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178An expression of disagreement with the views stated in The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness
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312I explain why model theory is unsatisfactory as a semantic theory and has drawbacks as a tool for proofs on logic systems. I then motivate and develop an alternative, the truth-valuational substitutional approach (TVS), and prove with it the soundness and completeness of the first order Predicate Calculus with identity and of Modal Propositional Calculus. Modal logic is developed without recourse to possible worlds. Along the way I answer a variety of difficulties that have been raised against T…Read more
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143The Development of Descartes’ Idea of Representation by CorrespondenceIn Andrea Strazzoni & Marco Sgarbi (eds.), Reading Descartes. Consciousness, Body, and Reasoning, Firenze University Press. pp. 41-57. 2023.Descartes was the first to hold that, when we perceive, the representation need not resemble what it represents but should correspond to it. Descartes developed this ground-breaking, influential conception in his work on analytic geometry and then transferred it to his theory of perception. I trace the development of the idea in Descartes’ early mathematical works; his articulation of it in Rules for the Direction of the Mind; his first suggestions there to apply this kind of representation-by-c…Read more
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10Yado shel Arisṭo: ḥamishah ʻiyunim filosofiyim = Aristotle's handHotsaʼat sefarim ʻa. sh. Y.L. Magnes, ha- Universiṭah ha-ʻIvrit. 2012.
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33Completeness of the Quantified Argument Calculus on the Truth-Valuational ApproachIn Boran Berčić, Aleksandra Golubović & Majda Trobok (eds.), Human Rationality: Festschrift for Nenad Smokrović, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka. 2022.The Quantified Argument Calculus (Quarc) is a formal logic system, first developed by Hanoch Ben-Yami in (Ben-Yami 2014), and since then extended and applied by several authors. The aim of this paper is to further these contributions by, first, providing a philosophical motivation for the truth-valuational, substitutional approach of (Ben-Yami 2014) and defending it against a common objection, a topic also of interest beyond its specific application to Quarc. Second, we fill the formal lacunae l…Read more
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48Logic and the boundaries of animal mentalityIn Christoph C. Pfisterer, Nicole Rathgeb & Eva Schmidt (eds.), Wittgenstein and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Hans-Johann Glock, Routledge. pp. 243-253. 2022.I try to identify elements of our mental capacities that separate us from animals. I focus on our command of logical concepts, demonstrable already in children in the second or third year of their life, which to date no animal has been shown to master. I draw various conclusions about the behavioural, intellectual, emotional, and moral capacities that depend on this mastery, and discuss recent empirical research that either supports or apparently disagrees with the claim that animals, even those…Read more
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88The Quantified Argument Calculus with Two- and Three-valued Truth-valuational SemanticsStudia Logica 111 (2): 281-320. 2022.We introduce a two-valued and a three-valued truth-valuational substitutional semantics for the Quantified Argument Calculus (Quarc). We then prove that the 2-valid arguments are identical to the 3-valid ones with strict-to-tolerant validity. Next, we introduce a Lemmon-style Natural Deduction system and prove the completeness of Quarc on both two- and three-valued versions, adapting Lindenbaum’s Lemma to truth-valuational semantics. We proceed to investigate the relations of three-valued Quarc …Read more
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40Fictional Characters and Their NamesStudia Semiotyczne 36 (1): 9-16. 2022.Fictional characters do not really exist. Names of fictional characters refer, to fictional characters. We should divorce the idea of reference from that of existence (the picture of the name as a tag has limited applications; the Predicate Calculus, with its existential quantifier, does not adequately reflect the relevant concepts in natural language; and model theory, with its domains, might also have been misleading). Many puzzle-cases are resolved this way (among other things, there is no pr…Read more
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47Word, Sign and Representation in DescartesJournal of Early Modern Studies 10 (1): 29-46. 2021.In the first chapter of his The World, Descartes compares light to words and discusses signs and ideas. This made scholars read into that passage our views of language as a representational medium and consider it Descartes’ model for representation in perception. I show, by contrast, that Descartes does not ascribe there any representational role to language; that to be a sign is for him to have a kind of causal role; and that he is concerned there only with the cause’s lack of resemblance to it…Read more
