This book attempts to marry truth-conditional semantics with cognitive linguistics in the church of computational neuroscience. To this end, it examines the truth-conditional meanings of coordinators, quantifiers, and collective predicates as neurophysiological phenomena that are amenable to a neurocomputational analysis. Drawing inspiration from work on visual processing, and especially the simple/complex cell distinction in early vision (V1), we claim that a similar two-layer architecture is sufficient to learn the truth-conditional meanings of the logical coordinators and logical quantifiers. As a (...) prerequisite, much discussion is given over to what a neurologically plausible representation of the meanings of these items would look like. We eventually settle on a representation in terms of correlation, so that, for instance, the semantic input to the universal operators (e.g. and, all)is represented as maximally correlated, while the semantic input to the universal negative operators (e.g. nor, no)is represented as maximally anticorrelated. On the basis this representation, the hypothesis can be offered that the function of the logical operators is to extract an invariant feature from natural situations, that of degree of correlation between parts of the situation. This result sets up an elegant formal analogy to recent models of visual processing, which argue that the function of early vision is to reduce the redundancy inherent in natural images. Computational simulations are designed in which the logical operators are learned by associating their phonological form with some degree of correlation in the inputs, so that the overall function of the system is as a simple kind of pattern recognition. Several learning rules are assayed, especially those of the Hebbian sort, which are the ones with the most neurological support. Learning vector quantization (LVQ) is shown to be a perspicuous and efficient means of learning the patterns that are of interest. We draw a formal parallelism between the initial, competitive layer of LVQ and the simple cell layer in V1, and between the final, linear layer of LVQ and the complex cell layer in V1, in that the initial layers are both selective, while the final layers both generalize. It is also shown how the representations argued for can be used to draw the traditionally-recognized inferences arising from coordination and quantification, and why the inference of subalternacy breaks down for collective predicates. Finally, the analogies between early vision and the logical operators allow us to advance the claim of cognitive linguistics that language is not processed by proprietary algorithms, but rather by algorithms that are general to the entire brain. Thus in the debate between objectivist and experiential metaphysics, this book falls squarely into the camp of the latter. Yet it does so by means of a rigorous formal, mathematical, and neurological exposition – in contradiction of the experiential claim that formal analysis has no place in the understanding of cognition. To make our own counter-claim as explicit as possible, we present a sketch of the LVQ structure in terms of mereotopology, in which the initial layer of the network performs topological operations, while the final layer performs mereological operations. The book is meant to be self-contained, in the sense that it does not assume any prior knowledge of any of the many areas that are touched upon. It therefore contains mini-summaries of biological visual processing, especially the retinocortical and ventral /what?/ parvocellular pathways computational models of neural signaling, and in particular the reduction of the Hodgkin-Huxley equations to the connectionist and integrate-and-fire neurons Hebbian learning rules and the elaboration of learning vector quantization the linguistic pathway in the left hemisphere memory and the hippocampus truth-conditional vs. image-schematic semantics objectivist vs. experiential metaphysics and mereotopology. All of the simulations are implemented in MATLAB, and the code is available from the book’s website. • The discovery of several algorithmic similarities between visison and semantics. • The support of all of this by means of simulations, and the packaging of all of this in a coherent theoretical framework. (shrink)

My thesis consists of three self-contained but interconnected papers. In the first one, 'Word and Objects', I assume that it is possible to quantify over absolutely everything, and show that certain English sentences containing collective predicates resist paraphrase in first-order languages and even in first-order languages enriched with plural quantifiers. To capture such sentences I develop a language containing plural predicates . ;The introduction of plural predicates leads to an extension of Quine's criterion of ontological commitment. I argue that (...) theories containing plural predicates can have plural ontological commitments in addition to singular ones. In this sense, I argue that the subject-matter of ontology is richer than one might have thought. ;Plural predicates turn out to be tremendously fruitful. For example, they provide us with natural formalizations for English plural definite descriptions and generalized quantifiers. They also allow us to state important set theoretic propositions, and give a formal semantics for second-order languages. Such a formal semantics is developed in the second paper, 'Toward a Theory of Second-Order Consequence', which is a collaboration with Gabriel Uzquiano. ;In the third paper, 'Frege's Unofficial Arithmetic', I consider an application of plural predicates to the philosophy of mathematics. By developing a suggestion of the later Frege, I show that any arithmetical predicate can be transformed into a plural predicate in such a way that the arithmetical predicate is true of the number of the Fs just in case the plural predicate is true of the Fs themselves. ;The transformation is important both because it can be put to use by nominalists about arithmetic and neo-Fregeans, and because it provides the foundations for an account of applied arithmetic. (shrink)

While sets are combinatorial collections, defined by their elements, classes are logical collections, defined by their membership conditions. We develop, in a potentialist setting, a predicative approach to (logical) classes of (combinatorial) sets. Some reasons emerge to adopt a stricter form of potentialism, which insists, not only that each object is generated at some stage of an incompletable process, but also that each truth is “made true” at some such stage. The natural logic of this strict form of potentialism is (...) semi-intuitionistic: where each set-sized domain is classical, the domain of all sets or all classes is intuitionistic. (shrink)

