[Michael Potter] If arithmetic is not analytic in Kant's sense, what is its subject matter? Answers to this question can be classified into four sorts according as they posit logic, experience, thought or the world as the source, but in each case we need to appeal to some further process if we are to generate a structure rich enough to represent arithmetic as standardly practised. I speculate that this further process is our reflection on the subject matter already obtained. (...) This suggestion seems problematic, however, since it seems to rest on a confusion between the empirical and the metaphysical self. /// [Bob Hale] Michael Potter considers several versions of the view that the truths of arithmetic are analytic and finds difficulties with all of them. There is, I think, no gainsaying his claim that arithmetic cannot be analytic in Kant's sense. However, his pessimistic assessment of the view that what is now widely called Hume's principle can serve as an analytic foundation for arithmetic seems to me unjustified. I consider and offer some answers to the objections he brings against it. (shrink)

We argue that Horgan's program for nominalizing science fails, because its translation of quantitative statements destroys the inferential structures of explanations, predictions and retrodictions of nonquantitative scientific facts.

What is wrong with abstraction’, Michael Potter and Peter Sullivan explain a further objection to the abstractionist programme in the foundations of mathematics which they first presented in their ‘Hale on Caesar’ and which they believe our discussion in The Reason's Proper Study misunderstood. The aims of the present note are: To get the character of this objection into sharper focus; To explore further certain of the assumptions—primarily, about reference-fixing in mathematics, about certain putative limitations of abstractionist set (...) theory, and about the effects of impredicativity in abstraction principles—which underlie it; and To advance the debate of the issues thereby raised. Thanks for helpful comments to Roy Cook and to an anonymous referee. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Michael Dummett mounts, in Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics, a concerted attack on the attempt, led by Crispin Wright, to salvage defensible versions of Frege's platonism and logicism in which Frege's criterion of numerical identity plays a leading role. I discern four main strands in this attack—that Wright's solution to the Caesar problem fails; that explaining number words contextually cannot justify treating them as enjoying robust reference; that Wright has no effective counter to ontological reductionism; and that the attempt is (...) vitiated by the unavoidable impredicativity of its leading principle—and argue that none of them succeeds. (shrink)

I point out that conceptions of particles as mathematical, or quasi mathematical, entities have a longer history than Resnik notices. I argue that Resnik's attack on the distinction between mathematical and physical entities is not deep enough. The crucial problem for this distinction finds its locus in the numerical indeterminancy of elementary particles. This problem, traced by Heisenberg, emerges from the discovery of antimatter.

This chapter begins with an examination of Michael Dummett's influential treatment of the issues, which couples an attempt to identify a common form exemplified by a large, if not exhaustive, range of R/AR disputes with important arguments against a realist position about meaning which ‐ if they are sound. It also examines Dummett's diagnosis of what is at stake in those disputes is correct ‐ promise to resolve the issue in the anti‐realist's favor, not only in the theory of (...) meaning itself, but across the board. The chapter surveys the principal negative arguments, advanced by Dummett and others, for semantic anti‐realism. It explains the arguments on R/AR disputes more generally, and reviews doubts about the adequacy of Dummett's general conception of their common form. It reviews other ways in which the anti‐realist case may be prosecuted. It concludes with a brief examination of the new perspective on R/AR disputes advocated in recent work by Wright. (shrink)

Michael Potter considers several versions of the view that the truths of arithmetic are analytic and finds difficulties with all of them. There is, I think, no gainsaying his claim that arithmetic cannot be analytic in Kant’s sense. However, his pessimistic assessment of the view that what is now widely called Hume’s principle can serve as an analytic foundation for arithmetic seems to me unjustified. I consider and offer some answers to the objections he brings against it.

