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9Voids, Aliens, and the Usual SuspectsIn Margit Gaffal (ed.), Language, Truth and Democracy: Essays in Honour of Jesús Padilla Gálvez, De Gruyter. pp. 45-64. 2020.
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119The Long and Winding RoadGrazer Philosophische Studien 98 (1): 75-89. 2021.Following its welcome revival in the late twentieth century, metaphysics in the analytic tradition has succumbed to decadence, with an astonishing variety of outlandish and extreme positions or “metaphysical follies” being taken seriously. This has caused an inevitable backlash among more scientifically-minded philosophers and incurred the scorn of scientists. Much of the reason for this is the blithe ignoring of empirical science by armchair metaphysicians. The roles of empirical knowledge in g…Read more
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18Stefan Roski, Bolzano's Conception of Grounding, Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 2017, ix + 269 pp., €59.00, ISBN 978‐3‐465‐03971‐6 (review)Dialectica 71 (4): 669-671. 2017.
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19Review. Psychologism: a case study in the sociology of philosophical knowledgeBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (3): 439-443. 1997.
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28Rescher on nomic necessityPhilosophical Studies 28 (3). 1975.(2) All X’s have to be Y’s is to be brought out by glossing the latter as a stronger, nomological generalization involving counterfactural claims, thus: (3) All X’s are Y’s and further if any z that is not an X were an X, then z would be a Y. Professor Rescher points out that while (1) is equivalent to its contrapositive..
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95Lewy on C. I. Lewis and EntailmentAnalysis 38 (3). 1978.In "meaning and modality" lewy claims the only ground for rejecting disjunctive syllogism as acceptable for entailment is rejection of bivalence. Examining lewis's 'proofs' of the paradoxes of strict implication he suggests the proof of 'if a then (b or not-B)' suppresses a premiss, Restoration of which blocks the paradox, Whereas the proof of 'if (a and not-A) then b' cannot be so blocked. But the paradoxes are dual, So he should have treated them dually by restoring a suppressed disjunct in th…Read more
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12Kierkegaard: a biographical introduction, by Ronald GrimsleyJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 5 (1): 93-95. 1974.
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21Kierkegaards theory of actionJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 7 (2): 111-122. 1976.
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5Leśniewski and MereologyIn Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska & Ángel Garrido (eds.), The Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present, Springer- Birkhauser,. pp. 337-359. 2018.This paper surveys mereology, the theory of parts and wholes, focussing on its origins in Leśniewski, and noting its intended employment as a surrogate for set theory. We examine parallel and independent work by Whitehead, Leonard and Goodman, and outline the subsequent adventures of mereology, both in its formal guises and in its now intensive application within philosophical ontology.
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6Czesław Lejewski: Propagator of Lvov-Warsaw Ideas AbroadIn Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska & Ángel Garrido (eds.), The Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present, Springer- Birkhauser,. pp. 499-504. 2018.Czesław Lejewski studied in Warsaw before the Second World War, after which he settled in England and resumed an academic career, becoming Professor of Philosophy in Manchester. His writings, all articles, continue and extend the ideas of his teachers, especially Stanisław Leśniewski in logic and Tadeusz Kotarbiński in metaphysics.
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7Stanisław Leśniewski: Original and Uncompromising Logical GeniusIn Urszula Wybraniec-Skardowska & Ángel Garrido (eds.), The Lvov-Warsaw School. Past and Present, Springer- Birkhauser,. pp. 209-221. 2018.Stanisław Leśniewski was one of the two originators and drivers of the Warsaw School of logic. This article describes his work chronologically, from his early philosophical work in Lvov to his highly original logical systems of protothetic, ontology and mereology. His struggles to overcome logical antinomies, his absolute commitment to logical clarity and precision, and his antipathy towards set theory made his nominalistic approach to logic among the most original of the twentieth century, whil…Read more
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Ch. 23. Metaphysics in analytic philosophyIn Michael Beaney (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of The History of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2013.
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151Drei Briten in Kakanien: Axel Bühler im Gespräch mit dem "Seminar for Austro-German-Philosophy"Information Philosophie 3 22-33. 1987.The three young philosophers Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith have become well-known in the last few years especially in German-speaking analytical philosophy and phenomenology circles. This is on the one hand as a result of their historical and systematic philosophical work; but it is also because of the provocative way in which they represent their philosophy. Because they often appear in threes, they have become known as the "gang of three" or "three musketeers" or even – and this…Read more
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Meinong on mindIn Sandra Lapointe (ed.), Philosophy of mind in the nineteenth century, Routledge, Taylor & Francs Group. 2018.
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Radical contingentism, or; why not even numbers exist necessarilyIn Ivette Fred Rivera & Jessica Leech (eds.), Being Necessary: Themes of Ontology and Modality from the Work of Bob Hale., Oxford University Press. 2018.
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Twardowski on judgmentIn Brian Andrew Ball & Christoph Schuringa (eds.), The Act and Object of Judgment: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives, Routledge. 2019.
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3WaysKriterion - Journal of Philosophy 1 (7): 12-15. 1994.ABSTRACT There is more than one way to kill a cat. What are ways? Very little has been written about them in general, but they appear at crucial places in many philosophical discussions. Clarity over the ontology of ways could help in several areas of philosophy. After indicating where ways have been mentioned, I discuss briefly the corresponding linguistic feature, adverbs of manner, before outlining three theories: a Platonistic one making ways a complex kind of function, a Davidsonian one in …Read more
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11Samuel Alexander’s CategoriesIn A. R. J. Fisher (ed.), Marking the Centenary of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 149-164. 2021.This chapter is concerned with the second of the four books of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time, and Deity, which bears the title “The Categories.” It occupies 164 pages, a fifth of the total. While most systematic metaphysicians treat of categories in some form, it is rare for one to discuss the topic at such length: what we have is practically a treatise within a treatise. Alexander understands categories to be those qualities of space-time that are pervasive and fundamental. A comparative expos…Read more
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11Formal ontology combines two ideas, one originating with Husserl, the other with Frege: that of ontology of the formal aspects of all objects, irrespective of their particular nature, and ontology pursued by employing the tools of modern formal disciplines, notably logic and semantics. These two traditions have converged in recent years and this is the first collection to encompass them as a whole in a single volume. It assembles essays from authors around the world already widely known for thei…Read more
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234VérifacteursEtudes de Philosophie 9 104-138. 2008-2011.French translation of "Truth-Makers" (1984). A realist theory of truth for a class of sentence holds that there are entities in virtue of which these sentences are true or false. We call such entities ‘truthmakers’ and contend that those for a wide range of sentences about the real world are moments (dependent particulars). Since moments are unfamiliar we provide a definition and a brief philosophical history, anchoring them in our ontology by showing that they are objects of perception. The co…Read more
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538Derrida degree: A question of honourThe Times 9 (May 9). 1992.A letter to The Times of London, May 9, 1992 protesting the Cambridge University proposal to award an honorary degree to M. Jacques Derrida.
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8Mark Steiner the applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (1): 181-184. 2001.
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70UnsaturatednessGrazer Philosophische Studien 14 (1): 73-95. 1981.Frege's obscure key concept of the unsaturatedness of functions is clarified with the help of the concepts of dependent and independent parts and foundation relations used by Husserl in describing the ontology of complex wholes. Sentential unity in Frege, Husserl and Wittgenstein: all have a similar explanation. As applied to linguistic expressions, the terms 'unsaturated' and 'incomplete' are ambiguous: they may mean the ontological property of Unselbständigkeit, inability to exist alone, or th…Read more
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34The Context of the Phenomenological MovementPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 44 (3): 426-428. 1984.
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5How to Do Things with ThingsIn Bruno Leclercq, Sébastien Richard & Denis Seron (eds.), Objects and Pseudo-Objects Ontological Deserts and Jungles from Brentano to Carnap, De Gruyter. pp. 3-16. 2015.
Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland