•  4680
    Frege's contribution to philosophy of language
    with Robert May
    In Barry C. Smith & Ernest Lepore (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 3-39. 2006.
    An investigation of Frege’s various contributions to the study of language, focusing on three of his most famous doctrines: that concepts are unsaturated, that sentences refer to truth-values, and that sense must be distinguished from reference
  •  2275
    The Julius Caesar objection
    In Richard G. Heck (ed.), Language, Thought, and Logic: Essays in Honour of Michael Dummett, Oxford University Press. pp. 273--308. 1997.
    This paper argues that that Caesar problem had a technical aspect, namely, that it threatened to make it impossible to prove, in the way Frege wanted, that there are infinitely many numbers. It then offers a solution to the problem, one that shows Frege did not really need the claim that "numbers are objects", not if that claim is intended in a form that forces the Caesar problem upon us.
  •  2225
    Meaning and Truth-conditions
    In Dirk Greimann & Geo Siegwart (eds.), Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language, Routledge. pp. 349--76. 2007.
    Defends the view that understanding can be identified with knowledge of T-sentences against the classical criticisms of Foster and Soames.
  •  1815
    Nonconceptual content and the "space of reasons"
    Philosophical Review 109 (4): 483-523. 2000.
    In Mind and World, John McDowell argues against the view that perceptual representation is non-conceptual. The central worry is that this view cannot offer any reasonable account of how perception bears rationally upon belief. I argue that this worry, though sensible, can be met, if we are clear that perceptual representation is, though non-conceptual, still in some sense 'assertoric': Perception, like belief, represents things as being thus and so.
  •  1725
    Frege’s Theorem: An Introduction
    The Harvard Review of Philosophy 7 (1): 56-73. 1999.
    A brief, non-technical introduction to technical and philosophical aspects of Frege's philosophy of arithmetic. The exposition focuses on Frege's Theorem, which states that the axioms of arithmetic are provable, in second-order logic, from a single non-logical axiom, "Hume's Principle", which itself is: The number of Fs is the same as the number of Gs if, and only if, the Fs and Gs are in one-one correspondence
  •  1678
    Gareth Evans has argued that the existence of vague objects is logically precluded: The assumption that it is indeterminate whether some object a is identical to some object b leads to contradiction. I argue in reply that, although this is true—I thus defend Evans's argument, as he presents it—the existence of vague objects is not thereby precluded. An 'Indefinitist' need only hold that it is not logically required that every identity statement must have a determinate truth-value, not that some …Read more
  •  1480
    Are there different kinds of content?
    In Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan D. Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. pp. 117-138. 2007.
    In an earlier paper, "Non-conceptual Content and the 'Space of Reasons'", I distinguished two forms of the view that perceptual content is non-conceptual, which I called the 'state view' and the 'content view'. On the latter, but not the former, perceptual states have a different kind of content than do cognitive states. Many have found it puzzling why anyone would want to make this claim and, indeed, what it might mean. This paper attempts to address these questions
  •  1349
    Frege on Identity and Identity-Statements: A Reply to Thau and Caplan
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33 (1): 83-102. 2003.
    The paper argues, as against Thau and Caplan, that the traditional interpretation that Frege abandoned his earlier views about identity and identity--statements is correct
  •  1189
    Self-reference and the languages of arithmetic
    Philosophia Mathematica 15 (1): 1-29. 2007.
    I here investigate the sense in which diagonalization allows one to construct sentences that are self-referential. Truly self-referential sentences cannot be constructed in the standard language of arithmetic: There is a simple theory of truth that is intuitively inconsistent but is consistent with Peano arithmetic, as standardly formulated. True self-reference is possible only if we expand the language to include function-symbols for all primitive recursive functions. This language is therefore…Read more
  •  1148
    The Composition of Thoughts
    with Robert May
    Noûs 45 (1): 126-166. 2010.
    Are Fregean thoughts compositionally complex and composed of senses? We argue that, in Begriffsschrift, Frege took 'conceptual contents' to be unstructured, but that he quickly moved away from this position, holding just two years later that conceptual contents divide of themselves into 'function' and 'argument'. This second position is shown to be unstable, however, by Frege's famous substitution puzzle. For Frege, the crucial question the puzzle raises is why "The Morning Star is a planet" and…Read more
  •  1107
    Solving Frege's puzzle
    Journal of Philosophy 109 (1-2): 728-732. 2012.
