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516Frege’s Puzzle (2nd ed.)Ridgeview Publishing Company. 1986.This is the 1991 (2nd) edition of the 1986 book (MIT Press), considered to be the classic defense of Millianism. The nature of the information content of declarative sentences is a central topic in the philosophy of language. The natural view that a sentence like "John loves Mary" contains information in which two individuals occur as constituents is termed the naive theory, and is one that has been abandoned by most contemporary scholars. This theory was refuted originally by philosopher Gottlo…Read more
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109The Decision Problem for Effective ProceduresLogica Universalis 17 (2): 161-174. 2023.The “somewhat vague, intuitive” notion from computability theory of an effective procedure (method) or algorithm can be fairly precisely defined even if it is not sufficiently formal and precise to belong to mathematics proper (in a narrow sense)—and even if (as many have asserted) for that reason the Church–Turing thesis is unprovable. It is proved logically that the class of effective procedures is not decidable, i.e., that no effective procedure is possible for ascertaining whether a given pr…Read more
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68Puzzles about IntensionalityIn Dale Jacquette (ed.), A Companion to Philosophical Logic, Blackwell. 2006.
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517How Not to Derive Essentialism from the Theory of ReferenceJournal of Philosophy 76 (12): 703-725. 1979.A thorough critique (extracted from the author’s 1979 doctoral dissertation) of Kripke’s purported derivation, in footnote 56 of his philosophical masterpiece /Naming and Necessity/, of nontrivial modal essentialism from the theory of rigid designation.
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79Effective ProceduresPhilosophies 8 (2): 27. 2023.This is a non-technical version of "The Decision Problem for Effective Procedures." The “somewhat vague, intuitive” notion from computability theory of an effective procedure (method) or algorithm can be fairly precisely defined, even if it does not have a purely mathematical definition—and even if (as many have asserted) for that reason, the Church–Turing thesis (that the effectively calculable functions on natural numbers are exactly the general recursive functions), cannot be proved. However,…Read more
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551
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119A Paradox about Sets of PropertiesSynthese 199 (5-6): 12777-12793. 2021.A paradox about sets of properties is presented. The paradox, which invokes an impredicatively defined property, is formalized in a free third-order logic with lambda-abstraction, through a classically proof-theoretically valid deduction of a contradiction from a single premise to the effect that every property has a unit set. Something like a model is offered to establish that the premise is, although classically inconsistent, nevertheless consistent, so that the paradox discredits the logic em…Read more
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225Impossible OddsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (3): 644-662. 2019.A thesis (“weak BCP”) nearly universally held among philosophers of probability connects the concepts of objective chance and metaphysical modality: Any prospect (outcome) that has a positive chance of obtaining is metaphysically possible—(nearly) equivalently, any metaphysically impossible prospect has zero chance. Particular counterexamples are provided utilizing the monotonicity of chance, one of them related to the four world paradox. Explanations are offered for the persistent feeling that …Read more
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61Vagaries about VaguenessIn Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and Clouds: Vaguenesss, its Nature and its Logic, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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173Wholes, Parts, and NumbersPhilosophical Perspectives 11 1-15. 1997.A puzzle concerning fractional and mixed numbers of things (e.g., two and a half oranges) is examined.
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234The Resilience of Illogical BeliefNoûs 40 (2). 2006.Although Professor Schiffer and I have many times disagreed, I share his deep and abiding commitment to argument as a primary philosophical tool. Regretting any communication failure that has occurred, I endeavor here to make clearer my earlier reply in “Illogical Belief” to Schiffer’s alleged problem for my version of Millianism.1 I shall be skeletal, however; the interested reader is encouraged to turn to “Illogical Belief” for detail and elaboration. I have argued that to bear a propositional…Read more
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67Semantically Empty GesturesIn Keith Allan, Jay David Atlas, Brian E. Butler, Alessandro Capone, Marco Carapezza, Valentina Cuccio, Denis Delfitto, Michael Devitt, Graeme Forbes, Alessandra Giorgi, Neal R. Norrick, Nathan Salmon, Gunter Senft, Alberto Voltolini & Richard Warner (eds.), Further Advances in Pragmatics and Philosophy: Part 1 From Theory to Practice, Springer Verlag. pp. 3-24. 2018.Frege held that the bare demonstrative ‘that’ is incomplete, and that it is the word together with a gesture that serves as the designating expression, and likewise that it is the word ‘yesterday’ together with the time of utterance that designates the relevant day. David Kaplan’s original theory of indexicals holds that Frege’s supplementation thesis is correct about demonstratives but incorrect about ‘yesterday’. Kaplan’s account of demonstratives deviates from Frege’s in treating supplemented…Read more
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103The Good, the Bad, and the UglyIn Marga Reimer & Anne Bezuidenhout (eds.), Descriptions and beyond, Oxford University Press. pp. 230--260. 2004.
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491The Logic of What Might Have BeenPhilosophical Review 98 (1): 3-34. 1989.The dogma that the propositional logic of metaphysical modality is S5 is rebutted. The author exposes fallacies in standard arguments supporting S5, arguing that propositional metaphysical modal logic is weaker even than both S4 and B, and is instead the minimal and weak metaphysical-modal logic T.
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73Two Conceptions of SemanticsIn Zoltan Gendler Szabo (ed.), Semantics Versus Pragmatics, Oxford University Press. pp. 317-328. 2005.
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199That FPhilosophical Studies 141 (2). 2008.Jeffrey King's principal objection to the direct-reference theory of demonstratives is analyzed and criticized. King has responded with a modified version of his original argument aimed at establishing the weaker conclusion that the direct-reference theory of demonstratives is either incomplete or incorrect. It is argued that this fallback argument also fails
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69Tense and IntensionIn Aleksandar Jokić & Quentin Smith (eds.), Time, Tense, and Reference, Mit Press. pp. 107-154. 2003.
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80Tense and Singular PropositionsIn Joseph Almog, John Perry & Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes From Kaplan, Oxford University Press. pp. 331--392. 1989.
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32Reference and information content: names and descriptionsIn Dov M. Gabbay & Franz Guenthner (eds.), Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 409--461. 1983.
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285Recurrence 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
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