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308Nonexistent ObjectsYale University Press. 1980.In this book Terence Parsons revives the older tradition of taking such objects at face value. Using various modern techniques from logic and the philosophy of language, he formulates a metaphysical theory of nonexistent objects. The theory is given a formalization in symbolism rich enough to contain definite descriptions, modal operators, and epistemic contexts, and the book includes a discussion which relates the formalized theory explicitly to English.
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270A Meinongian Analysis of Fictional ObjectsGrazer Philosophische Studien 1 (1): 73-86. 1975.This paper explores the view that there are such things as (nonexistent) fictional objects, and that we refer to such objects when we say things like "Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective", or "Conan Doyle wrote about Sherlock Holmes". A theory of such objects is developed as a special application of a Meinongian Ontology.
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257Bhartrhari on what cannot be saidPhilosophy East and West 51 (4): 525-534. 2001.Bhartṛhari claims that certain things cannot be signified--for example, the signification relation itself. Hans and Radhika Herzberger assert that Bhartṛhari's claim about signification can be validated by an appeal to twentieth-century results in set theory. This appeal is unpersuasive in establishing this view, but arguments akin to the semantic paradoxes (such as the "liar" paradox) come much closer. Unfortunately, these arguments are equally telling against another of his views: that the tha…Read more
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201Why Frege Should Not Have Said "The Concept Horse is Not a Concept"History of Philosophy Quarterly 3 (4). 1986.Frege held various views about language and its relation to non-linguistic things. These views led him to the paradoxical-sounding conclusion that "the concept horse is NOT a concept." A key assumption that led him to say this is the assumption that phrases beginning with the definite article "the" denote objects, not concepts. In sections I-III this issue is explained. In sections IV-V Frege's theory is articulated, and it is shown that he was incorrect in thinking that this theory led to the c…Read more
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176Frege's Hierarchies of Indirect Senses and the Paradox of AnalysisMidwest Studies in Philosophy 6 (1): 37-58. 1981.
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158Supposition as Quantification versus Supposition as Global Quantificational EffectTopoi 16 (1): 41-63. 1997.This paper follows up a suggestion by Paul Vincent Spade that there were two Medieval theories of the modes of personal supposition. I suggest that early work by Sherwood and others was a study of quantifiers: their semantics and the effects of context on inferences that can be made from quantified terms. Later, in the hands of Burley and others, it changed into a study of something else, a study of what I call global quantificational effect. For example, although the quantifier in ‘¬∀xPx’ is un…Read more
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151Events in the Semantics of English: A Study in Subatomic SemanticsMIT Press. 1990.This extended investigation of the semantics of event (and state) sentences in their various forms is a major contribution to the semantics of natural language, simultaneously encompassing important issues in linguistics, philosophy, and logic. It develops the view that the logical forms of simple English sentences typically contain quantification over events or states and shows how this view can account for a wide variety of semantic phenomena. Focusing on the structure of meaning in English se…Read more
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149True ContradictionsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (3). 1990.In In Contradiction, Graham Priest shows, as clearly as anything like this can be shown, that it is coherent to maintain that some sentences can be both true and false at the same time. As a consequence, some contradictions are true, and an appreciation of this possibility advances our understanding of the nature of logic and language.
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138The progressive in English: Events, states and processes (review)Linguistics and Philosophy 12 (2). 1989.This paper has two goals. The first is to formulate an adequate account of the semantics of the progressive aspect in English: the semantics of Agatha is making a cake, as opposed to Agatha makes a cake. This account presupposes a version of the so-called Aristotelian classification of verbs in English into EVENT, PROCESS and STATE verbs. The second goal of this paper is to refine this classification so as to account for the infamous category switch problem, the problem of how it is that modific…Read more
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117Indeterminate identity: metaphysics and semanticsClarendon Press. 2000.Terence Parsons presents a lively and controversial study of philosophical questions about identity. Because many puzzles about identity remain unsolved, some people believe that they are questions that have no answers and that there is a problem with the language used to formulate them. Parsons explores a different possibility: that such puzzles lack answers because of the way the world is (or because of the way the world is not). He claims that there is genuine indeterminacy of identity in the…Read more
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101Anaphoric pronouns in very late medieval supposition theoryLinguistics and Philosophy 17 (5). 1994.This paper arose from an attempt to determine how the very late medieval1 supposition theorists treated anaphoric pronouns, pronouns whose significance is derivative from their antecedents. Modern researches into pronouns were stimulated in part by the problem of "donkey sentences" discussed by Geach 1962 in a section explaining what is wrong with medieval supposition theory. So there is some interest in seeing exactly what the medieval account comes to, especially if it turns out, as I suspect,…Read more
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92A course in semanticsMIT Press. 2019.An introductory text in linguistic semantics, uniquely balancing empirical coverage and formalism with development of intuition and methodology. This introductory textbook in linguistic semantics for undergraduates features a unique balance between empirical coverage and formalism on the one hand and development of intuition and methodology on the other. It will equip students to form intuitions about a set of data, explain how well an analysis of the data accords with their intuitions, and exte…Read more
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89Ruth Barcan Marcus and the Barcan FormulaIn Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Diana Raffman & Nicholas Asher (eds.), Modality, morality, and belief: essays in honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus, Cambridge University Press. pp. 3--11. 1995.
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89The traditional square of oppositionStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.This entry traces the historical development of the Square of Opposition, a collection of logical relationships traditionally embodied in a square diagram. This body of doctrine provided a foundation for work in logic for over two millenia. For most of this history, logicians assumed that negative particular propositions ("Some S is not P") are vacuously true if their subjects are empty. This validates the logical laws embodied in the diagram, and preserves the doctrine against modern criticisms…Read more
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85Things that are right with the traditional square of oppositionLogica Universalis 2 (1): 3-11. 2008.. The truth conditions that Aristotle attributes to the propositions making up the traditional square of opposition have as a consequence that a particular affirmative proposition such as ‘Some A is not B’ is true if there are no Bs. Although a different convention than the modern one, this assumption remained part of centuries of work in logic that was coherent and logically fruitful.
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79Worldly Indeterminacy of IdentityProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95. 1995.Terence Parsons, Peter Woodruff; X*—Worldly Indeterminacy of Identity, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June 1995, Pages 171–192
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75Some problems concerning the logic of grammatical modifiersSynthese 21 (3-4). 1970.This paper consists principally of selections from a much longer work on the semantics of English. It discusses some problems concerning how to represent grammatical modifiers (e.g. slowly in x drives slowly) in a logically perspicuous notation. A proposal of Reichenbach's is given and criticized; then a new theory (apparently discovered independently by myself, Romain Clark, and Richard Montague and Hans Kamp) is given, in which grammatical modifiers are represented by operators added to a firs…Read more
Bel Air, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy |