Kit Fine and the Ontology of Modal Actualism

Index of the Section: "The Rediscovery of Ontology in Contemporary Thought"

Table of Formal and Descriptivists Ontologists (PDF - from Bernard Bolzano to present time)
Ontologists of the 19th and 20th Centuries (a selection of critical judgments about some of the greatest philosophers of the recent past)
Living Ontologists (a list of authors with an interest in ontology, with synthetic bibliographies)

INTRODUCTION

"My aim in this paper is to help lay the conceptual and methodological foundations for the study of realism. I come to two main conclusions: first, that there is a primitive metaphysical concept of reality, one that cannot be understood in fundamentally different terms; and second, that questions of what is real are to be settled upon the basis of considerations of ground. The two conclusions are somewhat in tension with one another, for the lack of a definition of the concept of reality would appear to stand in the way of developing a sound methodology for determining its application; and one of my main concerns has been to show how the tension between the two might be resolved.

The paper is in two main parts. In the first, I point to the difficulties in making out a metaphysical conception of reality. I begin by distinguishing this conception from the ordinary conception of reality (§ 1) and then show how the two leading contenders for the metaphysical conception - the factual and the irreducible - both appear to resist formulation in other terms. This leads to the quietist challenge, that questions of realism are either meaningless or pointless (§4); and the second part of the paper (§§5-10) is largely devoted to showing how this challenge might be met. I begin by introducing the notion of ground (§5) and then show how it can be used as a basis for resolving questions both of factuality (§§6-7) and of irreducibility (§§8-9). I conclude with some remarks on the essential unity of these two questions and of the means by which they are to be answered (§ 10)."

From: Kit Fine - The question of realism. - In: Individuals, essence and identity. Themes of analytic metaphysics. Edited by Bottani Andrea, Carrara Massimiliano, and Giaretta Pierdaniele. Dordrecht: Kluwer 2002. pp. 3-4.

COMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Propositional quantifiers in modal logic," Theoria 36: 336-346 (1970).
"Propositional quantifiers are added to S5, S4, T and B etc. The cases in which any truth-functional formula, any formula whatever, and any set of possible worlds correspond to a proposition are distinguished. Canonical models, a translation argument and quantifier elimination, respectively, are used to show, for the first two cases, that the logics are axiomatizable and that most of the modally weak logics are undecidable and, for all cases, that the S5 logics are decidable."
"The logics containing S4.3," Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik 17: 371-376 (1971).
"Counting, choice and undecidability," Manifold 11: 71-82 (1971).
"In so many possible worlds," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 13: 516-520 (1972).
"Ordinary modal logic deals with the notion of a proposition being true at least one possible world. This makes it natural to consider the notion of a proposition being true in k possible worlds for any nonnegative integer k. Such a notion would stand to Tarski's numerical quantifiers as ordinary possibility stands to the existential quantifier.
In this paper (1) I present several logics for numerical possibility. First I give the syntax and semantics for a minimal such logic (sections 1 and 2); then I prove its completeness (sections 3 and 4); and finally I show how to extend this result to other logics (section 5)."

(1) The results of this paper are contained in my doctorate thesis, submitted to the University of Warwick in 1969. I am greatly indebted to my supervisor, the late Arthur Prior. Without his help and encouragement this paper would never have been written.
"For so many individuals," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 13: 569-572 (1972).
"In his 'Introduction to logic', Tarski introduces the numerical quantifiers 'there are at least K individuals x such that', K a natural number. This paper proves completeness for a predicate calculus that contains each of these quantifiers but no sign for identity."
Logics containing S4 without the finite model property. In Conference in Mathematical Logic, London '70. Edited by Hodges Wilfrid. Berlin: Springer Verlag 1972. pp. 98-102
"Some necessary and sufficient conditions for representative decision on two alternatives," Econometrica 40: 1083-1090 (1972).
"Conditions for the existence of cycles under majority non-minority rules," Econometrica 41: 889-899 (1973).
Surveys on deontic logic, mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics. In UNESCO Survey of the social sciences.1973. pp.
"An ascending chain of S4 logics," Theoria 40: 110-116 (1974).
"This paper shows that there are infinite ascending chains of modal logics containing S4. The proof uses possible world semantics. A consequence of the proof is that there is a continuum of logics containing S4."
"Models for entailment," Journal of Philosophical Logic 3: 347-372 (1974).
Reprinted in: Alan Ross Anderson, Nuel D. Belnap, Jr., with contributions by J. Michael Dunn ... [et al.] - Entailment : the logic of relevance and necessity - Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992 vol. II.
"An incomplete logic containing S4," Theoria 40: 23-29 (1974).
"This paper exhibits a modal logic that is finitely axiomatized, stronger than S4, yet not complete for any Kripke semantics. The proof shows that a particular formula is valid in all frames of the logic but is not itself a theorem. The paper ends with some questions about the extent to which modal logics can be incomplete."
"Logics containing K4. Part I," Journal of Symbolic Logic 39: 31-42 (1974).
"This paper gives a general completeness result in modal logic. Let i(n) be the axiom that says there are at most n incomparable points related to a given point. then the result is that all logics containing K4 and i(n) are complete. The proof is a variant on the method of maximally consistent theories; it shows that a frame for any such logic results from dropping certain points from the canonical frame."
"Social choice and individual ranking I," Review of Economic Studies 41: 303-322 (1974).
With Ben J. Fine
"Social choice and individual ranking II," Review of Economic Studies 41: 459-475 (1974).
"Vagueness, truth and logic," Synthese 30: 265-300 (1975).
Reprinted in: Rosanna Keefe and Peter Smith - Vagueness: a reader - Cambridge, MIT Press, 1996, pp. 119-150.

"This paper deals with the truth-conditions and the logic for vague languages. The use of supervaluations and of classical logic is defended; and other approaches are criticized. the truth-conditions are extended to a language that contains a definitely operator and that is subject
to higher order vagueness."
"Normal forms in modal logic," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 16: 229-237 (1975).
"There are two main methods of completeness proof in modal logic.
One may use maximally consistent theories or their algebraic counterparts, on the one hand, or semantic tableaux and their variants, on the other hand. The former method is elegant but not constructive, the latter method is constructive but not elegant.
Normal forms have been comparatively neglected in the study of modal sentential logic. Their champions include Carnap [3], von Wright [10], Anderson [l] and Cresswell [4]. However, normal forms can provide elegant and constructive proofs of many standard results. They can also provide proofs of results that are not readily proved by standard means.
Section 1 presents preliminaries. Sections 2 and 3 establish a reduction to normal form and a consequent construction of models. Section 4 contains a general completeness result. Finally, section 5 provides normal formings for the logics T and K4."