    So-called 'Frege cases' pose a challenge for anyone who would hope to treat the contents of beliefs (and similar mental states) as Russellian propositions: It is then impossible to explain people's behavior in Frege cases without invoking non-intentional features of their mental states, and doing that seems to undermine the intentionality of psychological explanation. In the present paper, I develop this sort of objection in what seems to me to be its strongest form, but then offer a response to…Read more
  •  1097
    How Not To Watch Feminist Pornography
    Feminist Philosophical Quarterly 7 (1). 2021.
    This paper has three goals. The first is to defend Tristan Taromino and Erika Lust (or some of their films) from criticisms that Rebecca Whisnant and Hans Maes make of them. Toward that end, I will be arguing against the narrow conceptions that Whisnant and Maes have of what `feminist' pornography must be like. More generally, I hope to show by example why it is important to take pornographic films seriously as films if we're to understand their potential to shape, or mis-shape, socio-sexual nor…Read more
  •  1020
    Definition by Induction in Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik
    In William Demopoulos (ed.), Frege's philosophy of mathematics, Harvard University Press. 1995.
    This paper discusses Frege's account of definition by induction in Grundgesetze and the two key theorems Frege proves using it.
  •  994
    This paper is concerned with neo-Fregean accounts of reference to abstract objects. It develops an objection to the most familiar such accounts, due to Bob Hale and Crispin Wright, based upon what I call the 'proliferation problem': Hale and Wright's account makes reference to abstract objects seem too easy, as is shown by the fact that any equivalence relation seems as good as any other. The paper then develops a response to this objection, and offers an account of what it is for abstracta to e…Read more
  •  922
    Discusses Frege's formal definitions and characterizations of infinite and finite sets. Speculates that Frege might have discovered the "oddity" in Dedekind's famous proof that all infinite sets are Dedekind infinite and, in doing so, stumbled across an axiom of countable choice.
  •  879
    Truth in Frege
    with Robert May
    In M. Glanzberg (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Truth, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    A general survey of Frege's views on truth, the paper explores the problems in response to which Frege's distinctive view that sentences refer to truth-values develops. It also discusses his view that truth-values are objects and the so-called regress argument for the indefinability of truth. Finally, we consider, very briefly, the question whether Frege was a deflationist.
  •  822
    The Consistency of predicative fragments of frege’s grundgesetze der arithmetik
    History and Philosophy of Logic 17 (1-2): 209-220. 1996.
    As is well-known, the formal system in which Frege works in his Grundgesetze der Arithmetik is formally inconsistent, Russell’s Paradox being derivable in it.This system is, except for minor differ...
  •  822
    In "Counting and Indeterminate Identity", N. Ángel Pinillos develops an argument that there can be no cases of `Split Indeterminate Identity'. Such a case would be one in which it was indeterminate whether a=b and indeterminate whether a=c, but determinately true that b≠c. The interest of the argument lies, in part, in the fact that it appears to appeal to none of the controversial claims to which similar arguments due to Gareth Evans and Nathan Salmon appeal. I argue for two counter-claims. Fir…Read more
  •  817
    Truth and disquotation
    Synthese 142 (3): 317--352. 2005.
    Hartry Field has suggested that we should adopt at least a methodological deflationism: [W]e should assume full-fledged deflationism as a working hypothesis. That way, if full-fledged deflationism should turn out to be inadequate, we will at least have a clearer sense than we now have of just where it is that inflationist assumptions ... are needed. I argue here that we do not need to be methodological deflationists. More pre-cisely, I argue that we have no need for a disquotational truth-predic…Read more
  •  798
    Pornography and accommodation
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 64 (8): 830-860. 2021.
    ABSTRACT In ‘Scorekeeping in a Pornographic Language Game’, Rae Langton and Caroline West borrow ideas from David Lewis to attempt to explain how pornography might subordinate and silence women. Pornography is supposed to express certain misogynistic claims implicitly, through presupposition, and to convey them indirectly, through accommodation. I argue that the appeal to accommodation cannot do the sort of work Langton and West want it to do: Their case rests upon an overly simplified model of …Read more
  •  717
    A Liar Paradox
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 1 (1): 36-40. 2012.
