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660Numbers versus NominalistsAnalysis 68 (3). 2008.A nominalist account of statements of number (e.g., ‘There are exactly two moons of Mars’) is rebutted.
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551
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541Singular ConceptsSynthese. forthcoming.Toward a theory of n-tuples of individuals and concepts as surrogates for Russellian singular propositions and singular concepts. Alonzo Church proposed a powerful and elegant theory of sequences of functions and their arguments as singular-concept surrogates. Church’s account accords with his Alternative (0), the strictest of his three competing criteria for strict synonymy. The currently popular objection to strict criteria like (0) on the basis of the Russell-Myhill paradox is here rebutted. …Read more
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517How Not to Derive Essentialism from the Theory of ReferenceJournal of Philosophy 76 (12): 703-725. 1979.A thorough critique (extracted from the author’s 1979 doctoral dissertation) of Kripke’s purported derivation, in footnote 56 of his philosophical masterpiece /Naming and Necessity/, of nontrivial modal essentialism from the theory of rigid designation.
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516Frege’s Puzzle (2nd ed.)Ridgeview Publishing Company. 1986.This is the 1991 (2nd) edition of the 1986 book (MIT Press), considered to be the classic defense of Millianism. The nature of the information content of declarative sentences is a central topic in the philosophy of language. The natural view that a sentence like "John loves Mary" contains information in which two individuals occur as constituents is termed the naive theory, and is one that has been abandoned by most contemporary scholars. This theory was refuted originally by philosopher Gottlo…Read more
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489The Logic of What Might Have BeenPhilosophical Review 98 (1): 3-34. 1989.The dogma that the propositional logic of metaphysical modality is S5 is rebutted. The author exposes fallacies in standard arguments supporting S5, arguing that propositional metaphysical modal logic is weaker even than both S4 and B, and is instead the minimal and weak metaphysical-modal logic T.
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354In this candid autobiographical essay, Nathan Salmon recounts and assesses the impact of various philosophers and events on his philosophical development.
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342Naming, Necessity, and Beyond: Beyond Rigidity by Scott Soames (review)Mind 112 (447): 475-492. 2003.
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321Reference and Essence, expanded edition (2nd ed.)Prometheus Books. 2005.This is the second edition of an award-winning 1981 book (Princeton University Press and Basil Blackwell, based on the author’s doctoral dissertation) considered to be a classic in the philosophy of language movement known variously as the New Theory of Reference or the Direct-Reference Theory, as well as in the metaphysics of modal essentialism that is related to this philosophy of language.
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314RecurrencePhilosophical Studies 159 (3): 407-441. 2012.Standard compositionality is the doctrine that the semantic content of a compound expression is a function of the semantic contents of the contentful component expressions. In 1954 Hilary Putnam proposed that standard compositionality be replaced by a stricter version according to which even sentences that are synonymously isomorphic (in the sense of Alonzo Church) are not strictly synonymous unless they have the same logical form. On Putnam’s proposal, the semantic content of a compound express…Read more
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305Demonstrating and NecessityPhilosophical Review 111 (4): 497-537. 2002.My title is meant to suggest a continuation of the sort of philosophical investigation into the nature of language and modality undertaken in Rudolf Carnap’s Meaning and Necessity and Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity. My topic belongs in a class with meaning and naming. It is demonstratives—that is, expressions like ‘that darn cat’ or the pronoun ‘he’ used deictically. A few philosophers deserve particular credit for advancing our understanding of demonstratives and other indexical words. Thou…Read more
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289Illogical BeliefPhilosophical Perspectives 3 243-285. 1989.A sequel to the author’s book /Frege’s Puzzle/ (1986).
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284Modal Paradox: Parts and Counterparts, Points and CounterpointsMidwest Studies in Philosophy 11 (1): 75-120. 1986.