This article studies the monotonicity behavior of plural determinersthat quantify over collections. Following previous work, we describe thecollective interpretation of determiners such as all, some andmost using generalized quantifiers of a higher type that areobtained systematically by applying a type shifting operator to thestandard meanings of determiners in Generalized Quantifier Theory. Twoprocesses of counting and existential quantification thatappear with plural quantifiers are unified into a single determinerfitting operator, which, unlike previous proposals, both capturesexistential quantification with plural determiners and respects theirmonotonicity (...) properties. However, some previously unnoticed factsindicate that monotonicity of plural determiners is not always preservedwhen they apply to collective predicates. We show that the proposedoperator describes this behavior correctly, and characterize themonotonicity of the collective determiners it derives. It is proved thatdeterminer fitting always preserves monotonicity properties ofdeterminers in their second argument, but monotonicity in the firstargument of a determiner is preserved if and only if it is monotonic inthe same direction in the second argument. We argue that this asymmetryfollows from the conservativity of generalized quantifiers innatural language. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to provide a simple type-free set theory which can be used to give the various readings of collective/distributive sentences.

The nature of predication, and its relation to truth, is the central topic of Davidson’s posthumously published Truth and Predication . The main task which an account of predication should accomplish is a solution to the problem of predication; and that, Davidson tells us, is the problem of explaining what makes some collections of words, but not others, true or false (86). It is so-called because, Davidson thinks, the principal challenge faced by any answer to this problem is the problem (...) of explaining the distinctive contribution made by predicates to the truth or falsity of sentences. (shrink)

We suggest a new framework for the Weyl-Feferman predicativist program by constructing a formal predicative set theory P ZF which resembles ZF , and is suitable for mechanization. The basic idea is that the predicatively acceptable instances of the comprehension schema are those which determine the collections they define in an absolute way, independent of the extension of the “surrounding universe”. The language of P ZF is type-free, and it reflects real mathematical practice in making an extensive use of statically (...) defined abstract set terms. Another important feature of P ZF is that its underlying logic is ancestral logic (i.e. the extension of first-order logic with a transitive closure operation). (shrink)

Intuitively, collective nouns are pseudo-singular: a collection of things (a pair of people, a flock of birds, etc.) just is the things that make ‘it’ up. But certain facts about natural language seem to count against this view. In short, distributive predicates and numerals interact with collective nouns in ways that they seemingly shouldn’t if those nouns are pseudo-singular. We call this set of issues ‘the distribution problem’. To solve it, we propose a modification to cover-based semantics. On (...) this semantics, the interpretation of distributive predicates and numerals depends on a cover, where the choice of cover is strongly semantically constrained by the noun with which they interact. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the concept of collective essence: that some truths are essential to many items taken together. For example, that it is essential to conjunction and negation that they are truth-functionally complete. The concept of collective essence is one of the main innovations of recent work on the theory of essence. In a sense, this innovation is natural, since we make all sorts of plural predications. It stands to reason that there should be a distinction between (...) essential and accidental plural predications if there is a distinction among singular predications. In this paper I defend the view that the concept of collective essence is governed by the principle of Monotonicity: that something is essential to some items only if it is essential to any items to which they belong. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that non-agent collectives, including what one might call the ‘global collective’ consisting of the world’s population taken as a whole, cannot be the bearers of non-distributive moral obligations on pain of violating the principle that ‘ought implies can’. I argue that one prominent line of argument for this conclusion fails because it illicitly relies on a formulation of the ‘ought implies can’ principle which is inapt for contexts which allow for the possibility of non-distributive plural (...) predications of agency, which are precisely the contexts in which we might expect non-agents to be obligation-bearers. (shrink)

In this thesis I focus on F. H. Bradley's theory of judgment and his doctrine of predication. My goal is to present an account of Bradley's views which pays special attention to his belief that all logical predication must necessarily fail to accomplish what it sets out to do. All assertion , we are told, attempts to state truth, whole and complete; but, in the end, it must fall short. All judgment, Bradley claims, must contain an element of untruth or (...) falsity. And the outcome of this theory of predication is a doctrine of "degrees of truth". No truth is understood as entirely true or entirely false; rather, each has a position in a hierarchy of truths with some being truer than others when measured against the theoretical criterion of absolute knowledge. ;But, this is not to be understood as a sceptical doctrine. I argue that Bradley's doctrine of predicative failure should be seen as the only means by which radical scepticism in the theory of knowledge can be avoided. If we were capable of possessing truths which are whole and complete unto themselves then there would exist no legitimate basis upon which the inferential development of thought could expand beyond a self-enclosed circle. ;In this essay I also examine a persisting historical problem. It is my claim that Bradley's theory should be understood as a continuation of and development within the British neo-Kantian tradition. Bradley's association with this tradition has sometimes been questioned based on scattered statements found in the 1883 edition of the Principles of Logic. Collectively these statements have been referred to as the doctrine of "floating ideas". However, I maintain that the doctrine of floating ideas must be distinguished from the theory of predicative failure . I argue that the two theories should in no way be identified and that certain misinterpretations of Bradley's position have resulted from confusing these two incompatible views. (shrink)

We introduce a principle of local collection for compositional truth predicates and show that it is arithmetically conservative over the classically compositional theory of truth. This axiom states that upon restriction to formulae of any syntactic complexity, the resulting predicate satisfies full collection. In particular, arguments using collection for the truth predicate applied to sentences occurring in any given (code of a) proof do not suffice to show that the conclusion of that proof is true, in stark contrast (...) to the case of the induction scheme. We analyse various further results concerning end-extensions of models of compositional truth and the collection scheme for the compositional truth predicate. (shrink)