    The purpose of this note is to present a strong form of the liar paradox. It is strong because the logical resources needed to generate the paradox are weak, in each of two senses. First, few expressive resources required: conjunction, negation, and identity. In particular, this form of the liar does not need to make any use of the conditional. Second, few inferential resources are required. These are: (i) conjunction introduction; (ii) substitution of identicals; and (iii) the inference: From ¬…Read more
  •  708
    This paper discusses the question whether it is possible to explain the notion of a singular term without invoking the notion of an object or other ontological notions. The framework here is that of Michael Dummett's discussion in Frege: Philosophy of Language. I offer an emended version of Dummett's conditions, accepting but modifying some suggestions made by Bob Hale, and defend the emended conditions against some objections due to Crispin Wright. This paper dates from about 1989. It originall…Read more
  •  703
    Reason and Language
    In Cynthia Macdonald & Graham Macdonald (eds.), McDowell and His Critics, Blackwell. pp. 22--45. 2006.
    John McDowell has often emphasized the fact that the use of langauge is a rational enterprise. In this paper, I explore the sense in which this is so, arguing that our use of language depends upon our consciously knowing what our words mean. I call this a 'cognitive conception of semantic competence'. The paper also contains a close analysis of the phenomenon of implicature and some suggestions about how it should and should not be understood.
  •  702
    Ramified Frege Arithmetic
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 40 (6): 715-735. 2011.
    Øystein Linnebo has recently shown that the existence of successors cannot be proven in predicative Frege arithmetic, using Frege’s definitions of arithmetical notions. By contrast, it is shown here that the existence of successor can be proven in ramified predicative Frege arithmetic
  •  701
    A Logic for Frege's Theorem
    In Richard G. Heck (ed.), Frege’s Theorem: An Introduction, The Harvard Review of Philosophy. 1999.
    It has been known for a few years that no more than Pi-1-1 comprehension is needed for the proof of "Frege's Theorem". One can at least imagine a view that would regard Pi-1-1 comprehension axioms as logical truths but deny that status to any that are more complex—a view that would, in particular, deny that full second-order logic deserves the name. Such a view would serve the purposes of neo-logicists. It is, in fact, no part of my view that, say, Delta-3-1 comprehension axioms are not logical …Read more
  •  695
    Do demonstratives have senses?
    Philosophers' Imprint 2 1-33. 2002.
    Frege held that referring expressions in general, and demonstratives and indexicals in particular, contribute more than just their reference to what is expressed by utterances of sentences containing them. Heck first attempts to get clear about what the essence of the Fregean view is, arguing that it rests upon a certain conception of linguistic communication that is ultimately indefensible. On the other hand, however, he argues that understanding a demonstrative (or indexical) utterance require…Read more
  •  682
    MacFarlane on relative truth
    Philosophical Issues 16 (1). 2006.
    John MacFarlane has made relativism popular again. Focusing just on his original discussion, I argue that the data he uses to motivate the position do not, in fact, motivatie it at all. Many of the points made here have since been made, independently, by Hermann Cappelen and John Hawthorne, in their book Relativism and Monadic Truth.
  •  651
    The Sense of Communication
    Mind 104 (413). 1995.
    Many philosophers nowadays believe Frege was right about belief, but wrong about language: The contents of beliefs need to be individuated more finely than in terms of Russellian propositions, but the contents of utterances do not. I argue that this 'hybrid view' cannot offer no reasonable account of how communication transfers knowledge from one speaker to another and that, to do so, we must insist that understanding depends upon more than just getting the references of terms right.
  •  629
    Does Pornography Presuppose Rape Myths?
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 105 (1): 50-74. 2024.
    Rae Langton and Caroline West argue that pornography silences women by presupposing misogynistic attitudes, such as that women enjoy being raped. More precisely, they claim that a somewhat infamous pictorial, ‘Dirty Pool’, makes such presuppositions, and that it is typical in this respect. I argue for four claims. (1) There are empirical reasons to doubt that women are silenced in the way that Langton and West claim they are. (2) There is no evidence that very much pornography makes the sorts of…Read more
  •  619
    Frege and semantics
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 75 (1): 27-63. 2007.
    In recent work on Frege, one of the most salient issues has been whether he was prepared to make serious use of semantical notions such as reference and truth. I argue here Frege did make very serious use of semantical concepts. I argue, first, that Frege had reason to be interested in the question how the axioms and rules of his formal theory might be justified and, second, that he explicitly commits himself to offering a justification that appeals to the notion of reference. I then discuss the…Read more