•  482
    Identity and general similarity
    Philosophical Perspectives 12 177-199. 1998.
  •  201
    Relative identity
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
  •  151
    Resolution of some paradoxes of propositions
    Analysis 74 (1): 26-34. 2014.
    Solutions to Russell’s paradox of propositions and to Kaplan’s paradox are proposed based on an extension of von Neumann’s method of avoiding paradox. It is shown that Russell’s ‘anti-Cantorian’ mappings can be preserved using this method, but Kaplan’s mapping cannot. In addition, several versions of the Epimenides paradox are discussed in light of von Neumann’s method.
  •  144
    Semantic analysis of natural kind terms
    Topoi 13 (1): 25-30. 1994.
    This paper develops a model theoretic semantics for so called “natural kind terms” that reflects the viewpoint of (Kripke, 1980) and (Putnam, 1975). The semantics generates a formal counterpart of the “K-mechanism” investigated in (Salmon, 1981) and in unpublished work by Keith Donnellan
  •  135
    Contingency and modal logic
    Philosophical Studies 60 (1-2). 1990.
  •  134
    Diagonalization and truth functional operators
    Analysis 70 (2): 215-217. 2010.
    (No abstract is available for this citation)
  •  124
    Logic for Contigent Beings
    Journal of Philosophical Research 19 273-329. 1994.
    One of the logical problems with which Arthur Prior struggled is the problem of finding, in Prior’s own phrase, a “logic for contingent beings.” The difficulty is that from minimal modal principles and classical quantification theory, it appears to follow immediately that every possible object is a necessary existent. The historical development of quantified modal logic (QML) can be viewed as a series of attempts---due variously to Kripke, Prior, Montague, and the fee-logicians---to solve this p…Read more
  •  85
    Fiction and fabrication
    Philosophical Studies 47 (2). 1985.
  •  81
    Vagueness, ignorance, and margins for error
    with Kenton Machina
    Acta Analytica 17 (2): 19-45. 2002.
    We argue that the epistemic theory of vagueness cannot adequately justify its key tenet-that vague predicates have precisely bounded extensions, of which we are necessarily ignorant. Nor can the theory adequately account for our ignorance of the truth values of borderline cases. Furthermore, we argue that Williamson’s promising attempt to explicate our understanding of vague language on the model of a certain sort of “inexact knowledge” is at best incomplete, since certain forms of vagueness do …Read more
  •  77
    Real possibility
    Noûs 24 (5): 751-755. 1990.
  •  63
    Letters to the Editor
    with Sandra Lee Bartky, Marilyn Friedman, William Harper, Alison M. Jaggar, Richard H. Miller, Abigail L. Rosenthal, Naomi Scheman, Nancy Tuana, Steven Yates, Christina Sommers, Philip E. Devine, Michael Kelly, and Charles L. Reid
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 65 (7). 1992.
  •  62
    Friend on Making Up Stories
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 113 (3pt3): 365-370. 2013.
    Stacie Friend (2012) dismisses the traditional view that it is an author's imaginative activity of ‘making the story up’ rather than the reader's make-believe, that is of the essence of fiction. She claims that this view is ‘neither plausible nor popular’. I argue that her claim is false and that her arguments are unconvincing. I argue further in defence of the traditional view that it is quite easy to find or to simply construct counterexamples to the standard view that fiction necessarily invo…Read more
  •  48
    Semantics for Natural Kind Terms
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 23 (3). 1993.
    According to the well-known Kripke-Putnam view developed in Naming and Necessity and ‘The Meaning of Meaning’, proper names and ‘natural kind terms’ - words for natural substances, species, and phenomena - are non-descriptional and rigid. A singular term is rigid if it has the same referent in every possible world, and is non-descriptional if, roughly speaking, its referent is not secured by purely descriptive conditions analytically tied to the term. Thus, ‘the inventor of bifocals’ is nonrigid…Read more
  •  44
    Paraconsistent analytic implication
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 13 (1). 1984.
  •  40
    Logic for Contigent Beings
    Journal of Philosophical Research 19 273-329. 1994.
    One of the logical problems with which Arthur Prior struggled is the problem of finding, in Prior’s own phrase, a “logic for contingent beings.” The difficulty is that from minimal modal principles and classical quantification theory, it appears to follow immediately that every possible object is a necessary existent. The historical development of quantified modal logic (QML) can be viewed as a series of attempts---due variously to Kripke, Prior, Montague, and the fee-logicians---to solve this p…Read more
  •  39
    Zalta on sense and substitutivity
    Philosophical Studies 69 (2-3). 1993.
  •  34
    The completeness of S
    Studia Logica 38 (2). 1979.
    The subsystem S of Parry's AI [10] (obtained by omitting modus ponens for the material conditional) is axiomatized and shown to be strongly complete for a class of three valued Kripke style models. It is proved that S is weakly complete for the class of consistent models, and therefore that Ackermann's rule is admissible in S. It also happens that S is decidable and contains the Lewis system S4 on translation — though these results are not presented here. S is arguably the most relevant relevant…Read more
  •  28
    Alonzo Church
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2021.
    Alonzo Church (1903–1995) was a renowned mathematical logician, philosophical logician, philosopher, teacher and editor. He was one of the founders of the discipline of mathematical logic as it developed after Cantor, Frege and Russell. He was also one of the principal founders of the Association for Symbolic Logic and the Journal of Symbolic Logic. The list of his students, mathematical and philosophical, is striking as it contains the names of renowned logicians and philosophers. In this artic…Read more
  •  27
    A modified filtrations argument is used to prove that the relevant logic S of [2] is decidable.
  •  18
  •  18
    Identity and General Similarity
    Noûs 32 (S12): 177-199. 1998.
  •  17
    Relevance and conformity
    Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 26 (4): 455-462. 1985.
  •  9
    Making Up Stories
    In Thomas Anthony Hofweber Everett (ed.), Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-existence, Csli Publications. pp. 149-182. 2000.
  • A Family of Conforming Relevant Logics
    Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. 1981.
    Logic is easily misunderstood, especially relevant logic. Thus the philosopher Peter Geach deplores the current preoccupation with "inconsistent" logic that are non-trivial and yet inconsistent). But what use are these, anyway? And, as for entailment , the concept is well-developed and well-established. Why meddle with it? ;In this work, we do not meddle with logical consequence. Instead, we develop a group of well-behaved logics that are conforming; i.e. that conform to the Boolean Order of Thi…Read more