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This expanded version of the author’s autobiographical “My Philosophical Education” is available from the author on request.
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Singular TermsIn Hans Burkhardt & Barry Smith (eds.), Handbook of metaphysics and ontology, Philosophia Verlag. pp. 835-837. 1991.
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60TemporalityIn William Bright (ed.), Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford University Press. 1990.
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77Mythical ObjectsIn Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & David Shier (eds.), Meaning and Truth: Investigations in Philosophical Semantics, Seven Bridges Press. pp. 105-123. 2002.
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56Introduction to Sense and ReferenceIn Robert M. Harnish (ed.), Basic Topics in the Philosophy of Language, Pearson College Division. pp. 99-129. 1994.
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Reference: Names, Descriptions, and VariablesIn Handbuch Sprachphilosophie: Volume 2, Walter De Gruyter & Co. pp. 1123-1152. 1996.
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Kripke, Saul AaronIn Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (2nd Edition), Cambridge University Press. pp. 476. 1999.
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68Proper Names and DescriptionsIn John Corcoran (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2nd edition, Macmillan. 2006.
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53A Father's MessageIn _Metaphysics, Mathematics, and Meaning: Philosophical Papers I_, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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164How to Measure the Standard MetreProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 88 (1). 1988.Nathan Salmon; XII*—How to Measure the Standard Metre, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 193–218
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342Naming, Necessity, and Beyond: Beyond Rigidity by Scott Soames (review)Mind 112 (447): 475-492. 2003.
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64Modal Logic Kalish-and-Montague StyleIn _Metaphysics, Mathematics, and Meaning: Philosophical Papers I_, Oxford University Press. pp. 111-118. 2005.
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1Essentialism in Current Theories of ReferenceDissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. 1979.This 1979 doctoral dissertation was the basis for the author’s 1981 book, /Reference and Essence/ (Princeton University Press and Basil Blackwell). The dissertation was published by University Microfilms International (Ann Arbor, Michigan: 1980).
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60Content, Cognition, and Communication: Philosophical Papers II (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2007.Nathan Salmon presents a selection of nineteen of his essays from the early 1980s to 2006, on a set of closely connected topics central to analytic philosophy. The book is divided into four thematic sections, on direct reference, apriority, belief, and the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. The volume concludes with four essays about the distinction between meaning and use, or more generally, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics.
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153Relational BeliefIn Paolo Leonardi & Marco Santambrogio (eds.), Metaphysics, Mathemeatics, and Meaning, Cambridge University Press. pp. 206-228. 1995.
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248Modal Paradox II: Essence and CoherencePhilosophical Studies 178 (10): 3237-3250. 2021.Paradoxes of nested modality, like Chisholm’s paradox, rely on S4 or something stronger as the propositional logic of metaphysical modality. Sarah-Jane Leslie’s objection to the resolution of Chisholm’s paradox by means of rejection of S4 modal logic is investigated. A modal notion of essence congenial to Leslie’s objection is clarified. An argument is presented in support of Leslie’s crucial but unsupported assertion that, on pain of inconsistency, an object’s essence is the same in every possi…Read more
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130The Legacy of Naming and NecessityTheoria 88 (2): 434-437. 2021.Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 2, Page 434-437, April 2022.