Two objections are raised against Oliver and Smiley’s analysis of the collective–distributive opposition in their 2016 book: They take it as a basic premise that the collective reading of ‘baked a cake’ corresponds to a predicate different from its distributive reading, and the same applies to all predicate expressions that admit both a collective and a distributive interpretation. At the same time, however, they argue that inflectional forms of the same lexeme reveal a univocity that (...) should be preserved in a formal representation of English. These two assumptions sit uneasily. In developing their analysis, Oliver and Smiley come to the conclusion that even a singular predication such as ‘Tom baked a cake’ must be regarded as ambiguous between a collective and a distributive reading. This is so artificial that it hardly makes sense, and yet there seems to be no way out of the difficulty unless we are prepared to give up the basic premise just mentioned. (shrink)

In the sentence “Tom sits,” the name distinguishes Tom from anyone else, whereas the predicate assimilates Tom, Theaetetus, and anyone else to whom the predicate applies. The name marks out its bearer and the predicate groups together what it applies to. On that ground, his name is used to trace back Tom, and the predi- cate is used to describe and classify what it applies to. In both cases, the semantic link is a direct link between expressions (...) and particulars. Here, I will explore the workings of predicative names along the direction just hinted at. The analysis of predication has been less central to philosophical investigation than that of referen- tial expressions. Some problems have concerned the unity of the sentence—what makes us understand “The baby cries” as a sentence rather than a list of words? Other problems have been what a predicate was taken to stand for, properties and relations, and the understanding of either at the ontological level. If a predicate refers to a property or a relation, yet predication, which is central to our understand- ing of predicates, applies it to one or more particulars. On the background hinted at, these problems might be differently viewed. (shrink)

The present essay is intended to supply amplification, and where necessary correction, to my previous article on Anaxagoras' philosophy. Since its publication important essays on the same subject have been written by Mr. Cyril Bailey and by Mr. F. M. Cornford, and the present essay is also an attempt to examine some of the theories put forward in them. There are one or two points which may be stated at the outset. The conclusions which I put forward five years ago (...) I still believe to be valid. Some of the presentation of the evidence, however, I now see to be misleading and inadequate, notably the treatment of Aristotle's evidence, which I now hope to deal with more fully, and to show that it lends even stronger support to my thesis. I should also say that my former use of ‘Elements’ as a convenient collective term to refer to the four Empedoclean Elements has proved confusing, since it was never intended to suggest that these substances were elements in Anaxagoras' system. I now refer to them by their names in full. (shrink)

Upward monotonic semantics for necessity modals give rise to Ross’s Puzzle: they predict that □φ entails □(φ ∨ ψ), but common intuitions about arguments of this form suggest they are invalid. It is widely assumed that the intuitive judgments involved in Ross’s Puzzle can be explained in terms of the licensing of ‘Diversity’ inferences: from □(φ ∨ ψ), interpreters infer that the truth of each disjunct (φ, ψ) is compatible with the relevant set of worlds. I introduce two pieces of (...) data that this analysis fails to explain. Analyzing this data, I argue, suggests that necessity modals with embedded disjunctions license ‘Independence’ inferences: from the truth of □(φ ∨ ψ), interpreters infer that φ-without-ψ and ψ-without-φ are each compatible with the relevant set of worlds. I outline a bilateral inquisitive semantics for necessity modals that predicts the validity of the Independence inferences. I then argue that the resulting theory should be understood as one on which disjunctions denote pluralities of propositions, and necessity modals behave like collective predicates applied to these pluralities. (shrink)

There has been considerable recent interest in the “collective moral autonomy” thesis (CMA), that is, the notion that we can predicate moral successes, failures, and duties of collectives even if there are no comparable successes, failures, and duties among members. One reason why this position looks appealing is because the opposing individualist position seems to have what we might call an accounting problem. Individualists maintain that only individuals can be subjects of moral success, failure, or duty; however, many (...) reasonable judgments about collective actions include moral information on a scale and of a stringency that it does not seem possible to predicate even of the duties of members who have steering power in the actions of the collective. Here I offer a paradigm for thinking about responsibility judgments in organized collective cases to help individualism solve its accounting problem, and allow us to account within a strict individualist perspective for moral information that ostensibly favors CMA. (shrink)

The focus here is on analytical and instrumental requirements for those collective decision exercises that lend themselves to a judgment-driven resolution. These have not as yet received much concerted technical attention from either of the two main movements in the field. They remain somewhere beyond the purview of the objectively-predicated instruments that mainstream GDSS (Group Decision Support System) designs tend to favour. Yet neither are they so inherently ill-structured as the situations with which the GDNSS (Group Decision and Negotiation (...) Support System) community is concerned, these usually allowing only a subjectively-predicated, compromisive or consensus-based conclusion. If the technical requirements peculiar to judgment-driven decision exercises are to be well met, it will be through the offices of analytical instruments that can help assure the rationality of the resolutions at which they arrive. The primary purpose of these pages is to offer some suggestions about the types of analytical instruments that might serve this end. (shrink)

“Feminicity” is the term for a predicate register that enables feminist work be accounted for as relational “active-points” that collectively can be seen through what they have achieved. But going further, it marks where those active-points contribute to the dynamic field of feminist epistemologies and where change occurs. This article contributes to my larger project’s discussion of this concept. Broadly, feminicity argues that the active-points of feminist practices need to be understood within their situated fields as materialist informatics. In (...) the digital era, examples of the affects of digital feminicity are as identified in works such as those by Wajcman ; Haraway, Hayles, VNSMatrix, Adam, Plant. Collectively, such authors and artists opened a creative, and sometimes radical discourse of the digital field as multidirectional, multidimensional, multitemporal platform of “gender actions”. Taken as a predicated field sense of the term “predicate”), this work contributes to the feminist materialist reappraisal of feminist epistemology, and larger radical feminist deconstructive projects. Thus conceived, the genealogy of digital feminicity problematizes the monopolitical terms of feminism in its collation of actions, enabling a re-situation of feminist practices as positive material interventions and expressions of the ontological constitution of the political sphere. Feminicity does not propose a chronological account of the active-points, but processually and systemically addresses the terms of generational epistemological political change. This article describes the ways in which a materialist constructed register – “feminicity”– can be used to think about encounters between the domains of gender, politics and technology, as manifested by materialist informatics. For reasons of brevity, this article focuses on just two aspects of feminicity: the terms of predication of the female as gendered, and the issue of the image, as digital informatics, comprised of activitypoints of feminist practice. Consequently, these are measurable and offer practical resources for the general problem of gendering politics that operate in governance, resource distribution and a non-equal opportunity social/cultural power structure, under which minorities are disadvantaged. Feminist practice here refers to forms produced through feminist activities, ie, forms generated through relations with the matter of life through specific modalities of needs-based practices. (shrink)

Kant gave a two-fold answer to the question, ‘Is existence a predicate?’. His view that existence is not a first-level predicate, i.e., a predicate of objects like horses, stones, and you and me, is widely known. What is not so well-known, however, is his claim that existence is a second-level predicate, a predicate of concepts or of a collection of predicates. In this paper I hope to show why his arguments for both claims are unsuccessful.

One way to study and understand the notion of truth is to examine principles that we are willing to associate with truth, often because they conform to a pre-theoretical or to a semi-formal characterization of this concept. In comparing different collections of such principles, one requires formally precise notions of inter-theoretic reduction that are also adequate to compare these conceptual aspects. In this work I study possible ways to make precise the relation of conceptual equivalence between notions of truth associated (...) with collections of principles of truth. In doing so, I will consider refinements and strengthenings of the notion of relative truth-definability proposed by Fujimoto (2010): in particular I employ suitable variants of notions of equivalence of theories considered in Visser (2006) and Friedman & Visser (2014) to show that there are better candidates than mutual truth-definability for the role of sufficient condition for conceptual equivalence between the semantic notions associated with the theories. In the concluding part of the paper, I extend the techniques introduced in the first and show that there is a precise sense in which ramified truth (either disquotational or compositional) does not correspond to iterations of comprehension. (shrink)

Collaborative forms of work such as extended networks, expert groups, and consortia increasingly structure biomedical activities. They are particularly prominent in the cancer field, where procedures such as multicenter clinical trials have been instrumental in establishing the specialty of oncology, and subfields such as cancer genetics, where bioclinical activities—for example, testing for breast and ovarian cancer genes and follow-up interventions—are predicated on the articulation of a number of tasks performed by new clinical collectives. In this article, we examine the founding (...) and development of a French bioclinical collective—the Groupe Génétique et Cancer —that coordinates and structures the activities of most French actors in cancer genetics and operates simultaneously in the clinical, research, and regulatory domains. To examine the group’s structure and dynamics, the article combines information gathered through traditional fieldwork methods with information elicited from a coauthorship and semantic-network analysis of the publications of GGC members from 1969 to 2001. (shrink)

The “dynamic turn” in the field of second language acquisition catalyzed scholarly devotion to the complex dynamic relationships between learner and teacher variables and various academic emotions. As such, the present study examined the varying effects of the aforementioned variables on the constructs of positive and negative flow, and determined their strongest predictors, respectively. This study used a mixed-method approach to collect data from 607 Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language learners. In stage one of the research, the researcher first assessed the participants’ levels (...) of positive flow and negative flow in a blended learning context, then performed Pearson correlation analysis to confirm a significant, but weak positive relationship between positive flow and negative flow. Then, significant difference tests were run to determine the varied effects of those variables on flow. Finally, two multiple regression analyses were conducted to identify five predictors of positive flow, with the biggest contribution coming from learners’ attitudes toward the foreign language, and three predictors of negative flow, with the learners’ major accounting for the majority of variance. In the second stage of the research, a qualitative corpus was constructed, based on accounts of classroom experiences from 71 participants of the total sample, and further illustrated the quantitative findings. Pedagogical implications for educational psychologists and teachers of second and/or foreign languages are addressed. (shrink)

In the Logica Ingredientibus Abailard attacks the theory according to which universals are collections of individuals. This paper argues that Abailard's principal objection to this 'collective realism', viz, that it conflates universals with integral wholes, is actually quite strong, though it is generally overlooked by recent commentators. For implicit in this objection is the claim that the collective realist cannot provide a satisfactory account of predication. The reason for this is that integral wholes are not uniquely decomposable. In (...) support of thesis the author first explicates the medieval distinction between integral and subjective parts and then discusses its application to collective realism. (shrink)

Broad, C. D. Leibniz's predicate-in-notion principle and some of its alleged consequences.--Couturat, L. On Leibniz's metaphysics.--Friedrich, C. J. Philosophical reflections of Leibniz on law, politics, and the state.--Curley, E. M. The root of contingency. Furth, M. Monadology.--Hacking, I. Individual substance.--Hintikka, J. Leibniz on plenitude, relations, and the "reign of law."--Ishiguro, H. Leibniz's theory of the ideality of relations.--Kneale, M. Leibniz and Spinoza on activity.--Koyré, A. Leibniz and Newton.--Lovejoy, A. O. Plenitude and sufficient reason in Leibniz and Spinoza.--Mates, B. Leibniz (...) on possible worlds.--Russell, B. Recent work on the philosophy of Leibniz.--Wilson, M. D. On Leibniz's explication of "necessary truth.". (shrink)

A complete collection of Frank Sibley's articles on philosophical aesthetics, this volume includes five, remarkable, hitherto unpublished papers written in Sibley's later years. It addresses many topics, among them the nature of aesthetic qualities versus non-aesthetic qualities, the relation of aesthetic description to aesthetic evaluation, the different levels of evaluation, and the objectivity of aesthetic judgement. The later papers constitute both a significant development of Sibley's individual approach to aesthetics, such as his discussion of the distinction between attributive and predicative (...) uses of adjectives and of the aesthetic significance of tastes and smells, a topic Sibley considered to be much neglected. (shrink)

We prove that in IST, Nelson's internal set theory, the Uniqueness and Collection principles, hold for all (including external) formulas. A corollary of the Collection theorem shows that in IST there are no definable mappings of a set X onto a set Y of greater (not equal) cardinality unless both sets are finite and #(Y) ≤ n #(X) for some standard n. Proofs are based on a rather general technique which may be applied to other nonstandard structures. In particular we (...) prove that in a nonstandard model of PA, Peano arithmetic, every hyperinteger uniquely definable by a formula of the PA language extended by the predicate of standardness, can be defined also by a pure PA formula. (shrink)

The standard view of clauses embedded under attitude verbs or modal predicates is that they act as terms standing for propositions, a view that faces a range of philosophical and linguistic difficulties. Recently an alternative has been explored according to which embedded clauses act semantically as predicates of content-bearing objects. This paper argues that this approach faces serious problems when it is based on possible worlds-semantics. It outlines a development of the approach in terms of truthmaker theory instead.

We recently showed that it is possible to deal withcollections of indistinguishable elementary particles (in thecontext of quantum mechanics) in a set-theoretical framework, byusing hidden variables. We propose in the presentpaper another axiomatics for collections of indiscernibleswithout hidden variables, where hidden predicates are implicitlyassumed. We also discuss the possibility of a quasi-settheoretical picture for quantum theory. Quasi-set theory, basedon Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, was developed for dealing withcollections of indistinguishable, but, not identical objects.

The topic of our analysis is the argument for the existence of substances given by Bernard Bolzano in Athanasia, where he essentially employs two ontological categories: substance and adherence. Bolzano considers the real and conditioned Inbegriff of all adherences, which are wirklich and nicht selbst bestehen. He claims that the formed collection is dependent on something external and non-adherential, which therefore is a substance. Bolzano’s argumentation turns out to be structurally similar to his argument for the existence of God from (...) Lehrbuch der Religionswissenschaft, but in each of these reasonings, we find different plausible interpretations of the key concept “Inbegriff”. The latter argumentation refers to the mereological totality of existentially conditioned objects. We propose the explication of the Bolzanian Inbegriff of all adherences using two types of predication: we consider its extension as composed of certain intensional counterparts of adherences. In our approach, we use a fragment of the theory of abstract objects formulated by E. Zalta, describing two different relations between individuals and properties: extensional exemplification and intensional encoding. We put our reconstruction in a wider context of Bolzano’s ontology, formulating the needed axioms with two primitive predicates of second order... is an adherence,... is conditioned by something real as well as the conditionally introduced first order predicate constant \ for Inbegriff of all adherential ideas. Finally, we sketch a model for our theory. (shrink)

Aristotle and the sea battle, by G. E. M. Anscombe.--Aristotle's different possibilities, by K. J. J. Hintikka.--On Aristotle's square of opposition, by M. Thompson.--Categories in Aristotle and in Kant, by J. C. Wilson.--Aristotle's Categories, chapters I-V: translation and notes, by J. L. Ackrill.--Aristotle's theory of categories, by J. M. E. Moravcsik.--Essence and accident, by I. M. Copi.--Tithenai ta phainomena, by G. E. L. Owen.--Matter and predication in Aristotle, by J. Owens.--Problems in Metaphysics Z, chapter 13, by M. J. Woods.--The meaning (...) of agathon in the Ethics of Aristotle, by H. A. Prichard.--Agathon and eudaimonia in the Ethics of Aristotle, by J. L. Austin.--The final good in Aristotle's Ethics, by W. F. R. Hardie.--Aristotle on pleasure, by J. O. Urmson.--Bibliography (p. 335-341). (shrink)