From the philosophy of mind and language, through physics and mathematics, to the philosophy of the human sciences, morality and religion, there is almost no area of philosophy to which Hilary Putnam has not made highly original and influential contributions. This wide-ranging collection of papers provides a critical assessment and exploration of Putnam's Seminal Work. Written by Philosophers themselves well known for their work in the field, each essay bears witness to the continuing influence and importance of Putnam's thought. Putnam's (...) reply constitutes an extensive new essay which clarifies, and develops further, central themes in his philosophy. This volume includes papers by Simon Blackburn, George Boolos, Michael Hallett, Michael Redhead, Thomas Ricketts, David Wiggins and Crispin Wright. (shrink)

Pluralism, according to Michael P. Lynch, is the thesis that there are or can be more than one true story of the world; there can be incompatible but equally acceptable accounts of some subject matter.

This review admires Michael Marder’s inquiry as a parallel for which biosemiotics can find points of conceptual resonance, even as methodological differences remain. By looking at the dump of ungrounded semiosis – the semiotics of dislocating referents from objects, and its effects – we can better do the work of applying biosemiotics not just towards the wonders of living relations, but also to the manifold ways in which industrial civilization is haphazardly yet systematically destroying the possibility for spontaneous yet (...) contextualized semiogenesis. Biosemiotics has much to gain by understanding the ways, gross and subtle, in which Anthropocenic hubris undercuts our own ability to make sense of the world, doubling down on overconfidence at the expense of meaning-making. (shrink)

Crispin Wright and Bob Hale have defended the strategy of defining the natural numbers contextually against the objection which led Frege himself to reject it, namely the so-called ‘Julius Caesar problem’. To do this they have formulated principles (called sortal inclusion principles) designed to ensure that numbers are distinct from any objects, such as persons, a proper grasp of which could not be afforded by the contextual definition. We discuss whether either Hale or Wright has provided independent motivation (...) for a defensible version of the sortal inclusion principle and whether they have succeeded in showing that numbers are just what the contextual definition says they are. (shrink)

A follow-up, showing why Bob Hale's revision of his notion of weak sense is still inadequate.

Recently, Kit Fine's (1994) view that modal truths aretrue in virtue of,grounded in, orexplained byessentialist truths has been under attack. In what follows we offer two responses to the wave of criticism against his view. While the first response is pretty straightforward, the second is based on the distinction between, what we call,Reductive Finean EssentialismandNon-Reductive Finean Essentialism. Engaging the work of Bob Hale onNon-Reductive Finean Essentialism, we aim to show that the arguments against Fine's view are unconvincing, while we (...) acknowledge the presence of a deep standoff between the two views. (shrink)

A very influential idea in the epistemology of modality is that we acquire knowledge of metaphysical modality through knowledge of essence. As a consequence, the epistemology of essence becomes crucial in the attempt to answer the question of how we come to know modal propositions. In this paper I investigate Lowe’s and Hale’s approach to the epistemology of essence and argue that both of them remain in a crucial, structural sense incomplete. Systematizing this criticism against Lowe and Hale, (...) I then break down desiderata of what I call a structurally complete picture of the epistemology of essence. Finally, I discuss Husserl’s epistemology of essence and defend it against a notorious objection. However, Husserl’s approach also seems to remain incomplete, due to its appeal to imagination, which operates on the basis of background assumptions that are themselves in need of justification. I indicate, however, that a Husserlian theory of intuitive awareness of universals might supply us with (direct) justification of these background assumptions and, hence, that we might be able to paint a structurally complete picture of the epistemology of essence with Husserlian means. (shrink)

Fine, Lowe and Hale accept the view that necessity is to be explained by essences: Necessarily p iff, and because, there is some x whose essence ensures that p. Hale, however, believes that this strategy is not universally applicable; he argues that the necessity of essentialist truths cannot itself be explained by once again appealing to essentialist truths. As a consequence, Hale holds that there are basic necessities that cannot be explained. Thus, Hale style essentialism falls (...) short of what Wilsch calls the explanation-challenge (EC) for the metaphysics of necessity. Without endorsing the EC, I argue that Hale’s argument for basic, unexplained necessities fails due to a misunderstanding of the structure of essentialist explanations. Getting clear about the structure of essentialist explanations of necessity leads to a re-evaluation of crucial circularity- and regress-arguments that have been discussed in the debate about essentialism. (shrink)

Explains why Bob Hale's proposed notion of weak sense cannot explain the analyticity of Hume's principle as he claims. Argues that no other notion of the sort Hale wants could do the job either.