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284Are General Terms Rigid?Linguistics and Philosophy 28 (1). 2004.On Kripke’s intended definition, a term designates an object x rigidly if the term designates x with respect to every possible world in which x exists and does not designate anything else with respect to worlds in which x does not exist. Kripke evidently holds in Naming and Necessity, hereafter N&N (pp. 117–144, passim, and especially at 134, 139–140), that certain general terms – including natural-kind terms like ‘‘water’’ and ‘‘tiger’’, phenomenon terms like ‘‘heat’’ and ‘‘hot’’, and color ter…Read more
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281Recurrence AgainPhilosophical Studies 172 (2): 445-457. 2015.Kit Fine has replied to my criticism of a technical objection he had given to the version of Millianism that I advocate. Fine evidently objects to my use of classical existential instantiation in an object-theoretic rendering of his meta-proof. Fine’s reply appears to involve both an egregious misreading of my criticism and a significant logical error. I argue that my rendering is unimpeachable, that the issue over my use of classical EI is a red herring, and that Fine’s original argument commit…Read more
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272GeneralityPhilosophical Studies 161 (3): 471-481. 2012.A distinction is drawn among predicates, open sentences (or open formulas), and general terms, including general-term phrases. Attaching a copula, perhaps together with an article, to a general term yields a predicate. Predicates can also be obtained through lambda-abstraction on an open sentence. The issue of designation and semantic content for each type of general expression is investigated. It is argued that the designatum of a general term is a universal, e.g., a kind, whereas the designatu…Read more
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266Sleeping Beauty: Awakenings, Chance, Secrets, and VideoIn Alessandro Capone, Pietro Perconti & Roberto Graci (eds.), Philosophy, Cognition and Pragmatics, Springer Nature Switzerland. pp. 53-65. 2024.A new philosophical analysis is provided of the notorious Sleeping Beauty Problem. It is argued that the correct solution is one-third, but not in the way previous philosophers have typically meant this. A modified version of the Problem demonstrates that neither self-locating information nor amnesia is relevant to the core Problem, which is simply to evaluate the conditional chance of heads given an undated Monday-or-Tuesday awakening. Previous commentators have failed to appreciate the signifi…Read more
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248Modal Paradox II: Essence and CoherencePhilosophical Studies 178 (10): 3237-3250. 2021.Paradoxes of nested modality, like Chisholm’s paradox, rely on S4 or something stronger as the propositional logic of metaphysical modality. Sarah-Jane Leslie’s objection to the resolution of Chisholm’s paradox by means of rejection of S4 modal logic is investigated. A modal notion of essence congenial to Leslie’s objection is clarified. An argument is presented in support of Leslie’s crucial but unsupported assertion that, on pain of inconsistency, an object’s essence is the same in every possi…Read more
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243
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235A collection of ten previously published essays on existence, nonexistence, empty names, fiction and myth, and free logic.
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230The Resilience of Illogical BeliefNoûs 40 (2). 2006.Although Professor Schiffer and I have many times disagreed, I share his deep and abiding commitment to argument as a primary philosophical tool. Regretting any communication failure that has occurred, I endeavor here to make clearer my earlier reply in “Illogical Belief” to Schiffer’s alleged problem for my version of Millianism.1 I shall be skeletal, however; the interested reader is encouraged to turn to “Illogical Belief” for detail and elaboration. I have argued that to bear a propositional…Read more
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230Some Highs and Lows of Hylomorphism: On a Paradox about Property AbstractionPhilosophical Studies 177 (6): 1549-1563. 2020.We defend hylomorphism against Maegan Fairchild’s purported proof of its inconsistency. We provide a deduction of a contradiction from SH+, which is the combination of “simple hylomorphism” and an innocuous premise. We show that the deduction, reminiscent of Russell’s Paradox, is proof-theoretically valid in classical higher-order logic and invokes an impredicatively defined property. We provide a proof that SH+ is nevertheless consistent in a free higher-order logic. It is shown that the unrest…Read more
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225On DesignatingMind 114 (456): 1069-1133. 2005.A detailed interpretation is provided of the ‘Gray's Elegy’ passage in Russell's ‘On Denoting’. The passage is suffciently obscure that its principal lessons have been independently rediscovered. Russell attempts to demonstrate that the thesis that definite descriptions are singular terms is untenable. The thesis demands a distinction be drawn between content and designation, but the attempt to form a proposition directly about the content (as by using an appropriate form of quotation) inevitabl…Read more
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223Impossible OddsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (3): 644-662. 2019.A thesis (“weak BCP”) nearly universally held among philosophers of probability connects the concepts of objective chance and metaphysical modality: Any prospect (outcome) that has a positive chance of obtaining is metaphysically possible—(nearly) equivalently, any metaphysically impossible prospect has zero chance. Particular counterexamples are provided utilizing the monotonicity of chance, one of them related to the four world paradox. Explanations are offered for the persistent feeling that …Read more
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Philosophy of Language, Misc |
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Philosophy of Language |
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Logic in Philosophy |