We study the fragment of Peano arithmetic formalizing the induction principle for the class of decidable predicates, $I\Delta_1$ . We show that $I\Delta_1$ is independent from the set of all true arithmetical $\Pi_2-sentences$ . Moreover, we establish the connections between this theory and some classes of oracle computable functions with restrictions on the allowed number of queries. We also obtain some conservation and independence results for parameter free and inference rule forms of $\Delta_1-induction$ . An open problem formulated by J. (...) Paris is whether $I\Delta_1$ proves the corresponding least element principle for decidable predicates, $L\Delta_1$ (or, equivalently. the $\Sigma_1-collection$ principle $B\Sigma_1$ ). We reduce this question to a purely computation-theoretic one. (shrink)

This paper argues that, given a simple [DP VP] sentence, the availability of a collective interpretation crucially depends on the syntactic and semantic properties of the subject DP, specifically the presence versus absence of a pluralizing function that makes the collective interpretation available. In support of my claim, I present Lebanese Arabic and Western Armenian examples in which an indefinite DP contains a cardinal numeral and there is no overt distributivity operator but the interpretation of the sentence is (...) nevertheless obligatorily distributive, regardless of the predicate. I show that neither a distributivity operator within the DP nor one on the predicate can explain this strictly distributive interpretation. Instead, I argue that in order to allow a collective interpretation, an indefinite DP must denote a quantifier over pluralities, a condition that is not always met in numeral-containing indefinite DPs. While the claims in this paper are based primarily on observations from Lebanese Arabic and Western Armenian, because both are morphologically rich languages, the fact that this constraint is operative in these two unrelated languages, in addition to striking similarities to the Russian gender system, suggest that it is an inherent property of DPs crosslinguistically. (shrink)

“Great philosophers as well as great artists have the gift of inspiring profoundly different conceptions and meaning in the individuals who contemplate their work,” writes Joseph Owens. Even now, twenty-three centuries after the philosopher’s death, the study of Aristotle continues to challenge us and to broaden our intellectual outlook. In this volume, John R. Catan has gathered together 18 major essays by the well-known aristotelian scholar Joseph Owens that have influenced current opinion on the philosopher. The collection represents the first (...) well-rounded picture of Owens’s interpretation of the theory of knowledge and associated cognitive problems in moral philosophy. Among the themes highlighted are: universality, cognition, matter and predication, the sciences, the soul, and nature. Included is a complete Owens bibliography, covering the years from 1946 to the present. (shrink)

Frank Sibley was one of the most important philosophers of aesthetics of the last fifty years, whose published papers are required reading for serious students of the subject. Approach to Aesthetics will be welcomed both for bringing together these well known papers, and for its inclusion of new, previously unpublished papers. This timeless body of work will continue to demand and reward the attention of scholars and students.

In so-called Kripke-type models, each sentence is assigned either to true or to false at each possible world. In this setting, every possible world has the two-valued Boolean algebra as the set of truth values. Instead, we take a collection of algebras each of which is attached to a world as the set of truth values at the world, and obtain an extended semantics based on the traditional Kripke-type semantics, which we call here the algebraic Kripke semantics. We introduce algebraic (...) Kripke sheaf semantics for super-intuitionistic and modal predicate logics, and discuss some basic properties. We can state the Gödel-McKinsey-Tarski translation theorem within this semantics. Further, we show new results on super-intuitionistic predicate logics. We prove that there exists a continuum of super-intuitionistic predicate logics each of which has both of the disjunction and existence properties and moreover the same propositional fragment as the intuitionistic logic. (shrink)

This paper argues for an ontological distinction between two kinds of universals, 'kinds of tropes' such as 'wisdom' and properties such as 'the property of being wise'. It argues that the distinction is parallel to that between two kinds of collections, pluralities such as 'the students' and collective objects such as 'the class'. The paper argues for the priortity of distributive readings with pluralities on the basis of predicates of extent or shape, such 'large' or 'long'.

