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20Themes From Kaplan (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1989.This anthology of essays on the work of David Kaplan, a leading contemporary philosopher of language, sprang from a conference, "Themes from Kaplan," organized by the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University.
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116The semantics of common nouns and the nature of semanticsActa Philosophica Fennica 100 115-135. 2023.In “Is semantics possible?” Putnam connected two themes: the very possibility of semantics (as opposed to formal model theory) for natural languages and the proper semantic treatment of common nouns. Putnam observed that abstract semantic accounts are modeled on formal languages model theory: the substantial contribution is rules for logical connectives (given outside the models), whereas the lexicon (individual constants and predicates) is treated merely schematically by the models. This schema…Read more
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3The Puzzle That Never Was—Referential MechanicsIn Richard Schantz (ed.), Prospects for Meaning, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 21-34. 2012.
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11Introduction to the Volume “Naming and Necessity: A 40th‐Year Anniversary”Theoria 88 (2): 276-277. 2021.Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 2, Page 276-277, April 2022.
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4Introduction to the Volume “Naming and Necessity: A 40th‐Year Anniversary”Theoria 88 (2): 276-277. 2022.Theoria, Volume 88, Issue 2, Page 276-277, April 2022.
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14Forty Years Later: Naming Without Necessity, Necessity Without Naming 1Theoria 88 (2): 365-402. 2022.The essay examines the proper treament of (i) naming (ii) necessity. (A) It argues their mutual independence (B) provides a treatment of naming separately from any idea of “designation” (C) gives treatment of de re modality without any use of possible worlds, essences, concepts, rigid designators (D) it argues an ultimate asymmetry–naming/referring is a key real notion of semantics; necessity should not be the central idea in the metaphysics of nature.
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2Is Natural Semantics Possible?—Ordinary English, Formal Deformations-cum-Reformations and the Limits of Model TheoryIn Hans van Ditmarsch & Gabriel Sandu (eds.), Jaakko Hintikka on Knowledge and Game Theoretical Semantics, Springer. pp. 49-108. 2018.The essay is dedicated to the memory of Jaakko Hintikka and Hilary Putnam, two logically inventive philosophers who, nonetheless, showed deep judgment in bringing to the fore the limits of reducing natural languages to formal languages, via the use of logical forms and model theory. Writing in parallel ecologies, the two proposed rather similar “limitative” theses about the popular logical-form-cum-model theory methodology.
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Descartes' Punctum Archimedis: The Primality and Unity of Being, the Derivateness of the General DualitiesIn Hemmo Laiho & Arto Repo (eds.), DE NATURA RERUM - Scripta in honorem professoris Olli Koistinen sexagesimum annum complentis, University of Turku. pp. 25-58. 2016.
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1The Cosmic Ensemble: Reflections on the Nature?Mathematics SymbiosisMidwest Studies in Philosophy 31 (1): 344-371. 2007.
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3RepliesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (3): 717-734. 2007.What Am I? is so-called because of its focus on Descartes’ primal question in the mind-body realm and his primal answer, viz. “a man”. The question and answer are primal in both senses of the adjective: they come first, early in meditation II, when the topic is broached for the first time; and, in my view of Descartes, they are also the most fundamental question and answer. There are other questions—many many other questions—Descartes raises about the mind-body problem. Some came to substitute f…Read more
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6In Everything in Its Right Place, Joseph Almog develops the unitarian and universalist metaphysics of Spinoza
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1The Vernacular and the Omniscient Observer of HistoryIn Marga Reimer & Anne Bezuidenhout (eds.), Descriptions and beyond, Oxford University Press. 2004.
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4Having In Mind: The Philosophy of Keith Donnellan (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2011.Keith Donnellan of UCLA is one of the founding fathers of contemporary philosophy of language, along with David Kaplan and Saul Kripke. Donnellan was and is an extremely creative thinker whose insights reached into metaphysics, action theory, the history of philosophy, and of course the philosophy of mind and language. This volume collects the best critical essays on Donnellan's forty-year body of work. The pieces by such noted philosophers as Tyler Burge, David Kaplan, and John Perry, discuss D…Read more
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49Replies (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (3). 2005.Lucky is the writer whose commentators combine perceptiveness and grace. My two commentators delved deeply into the framework I assume in WAI. Where they see gaps, they elegantly nudge the discussion towards needed extensions/clarifications. Both use the monograph to launch searching metaphysical questions—about method and content. I will take up matters of method first, then turn to specific questions in the interpretation of Descartes and the metaphysics of essence/necessity/conceivability.
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2Essays on Reference, Language, and Mind (edited book)Oup Usa. 2012.This volume collects Keith Donnellan's key contributions dating from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, along with a substantive introduction by the editor Joseph Almog, which disseminates the work to a new audience and for posterity.
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3Semantical considerations on modal counterfactual logic with corollaries on decidability, completeness, and consistency questionsNotre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 21 (2): 467-479. 1980.