We correct a misunderstanding by Hale and Wright of an objection we raised earlier to their abstractionist programme for rehabilitating logicism in the foundations of mathematics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Unibilitas: The Key to Bonaventure’s Understanding of Human NatureThomas M. Osborne Jr.Historians of medieval philosophy have sometimes described St. Bonaventure’s anthropology as dualist or Augustinian. The conventional story runs that the conservative Bonaventure was afraid of contemporary attempts to describe the rational soul as the substantial form of the corporeal body.1 Bonaventure’s relationship to two intellectual trends lends some support to this theory. First, Bonaventure, following Avicebron and Alexander (...) of Hales, believed in universal hylomorphism, holding that all substances, even the angels and human souls separated from the body, are comprised of matter and form.2 If the human soul apart from the body has its own matter, then in what [End Page 227] sense can the soul be the substantial form of corporeal matter? Second, followers of Bonaventure pointed to this difficulty when they held that the body has its own forma corporeitatis.3 It is not surprising that some historians have regarded Bonaventure as a strong dualist. If the soul is a substance apart from the body, then how can it be one substance with the body? Unibilitasis Bonaventure’s answer to this problem.Bonaventure himself is thoroughly aware that he might seem to regard the soul as a complete substance by itself when he describes it as a composition of form with spiritual matter. If the soul is a composition of form and matter, then it is a hoc aliquid and complete in itself. The soul united with the body could not combine into a third substance.4 I will argue that for Bonaventure unibility is this ability of the soul and body to be united as one substance.In the thirteenth century, unibility describes the ability of two different substances or dispositions to become one supposit.5 For example, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas use unibility to describe how Christ’s human nature and his divine nature can be one person. Moreover, John of Rupella, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure use unibility to describe how the soul and the body form one substance. Most historians, like E. Gilson and E. Weber, have generally described unibility as the attempt to show how one human person can have both a substance which is spiritual and a different substance which is corporeal.6 Unibility is for them a concept which precedes the Thomistic discovery of the soul as the substantial form of the body. If this interpretation [End Page 228] were correct, then it would be difficult to see how Thomas Aquinas could retain the term. In fact, unibility has a variety of uses which depend upon the context of its appearance and the thought of the one who uses it.The unibility of the soul plays a far greater role in the thought of Bonaventure than it does in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Bonaventure describes unibility as the specific difference between the angels and humans. Unlike Thomas, Bonaventure thinks that humans, like angels, have both a substantial form and spiritual matter. A human being differs from an angel in that a human’s form can also be the substantial form of a body. Since unibility lies at the heart of Bonaventure’s anthropology, it seems strange that it has not been more thoroughly examined and discussed.The four main sections of this paper roughly correspond to the different contexts in which Bonaventure uses unibility to describe a property of the human soul. The first section shows that unibility is the specific difference that distinguishes humans from angels in the genus of intellectual substances. Second, this difference between humans and angels will be elaborated to show how human souls, unlike angels, are not only movers of bodies, but also perfections of their own particular body. The third section argues that since the soul is the perfection of the body, it is also the one substantial form of the body. The fourth section touches on Bonaventure’s discussion of personhood to show that the human soul when separated from the body is not a person because it is not a fully individual substance. Since an angel is not unitable to a human body, it is unlike a human soul in that it does not need... (shrink)