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317The Quantified Argument Calculus and Natural LogicDialectica 74 (2): 179-214. 2020.The formalisation of Natural Language arguments in a formal language close to it in syntax has been a central aim of Moss’s Natural Logic. I examine how the Quantified Argument Calculus (Quarc) can handle the inferences Moss has considered. I show that they can be incorporated in existing versions of Quarc or in straightforward extensions of it, all within sound and complete systems. Moreover, Quarc is closer in some respects to Natural Language than are Moss’s systems – for instance, is does no…Read more
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243The Barcan formulas and necessary existence: the view from QuarcSynthese 198 (11): 11029-11064. 2020.The Modal Predicate Calculus gives rise to issues surrounding the Barcan formulas, their converses, and necessary existence. I examine these issues by means of the Quantified Argument Calculus, a recently developed, powerful formal logic system. Quarc is closer in syntax and logical properties to Natural Language than is the Predicate Calculus, a fact that lends additional interest to this examination, as Quarc might offer a better representation of our modal concepts. The validity of the Barcan…Read more
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355I explain in what sense the structure of space and time is probably vague or indefinite, a notion I define. This leads to the mathematical representation of location in space and time by a vague interval. From this, a principle of complementary inaccuracy between spatial location and velocity is derived, and its relation to the Uncertainty Principle discussed. In addition, even if the laws of nature are deterministic, the behaviour of systems will be random to some degree. These and other consid…Read more
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251There is currently a theoretical tension between young children’s failure in False Belief Tasks (FBTs) and their success in a variety of other tasks that also seem to require the ability to ascribe false beliefs to agents. We try to explain this tension by the hypothesis that in the FBT, children think they are asked what the agent should do in the circumstances and not what the agent will do. We explain why this hypothesis is plausible. We examined the hypothesis in two experiments, each involv…Read more
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242Logical Inquiries into a New Formal System with Plural ReferenceIn Vincent Hendricks, Fabian Neuhaus, Stig Andur Pedersen, Uwe Schefler & Wansing Heinrich (eds.), First-Order Logic Revisited, Logos Verlag. pp. 173-223. 2004.
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1691The Logical Contingency of IdentityEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 14 (2): 5-10. 2018.I show that intuitive and logical considerations do not justify introducing Leibniz’s Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals in more than a limited form, as applying to atomic formulas. Once this is accepted, it follows that Leibniz’s Law generalises to all formulas of the first-order Predicate Calculus but not to modal formulas. Among other things, identity turns out to be logically contingent.
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1452Vagueness and Family ResemblanceIn Hans-Johann Glock & John Hyman (eds.), A Companion to Wittgenstein, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 407-419. 2017.Ben-Yami presents Wittgenstein’s explicit criticism of the Platonic identification of an explanation with a definition and the alternative forms of explanation he employed. He then discusses a few predecessors of Wittgenstein’s criticisms and the Fregean background against which he wrote. Next, the idea of family resemblance is introduced, and objections answered. Wittgenstein’s endorsement of vagueness and the indeterminacy of sense are presented, as well as the open texture of concepts. Common…Read more
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75A critique of Frege on common nounsRatio 19 (2). 2006.Frege analyzed the grammatical subject-term 'S' in quantified subject-predicate sentences, 'q S are P', as being logically predicative. This is in contrast to Aristotelian Logic, according to which it is a logical subject-term, like the proper name 'a' in 'a is P' – albeit a plural one, designating many particulars. I show that Frege's arguments for his analysis are unsound, and explain how he was misled to his position by the mathematical concept of function. If common nouns in this grammatical…Read more
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156The Quantified Argument CalculusReview of Symbolic Logic 7 (1): 120-146. 2014.I develop a formal logic in which quantified arguments occur in argument positions of predicates. This logic also incorporates negative predication, anaphora and converse relation terms, namely, additional syntactic features of natural language. In these and additional respects, it represents the logic of natural language more adequately than does any version of Frege’s Predicate Calculus. I first introduce the system’s main ideas and familiarize it by means of translations of natural language s…Read more
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40Critical Study of Amie L. Thomasson, Ordinary Objects (review)Croatian Journal of Philosophy 8 (2): 267-279. 2008.