Modern Studies in Philosophy, we are informed on the page facing the title-page, "is a series of anthologies presenting contemporary interpretations and evaluations of the works of major philosophers." The volumes are "intended to be contributions to contemporary debates as well as to the history of philosophy; they not only trace the origins of many problems important to modern philosophy, but also introduce major philosophers as interlocutors in current discussions." In the first of the two volumes on Plato three of (...) the articles chosen by Gregory Vlastos have not appeared elsewhere: Julius Moravcsik, Learning as Recollection; G. E. L. Owen, Plato on Not-Being; David Higgins, Sentence Meaning, Negation, and Plato's Problem of Non-Being. The other studies in Volume One are reprints: R. Robinson and J. D. Denniston, Plato; H. F. Cherniss, The Philosophical Economy of the Theory of Ideas; A. Wedberg, The Theory of Ideas; R. C. Cross and A. D. Woozley, Knowledge, Belief and the Forms; R. Robinson, Hypothesis in the Republic; G. Vlastos, Reasons and Causes in the Phaedo; R. E. Allen, Participation and Predication in Plato's Middle Dialogues; Colin Strang, Plato and the Third Man; J. L. Ackrill, Symplokë eidön; J. L. Ackrill, Plato and the Copula: Sophist 251-259. In Volume Two Terry Penner, "Thought and Desire in Plato" has not been published before. The others have: Paul Shorey, Plato's Ethics; David Sachs, A Fallacy in Plato's Republic; Raphael Demos, A Fallacy in Plato's Republic?; J. D. Mabbott, Is Plato's Republic Utilitarian?; G. Vlastos, Justice and Happiness in the Republic; F. M. Cornford, The Doctrine of Eros in Plato's Symposium; R. A. Markus, The Doctrine of Eros in Plato's Symposium; Glenn R. Morrow, Plato and the Rule of Law; Wayne A. R. Leys, Was Plato Non-Political?; F. E. Sparshott, Plato as Anti-Political Thinker; Renford Bambrough, Plato's Political Analogies; E. R. Dodds, Plato and the Irrational Soul; W. K. C. Guthrie, Plato's Views on the Nature of the Soul; Harold Cherniss, The Sources of Evil According to Plato; W. J. Verdenius, Plato's Doctrines of Artistic Imitation. Obviously, the above listed articles will be welcome to those debating issues in Plato and to historians of twentieth-century philosophy. There are two difficulties, however. The print is too small in the body of the text and is nearly microscopic in the footnotes and diagrams. Reading thus becomes almost painful. Margins to the left, right, top and bottom of the pages are practically nonexistent. On occasion footnote material is misplaced--for example, the comment on Strang's article as originally published elsewhere should be on p. 184, not on p. 187, of Volume One. But a greater problem is the fact that almost all the articles on metaphysics and epistemology are by linguistic analysts. Vlastos in his introductory remarks admits as much: "Volume One is heavily weighted on the 'analytical' side." He reports the statement of an un-named advocate of conceptual analysis "that these [analytic] methods now enable us to understand Plato better than he was ever understood by anyone in history--better than by any of his own contemporaries, even better than by himself!" He disclaims such euphoria but insists "there is an element of truth in it after all" insofar as analytic tools can alert a student to ambiguity and its consequences in some of Plato's sentences. Hence, "if we come across such sentences in Plato, it would be plainly true to say that we can understand them better than he did and even to add that we can, therefore, understand him better, since we can see both what he meant to say and the logical liabilities of his incautious sentences." All this is true enough, but a warning still is in order. Linguistic analysts tend to read only some of Plato's dialogues and, even within them, to concentrate on some passages only. This is understandable in view of their interests and the capacity of the analytic technique. But that selectivity might lead them to believe that the Plato thus revealed is the complete and authentic Plato, which it is not. Hence, in reading and teaching Plato one must complement language- and concept-analysis with other approaches. Vlastos himself is aware of this necessity : [[sic]] "Once we have made full allowance for what modern semantics and logic can do to make Plato more intelligible and alive for us today, we should be quick to concede that borrowings from this quarter must be used with economy and discretion, and that continuing reliance on older linguistic and historical disciplines is as essential now as it has ever been in the past if the object of our inquiries is Plato himself, instead of some mock-up more pleasing to current taste." One could only wish that Vlastos had fostered that reliance on other disciplines by including articles of that sort among those he actually chose.--L. S. (shrink)

Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a new account of plural logic. They argue that there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation in logic, and expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists.

This dissertation provides a model-theoretic semantics for English sentences atttributing a property or action to a group of objects, either collectively or distributively. It is shown that certain adverbial expressions select for collective predicates; therefore collective and distibutive predicates must be distinguishable. This finding is problematic for recent accounts of distributive predicates which analyze such predicates as taking group-level arguments, and hence as not distinguishable from collective predicates. ;A group-level treatment of distributives is possible, however, if (...) class='Hi'>predicate denotations are relativized to a set of events for which a part/whole relation is defined. An event in which a group performs an action distributively will have subevents in which each of the group's members perform the same action; an event in which the group performs the action collectively will not. ;This analysis also makes possible an account of the fact that adverbials expressing collective action commonly have an additional use expressing spatial proximity, both in English and cross-linguistically. . A spatial "trace" function on the set of events allows formal definitions for the spatial uses of such adverbials to exactly parallel the definitions for the collectivizing uses. ;The dissertation also provides arguments for a set-theoretic model for plurality, in which the group membership relation is distinct from the subgroup relation. ;Certain quantifiers are shown sensitive to distinction between different sorts of group-level event. To accommodate this fact, it is suggested that verbal denotations provide, for each event, both an "inclusion set" and an "exclusion set"--corresponding roughly to positive and negative denotations. If the inclusion and exclusion sets are allowed under certain circumstances not to complement each other, correct results obtain. ;The splitting of verbal denotations into inclusion and exclusion sets also allows the solution of certain problems in previous accounts of the semantics of subject-verb agreement for number. The dissertation closes with a defense of the hypothesis that agreement is conditioned primarily by the semantics. (shrink)

The curiously sweeping assumption that all reference is ‘ultimately’ singular — even in the case of plural or non-count reference — is presented and examined. In the case of plural reference, especially when associated with collective predication, the assumption takes the form of the thought that this is reference to collective entities, plural objects, or sets. Perhaps the most suggestive and profound, albeit notorious idea of this genre is Russell’s doctrine of the ‘class as many’. George Boolos’ explicitly (...) ‘no-class’ approach to the logic of plurality is then compared favourably with ‘reductive’ approaches. (shrink)

