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744Intuitionism and the Modal Logic of VaguenessJournal of Philosophical Logic 49 (2): 221-248. 2020.Intuitionistic logic provides an elegant solution to the Sorites Paradox. Its acceptance has been hampered by two factors. First, the lack of an accepted semantics for languages containing vague terms has led even philosophers sympathetic to intuitionism to complain that no explanation has been given of why intuitionistic logic is the correct logic for such languages. Second, switching from classical to intuitionistic logic, while it may help with the Sorites, does not appear to offer any advant…Read more
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742Against HarmonyIn Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Blackwell. forthcoming.Many prominent writers on the philosophy of logic, including Michael Dummett, Dag Prawitz, Neil Tennant, have held that the introduction and elimination rules of a logical connective must be ‘in harmony ’ if the connective is to possess a sense. This Harmony Thesis has been used to justify the choice of logic: in particular, supposed violations of it by the classical rules for negation have been the basis for arguments for switching from classical to intuitionistic logic. The Thesis has also had…Read more
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683Vagueness and Intuitionistic LogicIn Alexander Miller (ed.), Language, Logic,and Mathematics: Themes from the Philosophy of Crispin Wright, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.In his essay ‘“Wang’s Paradox”’, Crispin Wright proposes a solution to the Sorites Paradox (in particular, the form of it he calls the ‘Paradox of Sharp Boundaries’) that involves adopting intuitionistic logic when reasoning with vague predicates. He does not give a semantic theory which accounts for the validity of intuitionistic logic (and the invalidity of stronger logics) in that area. The present essay tentatively makes good the deficiency. By applying a theorem of Tarski, it shows that …Read more
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630Tempered pragmatismIn Cheryl Misak & Huw Price (eds.), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century, Oup/ba. 2016.This paper assesses the prospects of a pragmatist theory of content. I begin by criticising the theory presented in D.H. Mellor’s essay ‘Successful Semantics’. I then identify problems and lacunae in the pragmatist theory of meaning sketched in Chapter 13 of Dummett’s The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. The prospects are brighter, I contend, for a tempered pragmatism, in which the theory of content is permitted to draw upon irreducible notions of truth and falsity. I sketch the shape of such a…Read more
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586Objects of ThoughtIn Gary Ostertag (ed.), Meanings and Other Things: Themes From the Work of Stephen Schiffer, Oxford University Press. 2016.In his book The Things We Mean, Stephen Schiffer advances a subtle defence of what he calls the ‘face-value’ analysis of attributions of belief and reports of speech. Under this analysis, ‘Harold believes that there is life on Venus’ expresses a relation between Harold and a certain abstract object, the proposition that there is life on Venus. The present essay first proposes an improvement to Schiffer’s ‘pleonastic’ theory of propositions. It then challenges the face-value analysis. There w…Read more
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339Savoir FaireJournal of Philosophy 100 (3): 158-166. 2003.This paper challenges the linguistic arguments Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson gave in support of their thesis that knowing how is a species of knowing that.
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336Truth conditions and communicationMind 104 (416): 827-862. 1995.The paper addresses itself to the "Homeric struggle" in the theory of meaning between those (e.g., Grice) who try to analyze declarative meaning in terms of an intention to induce a belief and those (e.g., Davidson) for who declarative meaning consists in truth conditions. (The point of departure is Strawson's celebrated discussion of this issue, in his Inaugural Lecture.) I argue that neither style of analysis is satisfactory, and develop a "hybrid" that may be-although what I take from the Gri…Read more
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244Knowledge by deductionGrazer Philosophische Studien 77 (1): 61-84. 2008.It seems beyond doubt that a thinker can come to know a conclusion by deducing it from premisses that he knows already, but philosophers have found it puzzling how a thinker could acquire knowledge in this way. Assuming a broadly externalist conception of knowledge, I explain why judgements competently deduced from known premisses are themselves knowledgeable. Assuming an exclusionary conception of judgeable content, I further explain how such judgements can be informative. (According to the exc…Read more
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235Yes and noMind 109 (436): 781-823. 2000.In what does the sense of a sentential connective consist? Like many others, I hold that its sense lies in rules that govern deductions. In the present paper, however, I argue that a classical logician should take the relevant deductions to be arguments involving affirmative or negative answers to yes-or-no questions that contain the connective. An intuitionistic logician will differ in concentrating exclusively upon affirmative answers. I conclude by arguing that a well known intuitionistic cri…Read more
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205Contingent existentsPhilosophy 78 (4): 461-481. 2003.Timothy Williamson has recently put forward a proof that every object exists necessarily. I show where the proof fails. My diagnosis also exposes the fallacy in A. N. Prior's argument in favour of his modal logic, Q.
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198Ricky ponting and the judgesAnalysis 70 (2): 205-210. 2010.This article proposes revisions to the Laws of Cricket and to the criminal law of England. The Laws of Cricket should be revised so that an umpire may give a batsman out without having to specify precisely how he got out. The criminal law should be revised so that (e.g.) aiding and abetting a murderer is not subsumed under the crime of murder.
