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445Probabilistic measures of coherence and the problem of belief individuationSynthese 154 (1). 2007.Coherentism in epistemology has long suffered from lack of formal and quantitative explication of the notion of coherence. One might hope that probabilistic accounts of coherence such as those proposed by Lewis, Shogenji, Olsson, Fitelson, and Bovens and Hartmann will finally help solve this problem. This paper shows, however, that those accounts have a serious common problem: the problem of belief individuation. The coherence degree that each of the accounts assigns to an information set (or th…Read more
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10Many philosophy majors are shocked by the gap between the relative ease of lower-level philosophy courses and the difficulty of upper-division courses. This book serves as a necessary bridge to upper-level study in philosophy by offering rigorous but concise and accessible accounts of basic concepts and distinctions that are used throughout the discipline. It serves as a valuable advanced introduction to any undergraduate who is moving into upper-level courses in philosophy. While lower-level in…Read more
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55The Boolean Many-Valued Solution to the Sorites ParadoxSynthese 200 (2): 1-25. 2022.This paper offers the Boolean many-valued solution to the Sorites Paradox. According to the precisification-based Boolean many-valued theory, from which this solution arises, sentences have not only two truth values, truth (or 1) and falsity (or 0), but many Boolean values between 0 and 1. The Boolean value of a sentence is identified with the set of precisifications in which the sentence is true. Unlike degrees fuzzy logic assigns to sentences, Boolean many values are not linearly but only part…Read more
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3Indeterminate Identity: Metaphysics and Semantics (review)Philosophical Quarterly 52 (207): 262-265. 2002.
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63Vague Objects and Vague Identity: New Essays on Ontic Vagueness (edited book)Springer. 2014.This unique anthology of new, contributed essays offers a range of perspectives on various aspects of ontic vagueness. It seeks to answer core questions pertaining to onticism, the view that vagueness exists in the world itself. The questions to be addressed include whether vague objects must have vague identity, and whether ontic vagueness has a distinctive logic, one that is not shared by semantic or epistemic vagueness. The essays in this volume explain the motivations behind onticism, such a…Read more
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48Montague's treatment of determiner phrases: A philosophical introductionPhilosophy Compass 13 (6). 2018.This paper introduces Richard Montague's theory of determiner phrases to the philosophically oriented readers who are familiar with Russell's traditional treatment. Determiner phrases include not only quantifier phrases in the narrow sense, such as every man, some woman, and nothing, but also DP conjunctions such as Adam and Betty and Adam or Betty, and even proper names such as Adam and Betty. Montague treats all determiner phrases as belonging to type t, i.e., the type of functions from proper…Read more
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52Field on the Notion of ConsistencyNotre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 37 (4): 625-630. 1996.Field's claim that we have a notion of consistency which is neither model-theoretic nor proof-theoretic but primitive, is examined and criticized. His argument is compared to similar examinations by Kreisel and Etchemendy, and Etchemendy's distinction between interpretational and representational semantics is employed to reveal the flaw in Field's argument
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67Logic as instrument: the millian view on the role of logicHistory and Philosophy of Logic 17 (1-2): 73-83. 1996.I interpret Mill?s view on logic as the instrumentalist view that logical inferences, complex statements, and logical operators are not necessary for reasoning itself, but are useful only for our remembering and communicating the results of the reasoning. To defend this view, I first show that we can transform all the complex statements in the language of classical first-order logic into what I call material inference rules and reduce logical inferences to inferences which involve only atomic st…Read more
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117Nominalistic metalogicJournal of Philosophical Logic 27 (1): 35-47. 1998.This paper offers a novel method for nominalizing metalogic without transcending first-order reasoning about physical tokens (inscriptions, etc.) of proofs. A kind of double-negation scheme is presented which helps construct, for any platonistic statement in metalogic, a nominalistic statement which has the same assertability condition as the former. For instance, to the platonistic statement "there is a (platonistic) proof of A in deductive system D" corresponds the nominalistic statement "ther…Read more
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30Logic and TruthJournal of Philosophical Research 25 101-123. 2000.It is usually held that what distinguishes a good inference from a bad one is that a good inference is truth-preserving. Against this view, this paper argues that a logical inference is good or bad depending not on whether it is truth-preserving or not, but whether it belongs to a logical system the addition of which makes a deductively conservative extension of the derivation relations among the atomic statements. To so argue, the paper first contends that the meaning of the logical operators o…Read more
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128Logic and TruthJournal of Philosophical Research 25 101-123. 2000.It is usually held that what distinguishes a good inference from a bad one is that a good inference is truth-preserving. Against this view, this paper argues that a logical inference is good or bad depending not on whether it is truth-preserving or not, but whether it belongs to a logical system the addition of which makes a deductively conservative extension of the derivation relations among the atomic statements. To so argue, the paper first contends that the meaning of the logical operators o…Read more
