PAPERS AND ESSAYS
The following links will take you to various papers and essays. They range from introductions to - or commentaries upon - philosophers and their ideas (which are set at a fairly elementary standard) to philosophical essays of a more analytical and critical nature. In addition, a few of the following links will take you to works that are more academic in style and content. (A few of the essays are as short as 1,000 words in length; whereas the formal papers are often over 5,000 words.) All the following date from the year 2000 to the present time.
Admittedly, I have spent more time on certain pieces than on others. I thought, perhaps somewhat counterfactually, that an improvisationary feel would provide readers with a much-needed respite from much of the pedantry which passes for hard-core analysis.
(Note: Some of the logical symbols from word text have not been correctly copied to the website. For example, the conjunctive and disjunctive symbols have become squares in certain texts.)
Recent Additions:
Notes, Comments, Questions and Improvisations: One (added August 2007)
Notes, Comments, Questions and Improvisations: Two (added August 2007)
Philosophers
Most of the essays which follow are introductory in nature. Nevertheless, all the works contain critical and analytical components which sit alongside the introductions. (Note again: I have had problems with copying word document logical symbols to this web site. For example, sometimes the necessity operator has been turned into the existential quantification symbol and the conditional sign, for some reason, has become the symbol for logical necessity.)
Aquinas:
1) Kenny on Aquinas’s Ontology: Substance and Accidents
D.M. Armstrong:
1) An Analysis and Synthesis of D.M. Armstrong’s Analytical ‘The Nature of Possibility’
A.J. Ayer:
1) The Basics of the Philosophy of A. J. Ayer
F. Bradley: 1) Bradley’s Philosophy of Logic and Language 2) Bradley on Substances, Properties and Subject/Predicate Expressions
F. Brentano:
1) Brentano: Mental Acts and Mental Objects
R. Carnap:
1) Carnap's Conceptual Conventionalism
P. Churchland:
1) Churchland’s Eliminative Materialism
R.G. Collingwood:
1) Collingwood on Historical Philosophical Presuppositions
D. Davidson:
1) The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme
2) A Prolegomena For Future Work…
J. Derrida:
1) Derrida on the Greek Language of Philosophy
2) Derrida on Words and Meanings
3) Early Derrida’s Ethics
4) A Skewed Analytic Reading of Early Derrida’s Philosophy of Language
F. Dretske:
1) My Dog Has and Uses Concepts and Believes that x is F : a Reply to Fred Dretske
G. Frege:
1) Frege’s Notions of Function…
2) Frege on Concepts and Objects
3) Frege on Reference and Sense 1) Animals Don't Have Concepts
A. Gibbard:
1) Gibbard on Contingent Identity
M. Heidegger: 1) Heidegger on Being, Existenze and Knowledge: A Critical Introduction
1) Hume on Necessity and Causality
1) Husserl on Pure Logic and Phenomenology
I. Kant:
1) Kant’s Silently Protestant Last Stand
2) Kant's Synthetic A Priori
3) Kant's Hypothetical and Categorical Imperatives
S. Kripke:
1) Kripke’s ‘Identity and Necessity’: an Explication and Critical Commentary
2) Kripke's Second Argument Against Descriptive Content in Proper Names
3) Kripke's First Argument Against Descriptive Content in Proper Names D. Lewis: 1) D. Lewis’s Epistemic Contextualism 2) An Introduction to D. Lewis on Possible Worlds
A. Meinong:
1) Meinong’s Ontology: Subsistence, Existence and the Real
2) Early Russell on Meinong’s Jungle, Logical Form and Ontological Commitment
G.E. Moore:
1) Moore on Concepts and Propositions 1) Nagel as Philosopher-Priest and New Mysterian C.S. Peirce: 1) Peirce’s Philosophy of Logic and His Logic of Science 1) Peacocke on Sensations and Concepts 1) Poincare on Tautology, Inference and Mathematical Intuitions 1) The Basics of Popper’s Philosophy of Science
H. Putnam:
1) Putnam on External Truth and Conceptual Schemes
