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11Who's Afraid of Higher-Order Logic?Grazer Philosophische Studien 44 (1): 253-264. 1993.Suppose you hold the following opinions in the philosophy of logic. First-order predicate logic is expressively inadequate to regiment concepts of mathematic and natural language; logicism is plausible and attractive; set theory as an adjunct to logic is unnatural and ontologically extravagant; humanly usable languages are finite in lexicon and syntax; it is worth striving for a Tarskian semantics for mathematics; there are no Platonic abstract objects. Then you are probably already in cognitive…Read more
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Nominalism in PolandIn Jan Wolenski, Roberto Poli & Francesco Coniglione (eds.), Polish Scientific Philosophy: The Lvov-Warsaw School, Rodopi. pp. 207-231. 1993.
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32Abstraktion ohne abstrakte GegenstandeZeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 66 (1): 114-129. 2012.
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Truth on a Tight Budget: Tarski and NominalismIn Douglas Patterson (ed.), New Essays on Tarski and Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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191Extended SimplesThe Monist 87 (3): 371-384. 2004.I argue that the assumptions that physically basic things are either mereologically atomic, or that they are continuous and there are no atoms, both face difficult conceptual problems. Both views tend to presuppose a largely unquestioned assumption, that things have parts corresponding to the geometric parts of the regions they occupy. To avoid these problems I propose a third view, that physically simple things occupy a finite volume without themselves having parts. This view is examined enough…Read more
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98Metaphysical systematics: A lesson from Whitehead (review)Erkenntnis 48 (2-3): 377-393. 1998.Despite its lack of influence in analytical philosophy, and independently of its content as a process philosophy, Whitehead's system in Process and Reality affords a valuable lesson on how to pursue revisionary systematic metaphysics. This paper argues the case generally for metaphysical revision and system, describes the structure of Whitehead's categorial scheme, endorses his idea of an ultimate which is not an entity, and outlines an alternative, “digital” ultimate or basis composed of severa…Read more
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36Armstrong and TropesIn Francesco Federico Calemi (ed.), Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong, De Gruyter. pp. 71-84. 2016.
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41The Importance of Joint RespectPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1): 217-221. 1996.George and I have been discussing Dividing Reality. It was my Canadian friend whose native language is supposed to have so many different words for snow and ice who suggested I was wasting my time with him and should try George. After all, he pointed out, George’s environment is so different from even the Arctic that we'd be getting a truly alien perspective. He at least understands ‘gricular', in fact he'd be happy to see more gricular things about, they might well be edible. George does not se…Read more
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Structure and AbstractionIn Matthias Schirn (ed.), The Philosophy of Mathematics Today: Papers From a Conference Held in Munich From June 28 to July 4,1993, Clarendon Press. 1998.
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8Criss-crossing a Philosophical LandscapeGrazer Philosophische Studien 42 229-259. 1992.By considering a wide and expressly classified range of examples from natural and logical languages, the attempt is made to isolate from other concomitants the features of existential sentences which make them existential. One such concomitant is the imputation of singularity. There are many ways to say something exists, and their relationships are charted. It is denied that there is anything in reality called existence, or any special existential facts.
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30Meaning and languageIn Barry Smith & David Woodruff Smith (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Husserl (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy), Cambridge University Press. pp. 106. 1995.
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1What numbers really areIn R. E. Auxier & L. E. Hahn (eds.), The Philosophy of Michael Dummett, Open Court. pp. 229--247. 2007.
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1Lesniewski and Ontological CommitmentIn Denis Miéville & D. Vernant (eds.), Stanislaw Lesniewski Aujourd'hui, Université De Grenoble. pp. 103-119. 1995.
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12Philosophy and Logic in central Europe from Bolzano to TarskiKluwer Academic Publishers. 1992.This book with an introduction by Witold Marciszewski, views the history of philosophy and logic from 1837 to 1939 from the perspective of the cradle of modern exact philosophy - Central Europe. In a series of case studies, it illuminates the developments in this region, most notably in Austria and Poland, examining thinkers such as Bolzano, Brentano, Meinong, Husserl, Twardowski, Lesniewski, and Tarski, as well as the logicians like Frege and Russell with whom they bore a close resemblance. The…Read more
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20Approaching the alethic modal hexagon of oppositionLogica Universalis 6 (1-2): 109-118. 2012.Modal logic like many others sustains a hexagon of opposition, with the two “additional” vertices expressing contingency and non-contingency. We first illustrate hexagons of opposition generally by treating them as cut-down entailment lattices with order distinctions among multiple arguments suppressed. We then approach the modal case by treating it heuristically as a particular case of the hexagon for quantified propositions. Historically, possibility and contingency were sometimes confused: we…Read more
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179Higher-order quantification and ontological commitmentDialectica 51 (4). 1997.George Boolos's employment of plurals to give an ontologically innocent interpretation of monadic higher‐order quantification continues and extends a minority tradition in thinking about quantification and ontological commitment. An especially prominent member of that tradition is Stanislaw Leśniewski, and shall first draw attention to this work and its relation to that of Boolos. Secondly I shall stand up briefly for plurals as logically respectable expressions, while noting their limitations i…Read more
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46New Categories for Formal OntologyGrazer Philosophische Studien 49 (1): 77-99. 1994.What primitive concepts does formal ontology require? Forsaking as too indirect the linguistic way of discerning the categories of being, this paper considers what primitives might be required for representing things in themselves (noumena) and representations of them in a thoroughly crafted large autonomous multi-purpose database. Leaving logical concepts and material ontology aside, the resulting 32 categories in 13 families range from the obvious (identity/difference, existence/non-existence)…Read more
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36Unless you live in the world of theatre or film or politics or sport, you rarely get to meet people whom you can truly describe as “larger than life”. Academia has more than its fair share of boring people: being clever does not mean being interesting. But one academic I met on several occasions before he died was definitely larger than life, and he was Polish. He was Father Józef Maria Bocheński.
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11Tractatus Mereologico-Philosophicus?Grazer Philosophische Studien 28 (1): 165-186. 1986.The philosophies of late Brentano and early Wittgenstein can be brought closer in two ways. One way discovers a surprising amount of part-whole theory in the Tractatus if we see states of affairs (not wholly wilfully) as thinglike rather than factlike. This throws up a modal analogue to Chisholm's entia successiva in the form of situations. The other way sees all propositions as truth-functions of existential propositions, supporting Brentano's view that existentials are primary, and incidentall…Read more
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Evidence in FavourIn Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, Oxford University Press. pp. 357. 2003.
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9Meinong, consistency, and the absolute totalityIn Alfred Schramm (ed.), Meinongian Issues in Contemporary Italian Philosophy, De Gruyter. pp. 233-254. 2005.
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23Essay reviewHistory and Philosophy of Logic 15 (2): 227-235. 1994.stanislaw lesniewski, Collected Works, Edited by Stanislaw J. Surma, Jan T. Srzednicki and D. I. Barnett, with an annotated bibliography by V. Frederick Rickey. Warsaw:PWN?Polish Scientific Publishers; and Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer. 2 vols., xvi + 794 pp. $274/£163/Dfl. 480
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15To Be and/or Not to BeIn Lila Haaparanta & Heikki Koskinen (eds.), Categories of Being: Essays on Metaphysics and Logic, Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 241. 2012.
Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland