•  196
    On Type Distinctions and Expressivity
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 123 (2): 150-172. 2023.
    Quine maintained that philosophical and scientific theorizing should be conducted in an untyped language, which has just one style of variables and quantifiers. By contrast, typed languages, such as those advocated by Frege and Russell, include multiple styles of variables and matching kinds of quantification. Which form should our theories take? In this article, I argue that expressivity does not favour typed languages over untyped ones.
  •  419
    Two conceptions of absolute generality
    Philosophical Studies 180 (5-6): 1601-1621. 2023.
    What is absolutely unrestricted quantification? We distinguish two theoretical roles and identify two conceptions of absolute generality: maximally strong generality and maximally inclusive generality. We also distinguish two corresponding kinds of absolute domain. A maximally strong domain contains every potential counterexample to a generalisation. A maximally inclusive domain is such that no domain extends it. We argue that both conceptions of absolute generality are legitimate and investigat…Read more
  •  458
    Plurals and Mereology
    Journal of Philosophical Logic 50 (3): 415-445. 2020.
    In linguistics, the dominant approach to the semantics of plurals appeals to mereology. However, this approach has received strong criticisms from philosophical logicians who subscribe to an alternative framework based on plural logic. In the first part of the article, we offer a precise characterization of the mereological approach and the semantic background in which the debate can be meaningfully reconstructed. In the second part, we deal with the criticisms and assess their logical, linguist…Read more
  •  79
    Critical Plural Logic
    Philosophia Mathematica 28 (2): 172-203. 2020.
    What is the relation between some things and the set of these things? Mathematical practice does not provide a univocal answer. On the one hand, it relies on ordinary plural talk, which is implicitly committed to a traditional form of plural logic. On the other hand, mathematical practice favors a liberal view of definitions which entails that traditional plural logic must be restricted. We explore this predicament and develop a “critical” alternative to traditional plural logic.
  •  1027
    Plural expressions found in natural languages allow us to talk about many objects simultaneously. Plural logic — a logical system that takes plurals at face value — has seen a surge of interest in recent years. This book explores its broader significance for philosophy, logic, and linguistics. What can plural logic do for us? Are the bold claims made on its behalf correct? After introducing plural logic and its main applications, the book provides a systematic analysis of the relation between th…Read more
  •  284
    Unrestricted Quantification and the Structure of Type Theory
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (1): 44-64. 2021.
    Semantic theories based on a hierarchy of types have prominently been used to defend the possibility of unrestricted quantification. However, they also pose a prima facie problem for it: each quantifier ranges over at most one level of the hierarchy and is therefore not unrestricted. It is difficult to evaluate this problem without a principled account of what it is for a quantifier to be unrestricted. Drawing on an insight of Russell’s about the relationship between quantification and the struc…Read more
  •  117
    Introduction
    Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 56 (1): 1-2. 2015.
    Introduction to a special issue based on a summer school on set theory and high-order logic.
  •  570
    Metalogic and the Overgeneration Argument
    Mind 128 (511): 761-793. 2019.
    A prominent objection against the logicality of second-order logic is the so-called Overgeneration Argument. However, it is far from clear how this argument is to be understood. In the first part of the article, we examine the argument and locate its main source, namely, the alleged entanglement of second-order logic and mathematics. We then identify various reasons why the entanglement may be thought to be problematic. In the second part of the article, we take a metatheoretic perspective on th…Read more
  •  133
    Plural Logic and Sensitivity to Order
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (3): 444-464. 2015.
    Sentences that exhibit sensitivity to order (e.g. 'John and Mary arrived at school in that order' and 'Mary and John arrived at school in that order') present a challenge for the standard formulation of plural logic. In response, some authors have advocated new versions of plural logic based on fine-grained notions of plural reference, such as serial reference (Hewitt 2012) and articulated reference (Ben-Yami 2013). The aim of this article is to show that sensitivity to order should be accounted…Read more
  •  261
    Plural logic is widely assumed to have two important virtues: ontological innocence and determinacy. It is claimed to be innocent in the sense that it incurs no ontological commitments beyond those already incurred by the first-order quantifiers. It is claimed to be determinate in the sense that it is immune to the threat of non-standard interpretations that confronts higher-order logics on their more traditional, set-based semantics. We challenge both claims. Our challenge is based on a Henkin-…Read more
  •  643
    Semantics and the Plural Conception of Reality
    Philosophers' Imprint 14 1-20. 2014.
    According to the singular conception of reality, there are objects and there are singular properties, i.e. properties that are instantiated by objects separately. It has been argued that semantic considerations about plurals give us reasons to embrace a plural conception of reality. This is the view that, in addition to singular properties, there are plural properties, i.e. properties that are instantiated jointly by many objects. In this article, I propose and defend a novel semantic account of…Read more
  •  97
    Untyped Pluralism
    Mind 123 (490): 317-337. 2014.
    In the semantic debate about plurals, pluralism is the view that a plural term denotes some things in the domain of quantification and a plural predicate denotes a plural property, i.e. a property that can be instantiated by many things jointly. According to a particular version of this view, untyped pluralism, there is no type distinction between objects and properties. In this article, I argue against untyped pluralism by showing that it is subject to a variant of a Russell-style argument put …Read more
  •  266
    The paradox of idealization
    Analysis 69 (3): 461-469. 2009.
    A well-known proof by Alonzo Church, first published in 1963 by Frederic Fitch, purports to show that all truths are knowable only if all truths are known. This is the Paradox of Knowability. If we take it, quite plausibly, that we are not omniscient, the proof appears to undermine metaphysical doctrines committed to the knowability of truth, such as semantic anti-realism. Since its rediscovery by Hart and McGinn (1976), many solutions to the paradox have been offered. In this article, we presen…Read more
  •  49
    Introduction to Special Issue: Abstraction Principles
    Philosophia Mathematica 25 (1): 1-2. 2017.
    Introduction to a special issue on abstraction principles.
  •  288
    Unrestricted Quantification
    Philosophy Compass 9 (7): 441-454. 2014.
    Semantic interpretations of both natural and formal languages are usually taken to involve the specification of a domain of entities with respect to which the sentences of the language are to be evaluated. A question that has received much attention of late is whether there is unrestricted quantification, quantification over a domain comprising absolutely everything there is. Is there a discourse or inquiry that has absolute generality? After framing the debate, this article provides an overview…Read more
  •  4
    Logic and Plurals
    In Kirk Ludwig & Marija Jankovic (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Collective Intentionality, Routledge. pp. 451-463. 2018.
    This chapter provides an overview of the philosophical and linguistic debate about the logic of plurals. We present the most prominent singularizing analyses of plurals as well as the main criticisms that such analyses have received. We then introduce an alternative approach to plurals known as plural logic, focusing on the question whether plural logic can count as pure logic.
  •  90
    What Russell Should Have Said to Burali–Forti
    Review of Symbolic Logic 10 (4): 682-718. 2017.
    The paradox that appears under Burali-Forti’s name in many textbooks of set theory is a clever piece of reasoning leading to an unproblematic theorem. The theorem asserts that the ordinals do not form a set. For such a set would be—absurdly—an ordinal greater than any ordinal in the set of all ordinals. In this article, we argue that the paradox of Burali-Forti is first and foremost a problem about concept formation by abstraction, not about sets. We contend, furthermore, that some hundred years…Read more
  •  246
    Set Theory, Type Theory, and Absolute Generality
    Mind 123 (489): 157-174. 2014.
    In light of the close connection between the ontological hierarchy of set theory and the ideological hierarchy of type theory, Øystein Linnebo and Agustín Rayo have recently offered an argument in favour of the view that the set-theoretic universe is open-ended. In this paper, we argue that, since the connection between the two hierarchies is indeed tight, any philosophical conclusions cut both ways. One should either hold that both the ontological hierarchy and the ideological hierarchy are ope…Read more