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105Cognition 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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337Reference 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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129The Philosopher's Stone and Other Mythical ObjectsIn Stuart Brock & Anthony Everett (eds.), Fictional Objects, Oxford University Press. 2015.
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95The Very Possibility of Language: A Sermon on the Consequences of Missing ChurchIn C. Anthony Anderson & Michael Zelëny (eds.), Logic, meaning, and computation: essays in memory of Alonzo Church, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2001.
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71Constraint with RestraintIn Gary Ostertag (ed.), Meanings and Other Things: Themes From the Work of Stephen Schiffer, Oxford University Press. 2016.
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95Propositions 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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520Frege’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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129The 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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81Puzzles about IntensionalityIn Dale Jacquette (ed.), A Companion to Philosophical Logic, Wiley-blackwell. 2002.
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540How 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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135Effective 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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132A 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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249Impossible 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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73Vagaries about VaguenessIn Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and clouds: vagueness, its nature, and its logic, Oxford University Press. 2010.
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146Wholes, 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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257The 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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86Semantically 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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131The 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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525The 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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101Two Conceptions of SemanticsIn Zoltán Gendler Szabó (ed.), Semantics Versus Pragmatics, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 317-328. 2004.
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207That 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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86Tense and IntensionIn Aleksandar Jokić & Quentin Smith (eds.), Time, Tense, and Reference, Mit Press. pp. 107-154. 2003.
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Philosophy of Language, Misc |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic, Misc |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Logic in Philosophy |