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746The Paradox of TranslationIn B. . Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk & M. Thelen (eds.), Translation and Meaning, Hogeschool Zuyd. 2008.Critique of Alonzo Church's Translation Test. Church's test is based on a common misconception of the grammar of (so-called) quotations. His conclusion (that metalogical truths are actually contingent empirical truths) is a reductio of that conception. Chruch's argument begs the question by assuming that translation must preserve reference despite altering logical form of statements whose truth is explained by their form.
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7650Understanding the abortion argumentPhilosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1): 67-95. 1971.critical analyses of the arguments and attitudes favoring the various popular datings of the inception of a human being's life
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310Speciesism defended against common misrepresentations of what people actually believe about human moral status.
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1336Understanding RetributionCriminal Justice Ethics 2 (2): 19-38. 1983.Critical analysis of wide variety of conceptions and justifications of retribution and punishment. Emphasis is on pivotal role of condemnation
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658Socratic ScepticismMetaphilosophy 24 (4): 344-362. 1993.The Socratic Paradox (that only Socrates is wise, and only because only he recognizes our lack of wisdom) is explained, elaborated and defended. His philosophical scepticism is distinguished from others (Pyrrhonian, Cartesian, Humean, Kripkean Wittgenstein, etc.): the doubt concerns our understanding of our beliefs, not our justification for them; the doubt is a posteriori and inductive, not a priori. Post-Socratic philosophy confirms this scepticism: contra-Descartes, our ideas are not transpar…Read more
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443Post-Fregean theorists use 'quotation' to denote indifferently both colloquially called quotations (repetitions of prior utterances) and what I call 'displays': 'Rot' means red. Colloquially, quotation is a strictly historical property, not semantic or syntactic. Displays are semantically and syntactically distinctive sentential elements. Most displays are not quotations. Pure echo quotations (Cosmological arguments involve "an unnecessary shuffle") aren't displays. Frege-inspired formal languag…Read more
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953Neither M. Walzer's collectivist conception of the "moral equality" of combatants, nor its antithetical individualist conceptions of responsibility are compatible with the ethos of military professionalism and its conception(s) of the responsibility of military professionals for service in an unjust war.
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3786Are the Police Necessary?In E. Viano & J. Reiman (eds.), The Police in Society, D.c. Heath. 1975.critical analysis of need for police
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331Errata: A reply to AbbottPolitical Theory 6 (3): 337-344. 1978.A lengthy inventory of misreadings and other errors in Phillip Abbott's critique of recent essays on abortion by analytic philosophers.
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684The Synonymy AntinomyIn A. Kanamori (ed.), The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Philosophy Document Center. pp. 67-88. 2000.Resolution of Frege's Puzzle by denying that synonym substitution in logical truths preserves sentence sense and explaining how logical form has semantic import. Intensional context substitutions needn't preserve truth, because intercepting doesn't preserve sentence meaning. Intercepting is nonuniformly substituting a pivotal term in syntactically secured truth. Logical sentences and their synonym interceptions share factual content. Semantic content is factual content in synthetic predications,…Read more
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649Review of Robert Brown, Analyzing Love (review)Philosophy and Phenomonological Research 51 (1): 244-45. 1991.
Decatur, Georgia, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Applied Ethics |
Philosophy of Language |
Meta-Ethics |
Normative Ethics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |