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50Tree proofs for syllogisticStudia Logica 48 (4). 1989.This paper presents a tree method for testing the validity of inferences, including syllogisms, in a simple term logic. The method is given in the form of an algorithm and is shown to be sound and complete with respect to the obvious denotational semantics. The primitive logical constants of the system, which is indebted to the logical works of Jevons, Brentano and Lewis Carroll, are term negation, polyadic term conjunction, and functors affirming and denying existence, and use is also made of a…Read more
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70Mind and opacityDialectica 49 (2-4): 131-46. 1995.Where there is mind there is representational opacity, and vice versa. Opacity arises because where there is representation there may be misrepresentation, and the status of the misrepresenting sign or state of the misrepresenting sign‐user can only be characterized via the terms used for a correctly represented object. Opacity is not a blight for naturalism, but must be recognized and exploited if naturalism is to adequately embrace the mental. Opacity is illustrated for language, for the menta…Read more
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490Truth-MakersSwiss Philosophical Preprints. 2009.During the realist revival in the early years of this century, philosophers of various persuasions were concerned to investigate the ontology of truth. That is, whether or not they viewed truth as a correspondence, they were interested in the extent to which one needed to assume the existence of entities serving some role in accounting for the truth of sentences. Certain of these entities, such as the Sätze an sich of Bolzano, the Gedanken of Frege, or the propositions of Russell and Moore, were…Read more
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12Mathematik als wissenschaft der gestaltenIn Reinhard Fabian (ed.), Christian von Ehrenfels: Leben und Werk, Rodopi. pp. 8--112. 1986.
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Whitehead : process and cosmologyIn Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, Routledge. 2009.
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38Linguistic Complexity and Argumentative Unity: A Lvov-Warsaw School SupplementStudies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 36 (1): 101-119. 2014.It is argued that the source of complexity in language is twofold: repetition, and syntactic embedding. The former enables us to return again and again to the same subject across many sentences, and to maintain the coherence of an argument. The latter is governed by two forms of complexification: the functor-argument structure of all languages and the operator-bound-variable mechanism of familiar formal languages. The former is most transparently represented by categorial grammar, and an extensi…Read more
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62Relations and Idealism: On Some Arguments of Hochberg against Trope NominalismDialectica 68 (2): 305-315. 2014.In a recent article, Herbert Hochberg portrays my ontological position, that of a trope nominalist who is sceptical about relational tropes, as deviating into idealism. Since there are few philosophical views I find more repugnant than idealism, I must either resist the accusation or recant. I choose to resist, by showing how relational tropes are not needed as truth-makers for a wide range of truths, and raising the real possibility that they may not be needed at all, without lapsing into eithe…Read more
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25How to Do Things with Things: Brentano’s Reism and its LimitsIn 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.
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44Parts: A Study in OntologyClarendon Press. 1987.The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next…Read more
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483Bocheński and balance: System and history in analytic philosophyStudies in East European Thought 55 (4): 281-297. 2003.Using the work of Józef Bocheski as apositive example, this paper sets out the casefor a balanced use of historical knowledge indoing analytic philosophy. Between the twoextremes of relativizing historicism, whichdenies absolute truth, and arrogant scientism,which denies any constructive role for thehistory of ideas in philosophy, lies a viamedia in which historical reflection onconcepts and their history is placed at theservice of the system of cognitive philosophy.Knowledge of the history of p…Read more
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52Existential PropositionsGrazer Philosophische Studien 42 (1): 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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20New 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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24The Next Best Thing to Sense in BegriffsschriftIn Petr Kotatko & John Biro (eds.), Frege: Sense and Reference one Hundred Years later, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 129--140. 1995.
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103Confounding earlier predictions of naysayers and sceptics, by the beginning of the twenty-first century, metaphysics had re-emerged for the first time in decades as a vital, progressive and exciting branch of philosophy. Although the most strident criticisms came from early analytic philosophers such as Carnap, it is analytical metaphysics that has led the way. But rather than trace the stages of the revival of metaphysics, we consider a spread of contemporary themes which have been especially f…Read more
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35To be and/or not to be the objects of meinong and HusserlIn Leila Haaparanta & Heikki J. Koskinen (eds.), Categories of Being: Essays on Metaphysics and Logic, Oxford University Press. pp. 241. 2012.
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78Leibniz, Whitehead and the Metaphysics of CausationBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 18 (1): 175-177. 2010.This Article does not have an abstract
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229Ramsey, Particulars, and UniversalsTheoria 57 (3): 150-161. 1991.My subject is the arguments brought by Ramsey in his paper “ Universals ” ’ against the generally held distinction between particulars and universals. This paper is provocative, suggestive, and radical, and it is humbling to reflect that its author was just 22 years old when it was published in Mind. As so often with Ramsey, the paper is superficially very easy to follow and hardly requires any introduction other than the imperative, “Read it through”, but underneath the surface are many assumpt…Read more
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22Continuants and Occurrents, ISupplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 74 (1): 59-75. 2000.
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21Whose Fault? The Origins and Evitability of the Analytic–Continental RiftInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 9 (3): 295-311. 2001.This is a broad survey of the chronology of the rift between continental and analytic philosophy, starting in 1899. Whereas at that time there was no discernible divide, as the twentieth century progresses we can see a gradual parting of the ways in which philosophy was done, culminating in a period of maximum separation in 1945-68, followed by some convergence. There is one substantial historical thesis proposed, and facts are adduced from the chronology to back it up: that the divide was never…Read more
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74Logical atomism and its ontological refinement: A defenseIn Kevin Mulligan (ed.), Language, Truth and Ontology, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 157--179. 1991.
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20Parts Study in Ontology: A Study in OntologyOxford University Press UK. 1987.The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is, yet until now there has been no full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. This has far-reaching consequences for our understanding of s…Read more
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98Bolzano on CollectionsGrazer Philosophische Studien 53 (1): 87-108. 1997.Bolzano's theory of collections (Inbegriffe) has usually been taken as a rudimentary set theory. More recently, Frank Krickel has claimed it is a mereology. I find both interpretations wanting. Bolzano's theory is, as I show, extremely broad in scope; it is in fact a general theory of collective entities, including the concrete wholes of mereology, classes-as-many, and many empirical collections. By extending Bolzano's ideas to embrace the three factors of kind, components and mode of combinatio…Read more
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