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109What is Existence?In Manuel García-Carpintero & Genoveva Martí (eds.), Empty Representations: Reference and Non-Existence, Oxford University Press. pp. 245-261. 2014.Four accounts, three of them Kantian, of true sentences of the form “ exists” are contrasted. Russell’s theory that such sentences are meaningless is contrasted with two other Kantian theories that are analogous to one another: Frege’s semantic-ascent theory and the Frege-inspired ungerade (indirect, “oblique”) theory. Frege’s objection to the semantic-ascent account of identity is applied, ironically with equal force, against his account of existence. A second argument favoring the ungerade th…Read more
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60From Time to TimeIn Shyam Wuppuluri & Giancarlo Ghirardi (eds.), Space, Time and Limits of Human Understanding, Springer. pp. 61-75. 2017.The topic is time travel of the sort depicted in H. G. Wells’ classic novel, The Time Machine—Wellsian time travel. The range of proper applicability of the concept of Wellsian time travel is investigated. The results of this investigation are applied to provide a new argument against the metaphysical possibility of time travel in absolute time. Alternatively, the argument is against the possibility of Wellsian time travel relative to a single temporal frame of reference. The argument leaves ope…Read more
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114On What ExistsIn Frederique Janssen-Lauret (ed.), Quine, Structure, and Ontology, Oxford University Press. pp. 200-229. 2020.Quine’s criterion of theoretical ontological commitment is subject to a variety of interpretations, all of which save one yield incorrect verdicts. Moreover, the interpretation that yields correct verdicts is not what Quine meant. Instead the intended criterion unfairly imputes ontological commitments to theories that lack those commitments and fails to impute commitments to theories that have them. Insofar as Quine’s criterion is interpreted so that it yields only correct verdicts, it is trivia…Read more
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101Naming Names: A Deep Dive into Saul Kripke’s PhilosophySimply Charly. 2023.Charles Carlini interviews Nathan Salmón about the philosophical work of his mentor and friend, the late Saul Kripke, one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th Century.
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93How Things Have to BeIn Duško Prelević & Anand Vaidya (eds.), Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology, Routledge. pp. 128-149. 2023.Penelope Mackie and Scott Soames argue, contrary to my Reference and Essence (R&E), that Hilary Putnam was correct that the direct-reference theory of natural-kind terms, taken in conjunction with empirical or otherwise uncontroversial premises, yields non-trivial essentialism, such as the conclusion that water is essentially two-parts hydrogen, one-part oxygen. A controversial distinction is drawn between rigid and non-rigid general terms. A new criterion for general-term rigidity is proposed, …Read more
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96À Propos de Pierre, Does He…or Doesn’t He?In Ernest Lepore & David Sosa (eds.), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Language, 3, Oxford University Press. pp. 176-181. 2023.In Frege’s Puzzle (1986), Salmon analyzed ‘a withholds believing p’ in terms of a ternary relation BEL of x believing a proposition p under a guise g. The proposed analysis is the following: There is a proposition guise g such that a grasps p by means of g but a does not stand in BEL to p and g. Sean Crawford has made a proposal for Millians to evade propositional guises through second-order belief. Specifically, in effect, Crawford’s proposes to analyze the crucial notion of withheld belief ins…Read more
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91Cognition and RecognitionIntercultural Pragmatics 15 (2): 213-235. 2018.Expressions are synonymous if they have the same semantic content. Complex expressions are synonymously isomorphic in Alonzo Church’s sense if one is obtainable from the other by a sequence of alphabetic changes of bound variables or replacements of component expressions by syntactically simple synonyms. Synonymous isomorphism provides a very strict criterion for synonymy of sentences. Several eminent philosophers of language hold that synonymous isomorphism is not strict enough. These philosoph…Read more
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321Reference and Essence, expanded edition (2nd ed.)Prometheus Books. 2005.This is the second edition of an award-winning 1981 book (Princeton University Press and Basil Blackwell, based on the author’s doctoral dissertation) considered to be a classic in the philosophy of language movement known variously as the New Theory of Reference or the Direct-Reference Theory, as well as in the metaphysics of modal essentialism that is related to this philosophy of language.
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75The Very Possibility of Language: A Sermon on the Consequences of Missing ChurchIn Alonzo Church, C. Anthony Anderson & Michael Zelëny (eds.), Logic, meaning, and computation: essays in memory of Alonzo Church, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2001.
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68The Philosopher's Stone and Other Mythical ObjectsIn Stuart Brock & Anthony Everett (eds.), Fictional Objects, Oxford University Press. 2015.
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60Constraint with RestraintIn Gary Ostertag (ed.), Meanings and Other Things: Themes From the Work of Stephen Schiffer, Oxford University Press. 2016.
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94Propositions and Attitudes (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1988.The concept of a proposition is important in several areas of philosophy and central to the philosophy of language. This collection of readings investigates many different philosophical issues concerning the nature of propositions and the ways they have been regarded through the years. Reflecting both the history of the topic and the range of contemporary views, the book includes articles from Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, the Russell-Frege Correspondence, Alonzo Church, David Kaplan, John Pe…Read more
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