99 found
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  1. Singular Concepts.Nathan Salmón - 2024 - Synthese 204 (20).
    Toward a theory of n-tuples of individuals and concepts as surrogates for Russellian singular propositions and singular concepts. Alonzo Church proposed a powerful and elegant theory of sequences of functions and their arguments as singular-concept surrogates. Church’s account accords with his Alternative (0), the strictest of his three competing criteria for strict synonymy. The currently popular objection to strict criteria like (0) on the basis of the Russell-Myhill paradox is misguided. Russell-Myhill is not a problem specifically for Alternative (0). Rather (...)
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  2. Nonexistence.Nathan Salmon - 1998 - Noûs 32 (3):277-319.
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  3. The Logic of What Might Have Been.Nathan Salmon - 1989 - Philosophical Review 98 (1):3-34.
    The dogma that the propositional logic of metaphysical modality is S5 is rebutted. The author exposes fallacies in standard arguments supporting S5, arguing that propositional metaphysical modal logic is weaker even than both S4 and B, and is instead the minimal and weak metaphysical-modal logic T.
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  4. Existence.Nathan Salmon - 1987 - Philosophical Perspectives 1:49-108.
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  5. Illogical Belief.Nathan Salmon - 1989 - Philosophical Perspectives 3:243-285.
    A sequel to the author’s book /Frege’s Puzzle/ (1986).
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  6. Fictitious Existence versus Nonexistence.Nathan Salmon - forthcoming - Grazer Philosophische Studien.
    A correct observation to the effect that a does not exist, where ‘a’ is a singular term, could be true on any of a variety of grounds. Typically, a true, singular negative existential is true on the unproblematic ground that the subject term ‘a’ designates something that does not presently exist. More interesting philosophically is a singular, negative existential statement in which the subject term ‘a’ designates nothing at all. Both of these contrast sharply with a singular, negative existential in (...)
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  7. Tense and Singular Propositions.Nathan Salmon - 1989 - In Joseph Almog, John Perry & Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes From Kaplan. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 331--392.
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  8. A Millian Heir Rejects the Wages of Sinn.Nathan Salmon - 1990 - In C. Anthony Anderson (ed.), Propositional Attitudes: The Role of Content in Logic, Language, and Mind. Stanford: CSLI. pp. 215-247.
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  9. How Not to Derive Essentialism from the Theory of Reference.Nathan Ucuzoglu Salmon - 1979 - Journal of Philosophy 76 (12):703-725.
    A thorough critique (extracted from the author’s 1979 doctoral dissertation) of Kripke’s purported derivation, in footnote 56 of his philosophical masterpiece /Naming and Necessity/, of nontrivial modal essentialism from the theory of rigid designation.
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  10. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.Nathan Salmon - 2004 - In Marga Reimer & Anne Bezuidenhout (eds.), Descriptions and beyond. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 230--260.
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  11. How to Measure the Standard Metre.Nathan Salmon - 1988 - Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 88 (1):193 - 217.
    Nathan Salmon; XII*—How to Measure the Standard Metre, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 193–218.
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  12. Demonstrating and Necessity.Nathan Salmon - 2002 - Philosophical Review 111 (4):497-537.
    My title is meant to suggest a continuation of the sort of philosophical investigation into the nature of language and modality undertaken in Rudolf Carnap’s Meaning and Necessity and Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity. My topic belongs in a class with meaning and naming. It is demonstratives—that is, expressions like ‘that darn cat’ or the pronoun ‘he’ used deictically. A few philosophers deserve particular credit for advancing our understanding of demonstratives and other indexical words. Though Naming and Necessity is concerned (...)
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  13. Being of Two Minds: Belief with Doubt.Nathan Salmon - 1995 - Noûs 29 (1):1-20.
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  14. Modal Paradox: Parts and Counterparts, Points and Counterpoints.Nathan Salmon - 1986 - Midwest Studies in Philosophy 11 (1):75-120.
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  15. Reflexivity.Nathan Salmon - 1986 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 27 (3):401-429.
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  16. From Modality to Millianism.Nathan Salmón - 2024 - Noûs 2024 (2024;1–22):1–22.
    A new argument is offered which proceeds through epistemic possibility (for all S knows, p), cutting a trail from modality to Millianism, the controversial thesis that the semantic content of a proper name is simply its bearer. New definitions are provided for various epistemic modal notions. A surprising theorem about epistemic necessity is proved. A proposition p can be epistemically necessary for a knowing subject S even though p is /a posteriori/ and S does not know p. The identity relation (...)
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  17. The Pragmatic Fallacy.Nathan Salmon - 1991 - Philosophical Studies 63 (1):83--97.
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  18. Alethic Modalities.Nathan Salmón - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 2024:1-18.
    It is widely held that metaphysical modality is the broadest non-epistemic, alethic modality, and that /a posteriori/ modal essentialist truths, like that gold has atomic number 79, enjoy the necessity of the broadest alethic modality. One prominent argument for these conclusions--given by Cian Dorr, John Hawthorne, and Juhani Yli-Vakkuri--rests upon an extremely dubious premise: that certain pairs of properties—e.g., being gold and being made of atoms containing 79 protons—are one and the very same property. The two properties are seen to (...)
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  19. A Theory of Bondage.Nathan Salmon - 2006 - Philosophical Review 115 (4):415-448.
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  20. Are General Terms Rigid?Nathan Salmon - 2004 - Linguistics and Philosophy 28 (1):117 - 134.
    On Kripke’s intended definition, a term designates an object x rigidly if the term designates x with respect to every possible world in which x exists and does not designate anything else with respect to worlds in which x does not exist. Kripke evidently holds in Naming and Necessity, hereafter N&N (pp. 117–144, passim, and especially at 134, 139–140), that certain general terms – including natural-kind terms like ‘‘water’’ and ‘‘tiger’’, phenomenon terms like ‘‘heat’’ and ‘‘hot’’, and color terms like (...)
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  21. Impossible Odds.Nathan Salmón - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (3):644-662.
    A thesis (“weak BCP”) nearly universally held among philosophers of probability connects the concepts of objective chance and metaphysical modality: Any prospect (outcome) that has a positive chance of obtaining is metaphysically possible—(nearly) equivalently, any metaphysically impossible prospect has zero chance. Particular counterexamples are provided utilizing the monotonicity of chance, one of them related to the four world paradox. Explanations are offered for the persistent feeling that there cannot be chancy metaphysical necessities or chancy metaphysical impossibilities. Chance is objective but (...)
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  22. Recurrence.Nathan Salmon - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 159 (3):407-441.
    Standard compositionality is the doctrine that the semantic content of a compound expression is a function of the semantic contents of the contentful component expressions. In 1954 Hilary Putnam proposed that standard compositionality be replaced by a stricter version according to which even sentences that are synonymously isomorphic (in the sense of Alonzo Church) are not strictly synonymous unless they have the same logical form. On Putnam’s proposal, the semantic content of a compound expression is a function of: (i) the (...)
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  23. The Decision Problem for Effective Procedures.Nathan Salmón - 2023 - Logica Universalis 17 (2):161-174.
    The “somewhat vague, intuitive” notion from computability theory of an effective procedure (method) or algorithm can be fairly precisely defined even if it is not sufficiently formal and precise to belong to mathematics proper (in a narrow sense)—and even if (as many have asserted) for that reason the Church–Turing thesis is unprovable. It is proved logically that the class of effective procedures is not decidable, i.e., that no effective procedure is possible for ascertaining whether a given procedure is effective. This (...)
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  24. Tense and Intension.Nathan Salmon - 2003 - In Aleksandar Jokić & Quentin Smith (eds.), Time, Tense, and Reference. MIT Press. pp. 107-154.
