University of Oxford
Faculty of Philosophy
DPhil, 1978
St Andrews, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Interest
Medieval Logic
  •  48
    Aristotle and Łukasiewicz on Existential Import
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1 (3): 535--544. 2015.
    Jan Lukasiewicz's treatise on Aristotle's Syllogistic, published in the 1950s, has been very influential in framing contemporary understanding of Aristotle's logical systems. However, Lukasiewicz's interpretation is based on a number of tendentious claims, not least, the claim that the syllogistic was intended to apply only to non-empty terms. I show that this interpretation is not true to Aristotle's text and that a more coherent and faithful interpretation admits empty terms while maintaining …Read more
  •  8
    Logical pluralism is the claim that different accounts of validity can be equally correct. Beall and Restall have recently defended this position. Validity is a matter of truth-preservation over cases, they say: the conclusion should be true in every case in which the premises are true. Each logic specifies a class of cases, but differs over which cases should be considered. I show that this account of logic is incoherent. Validity indeed is truth-preservation, provided this is properly understood.…Read more
  •  81
    General-Elimination Stability
    Studia Logica 105 (2): 361-405. 2017.
    General-elimination harmony articulates Gentzen’s idea that the elimination-rules are justified if they infer from an assertion no more than can already be inferred from the grounds for making it. Dummett described the rules as not only harmonious but stable if the E-rules allow one to infer no more and no less than the I-rules justify. Pfenning and Davies call the rules locally complete if the E-rules are strong enough to allow one to infer the original judgement. A method is given of generatin…Read more
  • J. NORMAN and R. SYLVAN "Directions in relevant logic" (review)
    History and Philosophy of Logic 12 (2): 254. 1991.
  •  4
    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...
  •  20
    Hugh MacColl and the algebra of strict implication
    Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic 3 59-84. 1998.
  •  204
    In this book, Stephen Read sets out to rescue logic from its undeserved reputation as an inflexible, dogmatic discipline by demonstrating that its technicalities and processes are founded on assumptions which are themselves amenable to philosophical investigation. He examines the fundamental principles of consequence, logical truth and correct inference within the context of logic, and shows that the principles by which we delineate consequences are themselves not guaranteed free from error. Cen…Read more
  •  37
    Reflections on Anselm and Gaunilo
    International Philosophical Quarterly 21 (4): 437-438. 1981.
  •  27
    Burgess on relevance: a fallacy indeed
    Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 24 (4): 473-481. 1983.
  •  14
    Book review (review)
    History and Philosophy of Logic 14 (1): 109-132. 1993.
    Gabriel Nuchelmans, Dilemmatic arguments. Towards a history of their logic and rhetoric. Amsterdam, New York, Oxford, Tokyo:North-Holland, 1991. 152pp. No price stated Francis P. Dinneen, Peter of Spain:language in dispute. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1990. xxxix + 271 pp. Hfl. 110/$58.00 Charles H. Manekin, The logic of Gersonides. A translation of Sefer ha-heqqesh ha-yashar of Rabbi Levi ben Gershom with introduction, commentary and analytical glossary. Dordr…Read more
  •  72
    Paradox, Closure and Indirect Speech Reports
    Logica Universalis 9 (2): 237-251. 2015.
    Bradwardine’s solution to the the logical paradoxes depends on the idea that every sentence signifies many things, and its truth depends on things’ being wholly as it signifies. This idea is underpinned by his claim that a sentence signifies everything that follows from what it signifies. But the idea that signification is closed under entailment appears too strong, just as logical omniscience is unacceptable in the logic of knowledge. What is needed is a more restricted closure principle. A clu…Read more
  •  91
    Intentionality: Meinongianism and the medievals
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (3). 2004.