W.V.O. Quine:
1) The Place of Science, Scepticism and Normativity in Quine’s Naturalised Epistemology
2) Quine and Carnap on Abstract Meanings
3) Quine on Analyticity
4) Quine’s ‘On What There Is’
5) Basic Ideas in Quine’s Philosophy of Logic
6) Quine on the Indeterminacy of Meaning and Translation
7) A Superior Empiricism (Quine's Attitude towards the Natural Sciences)
B. Russell:
1) Russell on Definite Descriptions
2) Early Russell on Meinong’s Jungle, Logical Form and Ontological Commitmen
3) True Belief and Knowledge: D. Lewis against Russell
4) Sense-data and Inference: Davidson against Russell
G. Ryle:
1) A Short Overview of Ryle's Philosophy
E. Sosa:
1) Sosa on Conceptual Idealism
G.F. Stout:
1) Stout as an Early Trope Theorist
P.F. Strawson: 1) Strawson Against Basic and Foundational Particulars 2) Strawson on the Common Core of Central Concepts
M. Williams:
1) William’s Critique of Epistemological Realism
L. Wittgenstein:
1) Wittgenstein on Truth, Correctness…
2) Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument
3) An Introduction to W’s Philosophy of Mathematics
4) Logic and World: A Critical Account of the Basics of Early Wittgenstein
5) Wittgenstein and Heidegger: Unthought and the Point of Pointlessness
6) Wittgenstein and Heidegger on Religion, Language-Games and Philosophy
7) Wittgenstein and Heidegger on Ethics and Philosophy
8) Wittgenstein and Heidegger: Overcoming the Tradition as a Spiritual Act
9) A Wittgensteinian Take on Abstract Meanings and the Normativity of Linguistic Rules S. Yablo: 1) Yablo on Essence and Identity
Various Areas of Philosophy
Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Language:
1) Concepts/Descriptions and the Individuation of Objects
2) Conceptual Schemes and External Truths
3) Conceptual Variance
4) Proper Names, Name-Contents and n-Order Concepts
5) The Resemblance Relation
6) Sortal Essences
7) ‘Might’ Counterfactuals
8) How is Metaphysics Possible?
9) Concepts and Objects
10) Concepts, Objects and Modes of Presentation
11) Two Essays on Conceptual Scheme Relativism and the Notion of External Truth
12) Micro and Macro Conceptual Schemes
13) Names as Essences and the De Re/De Dicto Distinction
Logic and the Philosophy of Logic:
1) A Critical Account of Various Notions of Abstract Propositions: From Frege to Bealer
2) A Name and a Book that Name Themselves
3) Sentences that Directly Refer to Themselves
4) Sentences that Indirectly Refer to Themselves
5) Self-Referential Systems
6) The Liar and Heap Paradoxes
7) A (Somewhat) Empiricist Introduction to Logic
8) The Logical Constants and the Sentential Calculus
9) The Basics of the De Re/De Dicto Distinction
10) What is Logical Inference?
11) The Basic Logical Facts of Conditionals, Biconditionals and Tautologies
12) The Logic of, and the Quantification Over, Concepts
13) The Notational Basics of Formal Languages and Logical Consequence
14) Carnap and Quine on Implies and Entails
15) Double Modal Operators and Modal Equivalence (Note: some of the logical symbols have not been correctly copied.)
16) Proof and Doubt: A Non-Technical Introduction
17) The Very Basics of Quantification and Reference
18) The Basics of Logical Identity
19) A Few 19th Century Non-Fregean Accounts of Inductive and Deductive Logic
Epistemology:
1) The Con of the Cogito
2) Traditional Empiricism and the Problem and Status of Mathematics
Philosophy of Mind:
1) The Intentionality of Sexuality, Depression and Anxiety
2) Is Phenomenal Consciousness Non-Conceptual?
3) A Quasi-Kantian Critique of Non-Conceptual Experience
4) Linguistic Concepts/Animal Concepts
Ethics:
1) A Defence of the Devil: on Logically-Flawed Relativism
Metaphilosophy:
1) A Basic Introduction to the Fundamentals of Logical Positivism
2) A Critical Analysis of Philosophical Analysis
Questions:
1) What is the subject-matter of logic?
2) What is an essential property?
Notes, Comments, Questions and Improvisations:
1) One
2) Two