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  25. Introduction to Propositions and Attitudes.Nathan Salmon & Scott Soames - 1988 - In Nathan U. Salmon & Scott Soames (eds.), _Propositions and Attitudes_. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 1-15.
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  26. Mythical Objects.Nathan Salmón - 2002 - In Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & David Shier (eds.), Meaning and Truth: Investigations in Philosophical Semantics. Seven Bridges Press. pp. 105-123.
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  27. Lambda in Sentences with Designators.Nathan Salmon - 2010 - Journal of Philosophy 107 (9):445–468.
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  28. Assertion and Incomplete Definite Descriptions.Nathan U. Salmon - 1982 - Philosophical Studies 42 (1):37--45.
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  29. (1 other version)How to Become a Millian Heir.Nathan Salmon - 1989 - Noûs 23 (2):211-220.
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  30. Some Highs and Lows of Hylomorphism: On a Paradox about Property Abstraction.Teresa Robertson Ishii & Nathan Salmón - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (6):1549-1563.
    We defend hylomorphism against Maegan Fairchild’s purported proof of its inconsistency. We provide a deduction of a contradiction from SH+, which is the combination of “simple hylomorphism” and an innocuous premise. We show that the deduction, reminiscent of Russell’s Paradox, is proof-theoretically valid in classical higher-order logic and invokes an impredicatively defined property. We provide a proof that SH+ is nevertheless consistent in a free higher-order logic. It is shown that the unrestricted comprehension principle of property abstraction on which the (...)
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  31. Two Conceptions of Semantics.Nathan Salmon - 2004 - In Zoltan Gendler Szabo (ed.), Semantics Versus Pragmatics. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK. pp. 317-328.
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  32. The Resilience of Illogical Belief.Nathan Salmon - 2006 - Noûs 40 (2):369–375.
    Although Professor Schiffer and I have many times disagreed, I share his deep and abiding commitment to argument as a primary philosophical tool. Regretting any communication failure that has occurred, I endeavor here to make clearer my earlier reply in “Illogical Belief” to Schiffer’s alleged problem for my version of Millianism.1 I shall be skeletal, however; the interested reader is encouraged to turn to “Illogical Belief” for detail and elaboration. I have argued that to bear a propositional attitude de re (...)
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  33. Impossible Worlds.Nathan Salmon - 1984 - Analysis 44 (3):114 - 117.
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  34. Generality.Nathan Salmon - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 161 (3):471-481.
    A distinction is drawn among predicates, open sentences (or open formulas), and general terms, including general-term phrases. Attaching a copula, perhaps together with an article, to a general term yields a predicate. Predicates can also be obtained through lambda-abstraction on an open sentence. The issue of designation and semantic content for each type of general expression is investigated. It is argued that the designatum of a general term is a universal, e.g., a kind, whereas the designatum of a predicate is (...)
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  35. On What Exists.Nathan Salmón - 2020 - In Frederique Janssen-Lauret (ed.), Quine, Structure, and Ontology. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 200-229.
    Quine’s criterion of theoretical ontological commitment is subject to a variety of interpretations, all of which save one yield incorrect verdicts. Moreover, the interpretation that yields correct verdicts is not what Quine meant. Instead the intended criterion unfairly imputes ontological commitments to theories that lack those commitments and fails to impute commitments to theories that have them. Insofar as Quine’s criterion is interpreted so that it yields only correct verdicts, it is trivial and of questionable utility. Moreover, the correct criterion (...)
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  36. On Designating.Nathan Salmon - 2005 - Mind 114 (456):1069-1133.
    A detailed interpretation is provided of the ‘Gray's Elegy’ passage in Russell's ‘On Denoting’. The passage is suffciently obscure that its principal lessons have been independently rediscovered. Russell attempts to demonstrate that the thesis that definite descriptions are singular terms is untenable. The thesis demands a distinction be drawn between content and designation, but the attempt to form a proposition directly about the content (as by using an appropriate form of quotation) inevitably results in a proposition about the thing designated (...)