    Intentional verbs create three different problems: problems of non-existence, of indeterminacy, and of failure of substitutivity. Meinongians tackle the first problem by recognizing non-existent objects; so too did many medieval logicians. Meinongians and the medievals approach the problem of indeterminacy differently, the former diagnosing an ellipsis for a propositional complement, the latter applying their theory directly to non-propositional complements. The evidence seems to favour the Mein…Read more
  •  62
    Logical consequence as truth-preservation
    Logique and Analyse 183 (4): 479-493. 2003.
    t is often suggested that truth-preservation is insufficient for logical consequence, and that consequence needs to satisfy a further condition of relevance. Premises and conclusion in a valid consequence must be relevant to one another, and truth-preservation is too coarse-grained a notion to guarantee that. Thus logical consequence is the intersection of truth-preservation and relevance. This situation has the absurd consequence that one might concede that the conclusion of an arg…Read more
  •  1
    Truth, Signification and Paradox
    In T. Achourioti, H. Galinon, J. Martínez Fernández & K. Fujimoto (eds.), Unifying the Philosophy of Truth, Imprint: Springer. pp. 393-408. 2015.
    Thomas Bradwardine's solution to the semantic paradoxes, presented in his Insolubilia written in Oxford in the early 1320s, turns on two main principles: that a proposition is true only if things are wholly as it signifies; and that signification is closed under consequence. After exploring the background in Walter Burley's account of the signification of propositions, the question is considered of the extent to which Bradwardine's theory is compatible with the distribution of truth over conjunc…Read more
  •  108
    Hypertasks
    with Peter Clark
    Synthese 61 (3). 1984.
  •  8
  •  117
    General-Elimination Harmony and the Meaning of the Logical Constants
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 39 (5): 557-576. 2010.
    Inferentialism claims that expressions are meaningful by virtue of rules governing their use. In particular, logical expressions are autonomous if given meaning by their introduction-rules, rules specifying the grounds for assertion of propositions containing them. If the elimination-rules do no more, and no less, than is justified by the introduction-rules, the rules satisfy what Prawitz, following Lorenzen, called an inversion principle. This connection between rules leads to a general form of…Read more
  •  18
    This book presents the very latest research on the medieval use of sophisms in logical and grammatical investigation by twenty-three of the leading experts in Europe and beyond. Important insights into the genre of sophismatic treatises have been gained only very recently, and the organisation of the European Symposium on this topic in 1990 led to a concentration of research and evaluation of insights. The papers are divided into three groups: one covers textual study and analysis of the role of…Read more
  •  30
    Miller, Bradwardine and the Truth
    Discusiones Filosóficas 12 (18): 229-35. 2011.
    In his article "Verdades antiguas y modernas" (in the same issue, pp. 207-27), David Miller criticised Thomas Bradwardine’s theory of truth and signification and my defence of Bradwardine’s application of it to the semantic paradoxes. Much of Miller’s criticism is sympathetic and helpful in gaining a better understanding of the relationship between Bradwardine’s proposed solution to the paradoxes and Alfred Tarski’s. But some of Miller’s criticisms betray a misunderstanding of crucial aspects of…Read more
  •  57
    Conditionals and the Ramsey Test
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 69 (1). 1995.
  •  61
    Plural signification and the Liar paradox
    Philosophical Studies 145 (3): 363-375. 2009.
    In recent years, speech-act theory has mooted the possibility that one utterance can signify a number of different things. This pluralist conception of signification lies at the heart of Thomas Bradwardine’s solution to the insolubles, logical puzzles such as the semantic paradoxes, presented in Oxford in the early 1320s. His leading assumption was that signification is closed under consequence, that is, that a proposition signifies everything which follows from what it signifies. Then any propo…Read more
  •  8
    Articulating Medieval Logic, by Terence Parsons (review)
    Mind 124 (496): 1353-1356. 2015.
  •  50
    A survey of the life of Hugh MacColl (1837-1909)
    with Michael Astroh and Ivor Grattan-Guinness
    History and Philosophy of Logic 22 (2): 81-98. 2001.
    The Scottish logician Hugh MacColl is well known for his innovative contributions to modal and nonclassical logics. However, until now little biographical information has been available about his academic and cultural background, his personal and professional situation, and his position in the scientific community of the Victorian era. The present article reports on a number of recent findings
  •  33