University of Oxford
Faculty of Philosophy
DPhil, 1978
St Andrews, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Interest
Medieval Logic
  •  22
    Identity and harmony
    Analysis 64 (2): 113-119. 2004.
  • Homophone Semantik für die relevante Aussagenlogik
    Conceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie 23 (59): 77-89. 1989.
  •  140
    Hairier than Putnam Thought
    with Crispin Wright
    Analysis 45 (1). 1985.
    " In 'Vagueness and Alternative Logic' (Realism and Reason, Cambridge 1983, pp. 271-86, especially 285-6), Hilary Putnam puts forward a suggestion for a formal treatment of the logic of vagueness. … Putnam admits that, at the time of writing, he had not thought this idea through. What will already be apparent to the alert reader is that, in order to disclose serious difficulties for the proposal, Putnam would not have had to think far."
  •  92
    Harmonic inferentialism and the logic of identity
    Review of Symbolic Logic 9 (2): 408-420. 2016.
    Inferentialism claims that the rules for the use of an expression express its meaning without any need to invoke meanings or denotations for them. Logical inferentialism endorses inferentialism specically for the logical constants. Harmonic inferentialism, as the term is introduced here, usually but not necessarily a subbranch of logical inferentialism, follows Gentzen in proposing that it is the introduction-rules whch give expressions their meaning and the elimination-rules should accord harmo…Read more
  • Conditionals and the Ramsey Test
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 69 47-64. 1995.
    Much thinking about conditionals over the last twenty years has been stimulated by the so-called 'Ramsey test'. Ramsey's idea was simple, but appealing. One should believe a conditional, 'if A then B' if one would come to believe B if one were to add A to one's stock of beliefs. The Ramsey test does not justify treating conditionals with true antecedent and consequent as true, and accepting it does not require one to accept either the similarity or probability theories of the conditional. It cer…Read more
  •  1
    A. Broadie, "The Circle of John Mair" (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 37 (46): 120. 1987.
  •  21
    Preface
    Philosophia Scientiae 15 1-5. 2011.
    This volume would not exist without the help of all those who contributed to the organisation of the MacColl centenary meeting (Boulogne-sur-Mer, 9--10 October 2009). We are especially grateful to Bruno Béthouart, Jacques Dubucs, Gerhard Heinzmann, and Shahid Rahman. We would also like to thank Michael Astroh, Sandrine Avril, Anny Bégard, Christian Berner, Pierre-Édouard Bour, Peggy Cardon, Emmanuelle Jablonsky, Christian Mac Coll, Tony Mann, Gildas Nzokou, Max Papyle, Bernard Quéh...
  •  11
    The Philosophy of Thomas Reid: A Collection of Essays (edited book)
    Wiley-Blackwell. 2003.
    Thomas Reid was one of the greatest philosophers of the eighteenth century and a contemporary of Kant's. This volume is part of a new wave of international interest in Reid from a new generation of scholars. The volume opens with an introduction to Reid's life and work, including biographical material previously little known. A classic essay by Reid himself - 'Of Power' - is then reproduced, in which he sets out his distinctive account of causality and agency. This is followed by ten original es…Read more
  •  65
    Proof-theoretic validity
    In Colin R. Caret & Ole T. Hjortland (eds.), Foundations of Logical Consequence, Oxford University Press. pp. 136-158. 2015.
    The idea of proof-theoretic validity originated in the work of Gentzen, when he suggested that the meaning of each logical expression was encapsulated in its introduction-rules. The idea was developed by Prawitz and Dummett, but came under attack by Prior under the soubriquet 'analytic validity'. Logical truths and logical consequences are deemed analytically valid by virtue of following, in a way which the present chapter clarifies, from the meaning of the logical constants. But different logic…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.
  •  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
  •  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
  •  89
    Paradoxes of Signification
    Vivarium 54 (4): 335-355. 2016.
    _ Source: _Volume 54, Issue 4, pp 335 - 355 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 consequentia…Read more
  •  70
    Symmetry and Paradox
    History and Philosophy of Logic 27 (4): 307-318. 2006.
    The ?no???no? paradox (so-called by Sorensen) consists of a pair of propositions each of which says of the other that it is false. It is not immediately paradoxical, since it has a solution in which one proposition is true, the other false. However, that is itself paradoxical, since there is no clear ground for determining which is which. The two propositions should have the same truth-value. The paper shows how a proposal by the medieval thinker Thomas Bradwardine solves not only the Liar parad…Read more
  •  116
    Peirce's example puts another nail in the coffin of the truth-functionality thesis. Conditionals are not truth-functional.
  •  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
  •  31
    Validity and the intensional sense of 'and'
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 59 (3). 1981.
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  94
    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
  • J. NORMAN and R. SYLVAN "Directions in relevant logic" (review)
    History and Philosophy of Logic 12 (2): 254. 1991.
  •  342
    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
  •  20
    Hugh MacColl and the algebra of strict implication
    Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic 3 59-84. 1998.
  •  223
    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
  •  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...
  •  37
    Reflections on Anselm and Gaunilo
    International Philosophical Quarterly 21 (4): 437-438. 1981.