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14Book 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
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114Paradox, Closure and Indirect Speech ReportsLogica 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
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1Truth, Signification and ParadoxIn 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
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91Intentionality: Meinongianism and the medievalsAustralasian 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
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62Logical consequence as truth-preservationLogique 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
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30Miller, Bradwardine and the TruthDiscusiones 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
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309General-Elimination Harmony and the Meaning of the Logical ConstantsJournal 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
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19This 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
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102Plural signification and the Liar paradoxPhilosophical 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
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50A survey of the life of Hugh MacColl (1837-1909)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
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13Late‐Scholastic and Humanist Theories of the PropositionPhilosophical Books 23 (1): 16-17. 1982.
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33The philosophy of logicIn T. Lupher & T. Adajian (ed.), The Philosophy of Logic : 5 Questions, . pp. 133-41. 2013.Postprint.
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7Book Reviews (review)History and Philosophy of Logic 12 (2): 241-267. 1991.MEDIEVAL LOGICCARLOS A. DUFOUR, Die Lehre der Proprietates Terminorum. Sinn und Referenz in mittelalterlicher Logik. München, Hamden, Wien: Philosophia, 1989. 312 pp. 148 DM.NORMAN KRETZMANN and BARBARA ENSIGN KRETZMANN The Sophismata of Richard Kilvington. Oxford: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 1990. xx + 156 pp. £27.50.LOGIC AND MATHEMATICSSOULEYMANE BACHIR DIAGNE, Boole. Paris: Editions Belin, 1989. 262pp. 75 Ffr.M.-M. TOEPELL, Über die Entstehung von David Hilb…Read more
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316Truthmakers and the disjunction thesisMind 109 (432): 67-80. 2000.The correspondence theory of truth has experienced something of a revival recently in the form of the Truthmaker Axiom: whatever is true, something makes it true. We consider various postulates which have been proposed to characterize truthmaking, in particular, the Disjunction Thesis (DT), that whatever makes a disjunction true must make one or other disjunct true. In conjunction with certain other assumptions, DT leads to triviality. We show that there are elaborations of truthmaking on which …Read more
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83Review of J.c.Beall, Greg Restall, Logical Pluralism (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (5). 2006.
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1Western LogicJournal of the Indian Council for Philosophical Research 27 (1): 13-45. 2010.The editors invited us to write a short paper that draws together the main themes of logic in the Western tradition from the Classical Greeks to the modern period. To make it short we had to make it personal. We set out the themes that seemed to us either the deepest, or the most likely to be helpful for an Indian reader.
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122Completeness and categoricity: Frege, gödel and model theoryHistory and Philosophy of Logic 18 (2): 79-93. 1997.Frege’s project has been characterized as an attempt to formulate a complete system of logic adequate to characterize mathematical theories such as arithmetic and set theory. As such, it was seen to fail by Gödel’s incompleteness theorem of 1931. It is argued, however, that this is to impose a later interpretation on the word ‘complete’ it is clear from Dedekind’s writings that at least as good as interpretation of completeness is categoricity. Whereas few interesting first-order mathematical th…Read more
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4Book Reviews (review)History and Philosophy of Logic 7 (1): 77-117. 1986.MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE LOGICSIMON OF FAVERSHAM, Quaestiones super Libro Elenchorum. Text in Latin with introduction and notes in English, edited by Sten Ebbesen, Thomas Izbicki, John Longeway, Francesco del Punta, Eileen Serene and Eleonore Stump. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984. xiv + 270 pp. $3 1.OO.JACOPO ZABARELLA, De methodis libri quatuor; Liber de regressu. Edited by Cesare Vasoli. Bologna: Editrice CLUEB, 1985. xxxviii+ 193 pp. Lire 57,000.EDITIONSG. W. F. HEGE…Read more
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16Peter of Spain: Summaries of Logic: Text, Translation, Introduction and Notes by Brian P. Copenhaver (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 53 (4): 783-784. 2015.
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132The unity of the factPhilosophy 80 (3): 317-342. 2005.What binds the constituents of a state of affairs together and provides unity to the fact they constitute? I argue that the fact that they are related is basic and fundamental. This is the thesis of Factualism: the world is a world of facts. I draw three corollaries: first, that the Identity of truth is mistaken, in conflating what represents (the proposition) with what is represented (the fact). Secondly, a popular interpretation of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, due to Steinus, whereby false propos…Read more
St Andrews, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Medieval Logic |