•  254
    Logic and Language in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (review)
    Philosophical Review 111 (2): 327-330. 2002.
    This short book comprises “four largely self-contained studies … unified by a common interpretive approach”, the “investigation of the historical development of … Wittgenstein’s early philosophy”. Proops applies this historical approach to Wittgenstein’s conception of logic, his critique of “logical assertion,” his “picture theory” of language, and his discussion of the justification of deduction. He endeavors to “bring out how Wittgenstein develops his views … as foils to the positions develope…Read more
  •  222
    The multiplicity of general propositions
    Noûs 26 (4): 409-426. 1992.
  •  202
    Ryle’s “Intellectualist Legend” in Historical Context
    Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5 (5). 2017.
    Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that emerged from his criticism of the “intellectualist legend” that to do something intelligently is “to do a bit of theory and then to do a bit of practice,” and became a philosophical commonplace in the second half of the last century. In this century Jason Stanley has attacked Ryle’s distinction, arguing that “knowing-how is a species of knowing-that,” and accusing Ryle of setting up a straw man in his critique of “intellectualis…Read more
  •  176
    Judgment and truth in Frege
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 38 (4): 549-581. 2000.
    Thomas Ricketts has developed a powerful interpretation of Frege on judgment, truth and logic. Recently, Ricketts has modified his reading, holding that judgment is an act of knowledge-acquisition; this rules out incorrect judgment. I argue that Ricketts goes too far here. I criticize the textual basis for Ricketts's new view, and show that the interpretive problems which led him to this change can be met without such extreme measures. Thus, I defend Ricketts' earlier view against his own later …Read more
  •  122
    Wilson on Kripke's Wittgenstein
    Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 60 (3): 571-584. 2000.
    George Wilson has recently defended Kripke's well-known interpretation of Wittgenstein against the criticisms of John McDowell. Wilson claims that these criticisms rest on misunderstandings of Kripke and that, when correctly understood, Kripke's interpretation stands up to them well. In particular, Wilson defends Kripke's Wittgenstein against the charge of "non-factualism" about meaning. However, Wilson has not appreciated the full significance of McDowell's criticism. I use a brief exploration …Read more
  •  109
    Kripke and the logic of truth
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 17 (3). 1988.
  •  99
    My title1 is taken from one of the most obscure, and most discussed, sections of an already obscure and much discussed work, the discussion of the self, the world, and solipsism in sections 5.6-5.641 of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus.2 Wittgenstein writes: 5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. 5.61 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. We cannot therefore say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is not…Read more
  •  93
    The argument of "on denoting"
    Philosophical Review 103 (2): 249-297. 1994.
  •  91
    Sense and reference: the origins and development of the distinction
    In Tom Ricketts & Michael D. Potter (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Frege, Cambridge University Press. pp. 220--292. 2010.
    Frege’s distinction between sense (Sinn) and meaning (Bedeutung) is his most influential contribution to philosophy, however central it was to his own projects, and however he may have conceived its importance. Philosophers of language influenced by, or reacting against the distinction, and historians of philosophy commenting on it, have all contributed to the voluminous literature surrounding it.1 Nonetheless in this essay I hope to shed new light on the distinction by considering it in the con…Read more
  •  88
    Review of Gottlob Frege, Dale Jacquette (tr.), The Foundations of Arithmetic (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (1). 2008.
    Last spring, as I was beginning a graduate seminar on Frege, I received a complimentary copy of this new translation of his masterwork, The Foundations of Arithmetic . I had ordered Austin's famous translation, well-loved for the beauty of its English and the clarity with which it presents Frege's overall argument, but known to be less than literal, and to sometimes supplement translation with interpretation. I was intrigued by Dale Jacquette's promise "to combine literal accuracy and readabilit…Read more
  •  76
    Some supervaluation-based consequence relations
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 32 (3): 225-244. 2003.
