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312I—R. M. Sainsbury and Michael Tye: An Originalist Theory of ConceptsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1): 101-124. 2011.We argue that thoughts are structures of concepts, and that concepts should be individuated by their origins, rather than in terms of their semantic or epistemic properties. Many features of cognition turn on the vehicles of content, thoughts, rather than on the nature of the contents they express. Originalism makes concepts available to explain, with no threat of circularity, puzzling cases concerning thought. In this paper, we mention Hesperus/Phosphorus puzzles, the Evans-Perry example of the…Read more
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107Empty NamesThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 6 57-66. 2000.This paper explores the idea that a name should be associated with a reference condition, rather than with a referent, just as a sentence should be associated with a truth condition, rather than with a truth value. The suggestion, to be coherent, needs to be set in a freelogical framework (following Burge). A prominent advantage of the proposal is that it gives a straight-forward semantics for empty names. A problem discussed in this paper is that of reconciling the rigidity of names with seemin…Read more
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25Call for Papers for'SORITES'SORITES is a new refereed all-English electronic international quarterly of analytical philosophyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 73 (2). 1995.
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24Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 1: The Dawn of Analysis (review)Philosophical Studies 129 (3): 645-665. 2005.I discuss Soames's proposal that Moore could have avoided a central problem in his moral philosophy if he had utilized a method he himself pioneered in epistemology. The problem in Moore's moral philossophy concerns what it is for a moral claim to be self-evident. The method in Moore's epistemology concerns not denying the obvious. In view of the distance between something's being self-evident and its being obvious, it is suggested that Soames's proposal is mistaken
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129Russell on AcquaintanceRoyal Institute of Philosophy Lecture Series 20 219-244. 1986.In Russell's Problems of Philosophy (PP), acquaintance is the basis of thought and also the basis of empirical knowledge. Thought is based on acquaintance, in that a thinker has to be acquainted with the basic constituents of his thoughts. Empirical knowledge is based on acquaintance, in that acquaintance is involved in perception, and perception is the ultimate source of all empirical knowledge.
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21Thinking About ThingsOxford University Press. 2018.Mark Sainsbury presents an original account of how language works when describing mental states, based on a new theory of what is involved in attributing attitudes like thinking, hoping, and wanting. He offers solutions to longstanding puzzles about how we can direct our thought to such a diversity of things, including things that do not exist.
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Indexicals and Reported SpeechIn J. W. Davis (ed.), Philosophical logic, D. Reidel. pp. 45-69. 1969.
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6SoritesIn B. Hale & C. Wright (eds.), Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Blackwell. 1995.
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608Scott Soames, philosophical analysis in the twentieth century: Volume 1: The dawn of analysis (review)Philosophical Studies 129 (3). 2006.The review praises the philosophical quality, but is less enthusiastic about the scholarship and historical accuracy.
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50Intensional Transitives and PresuppositionsCritica 40 (120): 129-139. 2008.My commentators point to respects in which the picture provided in Reference without Referents is incomplete. The picture provided no account of how sentences constructed from intensional verbs can be true when one of the referring expressions fails to refer. And it gave an incomplete, and possibly misleading, account of how to understand certain serious uses of fictional names, as in "Anna Karenina is more intelligent than Emma Bovary" and "Anna Karenina does not exist". In the present response…Read more
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328Fiction and FictionalismRoutledge. 2009.Are fictional characters such as Sherlock Holmes real? What can fiction tell us about the nature of truth and reality? In this excellent introduction to the problem of fictionalism R. M. Sainsbury covers the following key topics: what is fiction? realism about fictional objects, including the arguments that fictional objects are real but non-existent; real but non-factual; real but non-concrete the relationship between fictional characters and non-actual worlds fictional entities as abstract art…Read more
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2021Concepts without boundariesIn Rosanna Keefe & Peter Smith (eds.), Vagueness: A Reader, Mit Press. pp. 186-205. 1996.
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RussellIn Ted Honderich (ed.), The philosophers: introducing great western thinkers, Oxford University Press. 1995.
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90Benevolence and evilAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 58 (2). 1980.This Article does not have an abstract
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9Option negation and dialetheiasIn Graham Priest, Jc Beall & Bradley P. Armour-Garb (eds.), The Law of Non-Contradiction : New Philosophical Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 85--92. 2004.
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43Tolerating VaguenessProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 89. 1989.R. M. Sainsbury; III*—Tolerating Vagueness, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 89, Issue 1, 1 June 1989, Pages 33–48, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.
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10Semantic Theory and Grammatical StructureAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 54 (1): 133-172. 1980.
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485'Of course there are fictional characters'Revue Internationale de Philosophie 262 (4): 615-40. 2012.There is no straightforward inference from there being fictional characters to any interesting form of realism. One reason is that “fictional” may be an intensional operator with wide scope, depriving the quantifier of its usual force. Another is that not all uses of “there are” are ontologically committing. A realist needs to show that neither of these phenomena are present in “There are fictional characters”. Other roads to realism run into difficulties when negotiating the role that presuppos…Read more
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12Indexicals and Reported SpeechIn T. J. Smiley & Thomas Baldwin (eds.), Studies in the Philosophy of Logic and Knowledge, Published For the British Academy By Oxford University Press. pp. 209. 2004.
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Areas of Interest
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Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
M&E, Misc |