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Privacy as a supra-regime value : the ethical argument for a new evolution of regime values to better protect financial privacy in local governmentsIn Nicole M. Elias & Amanda M. Olejarski (eds.), Ethics for contemporary bureaucrats: navigating constitutional crossroads, Routledge. 2020.
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Solipsism and the selfIn José L. Zalabardo (ed.), Wittgenstein's Tractatus logico-philosophicus: a critical guide, Cambridge University Press. 2024.
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12Early Analytic Philosophy: From Frege to RamseyRoutledge. 2018.In this book, Michael Potter offers a fresh and compelling portrait of the birth and first several decades of analytic philosophy, one of the most important periods in philosophy’s long history. He focuses on the period between the publication of Gottlob Frege’s _Begriffsschrift _in 1879 and Frank Ramsey’s death in 1930. Potter--one of the most influential writers on late 19 th and early 20 th century philosophy--presents a deep but accessible account of the break with Absolute Idealism and Neo-…Read more
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14Wittgenstein and the External World ProgrammeIn Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: 100 Years After the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Springer Verlag. pp. 223-233. 2023.I trace the history of Wittgenstein’s engagement with Russell’s external world programme from 1913 to 1929.
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16Reason's Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap (review)Erkenntnis 56 (2): 264-268. 2000.
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23Intuition and Reflection in ArithmeticAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 73 63-98. 1999.[Michael Potter] If arithmetic is not analytic in Kant's sense, what is its subject matter? Answers to this question can be classified into four sorts according as they posit logic, experience, thought or the world as the source, but in each case we need to appeal to some further process if we are to generate a structure rich enough to represent arithmetic as standardly practised. I speculate that this further process is our reflection on the subject matter already obtained. This suggestion seem…Read more
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46Frege: The Pure Business of Being True, by Charles TravisMind. forthcoming.Travis is evidently a self-conscious prose stylist, by which I mean that he pays attention to the style of his prose, not that this style is worth emulating. On.
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15Classical Arithmetic is Part of Intuitionistic ArithmeticGrazer Philosophische Studien 55 (1): 127-141. 1998.One of Michael Dummett's most striking contributions to the philosophy of mathematics is an argument to show that the correct logic to apply in mathematical reasoning is not classical but intuitionistic. In this article I wish to cast doubt on Dummett's conclusion by outlining an alternative, motivated by consideration of a well-known result of Kurt Gödel, to the standard view of the relationship between classical and intuitionistic arithmetic. I shall suggest that it is hard to find a perspecti…Read more
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16Taming the Infinite1 (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (4): 609-619. 1996.
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49Intuitive and Regressive Justifications†Philosophia Mathematica 28 (3): 385-394. 2020.In his recent book, Quine, New Foundations, and the Philosophy of Set Theory, Sean Morris attempts to rehabilitate Quine’s NF as a possible foundation for mathematics. I explain why he does not succeed.
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17Propositions in Wittgenstein and RamseyIn Gabriele Mras, Paul Weingartner & Bernhard Ritter (eds.), Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics: Proceedings of the 41st International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium, De Gruyter. pp. 375-384. 2019.
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35Foundations Without Foundationalism: A Case for Second-Order LogicPhilosophical Quarterly 44 (174): 127-129. 1994.
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Propositions in Wittgenstein and RamseyIn Gabriele Mras, Paul Weingartner & Bernhard Ritter (eds.), Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics: Proceedings of the 41st International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium, De Gruyter. pp. 375-383. 2019.
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31Wittgenstein's pre—Tractatus manuscripts: a new appraisalIn Peter M. Sullivan & Michael D. Potter (eds.), Wittgenstein's Tractatus: history and interpretation, Oxford University Press. pp. 13-39. 2013.
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15Recarving Content: Hale's Final ProposalProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (3): 301-304. 2002.
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211Taming the Infinite (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (4): 609-619. 1996.A critique of Shaughan Lavine's attempt in /Understanding the Infinite/ to reduce talk about the infinite to finitely comprehensible terms.
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55Recarving content: Hale's final proposalProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (3). 2002.A follow-up, showing why Bob Hale's revision of his notion of weak sense is still inadequate.
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100Abstraction by recarvingProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 101 (3). 2001.Explains why Bob Hale's proposed notion of weak sense cannot explain the analyticity of Hume's principle as he claims. Argues that no other notion of the sort Hale wants could do the job either.
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254Mathematical Knowledge (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2007.What is the nature of mathematical knowledge? Is it anything like scientific knowledge or is it sui generis? How do we acquire it? Should we believe what mathematicians themselves tell us about it? Are mathematical concepts innate or acquired? Eight new essays offer answers to these and many other questions.
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89The Cambridge Companion to Frege (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2012.Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) was unquestionably one of the most important philosophers of all time. He trained as a mathematician, and his work in philosophy started as an attempt to provide an explanation of the truths of arithmetic, but in the course of this attempt he not only founded modern logic but also had to address fundamental questions in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. Frege is generally seen (along with Russell and Wittgenstein) as one of the fathers of the analytic …Read more
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42Critical Notice: David Lewis's Parts of ClassesPhilosophical Quarterly 43 (172). 1993."Parts of Classes" tries to separate the unproblematic part of set theory (mereology) from the problematic part (singletons). In the process several things get lost: an empty set which is really empty; a satisfying account of the paradoxes; and the motivation for the iterative conception of set. Lewis' attack on the coherence of singletons makes it puzzling what he sees his book as doing. Nor is it clear that mereology is as ontologically innocent as Lewis would have us believe.
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Mathematics |
20th Century Philosophy |