Physicalism has, over the past twenty years, become almost an orthodoxy, especially in the philosophy of mind. Many philosophers, however, feel uneasy about this development, and this volume is intended as a collective response to it. Together these papers, written by philosophers from Britain, the United States, and Australasia, show that physicalism faces enormous problems in every area in which it is discussed. The contributors not only investigate the well-known difficulties that physicalism has in accommodating sensory consciousness, but also bring (...) out its inadequacies in dealing with thought, intentionality, abstract objects, , and principles of both theoretical and practical reason; even its ability to cope with the physical world itself is called into question. Both strong "reductionist" versions and weaker "supervenience" theories are discussed and found to face different but equally formidable obstacles. Contributors include George Bealer, Peter Forrest, John Foster, Grant Gillett, Bob Hale, Michael Lockwood, George Myro, Nicholas Nathan, David Smith, Steven Wagner, Ralph Walker, and Richard Warner. (shrink)

The fourteen papers in this collection offer a variety of original contributions to the epistemology of modality. In seeking to explain how we might account for our knowledge of possibility and necessity, they raise some novel questions, develop some unfamiliar theoretical perspectives, and make some intriguing proposals. Collectively, they advance our understanding of the field. In Part I of this Introduction, I give some general background about the contemporary literature in the area, by sketching a timeline of the main tendencies (...) of the past twenty-five years or so, up to the present debates. Next, I focus on four features that largely characterize the latest literature, and the papers in the present collection in particular: (i) an endorsement of the importance of essentialism; (ii) a shift to a “metaphysics-first” approach to modal epistemology; (iii) a focus on metaphysical modality as opposed to other kinds of modality; and (iv) a preference for non-uniform modal epistemology. In Part II, I present the individual papers in the volume. These are organized around the following four chapters, based on their topic: (A) Skepticism & Deflationism; (B) Essentialism; (C) Non-Essentialist Accounts; (D) Applications. -/- LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS: Francesco Berto; Stephen Biggs & Jessica Wilson; Justin Clark-Doane; Philip Goff; Bob Hale; Frank Jackson; Mark Jago; Boris Kment; Antonella Mallozzi; Graham Priest; Gabriel Rabin; Amie Thomasson; Anand Vaidya & Michael Wallner; Jennifer Wang. -/- The volume is dedicated to the memory of Bob Hale. -/- . (shrink)

Over the last few decades Michael Dummett developed a rich program for assessing logic and the meaning of the terms of a language. He is also a major exponent of Frege's version of logicism in the philosophy of mathematics. Over the last decade, Neil Tennant developed an extensive version of logicism in Dummettian terms, and Dummett influenced other contemporary logicists such as Crispin Wright and Bob Hale. The purpose of this paper is to explore the prospects for Fregean (...) logicism within a broadly Dummettian framework. The conclusions are mostly negative: Dummett's views on analyticity and the logical/non-logical boundary leave little room for logicism. Dummett's considerations concerning manifestation and separability lead to a conservative extension requirement: if a sentence S is logically true, then there is a proof of S which uses only the introduction and elimination rules of the logical terms that occur in S. If basic arithmetic propositions are logically true-as the logicist contends-then there is tension between this conservation requirement and the ontological commitments of arithmetic. It follows from Dummett's manifestation requirements that if a sentence S is composed entirely of logical terminology, then there is a formal deductive system D such that S is analytic, or logically true, if and only if S is a theorem of D. There is a deep conflict between this result and the essential incompleteness, or as Dummett puts it, the indefinite extensibility, of arithmetic truth. (shrink)

I consider the well known “manifestation challenge” to semantic realism propounded by Michael Dummett, and further developed by Crispin Wright and Bob Hale. I distinguish between strong and weak versions of the challenge, and show that anti–realists effectively concede that realism can meet the strong version. I then argue that the weak version is unmotivated. Building on work by John McDowell and Peter Strawson, and responding to criticisms from Wright, I argue further that the semantic realist can meet (...) even the weak version. It emerges, inter alia, that there are some serious ambiguities in the standard anti–realist characterisations of semantic realism. (shrink)

Edited book on the prospects of non-Platonist realism in the philosophy of mathematics. Physicalism holds that mathematics studies properties realised or realisable in the physical world. This collection of papers has its origin in a conference held at the University of Toronto in June of 1988. The theme of the conference was Physicalism in Mathematics: Recent Work in the Philosophy of Mathematics. At the conference, papers were read by Geoffrey Hellman (Minnesota), Yvon Gauthier (Montreal), Michael Hallett (McGill), Hartry Field (...) (USC), Bob Hale (Lancaster & St Andrew's), Alasdair Urquhart (Toronto) and Penelope Maddy (Irvine). This volume supplements updated versions of six of those papers with contributions by Jim Brown (Toronto), John Bigelow (La Trobe), John Burgess (Princeton), Chandler Davis (Toronto), David Papineau (Cambridge), Michael Resnik (North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Peter Simons (Salzburg) and Crispin Wright (St Andrews & Michigan). Together they provide a vivid, expansive snapshot of the exciting work which is currently being carried out in philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Mathematics Today gives a panorama of the best current work in this lively field, through twenty essays specially written for this collection by leading figures. The topics include indeterminacy, logical consequence, mathematical methodology, abstraction, and both Hilbert's and Frege's foundational programmes. The collection will be an important source for research in the philosophy of mathematics for years to come. Contributors Paul Benacerraf, George Boolos, John P. Burgess, Charles S. Chihara, Michael Detlefsen, Michael Dummett, Hartry Field, (...) Kit Fine, Bob Hale, Richard G. Heck, Jnr., Geoffrey Hellman, Penelope Maddy, Karl-Georg Niebergall, Charles D. Parsons, Michael D. Resnik, Matthias Schirn, Stewart Shapiro, Peter Simons, W.W. Tait, Crispin Wright. (shrink)

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 originally (...) formed part of a very early draft of what became my Ph.D. dissertation. I rediscovered it and began scanning it, when I had nothing better to do, in Fall 2001, making some minor editing changes along the way. Suffice it to say that it no longer represents my current views. I hope, however, that it remains of some small interest. (shrink)

This book explores two questions that are integral to the question of the existence of God. The first question concerns the meaning of "existence" and the second concerns the meaning of "God". Regarding the first question, this book motivates, presents and defends the meta-ontology found in Gottlob Frege's writings and defended by Michael Dummett, Crispin Wright and Bob Hale. Frege's approach to questions of existence has mainly found use in connection with abstract objects such as numbers. This is (...) one of the first studies to systematically present Fregean meta-ontology and apply it to theology. Frege's meta-ontology is informed by his context principle. According to this, logico-syntactic notions such as "singular term" and "predicate" are pivotal to questions of what exists. These notions serve to throw light on the second question. Through thorough engagement with Old as well and New Testament texts, the book shows how Frege's logico-syntactic notions are of crucial importance when seeking to understand the meaning and use of "God". To complete the defence of Fregean meta-ontology, the book concludes by pointing to important differences between the otherwise closely associated concepts of an object found in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Frege's writings. (shrink)

Discusses the experiments of Aristotle, William Beaumont, Robert Norman, Stephen Hales, Konrad Lorenz, Galileo, Robert Boyle, Theodoric of Freibourg, Louis Pasteur, Ernest Rutherford, A.A. Michelson, E.W. Morley, F. Jacob, E. Wollman, J.J. Gibson, A.L. Lavoisier, Humphrey Davy, J.J. Thomson, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, J.J. Berzelius, and Otto Stern.

The fourteen papers in this collection offer a variety of original contributions to the epistemology of modality. In seeking to explain our knowledge of possibility and necessity, they raise some novel questions, develop some unfamiliar theoretical perspectives, and make some intriguing proposals. In the Introduction (penultimate draft available for download), I give some general background about the contemporary literature in the area, by sketching a timeline of the main tendencies of the past twenty-five years or so, up to the present (...) debates. Next, I focus on four features that largely characterize the latest literature, and the papers in the present collection in particular: (i) an endorsement of the importance of essentialism; (ii) a shift to a “metaphysics-first” approach to modal epistemology; (iii) a focus on metaphysical modality as opposed to other kinds of modality; and (iv) a preference for non-uniform modal epistemology. Then I turn to present the individual papers in the volume, which are organized based on their topic around the following four chapters: (A) Skepticism & Deflationism; (B) Essentialism; (C) Non-Essentialist Accounts; (D) Applications. LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS: Francesco Berto; Stephen Biggs & Jessica Wilson; Justin Clark-Doane; Philip Goff; Bob Hale; Frank Jackson; Mark Jago; Boris Kment; Antonella Mallozzi; Graham Priest; Gabriel Rabin; Amie Thomasson; Anand Vaidya & Michael Wallner; Jennifer Wang. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Bob Hale. (shrink)