    In this paper, we define some consequence relations based on supervaluation semantics for partial models, and we investigate their properties. For our main consequence relation, we show that natural versions of the following fail: upwards and downwards Lowenheim-Skolem, axiomatizability, and compactness. We also consider an alternate version for supervaluation semantics, and show both axiomatizability and compactness for the resulting consequence relation
  •  70
    A Capacity to Get Things Right: Gilbert Ryle on Knowledge
    European Journal of Philosophy 25 (1): 25-46. 2017.
    Gilbert Ryle's distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that faces a significant challenge: accounting for the unity of knowledge. Jason Stanley, an ‘intellectualist’ opponent of Ryle's, brings out this problem by arguing that Ryleans must treat ‘know’ as an ambiguous word and must distinguish knowledge proper from knowledge-how, which is ‘knowledge’ only so-called. I develop the challenge and show that underlying Ryle's distinction is a unified vision of knowledge as ‘a capacity to get t…Read more
  •  68
    Margaret MacDonald and Gilbert Ryle: a philosophical friendship
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 30 (2): 288-311. 2022.
    This article considers the personal and philosophical relationship between two philosophers, Margaret MacDonald and Gilbert Ryle. I show that a letter from MacDonald to Ryle found at Linacre Colleg...
  •  67
    Contextualism and Holism in the Early Wittgenstein
    Philosophical Topics 25 (2): 87-120. 1997.
  •  60
    Gyula begins with a contrast between contemporary scare-quotes essentialism and Aristotelian full-blooded essentialism. The former is a semantic thesis couched in the vocabulary of possible-worlds semantics, holding that some terms are rigid designators, while the latter is a metaphysical thesis, couched in a more ancient vocabulary, holding that things have essences. Gyula argues that the more traditional metaphysical framework deserves reconsideration, both because it can help us with problems…Read more
  •  54
    How not to argue for incompatibilism
    Erkenntnis 60 (1): 1-26. 2004.
      Ted A. Warfield has recently employed modal logic to argue that compatibilism in the free-will/determinism debate entails the rejection of intuitively valid inferences. I show that Warfield's argument fails. A parallel argument leads to the false conclusion that the mere possibility of determinism, together with the necessary existence of any contingent propositions, entails the rejection of intuitively valid inferences. The error in both arguments involves a crucial equivocation, which can be…Read more
  •  53
    Mark Textor, Frege on Sense and Reference (review)
    Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 2 (10). 2014.
    London and New York. Routledge, 2011, x + 291. $125.00 (hardcover); $33.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-415-41961-1.
  •  51
  •  49
    Marti on Descriptions in Carnap’s S
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 26 (6): 629-634. 1997.
    This note is a friendly amendment to Marti's analysis of the failure of Føllesdal's argument that modal distinctions collapse in Carnap's logic S2. Føllesdal's argument turns on the treatment of descriptions. Marti considers how modal descriptions, which Carnap banned, might be handled; she adopts an approach which blocks Føllesdal's argument, but requires a separate treatment of non-modal descriptions. I point out that a more general treatment of descriptions in S2 is possible, and indeed is im…Read more
  •  48
    Soames on Russell’s logic: a reply
    Philosophical Studies 139 (2): 209-212. 2008.
    In "What is History For?," Scott Soames responds to criticisms of his treatment of Russell's logic in volume 1 of his "Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century." This note rebuts two of Soames's replies, showing that a first-order presentation of Russell's logic does not fit the argument of the "Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy," and that Soames's contextual definition of classes does not match Russell's contextual definition of classes. In consequence, Soames's presentation of Rus…Read more
  •  45
    Ideology and Knowledge-How
    Theoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 31 (3): 295-311. 2016.
    In work culminating in Know How (2009), Jason Stanley argues, against Gilbert Ryle, that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that. In How Propaganda Works (2015), Stanley portrays this work as undermining a “flawed ideology” supporting elitist valuations of intellectual work and workers. However, the link between Stanley’s two philosophical projects is weak. Ryle’s distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that lacks the political consequences foreseen by Stanley. Versions of “intellec…Read more