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133A Wittgensteinian solution to the soritesPhilosophical Investigations 33 (3): 229-244. 2010.I develop a solution to the Sorites Paradox, according to which a concatenation of valid arguments need not itself be valid. I specify which chains of valid arguments are those that do not preserve validity: those that pass the vague boundary between cases where the relevant concept applies and cases where that concept does not apply. I also develop various criticisms of this solution and show why they fail; basically, they all involve a petitio at some stage. I criticise the conviction that if …Read more
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129An argument against functionalismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (3): 320-324. 1999.Functionalists define a given mental state as a state that is apt to be the cause of specific effects and the effect of specific causes. Two tokens of the same belief, however, often cause and are caused by very different events: what makes them beliefs of the same type? Several answers, including the one relying on the identity of actual plus counterfactual causal relations, are considered and rejected. Functionalists did not notice that they have to specify how a state which is to be identifie…Read more
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169Descartes' Philosophical Revolution: A ReassessmentPalgrave-Macmillan. 2015.In this book, Ben-Yami reassesses the way Descartes developed and justified some of his revolutionary philosophical ideas. The first part of the book shows that one of Descartes' most innovative and influential ideas was that of representation without resemblance. Ben-Yami shows how Descartes transfers insights originating in his work on analytic geometry to his theory of perception. The second part shows how Descartes was influenced by the technology of the period, notably clockwork automata, i…Read more
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93Frege's invention of the predicate calculus has been the most influential event in the history of modern logic. The calculus’ place in logic is so central that many philosophers think, in fact, of it when they think of logic. This book challenges the position in contemporary logic and philosophy of language of the predicate calculus claiming that it is based on mistaken assumptions. Ben-Yami shows that the predicate calculus is different from natural language in its fundamental semantic charac.
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149Causality and temporal order in special relativityBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 57 (3): 459-479. 2006.David Malament tried to show that the causal theory of time leads to a unique determination of simultaneity relative to an inertial observer, namely standard simultaneity. I show that the causal relation Malament uses in his proofs, causal connectibility, should be replaced by a different causal relation, the one used by Reichenbach in his formulation of the theory. I also explain why Malament's reliance on the assumption that the observer has an eternal inertial history modifies our conception …Read more
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269Absolute Distant Simultaneity in Special RelativityFoundations of Physics 49 (12): 1355-1364. 2019.What is simultaneous with an event is what can interact with it; events have duration; therefore, any given event has distant events simultaneous with it, even according to Special Relativity. Consequently, the extension of our pre-relativistic judgments of distant simultaneity are largely preserved.
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227The Row of Heads: A Philosophical TragedyThink 11 (32): 71-84. 2012.Curtain. On the stage there's a row of about forty heads, of natural size, on a long and narrow white board roughly chest height, arranged facing the audience with equal spaces between them from near the left end of the stage to near its right end. The heads are all identical apart from two features. First, the leftmost head is completely bald, the rightmost head has lots of hair on its scalp, and the amount of hair on the heads increases gradually and uniformly from left to right, so that it is…Read more
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146The semantics of kind termsPhilosophical Studies 102 (2): 155-184. 2001.This paper criticizes Kripke’s and Putnam’s theory of the semantics of natural kind terms (KPT) and develops an alternative theory. It first examines description theories of natural kind terms, to see what their flaws are and what can be preserved of them. It then presents the KPT and makes three main criticisms. These rely on the meaning of elementary particles’ names, on reactions to the absence of a common essential nature, and on applications of old terms to new cases. Lastly, it develops a …Read more
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260Behaviorism and psychologism: Why Block’s argument against behaviorism is unsoundPhilosophical Psychology 18 (2): 179-186. 2005.Ned Block. Psychologism and behaviorism. Philosophical Review, 90, 5-43.) argued that a behaviorist conception of intelligence is mistaken, and that the nature of an agent's internal processes is relevant for determining whether the agent has intelligence. He did that by describing a machine which lacks intelligence, yet can answer questions put to it as an intelligent person would. The nature of his machine's internal processes, he concluded, is relevant for determining that it lacks intelligen…Read more
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