University of Oxford
Faculty of Philosophy
DPhil, 1978
St Andrews, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Interest
Medieval Logic
  •  99
    Square of Opposition: A Diagram and a Theory in Historical Perspective
    History and Philosophy of Logic 35 (4): 315-316. 2014.
    We are pleased to present this special issue of the journal History and Philosophy of Logic dedicated to the square of opposition.The square of opposition is a diagram and a theory of opposition re...
  •  1427
    Merely Confused Supposition
    Franciscan Studies 40 (1): 265-97. 1980.
    In this article, we discuss the notion of merely confused supposition as it arose in the medieval theory of suppositio personalis. The context of our analysis is our formalization of William of Ockham's theory of supposition sketched in Mind 86 (1977), 109-13. The present paper is, however, self-contained, although we assume a basic acquaintance with supposition theory. The detailed aims of the paper are: to look at the tasks that supposition theory took on itself and to use our formalization to…Read more
  •  32
    Paradoxes of Signification
    New Content is Available for Vivarium. 2018.
    _ Source: _Page Count 21 Ian Rumfitt has recently drawn our attention to a couple of paradoxes of signification, claiming that although Thomas Bradwardine’s “multiple-meanings” account of truth and signification can solve the first of them, it cannot solve the second. The paradoxes of signification were in fact much discussed by Bradwardine’s successors in the fourteenth century. Bradwardine’s solution appears to turn on a distinction between the principal and the consequential signification of …Read more
  •  79
    How Is Material Supposition Possible?
    Journal of Nietzsche Studies 8 (1): 1-20. 1999.
    I. SUPPOSITION AND SIGNIFICATIONIn an insightful article on the medieval theory of supposition, Elizabeth Karger noted a remarkable development in the characterization of the material mode of supposition between William of Ockham and his contemporaries in the early fourteenth century and Paul of Venice and others at the turn of the fifteenth century.1. E. Karger, “La Supposition Materielle comme Supposition Significative: Paul de Venise, Paul de Pergula,” in A. Maierú, ed., English Logic in Ital…Read more
  •  28
    Concepts and Meaning in Medieval Philosophy
    Philosophy and Theology 8 1-20. 1999.
    In his recent study, Concepts, Fodor identifies five nonnegotiable constraints on any theory of concepts. These theses were all shared by the standard medieval theories of concepts. However, those theories were cognitivist, in contrast with Fodor’s: concepts are definitions, a form of natural knowledge. The medieval theories were formed under two influences, from Aristotle by way of Boethius, and from Augustine. The tension between them resulted in the Ockhamist notion of a natural language, con…Read more
  •  1
    Marilyn McCord Adams, "William Ockham"
    Philosophical Quarterly 40 (161): 537. 1990.
  • HUGHES, G. E.: "John Buridan on Self-Reference" (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (n/a): 423. 1984.
  •  23
    Johannes Buridanus: Summulae de Practica Sophismatum (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 45 (1): 157-158. 2007.
    Stephen Read - Johannes Buridanus: Summulae de Practica Sophismatum - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.1 157-158 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Stephen Read University of St. Andrews Fabienne Pironet, editor. Johannes Buridanus: Summulae de Practica Sophismatum. Artistarium 10–9. Turnhout: Brepols 2004. Pp. xlix + 193. Paper, €40.00. John Buridan was an unusual figure in fourteenth-century logic and philosophy. Logic was at …Read more
  •  5
    Book reviews (review)
    with C. Hill, Bertil Rolf, Gregory Landini, Timothy Williamson, Desmond Paul Henry, I. Grattan-Guinness, Simone Martini, Reinhard Hülsen, R. N. Bosley, Claire Ortiz Hill, J. Hund, Kenneth G. Ferguson, Maía Frápolli, F. Widebäck, Peter øhrstrøm, and Nino B. Cocchiarella
    History and Philosophy of Logic 17 (1-2): 85-119. 1996.
    A. Kenny, Frege, an introduction to the founder of modern analytic philosophy. London:Penguin, 1995. viii-h223pp. £7.99 T. Willamson, Vagueness. London:Routledge, 1994. xiii-f-325 pp. £35.00 TOM BU...
  •  160
    Harmony and autonomy in classical logic
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 29 (2): 123-154. 2000.
    Michael Dummett and Dag Prawitz have argued that a constructivist theory of meaning depends on explicating the meaning of logical constants in terms of the theory of valid inference, imposing a constraint of harmony on acceptable connectives. They argue further that classical logic, in particular, classical negation, breaks these constraints, so that classical negation, if a cogent notion at all, has a meaning going beyond what can be exhibited in its inferential use. I argue that Dummett gives …Read more
  •  48
    Saving Truth from Paradox, by Hartry Field
    Mind 119 (473): 215-219. 2010.
