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232The 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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67Mind, Machine, and Metaphor: An Essay on Artificial Intelligence and Legal ReasoningPhilosophical Books 36 (2): 134-136. 1995.
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66Fallacious ReasoningTeaching Philosophy 18 (2): 139-146. 1995.The author recommends an involved study of logical fallacies in order to provide a database of testable hypotheses for error reasoning. The purpose of the study is to make the study of logical fallacies accessible to a wider audience. Following a recent study conducted by Ludwig Schlecht, the author presents a diagnostic method to illustrate how an argument can be fallacious from the breach of particular rational principles. The diagnosis method also serves as investigation into other forms of a…Read more
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154The 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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32Brevity (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2013.Brevity in conversation is a window to the workings of the mind. It is both a multifaceted topic of deep philosophical importance and a phenomenon that serves as a testing ground for theories in linguistics, psycholinguistics and computer modeling. Speakers use elliptical constructions and exploit salient features of the conversational environment, a process of pragmatic enrichment, so as to pack a great deal into a few words. They also tailor their words to theirparticular conversational partne…Read more
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Russell, Edward Lear, Plato, Zeno, Grelling, EubulidesThe Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 1. 2005.
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286Pierre 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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10Humor and HarmSorites 3 27-42. 1995.For familiar reasons, stereotyping is believed to be irresponsible and offensive. Yet the use of stereotypes in humor is widespread. Particularly offensive are thought to be sexual and racial stereotypes, yet it is just these that figure particularly prominently in jokes. In certain circumstances it is unquestionably wrong to make jokes that employ such stereotypes. Some writers have made the much stronger claim that in all circumstances it is wrong to find such jokes funny; in other words that …Read more
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116Wittgenstein's Late Views on Belief, Paradox and ContradictionPhilosophical Investigations 11 (1): 49-73. 1988.
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174IntroductionThe Monist 88 (1): 3-10. 2005.According to some commentators, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is all one big joke: we plough through the text trying to extract the sense out of each spare and heroic proposition, only to be told at the end, that anyone who understands the author will realize that all of his propositions are nonsensical and so are not even propositions. The whole work is a kind of hoax; the readers are ridiculed, but, with luck, will eventually have to laugh when they come to recognize that what they had taken for de…Read more
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165Wittgenstein and situation comedyPhilosophia 37 (4): 605-627. 2009.Wittgenstein discusses speakers exploiting context to inject meaning into the sentences that they use. One facet of situation comedy is context-injected ambiguity, where scriptwriters artfully construct situations such that, because of conflicting contextual clues, a character, though uttering a sentence that contains neither ambiguous words nor amphibolous contruction may plausibly be interpreted in at least two distinct ways. This highlights an important distinction between the (concise) sente…Read more
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208A 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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276Paradoxical partners: semantical brides and set-theoretical groomsAnalysis 73 (1): 33-37. 2013.Is there a key for ‘translating' some set-theoretical paradoxes into counterpart semantical paradoxes and vice-versa? There is, and this encourages the hope of a unified solution. The solution turns not on inventing new axioms that do not entail contradiction, but on imposing a completely intuitive restriction on the comprehension axiom of naive set theory in order to avoid illegitimate (circular) stipulation
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11I was commissioned by Barry Smith, Editor of The Monist , to act as Advisory Editor for issue 88.1, January 2005 on the topic Humor, and we drafted the appended description. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2004, and you are welcome to submit an article to me for consideration (word limit 7,500 words, including footnotes). What the Editor and I are, hoping for, is some serious and seriously good philosophical writing on this topic.
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100Why the substitution of co-referential expressions in a statement may result in change of truth-value (Concluding Part)The Reasoner 1 (2): 6-7. 2007.
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76Clear and queer thinking: Wittgenstein's development and his relevance to modern thought (edited book)Duckworth. 1999.Laurence 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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University of KentRegular Faculty
University of St. Andrews
PhD, 1977