•  386
    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
  •  177
    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
  •  176
    Vagueness as a modality
    Philosophical Quarterly 50 (200): 359-370. 2000.
  •  157
    Indefiniteness of mathematical objects
    Philosophia 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
  •  153
    A new theory of quantifiers and term connectives
    Journal 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
  •  129
    Conceptions of truth
    Australasian 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:).
  •  124
    Logic and Truth
    Journal 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
  •  104
    Nominalistic metalogic
    Journal 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
  •  97
    A defense of indeterminate distinctness
    Synthese 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
  •  95
    A deflationist approach to indeterminacy and vagueness
    Philosophical 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
  •  79
    Identity Is Simple
    American Philosophical Quarterly 37 (4). 2000.
  •  78
    A unified theory of quotation
    Pacific 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
  •  59
    Logic as instrument: the millian view on the role of logic
    History 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
  •  53
    Can 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
  •  49
    The Boolean many-valued approach to vagueness is similar to the infinite-valued approach embraced by fuzzy logic in the respect in which both approaches seek to solve the problems of vagueness by assigning to the relevant sentences many values between falsity and truth, but while the fuzzy-logic approach postulates linearly-ordered values between 0 and 1, the Boolean approach assigns to sentences values in a many-element complete Boolean algebra. On the modal-precisificational approach represent…Read more
  •  46
    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
  •  45
    Field on the Notion of Consistency
    Notre 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
  •  41
    Free Logic (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2): 281-283. 2004.
  •  37
    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
  •  35
    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
  •  26
    Logic and Truth
    Journal 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
  •  17
    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
  •  13
    Free Logic (review)
    International Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2): 281-283. 2004.
  •  8
    Many 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
  •  3
    Indeterminate Identity: Metaphysics and Semantics (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 52 (207): 262-265. 2002.