Bob Hale presents a broadly Fregean approach to metaphysics, according to which ontology and modality are mutually dependent upon one another. He argues that facts about what kinds of things exist depend on facts about what is possible. Modal facts are fundamental, and have their basis in the essences of things--not in meanings or concepts.

The grand and sweeping claims of many relativists might seem to amount to the argument that everything is relative--except the thesis of relativism. In this book, Steven Hales defends relativism, but in a more circumscribed form that applies specifically to philosophical propositions. His claim is that philosophical propositions are relatively true--true in some perspectives and false in others. Hales defends this argument first by examining rational intuition as the method by which philosophers come to have the beliefs they do. Analytic (...) rationalism, he claims, has a foundational reliance on rational intuition as a method of acquiring basic beliefs. He then argues that there are other methods that people use to gain beliefs about philosophical topics that are strikingly analogous to rational intuition and examines two of these: Christian revelation and the ritual use of hallucinogens. Hales argues that rational intuition is not epistemically superior to either of these alternative methods. There are only three possible outcomes: we have no philosophical knowledge ; there are no philosophical propositions ; or there are knowable philosophical propositions, but our knowledge of them is relative to doxastic perspective. Hales defends relativism against the charge that it is self-refuting and answers a variety of objections to this account of relativism. Finally, he examines the most sweeping objection to relativism: that philosophical propositions are not merely relatively true, because there are no philosophical propositions--all propositions are ultimately empirical, as the naturalists contend. Hales's somewhat disturbing conclusion--that intuition-driven philosophy does produce knowledge, but not absolute knowledge--is sure to inspire debate among philosophers. (shrink)

Review of *New Essays on the A Priori*, an excellent collection edited by Paul Boghossian and Christopher Peacocke. Contributors include: Tyler Burge; Quassim Cassam; Philip Kitcher; Penelope Maddy; Hartry Field; Paul Horwich; Peter Railton; Stephen Yablo; Bob Hale; Crispin Wright; Frank Jackson; Stewart Shapiro; Michael Friedman; Martin Davies; Bill Brewer; and Thomas Nagel.

‘Hello, this is the Women’s Center, may I help you?’ ‘Yeah, uh, hi. I don’t really know if I should be calling you, but a friend of mine told me to call. She thought it was a good idea.’ ‘Sure. Let me ask before we go on – are you in a safe place to talk? Are you in any immediate danger?’ ‘I think I can talk. I dunno, I guess I’m not sure. I mean, I don’t think he’s here (...) right now, but he’s always keeping an eye on me. I never really know if he’s watching or not. I don’t think I’m in immediate danger.’. (shrink)

This collection of 18 papers, most of which were originally presented at a 1976 University of Kansas Symposium, is intended to meet the growing demand for "serious analysis" of a host of "micro-moral" issues, such as corporate bribes to foreign officials, abuses in advertising, conflicts of interest, etc., as well as the "macro-moral" issue of the compatibility of "free enterprise" and "social justice." Six of the 19 authors teach philosophy and they are joined by academic colleagues in business-oriented disciplines, lawyers (...) with government experience, a labor leader, and a social critic. The opener by DeGeorge effectively introduces the remaining topics and attacks the position that ethics is irrelevant to business affairs. His co-editor then sounds a triumphant theme we hear again in the strident pieces of Irving Kristol and John Hospers--viz., that American Capitalism is hale and hearty, under attack by well-meaning but unrealistic critics who fail to see the justice of the Invisible Hand. Michael Harrington, the lone socialist represented gently suggests an alternative to "corporate collectivism" and tries to unmask the myth of a free enterprise society. (shrink)