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170Indefiniteness of mathematical objectsPhilosophia Mathematica 8 (1): 26--46. 2000.The view that mathematical objects are indefinite in nature is presented and defended, hi the first section, Field's argument for fictionalism, given in response to Benacerraf's problem of identification, is closely examined, and it is contended that platonists can solve the problem equally well if they take the view that mathematical objects are indefinite. In the second section, two general arguments against the intelligibility of objectual indefiniteness are shown erroneous, hi the final sect…Read more
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67Can deflationism allow for hidden indeterminacy?Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (3). 2002.Field (2000) claims that both inflationists and deflationists can and should accept the existence of linguistic indeterminacy in their own language. This paper shows that inflationists and deflationists consider the nature of indeterminacy quite differently; in particular, deflationists’ notion of indeterminacy lacks the kind of objectivity inflationists’ notion has; as a result, while both inflationists and deflationists can and should accept the existence of manifest indeterminacy such as vagu…Read more
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98A deflationist approach to indeterminacy and vaguenessPhilosophical Studies 107 (1). 2002.Deflationists cannot make sense ofthe notion of referential indeterminacybecause they deny the existence of substantivereference. One way for them to make sense ofthe objective existence of linguisticindeterminacy is by embracing theworldly (or objectual) view ofindeterminacy, the view that indeterminacyexists not in reference relations but in the(non-linguistic) world itself. On this view,the entire world is divided into precisified worlds, just as it is dividedinto temporal slices and (arguabl…Read more
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Review of Terence Parsons, Indeterminacy Identity (review)Philosophical Quarterly 52 (208): 262--5. 2002.
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132Conceptions of truthAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (3). 2004.Book Information Conceptions of Truth. Conceptions of Truth Wolfgang Künne , Oxford : Clarendon Press , 2003 , xiii + 493 , £50.00 ( cloth ) By Wolfgang Künne. Clarendon Press. Oxford. Pp. xiii + 493. £50.00 (cloth:).
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84A unified theory of quotationPacific Philosophical Quarterly 86 (2). 2005.This paper offers a theory of quotation by uniting two apparently disparate extant theories, Recanati's pragmatic theory and Washington's identity theory. Recanati draws a distinction between open and closed quotations, and contends that open quotations do not refer. Washington argues that closed quotations refer to various expression types, not just orthographic and/or phonetic types. By combining these views, this paper proposes a theory, according to which quotations, open or closed, may be t…Read more
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165A new theory of quantifiers and term connectivesJournal of Logic, Language and Information 18 (3): 403-431. 2009.This paper sets forth a new theory of quantifiers and term connectives, called shadow theory , which should help simplify various semantic theories of natural language by greatly reducing the need of Montagovian proper names, type-shifting, and λ-conversion. According to shadow theory, conjunctive, disjunctive, and negative noun phrases such as John and Mary , John or Mary , and not both John and Mary , as well as determiner phrases such as every man , some woman , and the boys , are all of sema…Read more
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107A defense of indeterminate distinctnessSynthese 191 (15): 3557-3573. 2014.On the one hand, philosophers have presented numerous apparent examples of indeterminate individuation, i.e., examples in which two things are neither determinately identical nor determinately distinct. On the other hand, some have argued against even the coherence of the very idea of indeterminate individuation. This paper defends the possibility of indeterminate individuation against Evans’s argument and some other arguments. The Determinacy of Identity—the thesis that identical things are det…Read more
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190How Barnes and Williams have failed to present an intelligible ontic theory of vaguenessAnalysis 75 (4): 565-573. 2015.Elizabeth Barnes and J. Robert G. Williams claim to offer a new ontic theory of vagueness, the kind of theory which considers vagueness to exist not in language but in reality. This paper refutes their claim. The possible worlds they employ are ersatz possible worlds, i.e., sets of sentences. Unlike reality, they don’t contain concrete and often material objects. As a result, there is nothing in Barnes and Williams’s description of the theory that the semanticist cannot or does not accept. Thus,…Read more
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29Vague Objects and Vague Identity: New Essays on Ontic Vagueness (edited book)Springer. 2014.This unique anthology of new, contributed essays offers a range of perspectives on various aspects of ontic vagueness. It seeks to answer core questions pertaining to onticism, the view that vagueness exists in the world itself. The questions to be addressed include whether vague objects must have vague identity, and whether ontic vagueness has a distinctive logic, one that is not shared by semantic or epistemic vagueness. The essays in this volume explain the motivations behind onticism, such a…Read more
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