-
113Tense and Singular PropositionsIn Joseph Almog, John Perry & Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes From Kaplan, Oxford University Press. pp. 331--392. 1989.
-
101Two Conceptions of SemanticsIn Zoltán Gendler Szabó (ed.), Semantics Versus Pragmatics, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 317-328. 2004.
-
32Reference and information content: names and descriptionsIn Dov M. Gabbay & Franz Guenthner (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 409--461. 1983.
-
76Quantifying into the unquantifiable: the life and work of David KaplanIn Joseph Almog & Paolo Leonardi (eds.), The philosophy of David Kaplan, Oxford University Press. pp. 25. 2010.
-
351RecurrencePhilosophical Studies 159 (3): 407-441. 2012.Standard compositionality is the doctrine that the semantic content of a compound expression is a function of the semantic contents of the contentful component expressions. In 1954 Hilary Putnam proposed that standard compositionality be replaced by a stricter version according to which even sentences that are synonymously isomorphic (in the sense of Alonzo Church) are not strictly synonymous unless they have the same logical form. On Putnam’s proposal, the semantic content of a compound express…Read more
-
305Recurrence AgainPhilosophical Studies 172 (2): 445-457. 2015.Kit Fine has replied to my criticism of a technical objection he had given to the version of Millianism that I advocate. Fine evidently objects to my use of classical existential instantiation in an object-theoretic rendering of his meta-proof. Fine’s reply appears to involve both an egregious misreading of my criticism and a significant logical error. I argue that my rendering is unimpeachable, that the issue over my use of classical EI is a red herring, and that Fine’s original argument commit…Read more
-
77Points, complexes, complex points, and a yachtIn Nicholas Griffin & Dale Jacquette (eds.), Russell Vs. Meinong: The Legacy of "on Denoting", Routledge. 2008.
-
107Three Perspectives on Quantifying InIn Robin Jeshion (ed.), New Essays on Singular Thought, Oxford University Press. pp. 64. 2010.
-
255On DesignatingMind 114 (456): 1069-1133. 2005.A detailed interpretation is provided of the ‘Gray's Elegy’ passage in Russell's ‘On Denoting’. The passage is suffciently obscure that its principal lessons have been independently rediscovered. Russell attempts to demonstrate that the thesis that definite descriptions are singular terms is untenable. The thesis demands a distinction be drawn between content and designation, but the attempt to form a proposition directly about the content (as by using an appropriate form of quotation) inevitabl…Read more
-
638Numbers versus NominalistsAnalysis 68 (3). 2008.A nominalist account of statements of number (e.g., ‘There are exactly two moons of Mars’) is rebutted.
-
153Julius Caesar and the NumbersPhilosophical Studies 175 (7): 1631-1660. 2018.This article offers an interpretation of a controversial aspect of Frege’s The Foundations of Arithmetic, the so-called Julius Caesar problem. Frege raises the Caesar problem against proposed purely logical definitions for ‘0’, ‘successor’, and ‘number’, and also against a proposed definition for ‘direction’ as applied to lines in geometry. Dummett and other interpreters have seen in Frege’s criticism a demanding requirement on such definitions, often put by saying that such definitions must pro…Read more
-
131Fregean Theory and the Four Worlds Paradox: A Reply to David overPhilosophical Books 25 (1): 7-11. 1984.
-
320Illogical BeliefPhilosophical Perspectives 3 243-285. 1989.A sequel to the author’s book /Frege’s Puzzle/ (1986).
-
177Is de re_ Belief Reducible to _de dicto?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27 (sup1): 85-110. 1997.
-
299GeneralityPhilosophical Studies 161 (3): 471-481. 2012.A distinction is drawn among predicates, open sentences (or open formulas), and general terms, including general-term phrases. Attaching a copula, perhaps together with an article, to a general term yields a predicate. Predicates can also be obtained through lambda-abstraction on an open sentence. The issue of designation and semantic content for each type of general expression is investigated. It is argued that the designatum of a general term is a universal, e.g., a kind, whereas the designatu…Read more
-
327Demonstrating and NecessityPhilosophical Review 111 (4): 497-537. 2002.My title is meant to suggest a continuation of the sort of philosophical investigation into the nature of language and modality undertaken in Rudolf Carnap’s Meaning and Necessity and Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity. My topic belongs in a class with meaning and naming. It is demonstratives—that is, expressions like ‘that darn cat’ or the pronoun ‘he’ used deictically. A few philosophers deserve particular credit for advancing our understanding of demonstratives and other indexical words. Thou…Read more
-
172A Problem in the Frege-Church Theory of Sense and DenotationNoûs 27 (2): 158-166. 1993.There is an inconsistency among claims made (or apparently made) in separate articles by Alonzo Church concerning Frege's distinction between sense and denotation taken together with plausible assertions by Frege concerning his notion of ungerade Sinn-i.e., the sense that an expression allegedly takes on in positions in which it has ungerade Bedeutung, denoting its own customary sense. As with any inconsistency, the difficulty can be avoided by relinquishing one of the joint assumptions from whi…Read more
-
299Are General Terms Rigid?Linguistics and Philosophy 28 (1). 2004.On Kripke’s intended definition, a term designates an object x rigidly if the term designates x with respect to every possible world in which x exists and does not designate anything else with respect to worlds in which x does not exist. Kripke evidently holds in Naming and Necessity, hereafter N&N (pp. 117–144, passim, and especially at 134, 139–140), that certain general terms – including natural-kind terms like ‘‘water’’ and ‘‘tiger’’, phenomenon terms like ‘‘heat’’ and ‘‘hot’’, and color ter…Read more
-
87A Millian Heir Rejects the Wages of SinnIn C. Anthony Anderson (ed.), Propositional Attitudes: The Role of Content in Logic, Language, and Mind, Stanford: Csli. pp. 215-247. 1990.
-
129Pronouns as VariablesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (3). 2006.University of California, Santa Barbara.
-
155About AboutnessEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 3 (2): 59-76. 2007.A Russellian notion of what it is for a proposition to be “directly about” something in particular is defined. Various strong and weak, and mediate and immediate, Russellian notions of general aboutness are then defined in terms of Russellian direct aboutness. In particular, a proposition is about something iff the proposition is either directly, or strongly indirectly, about that thing. A competing Russellian account, due to Kaplan, is criticized through a distinction between knowledge by descr…Read more
APA Western Division
Santa Barbara, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
1 more
Philosophy of Language, Misc |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic, Misc |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Logic in Philosophy |