[1] Anderson, A. R., "Improved decision procedures for Lewis's calculus S4 and Van Wright's calculus M," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 34 (1969), pp. 253-255.
[2] Bull, R. A., "On the extension of S4 with CLMpMLp," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. VIII (1967), pp. 325-329.
[3] Carnap, R., "Modalities and quantification," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 11 (1946), pp. 33-64.
[4] Cresswell, M. J., "A conjunctive normal form for S3.5," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 34 (1969), pp. 253-255.
[10] Wright, G. H. von, An Essay in Modal Logic, Amsterdam (1951).
"Review of David Lewis Counterfactuals," Mind 84: 451-458 (1975).
Some connections between elementary and modal logic. In Proceedings of the Third Scandinavian Logic Symposium. Edited by Kanger Stig. Amsterdam: North-Holland 1975. pp. 15-31
"Review of The nature of necessity (A. Plantinga)," The Philosophical Review 86: 562-566 (1976).
Reprinted in: Modality and tense. Philosophical papers as chapter 11.
"Completeness for the semi-lattice semantics. Abstract," Journal of Symbolic Logic 41: 560 (1976).
"Completeness for the S5 analogue of E_i," Journal of Symbolic Logic 41: 559-560 (1976).
"Properties, propositions and sets," Journal of Philosophical Logic 6: 135-191 (1977).
"This paper presents a theory of extensional and intensional entities. It takes a possible-worlds account of these entities for granted and, in terms of that account, attempts to characterize and investigate various features of the entities. tTese features include existence in a world, being purely general or qualitative, being logical, having an individual as a constituent, and being essentially modal. the characterizations are given abstractly, in terms of a relevant notion of isomorphism, and linguistically, in terms of expressibility within an ideal language."
World, times and selves. London: Duckworth 1977.
Co-author: Arthur Norman Prior
Postscript to Worlds, times and selves by Arthur Norman Prior. In Worlds, times and selves. London: Duckworth 1977. pp.
Reprinted in: Modality and tense. Philosophical papers as chapter 4.
"Model theory for modal logic Part I: The 'de re / de dicto' distinction," Journal of Philosophical Logic 7: 125-156 (1978).
" This series attempts to bring the methods of model theory closer to certain philosophical concerns in modal logic. In the first part, I deal with two related philosophical positions, "de re" scepticism and anti-haecceitism. The main result is that a sentence is equivalent to a "de dicto" one if and only if its truth-value does not turn on the identity of individuals across possible worlds. However, there are also extensions of the result to different languages, different logics, generalisations of the concept of "de dicto"."
"Model theory for modal logic Part II: the elimination of 'de re' modality," Journal of Philosophical Logic 7: 277-306 (1978).
"A modal theory is said to permit formula (sentence) eliminability if each formula (sentence) is equivalent, in the theory, to a "de dicto" formula. Various particular and general results on theories which permit eliminability are established. it is shown, for example, that no consistent theory with "de dicto" axioms permits sentence eliminability and that there is only one natural which permits formula eliminability."
"Failures of the interpolation lemma in quantified modal logic," Journal of Symbolic Logic 44: 201-206 (1979).
" It is shown that Beth's definability theorem and its corollary, the interpolation lemma, fail for quantified S5, with or without constant domain, and for all systems with constant domain that lie between K and S5."
Analytic implication. In Papers on language and logic. Edited by Dancy Jonathan. Keele: Keele University Library 1979. pp. 64-70
Reprinted in: Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 27, 1986, pp. 169-179.
"Parry presented a system of analytic implication in [7] and [8], Dunn [2] gave an algebraic completeness proof for an extension of this system and Urquhart [10] later gave a semantic completeness proof for Dunn's system with necessity. This paper establishes completeness for Parry's original system, (*) thereby answering a question of Gödel [6], and then, on the basis of the completeness result, derives decidability; it also deals with quantificational versions and other modifications of his system.
Section 1 contains some informal remarks on the notion of analytic implication.
They are not strictly relevant to the later analysis, although they may help to place it in perspective. Section 2 presents the semantics and Section 3 exhibits a system of analytic implication. Section 4 helps to demonstrate that the system is equivalent to Parry's, and Section 5 establishes completeness. Finally, Section 6 outlines the theory for some related systems."

(*) I mean the full system of [7] with adjunction, A14 and A15.