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE LOGICALEXANDER BROADIE, Introduction to medieval logic. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. vi + l5Opp. £20.00.CHARLES B. SCHMITT, QUENTIN SKINNER, ECKHARD KESSLER, JILL KRAYE, The Cambridge historj. of renaissance philosophj.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, xiii + 968 pp. £5O.OO/$79.jO.GERMAN TRADITIONSSTEPHEN PRIEST, Hegel's critique of Kant. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. xii + 229 pp. £22.50.NORBERT HINSKE, Kant 7 Index, Band 2, Stellenindex und Konkordanz zu “Zmmanuel Kant's Logik”. Erstellt in Zusammenarbeit mit Heinrich P. Delfosse und Heinz Schay. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: (...) Frommann-Holzboog, 1986. xlviii + 633 pp. DM 475.FREGE STUDIESGOTTLOB FREGE, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Eine logisch mathematische Untersuchung über den Begrif der Zahl. Centenarausgabe. Mit ergänzenden Texten kritisch herausgegeben von Christian Thiel. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1986. 187 + Ixiii. pp. DM 120.G. WECHSUNG, Frege Conference 1984. Berlin: Akademic Verlag, 1984. 408 pp. DDR-DM5 1.ANGLO–SAXON TRADITIONSN. B. COCCHIARELLA, Logical studies in early analytic philosophy. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1987. 295 pp. $30.00.PAUL GOCHET, Ascent to truth. A critical exumination of Quine‘s philosophy. Miinchen: Philosophia Verlag, 1986. 201 pp. DM59.BARRY M. TAYLOR, Michael Dummett: contributions to philosophy. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987. xii+ 339 pp. £47.25.OBJECTS OF THOUGHTB. HALE,objects. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987; New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988. viii + 282pp. £27.50.ANTHONY PALMER, Concept and object. The unity of the proposition in logic and psychology. London and New York: Routledge, 1988. xvi + 144 pp. £19.95.NON–CLASSICAL LOGICSG. PRIEST, In contradiction: a study of the transconsistent. Dordrecht, Boston, Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987. xvf 279 pp. $49.50.JÜRGEN WALTHER, Logik der Fragen, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter, 1985. viii + 334pp. DM 98.MISCELLANEOUSF. ENRIQUES, Per la storia della logica. Photostatic reproduction of the 1922 edition. Foreword by Raffaella Simili. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1987. xxii + 302 pp. 18,000 Lire.PAUL WEINGARTNER and GERHARD SCHURZ, Logic, philosophy of science and epistemology. Proceedings of the 11th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 4th to 13th August 1986, Kirchberg am Wechsel. Selected papers. Vienna: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1987. 430 pp. £54.00.G. TAKEUTI, Proof theory. Second edition. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1987. 490 pp. $64.00. (shrink)

This book is a collection of essays written by Bob Hale (three co-authored), with a critical introduction from Kit Fine. They comprise Hale’s final years of work, adding to and extending beyond his landmark monograph Necessary Beings: An Essay on Ontology, Modality, and the Relations Between Them (OUP, 2013, 2nd edition 2015). The essays develop and consolidate several key themes in Hale’s work, most notably the notion of definition, especially as it extends beyond definition of a word (...) to definition of a thing more generally, and its relations to essence and existence; how the recently influential notion of truthmaking relates to and illuminates some of these issues; and ontological questions connected with Hale’s metaphysical commitments on the one hand, and his commitments in the foundations of mathematics on the other. Several of the essays engage with and respond to work by Kit Fine, and contributions to Being Necessary: Themes of Ontology and Modality from the Work of Bob Hale (OUP 2018). As such, these essays also demonstrate a rich and fruitful philosophical dialogue between Hale and his critics and friends. (shrink)

Bob Hale; XII*—Grundlagen §64, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 97, Issue 1, 1 June 1997, Pages 243–262, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9264.00015.