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  37. My Philosophical Education.Nathan Salmón - manuscript
    In this candid autobiographical essay, Nathan Salmon recounts and assesses the impact of various philosophers and events on his philosophical development.
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  38. A Paradox about Sets of Properties.Nathan Salmón - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5-6):12777-12793.
    A paradox about sets of properties is presented. The paradox, which invokes an impredicatively defined property, is formalized in a free third-order logic with lambda-abstraction, through a classically proof-theoretically valid deduction of a contradiction from a single premise to the effect that every property has a unit set. Something like a model is offered to establish that the premise is, although classically inconsistent, nevertheless consistent, so that the paradox discredits the logic employed. A resolution through the ramified theory of types (...)
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  39. The Very Possibility of Language: A Sermon on the Consequences of Missing Church.Nathan Salmon - 2001 - In C. Anthony Anderson & Michael Zelëny (eds.), Logic, meaning, and computation: essays in memory of Alonzo Church. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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  40. Trans-World Identification and Stipulation.Nathan Salmon - 1996 - Philosophical Studies 84 (2-3):203 - 223.
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  41. Relative and Absolute Apriority.Nathan Salmon - 1993 - Philosophical Studies 69 (1):83 - 100.
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  42. Reflections on Reflexivity.Nathan Salmon - 1992 - Linguistics and Philosophy 15 (1):53 - 63.
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  43. Memoirs of a Misunderstood Truth Seeker.Nathan Salmon - manuscript
    An expanded version of the author’s candid, autobiographical “My Philosophical Education”.
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  44. Recurrence Again.Nathan Salmon - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (2):445-457.
    Kit Fine has replied to my criticism of a technical objection he had given to the version of Millianism that I advocate. Fine evidently objects to my use of classical existential instantiation in an object-theoretic rendering of his meta-proof. Fine’s reply appears to involve both an egregious misreading of my criticism and a significant logical error. I argue that my rendering is unimpeachable, that the issue over my use of classical EI is a red herring, and that Fine’s original argument (...)
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  45. This Side of Paradox.Nathan Salmon - 1993 - Philosophical Topics 21 (2):187-197.
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  46. The Philosopher's Stone and Other Mythical Objects.Nathan Salmon - 2015 - In Stuart Brock & Anthony Everett (eds.), Fictional Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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  47. Vagaries about Vagueness.Nathan Salmon - 2010 - In Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and clouds: vagueness, its nature, and its logic. New York: Oxford University Press.
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  48. Cognition and Recognition.Nathan Salmon - 2018 - Intercultural Pragmatics 15 (2):213-235.
    Expressions are synonymous if they have the same semantic content. Complex expressions are synonymously isomorphic in Alonzo Church’s sense if one is obtainable from the other by a sequence of alphabetic changes of bound variables or replacements of component expressions by syntactically simple synonyms. Synonymous isomorphism provides a very strict criterion for synonymy of sentences. Several eminent philosophers of language hold that synonymous isomorphism is not strict enough. These philosophers hold that ‘Greeks prefer Greeks’ and ‘Greeks prefer Hellenes’ express different (...)
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  49. Analyticity and Apriority.Nathan Salmon - 1993 - Philosophical Perspectives 7:125-133.
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  50. About Aboutness.Nathan Salmon - 2007 - European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 3 (2):59-76.
    A Russellian notion of what it is for a proposition to be “directly about” something in particular is defined. Various strong and weak, and mediate and immediate, Russellian notions of general aboutness are then defined in terms of Russellian direct aboutness. In particular, a proposition is about something iff the proposition is either directly, or strongly indirectly, about that thing. A competing Russellian account, due to Kaplan, is criticized through a distinction between knowledge by description and denoting by description. The (...)
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