In most cases, a wh-question calls for an answer that names an entity in the set denoted by the extension of the wh-complement. However, evidence from questions with necessity modals and questions with collective predicates argues that sometimes a wh-question must be interpreted with a higher-order reading, in which this question calls for an answer that names a generalized quantifier. This paper investigates the distribution and compositional derivation of higher-order readings of wh-questions. First, I argue that the generalized quantifiers (...) that can serve as semantic answers to wh-questions must be homogeneously positive. Next, on the distribution of higher-order readings, I observe that questions in which the wh-complement is singular-marked or numeral-modified can be answered by elided disjunctions but not by conjunctions. I further present two ways to account for this disjunction–conjunction asymmetry. In the uniform account, these questions admit disjunctions because disjunctions may satisfy the atomicity requirement of singular-marking and the cardinality requirement of numeral modification. In the reconstruction account, the wh-complement is syntactically reconstructed, which gives rise to local uniqueness and yields a contradiction for conjunctive answers. (shrink)

Part of Frege's concern about whether number words are properties of objects was that if they could be construed as such it would lend support to the view that truths of arithmetic were empirical truths. Such concern is ill-founded. Even if number words do apply to objects as predicates, this does not entail that numerical truths would be empirical, any more than the fact that ‘bachelor’ and ‘unmarried’ are predicates of objects entails that their relationship is an empirical one. The (...) account of number words as predicates given here, consequently, should not be taken as supportive of any one particular theory concerning arithmetic truth rather than another.The view of number words that emerges above from the criticism of Frege's arguments is that sentences containing number words can and do say something about objects in a collective and syncategorematic way. That is, they say something about classes of objects, when it is clear what is to count as an object. Whether this view commits us to accepting certain ontological entities, classes of individuals, above and beyond individuals themselves, I am not prepared to say, and at any rate this question falls beyond the intended scope of this essay. To those who would eschew abstract entities, however, it may be noted that the ontological problems that arise are not peculiar to this view; they seem no more or less severe than those that arise in connection with other collective predicate statements, as, for example, “Blue whales are becoming extinct.”The view presented here also does not pretend to be a fatal criticism of the logicist program. Taking our cue from the above noted fact that syncategorematic predicates share in a common ‘partial’ abstract sense, it seems reasonable to say that it is just the set of such partial senses of number words, and the relationships that hold between such senses, that the logicist and the pure number theorist investigate. (shrink)

This book is presumably a collection of essays delivered at a conference, though it's hard to say. There is no cover description and the editors' introduction, where this information might have been found, is missing from the volume (at least from my copy) in spite of being listed in the table of contents. A curious editorial slip. In fact, from an editorial perspective this book is a disaster. Not only is the format reminiscent of those camera ready volumes that jammed (...) our libraries in the late Eighties, when word processors began to spread and people started using them to produce entire books without knowing how to handle line spacing and hyphenation -- not to mention orphans and widows, footnotes, tabs, apostrophes, etc. There are also lots of typos, English infelicities, punctuation disorders. Obviously nobody checked the page proofs. There are even formulas that were not properly converted from the original files and have been printed with the infamous boxes in place of the logical symbols. Publishing academic books in analytic philosophy is becoming increasingly difficult and not every publisher can afford serious copy editing. But charging 74 euros for such a poorly manufactured item is appalling. (shrink)

The paper argues that two distinct and independent notions of plurality are involved in natural language anaphora and quantification: plural reference (the usual non-atomic individuals) and plural discourse reference, i.e., reference to a quantificational dependency between sets of objects (e.g., atomic/non-atomic individuals) that is established and subsequently elaborated upon in discourse. Following van den Berg (PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 1996), plural discourse reference is modeled as plural information states (i.e., as sets of variable assignments) in a new dynamic system (...) couched in classical type logic that extends Compositional DRT (Muskens, Linguistics and Philosophy, 19, 143-186, 1996). Given the underlying type logic, compositionality at sub-clausal level follows automatically and standard techniques from Montague semantics become available. The idea that plural info states are semantically necessary (in addition to non-atomic individuals) is motivated by relative-clause donkey sentences with multiple instances of singular donkey anaphora that have mixed (weak and strong) readings. At the same time, allowing for non-atomic individuals in addition to plural info states enables us to capture the intuitive parallels between singular and plural (donkey) anaphora, while deriving the incompatibility between singular (donkey) anaphora and collective predicates. The system also accounts for empirically unrelated phenomena, e.g., the uniqueness effects associated with singular (donkey) anaphora discussed in Kadmon (Linguistics and Philosophy, 13, 273-324, 1990) and Heim (Linguistics and Philosophy, 13, 131-177, 1990) among others. (shrink)

Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a new account of plural logic. They argue that there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation in logic, and expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists.

A distinction is introduced between itemized and non-itemized plural predication. It is argued that a full-fledged system of plural logic is not necessary in order to account for the validity of inferences concerning itemized collective predication. Instead, it is shown how this type of inferences can be adequately dealt with in a first-order logic system, after small modifications on the standard treatment. The proposed system, unlike plural logic, has the advantage of preserving completeness. And as a result, inferences such (...) as ‘Dick and Tony emptied the bottle, hence Tony and Dick emptied the bottle’ are shown to be first-order. (shrink)