[1] Anderson A. R. and N. D. Belnap, Jr., "A simple treatment of truth-functions," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 25 (1959), pp. 301-302.
[2] Dunn, J. M., "A modification of Parry's analytic implication," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, vol. 13, no. 2 (1972), pp. 195-205.
[3] Epstein, D., "The semantic foundations of logic," to appear.
[4] Hughs, G. E. and M. J. Cresswell, An Introduction to Modal Logic, Methuen, London, 1968.
[5] Kielkopf, C. F., Formal Sentential Entailment, University Press of America, Washington, D.C., 1977.
[6] Parry, W. T., "Ein Axiomsystem fur eine neue Art von Implication (analytische Implication)," Ergebrisse eines Mathematischen Colloquiums, vol. 4 (1933), pp. 5-6.
[7] Parry, W. T., "The logic of C. I. Lewis," pp. 115-154 in The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis, ed., P. A. Schilpp, Cambridge University Press, 1968.
[8] Parry, W. T., "Comparison of entailment theories," The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 37 (1972), pp. 441 f.
[9] Post, E. L., The Two-Valued Iterative Systems of Mathematical Logic, Princeton, University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1941.
[10] Urquhart, A., "A semantical theory of analytical implication," Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 2 (1973), pp. 212-219.
"First-order modal theories. II: Propositions," Studia Logica 39: 159-202 (1980).
"This paper is part of a general programme of developing and investigating particular first-order modal theories. In the paper, a modal theory of propositions is constructed under the assumption that there are genuinely singular propositions, i.e., ones that contain individuals as constituents. Various results on decidability, axiomatizability and definability are established."
"First-order modal theories. I: Sets," Noûs 15: 177-205 (1981).
"This paper is the first part of a general program to develop different existentialist theories and deals with the special topic of sets. various essentialist axioms are discussed, and an attempt is made to formalize correct modal systems for sets. These systems are then investigated metatheoretically. The topics considered include: class abstracts in a modal setting; the deductive equivalence of the different systems; embedding of the possible worlds semantics within a first-order modal theory; the modal adequacy of the formalizations; and the identity of sets as part of a general account of the identity of objects."
"Model theory for modal logic. Part III: Existence and predication," Journal of Philosophical Logic 10: 293-307 (1981).
"This paper is concerned with the technical implications of the requirement that the predicates of a modal language be true only of the existents of each world. a preservation result for formulas in which the predicates are made to conform to the requirement is established, and sufficient conditions for the predicates of a theory to admit of an analysis in terms of those that meet the requirement are laid down.
This paper is the third and final part of a series. It was completed and submitted to the Journal of Philosophical Logic in 1977, at about the same time as the other parts. But because of some mishap in the mail, its publication was delayed. The present part is independent from the other parts in its results, but draws upon the terminology of Section 2 of Part I."
"The problem of non-existents. I: Internalism," Topoi 1: 97-140 (1982).
" I describe a particular theory of non-existent objects and point out what seem to be its principal defects. An attempt is made, on the way, to set up a more general framework for the consideration of questions in object theory."
"First-order modal theories. III: Facts," Synthese 53: 43-122 (1982).
"This paper gives a philosophical and technical account of the essentialist properties of facts."
Acts, events and things. In Sprache und Ontologie. Akten des sechsten Internationalen Wittgenstein-Symposiums, 23. bis 30. August 1981, Kirchberg am Wechsel (Osterreich). Edited by Leinfellner Werner, Kraemer Eric, and Schank Jeffrey. Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky 1982. pp. 97-105
"The permutation principle in quantificational logic," Journal of Philosophical Logic 12: 33-37 (1983).
"Symposium. A defence of arbitrary objects: I," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary volume 57: 55-77 (1983).
Reprinted in: Fred Landman, Frank Veltman (eds.) - Varieties of formal semantics. Proceedings of the fourth Amsterdam colloquium, September 1982 - Dordrecht,: Foris Publications, 1984.

"A theory of arbitrary objects is defended against various philosophical objections. Several applications of the theory to the study of generality are outlined."
"Critical review of T. Parsons' Nonexistent objects," Philosophical Studies 45: 95-142 (1984).
Review of: Terence Parsons - Nonexistent objects - New Haven, Yale University Press, 1980.

"There has recently been a rebellion within the ranks of analytic philosophy. It has come to be appreciated that, in the debate between Russell and Meinong, Russell was perhaps mistaken in his criticisms and Meinong was perhaps correct in his views. As a consequence, an attempt was made to rehabilitate the Meinongian position, to defend it against the most obvious attacks and to develop it in the most plausible ways. T. Parsons was among the first of the contemporary philosophers to make this attempt,' and so it is especially appropriate that his views should now be set out in a book.
I should say, at the outset, that I thoroughly approve of the Meinongian project. As Parsons makes clear (pp. 32-38), we refer to non-existents in much the same way as we refer to other objects. It is therefore incumbent upon the philosopher to work out the principles by which our discourse concerning such objects is governed. Not that this is necessarily to endorse a realist position towards the objects of the resulting theory. Nominalists and Platonists alike may attempt to set out the principles that govern arithmetical discourse; and it is in the same spirit that the realist or anti-realist may attempt to set out the principles of our fictional discourse.
Despite my approval of the project, I must admit to some misgivings as to how Parsons has carried it out. These misgivings are of two kinds. There are first some internal criticisms, requiring only change within Parsons' basic approach. There are then some external criticisms, requiring change to the basic approach.
These criticisms, though, should not be though.. to detract from the merits of Parsons' book. It is, in many ways, an admirable contribution to the field. It gives weight both to the interest and the legitimacy of the Meinongian enterprise; it pinpoints the difficulties which any satisfactory theory must deal with; and in its solution to those difficulties, it sets up a theory with a degree of rigour and systematicity that should serve as a model for years to come. As a well worked-out and accessible contribution to object theory, there is no better book."
"Truth without satisfaction," Journal of Philosophical Logic 13: 397-421 (1984).
With Timothy McCarthy.

"Tarski defined truth in terms of satisfaction. but is this necessary? We give some answers to this question and thereby solve a problem of Kripke's and of Tharp's."
"Natural deduction and arbitrary objects," Journal of Philosophical Logic 14: 57-107 (1985).
Reprinted in Philosopher's Annual - vol. 8, 1985.

"I sketch a theory of arbitrary or variable objects and then use it in interpreting systems of natural deduction that contain a rule of existential instantiation. Such an interpretation is able to motivate the restrictions on the rules and to provide simple and natural proofs of soundness. it also seems to correspond quite well to our actual understanding of quantificational reasoning."
"Logics containing K4. Part II," Journal of Symbolic Logic 50: 619-651 (1985).
"This paper deals with logics containing K4 that are complete for a class of frames that contains any subframe of its members. A uniform axiomatization of such logics is given; it is shown that they all have the finite model properly; and tests for compactness are developed. Various other results on p-morphism, definability and decidability are also established."
Reasoning with arbitrary objects. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1985.
Contents: Preface VII; Introduction 1; 1. The general framework 5; 2. Some standard systems 61; 3. Systems in general 147; 4. Non standard-systems 177; Bibliography 210; General Index 215; Index of symbols 219-220.
Plantinga on the reduction of possibilist discourse. In Alvin Plantinga. Edited by Tomberlin James and Van Inwagen Peter. Dordrecht: Reidel 1985. pp. 145-186
Reprinted in: Modality and tense. Philosophical papers as chapter 5.

"What is the modal actualist to make of apparently intelligible discourse concerning possible worlds and individuals? I compare Plantinga's and my own views on this question. I also discuss some related questions on the connection between existence and predication, the necessary existence of propositions, and the Priorian perspective on modality."
"Semantics for quantified relevance logic," Journal of Philosophical Logic 17: 27-59 (1988).
Reprinted in: Alan Ross Anderson, Nuel D. Belnap, Jr., with contributions by J. Michael Dunn ... [et al.] - Entailment : the logic of relevance and necessity - Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992 vol. II pp. 235-262..

"It is known that quantified R and related systems are not complete for the standard versions of the operational or ternary relation semantics. I provide a version of these semantics for which such systems are complete. It employs an unorthodox clause for the quantifiers: a universally quantified statement is true iff the corresponding condition is true of an arbitrary individual."
Incompleteness for quantified relevance logics. In Directions in relevant logic. Edited by Norman Jean and Sylvan Richard. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1989. pp. 205-225
Reprinted in: Alan Ross Anderson, Nuel D. Belnap, Jr., with contributions by J. Michael Dunn ... [et al.] - Entailment : the logic of relevance and necessity - Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1992 vol. II.

"Propositional relevance logic is complete for a certain relational semantics. It is shown that the natural extension of the logic to quantifiers is not complete for the natural extension of the semantics."
The problem of de re modality. In Themes from Kaplan. Edited by Almog Joseph, Perry John, and Wettstein Howard. New York: Oxford University Press 1989. pp. 197-272
Reprinted in: Modality and tense. Philosophical papers as chapter 2.

