Columbia University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1994
Oakland, California, United States of America
  •  45
    Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Arithmetic
    Dialogue 37 (1): 83-. 1998.
    It is argued that the finitist interpretation of wittgenstein fails to take seriously his claim that philosophy is a descriptive activity. Wittgenstein's concentration on relatively simple mathematical examples is not to be explained in terms of finitism, But rather in terms of the fact that with them the central philosophical task of a clear 'ubersicht' of its subject matter is more tractable than with more complex mathematics. Other aspects of wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics are touch…Read more
  •  43
    Mathematics, Mind, and Necessity in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 36 (2): 197-214. 2010.
  •  27
    Language, the World and Spontaneity in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
    Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 39 89-95. 2008.
    Wittgenstein’s early philosophy of language is shaped by his attention to Parmenides’ paradox of false propositions and the problem of the unity of the proposition. Wittgenstein (dis)solves these two (pseudo)problems through his discussion of the “internal pictorial relation” between propositions and states of affairs, which is an artifact of language and the world being “constructed according to a common logical pattern” (TLP 4.014). After examining these issues, I argue that this treatment poi…Read more
  •  22
    Book review (review)
    with D. S. Clarke and Anthony Graybosch
    Philosophia 27 (3-4): 453-459. 1999.
  •  10
    Donald Davidson
    Mcgill-Queen's University Press. 2004.
    Donald Davidson's work has been of seminal importance in the development of analytic philosophy and his views on the nature of language, mind and action remain the starting point for many of the central debates in the analytic tradition. His ideas, however, are complex, often technical, and interconnected in ways that can make them difficult to understand. This introduction to Davidson's philosophy examines the full range of his writings to provide a clear succinct overview of his ideas. This bo…Read more
  •  8
    Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Arithmetic
    Dialogue 37 (1): 83-106. 1998.
    External obstacles to properly understanding Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics are not lacking, either. For one thing, there is the piecemeal way that his mathematical manuscripts have been made available. The editors of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics write that “the time has not yet come to print the whole of Wittgenstein’s MSS on these... topics”. One wonders what sorts of reasons there could be for that editorial choice.
  •  6
    Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (edited book)
    Broadview Press. 2014.
    Ludwig Wittgenstein’s _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ is among the most ambitious and influential philosophical works of the early twentieth century, and in recent years it has again occupied a central position in discussions of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Written in an austere and meticulous style, the _Tractatus_ addresses questions in the philosophy of language, logic, and metaphysics, and, according to its author, provides a solution to all the problems of philosophy. This Broadview Edition …Read more
  •  5
    Review of Donald Davidson. Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (review)
    Contemporary Pragmatism 1 (2): 191-194. 2004.
  •  3
    Book review (review)
    with D. S. Clarke and Anthony Graybosch
    Philosophia 27 (3-4): 643-657. 1999.
  •  1
  • Wittgenstein on Truth and Necessity in Mathematics
    Dissertation, Columbia University. 1994.
    This essay investigates the nature of necessary truth in logic and mathematics through a discussion of Wittgenstein's writings on logic and mathematics. My principal scholarly interest in the dissertation is Wittgenstein' s later philosophy, but I also examine his philosophy in the Tractatus and the transitional texts of the 1930s. ;In chapter one I present the Tractatus' general theory of representation through an examination of Wittgenstein's work on the ancient problem of the unity of a propo…Read more