only in that once implanted with the seeds of great thinkers, interesting flora grew. This chapter examines the influence on him of authors he regarded as truly original, such as Bolzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege and Russell.
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103Pierre and circumspection in belief-formationAnalysis 69 (4): 653-655. 2009.In a well-known story constructed by Saul Kripke , Pierre, a rational but monolingual Frenchman who has never visited England, acquires, on the evidence of many magazine pictures of London, the belief that London is beautiful. He is happy to declare ‘Londres est jolie’. Pierre eventually moves to England and settles in one of the seedier areas of London, travelling only to comparably shabby neighbourhoods. He learns English by immersion, though he does not realize that ‘London’ and ‘Londres’ are…Read more
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106The Sorites is nonsense disguised by a fallacyAnalysis 72 (1): 61-65. 2012.It is uncontroversial that, on any run through a Sorites series, a subject, at some point, switches from an ‘F’ verdict on one exhibit to a non-‘F’ verdict on the next. (Where this ‘cut-off’ point occurs tend to differ from trial to trial.) It is a fallacy to infer that there must be a cut-off point simpliciter between F items and non-F items. The transition is from firm ground to swamp. In the Sorites reasoning, some conditionals of the form ‘If Item n is F, then Item n + 1 is F’ are not false …Read more
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1A Problem For The DialetheistBulletin of the Section of Logic 15 (1): 10-13. 1986.There has recently been revived logical interest, particularly in the context of attempts to solve the logico-semantical paradoxes, of the idea that there are true contracistions, and of semantics accomodating the glut value both true and false. By considering some generally accepted claims about assertion. I attempt to show that this dialetheist idea is untenable
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121How original a work is the tractatus logico-philosophicus?Philosophy 77 (3): 421-446. 2002.Wittgenstein's Tractatus is widely regarded as a masterpiece, a brilliant, if flawed attempt to achieve an ‘unassailable and definitive … final solution’ to a wide range of philosophical problems. Yet, in a 1931 notebook, Wittgenstein confesses: ‘I think there is some truth in my idea that I am really only reproductive in my thinking. I think I have never invented a line of thinking but that it was always provided for me by someone else’. This disarming self-assessment is, I believe accurate. Th…Read more
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University of KentRegular Faculty
University of St. Andrews
PhD, 1977