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195Plural terms : Another variety of reference?In José Luis Bermúdez (ed.), Thought, Reference, and Experience: Themes From the Philosophy of Gareth Evans, Clarendon Press. pp. 84--123. 2005.
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174Frege's theory of predication: An elaboration and defense, with some new applicationsPhilosophical Review 103 (4): 599-637. 1994.
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171I—Ian Rumfitt: Truth and MeaningAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 88 (1): 21-55. 2014.Should we explicate truth in terms of meaning, or meaning in terms of truth? Ramsey, Prior and Strawson all favoured the former approach: a statement is true if and only if things are as the speaker, in making the statement, states them to be; similarly, a belief is true if and only if things are as a thinker with that belief thereby believes them to be. I defend this explication of truth against a range of objections.Ramsey formalized this account of truth as follows: B is true =df ∃P; in §i, I…Read more
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158Logical NecessityIn Bob Hale & Aviv Hoffmann (eds.), Modality: metaphysics, logic, and epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2010.Book synopsis: The philosophy of modality investigates necessity and possibility, and related notions--are they objective features of mind-independent reality? If so, are they irreducible, or can modal facts be explained in other terms? This volume presents new work on modality by established leaders in the field and by up-and-coming philosophers. Between them, the papers address fundamental questions concerning realism and anti-realism about modality, the nature and basis of facts about what is…Read more
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141Sense and EvidenceThe Monist 96 (2): 177-204. 2013.There are many theories which say how the truth-value (the Fregean reference) of a complete sentence depends on the references of its parts. The present paper proposes a theory of how the Fregean sense of a sentences depends on the senses of its parts. A sentence's sense is related to the evidence that would justify its assertion. The theory characterizes the senses of 'and', 'or', 'not', and 'if...then'.
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136Co-ordination principles: A replyMind 117 (468): 1059-1063. 2008.I explain why Fernando Ferreira's interesting formal result does not threaten the bilateralist account of the sense of the connectives.
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133On A Neglected Path to IntuitionismTopoi 31 (1): 101-109. 2012.According to Quine, in any disagreement over basic logical laws the contesting parties must mean different things by the connectives or quantifiers implicated in those laws; when a deviant logician ‘tries to deny the doctrine he only changes the subject’. The standard semantics for intuitionism offers some confirmation for this thesis, for it represents an intuitionist as attaching quite different senses to the connectives than does a classical logician. All the same, I think Quine was wrong, ev…Read more
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127The categoricity problem and truth-value gapsAnalysis 57 (4). 1997.In his article 'Rejection' (1996), Timothy Smiley had shown how a logical system allowing rules of rejection could provide a categorical axiomatization of the classical propositional calculus. This paper shows how rules of rejection, when placed in a multiple conclusion setting, can also provide categorical axiomatizations of a range of non-classical calculi which permit truth-value gaps, among them the calculus in Smiley's own 'Sense without denotation' (1960).
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112The vagaries of paraphrase: A reply to Holton on the counting problemAnalysis 56 (4). 1996.In his 'paratactic' analysis of indirect speech reports, Davidson took the occurrence of 'that' in 'Galileo said that the Earth moves' to be a demonstrative expression which refers to the reporter's subsequent utterance of 'the Earth moves'. Ian McFetridge used his 'counting problem' to argue that we get a better version of the paratactic theory if we take the demonstrative 'that' to refer to the proposition expressed by the reporter's utterance, rather than to the utterance itself. In this note…Read more
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108Concepts and CountingProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (1): 41-68. 2002.Frege's analysis of Zahlangaben is expounded and evaluated.
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108Old Adams BuriedAnalytic Philosophy 54 (2): 157-188. 2013.I present some counterexamples to Adams's Thesis and explain how they undermine arguments that indicative conditionals cannot be truth-evaluable propositions
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97Inference, Deduction, LogicIn John Bengson & Marc A. Moffett (eds.), Knowing How: Essays on Knowledge, Mind, and Action, Oxford University Press, Usa. pp. 334. 2011.
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93Singular terms and arithmetical logicismPhilosophical Books 44 (3): 193--219. 2003.This article is a critical notice of Bob Hale and Crispin Wright's *The Reason's Proper Study* (OUP). It focuses particularly on their attempts (crucial to their neo-logicist project) to say what a singular term is. I identify problems for their account but include some constructive suggestions about how it might be improved.
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78Logic and existenceAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 73 (1). 1999.[Ian Rumfitt] Frege's logicism in the philosophy of arithmetic consisted, au fond, in the claim that in justifying basic arithmetical axioms a thinker need appeal only to methods and principles which he already needs to appeal in order to justify paradigmatically logical truths and paradigmatically logical forms of inference. Using ideas of Gentzen to spell out what these methods and principles might include, I sketch a strategy for vindicating this logicist claim for the special case of the ari…Read more
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