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Title: Carnap on Metaphysics, Before and After 1932: The Importance of Tolerance Abstract: Late in 1932, Carnap accepts the Principle of Tolerance. This makes a fundamental difference to his philosophy, although that is not always readily apparent in his writings. The present paper illustrates this claim by examining his opposition to metaphysics. It discusses his pre-1932…

Title: Vague Mereology and Supervaluationism Abstract: What is the referent of ‘Mt Everest’, ‘Edinburgh’, and even of ‘Meta’ and ‘Mark Zuckerberg’? Like dust, vagueness ‘gets into everything’ (Dummett, 1995, p. 207) but, unlike dust, it is often taken to be only a semantic phenomenon. Standard supervaluationist accounts explain failures of reference fixing by appealing to…

Title: On the Plurality of Analyses: From Lewis Back to Russell and Moore Abstract: It is often argued that, amongst the various existing philosophical traditions, the one that enjoys the widest support is the analytic tradition. And, indeed, it is undoubtedly true that many philosophers would be prepared to describe themselves as ‘analytic philosophers’. Yet…

Title: On the Hyperintensions of Properties Abstract: Hyperintensionalists encounter two serious problems that cast doubt on their view of property identity, both stem from when insufficient attention is paid to the hyperintensions of properties. The first problem is what I call the ‘Granularity Problem’. It is the problem of finding a criterion of identity for…

Have a good break and see you in the new year!

This will be a pre-read discussion. To obtain a copy of the discussed paper, email the speaker via sen1@st-andrews.ac.uk. We ask participants to read the discussion paper ahead of the session and to prepare questions.

Title: Explanations in logic Abstract: To explain phenomena in the world is a central human activity and one of the main goals of rational inquiry. There are several types of explanation: one can explain by drawing an analogy, as one can explain by dwelling on the causes (e.g. see Woodward (2004)). Amongst these different kinds…