    (No abstract is available for this citation)
  •  17
    A survey of the life of Hugh MacColl (1837-1909)
    with Michael Astroh and Ivor Grattan-Guinness
    Philosophia Scientiae 15 7-29. 2011.
    Introduction Contrary to a widespread assumption the modern history of modal logic did not start with C. I. Lewis’ Survey of Symbolic Logic [Lewis 1918]. His eminent work was preceded by some 20 years by H. MacColl’s fifth article on ‘The Calculus of Equivalent Statements’. This article was read at the London Mathematical Society on 12 November 1896. Some months later it was published in the Society’s Proceedings [MacColl 1896-1897]. During the following years MacColl presented his logic prim...
  •  66
    Richard Kilvington and the Theory of Obligations
    Vivarium 53 (2-4): 391-404. 2015.
    Kretzmann and Spade were led by Richard Kilvington’s proposed revisions to the rules of obligations in his discussion of the 47th sophism in his Sophismata to claim that the purpose of obligational disputations was the same as that of counterfactual reasoning. Angel d’Ors challenged this interpretation, realising that the reason for Kilvington’s revision was precisely that he found the art of obligation unsuited to the kind of reasoning which lay at the heart of the sophismatic argument. In his …Read more
  •  13
    Epistemic Logic in the Later Middle Ages
    Philosophical Books 36 (2): 102-104. 1995.
  •  67
    Necessary truth and proof
    Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy 51 (121): 47-67. 2010.
    What makes necessary truths true? I argue that all truth supervenes on how things are, and that necessary truths are no exception. What makes them true are proofs. But if so, the notion of proof needs to be generalized to include verification-transcendent proofs, proofs whose correctness exceeds our ability to verify it. It is incumbent on me, therefore, to show that arguments, such as Dummett's, that verification- truth is not compatible with the theory of meaning, are mistaken. The answer is t…Read more
  •  8
    Language and Thought
    Philosophical Books 25 (3): 177-179. 1984.
  •  100
    Insolubilia and the fallacy secundum quid et simpliciter
    with Catarina Dutilh Novaes
    Vivarium 46 (2): 175-191. 2008.
    Thomas Bradwardine makes much of the fact that his solution to the insolubles is in accordance with Aristotle's diagnosis of the fallacy in the Liar paradox as that of secundum quid et simpliciter. Paul Spade, however, claims that this invocation of Aristotle by Bradwardine is purely "honorary" in order to confer specious respectability on his analysis and give it a spurious weight of authority. Our answer to Spade follows Bradwardine's response to the problem of revenge: any proposition saying …Read more
  •  12
    In defence of the dog: Response to Restall
    In S. Rahman J. Symons (ed.), Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, Kluwer Academic Publisher. pp. 175--180. 2004.
  •  26
    The liar and the new t-schema
    Discusiones Filosóficas 11 (17): 119-137. 2010.
    Desde que Tarski publicó su estudio sobreel concepto de verdad en los años 30, hasido una práctica ortodoxa el considerarque t oda i nst anci a del esquema T esverdadera. Sin embargo, algunas instanciasdel esquema son falsas. Éstas incluyen lasi nst anci as paradój i cas ej empl i f i cadaspor la oración del mentiroso. Aquí sedemuestra que un esquema mejor permiteun tratamiento uniforme de la verdad enel que las paradojas semánticas resultanser simplemente falsas.Si nc e Ta r s ki publ i s he d …Read more
  •  18
    These are two of only three medieval treatises known to the editors explicitly devoted to discussion of concepts. That is not to deny that other works treat extensively of concepts among other matters.
  •  62
    Field's Paradox and Its Medieval Solution
    History and Philosophy of Logic 31 (2): 161-176. 2010.
    Hartry Field's revised logic for the theory of truth in his new book, Saving Truth from Paradox , seeking to preserve Tarski's T-scheme, does not admit a full theory of negation. In response, Crispin Wright proposed that the negation of a proposition is the proposition saying that some proposition inconsistent with the first is true. For this to work, we have to show that this proposition is entailed by any proposition incompatible with the first, that is, that it is the weakest proposition inco…Read more
  •  88
    Self-reference and validity
    Synthese 42 (2). 1979.
  •  46
    John Buridan’s Theory of Consequence and His Octagons of Opposition
    In J.-Y. Beziau & Dale Jacquette (eds.), Around and Beyond the Square of Opposition, Birkhäuser. pp. 93--110. 2012.
    One of the manuscripts of Buridan’s Summulae contains three figures, each in the form of an octagon. At each node of each octagon there are nine propositions. Buridan uses the figures to illustrate his doctrine of the syllogism, revising Aristotle's theory of the modal syllogism and adding theories of syllogisms with propositions containing oblique terms (such as ‘man’s donkey’) and with ‘propositions of non-normal construction’ (where the predicate precedes the copula). O-propositions of non-no…Read more