"This paper attempts to evaluate Quine's arguments against quantifying into modal contexts and, as such, both complements and expands on my paper "Quine on Quantifying In". Special attention is given to the conditions for quantification to be intelligible and the question of whether quantification must be referential."
The justification of negation as failure. In Logic, methodology and philosophy of science VIII. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Moscow, 1987. Edited by Fenstad Jens Erik, Frolov Ivan, and Hilpinen Risto. Amsterdam: North-Holland 1989. pp. 263-301
"Prolog is a logic programming language; it is used to answer queries on the basis of information provided by the programmer. For the most part, the logic employed by Prolog is standard. But it uses a highly unorthodox rule for establishing negative facts. This rule, the so-called rule of negation as failure, allows us to deny a statement on the grounds that a certain attempt to prove it has failed.
The rule is not classically valid; and therefore the question arises as to how it is to be justified. There are basically three different kinds of justification that have been proposed in the literature. The first is to re-interpret negation to mean something like unprovability. The second is to assume that the program is complete with respect to truths; all truths are derivable. The third is to suppose that the program is complete with respect to conditions; all sufficient conditions for the application of the predicates have been specified.
My aim in this paper is to evaluate these various proposals and then to make a proposal of my own. I shall argue that the existing proposals all suffer from some defect or another: the first is unable to account for a classical reading of negation; the second delivers too much on programs which employ negation; and the third delivers too little on programs which make no use of negation.
I shall then argue that my own proposal is able to avoid these difficulties. From one point of view, the proposal is not new; it is merely a form of the second proposal stated above, according to which all truths are derivable. However, the concept of derivability which is appealed to is quite novel; for the assumption that all truths are derivable, may itself be used in establishing that a given statement is derivable. The assumption has, in other words, a self-referential character.
The proposal has various other features of interest. It provides a natural way of interpreting inductive definitions in which the positive instances of a predicate are allowed to depend upon its negative instances. It sanctions an extension of the rule of negation of failure, under which not only the finite, but also the transfinite, failure of a statement may constitute a ground for its denial. It is capable of variation in the choice of which other assumptions or rules are used in defining the concept of derivability.
(...)
One feature of my exposition is worthy of special note. I have for the most part confined my attention to the sentential case, under which only truth-functional complexity is ever exposed. Such a case is usually regarded as trivial, since most of the interesting features of Prolog depend upon the use of variables. However, in this regard, the rule of negation as failure is an exception. Most of the problems in justifying the rule already arise at the sentential level; and to solve these problems at this level is to have gone a long way towards solving them altogether. There are, however, certain difficulties which are peculiar to the introduction of variables and terms; and these are considered at the end of the paper. It is argued, in particular, that the usual assumptions concerning an ontology of terms are needlessly strong and that an ordinary ontology of individuals can be countenanced in its place."
Quine on quantifying in. In Propositional attitudes: the role of content in logic, language and mind. Edited by Anderson Anthony and Owens Joseph. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University 1990. pp. 1-26
"The paper attempts to evaluate Quine's argument against quantifying into modal contexts. Two versions of the argument are distinguished, one of a broadly logical sort and the other relating to the nature of necessity. The first version is seen to depend upon an assumption of linguistic uniformity, which may be reasonable for certain ideal formal languages but which is problematic for natural languages; and the second version is seen to have some force in application to a metaphysical conception of modality, but to have none in application to a logical or analytic conception of modality."
"The study of ontology," Noûs 25: 263-294 (1991).
"A constructional ontology is one which serves to construct complexes from simples. The present paper is concerned with the nature and with the study of such ontologies. It attempts to say, in the first place, how they are constituted and by what principles they are governed. But it also attempts to say how their study may lead one to adopt certain positions and to make certain definitions.
The remarks on the study of ontology are meant to relate to the study of disciplines in general. I am interested in how the study of a discipline gets shaped by the positions which are adopted and the strategies which are pursued. These interact; for the pursuit of certain kinds of strategy will lead to the adoption of certain kinds of position, and the adoption of certain kinds of position will be required by the pursuit of certain kinds of strategy. One therefore needs to understand how they interact.
Certain subsidiary themes run through the paper, all interrelated in one way or another. One concerns a dialectical conception of modality, one that is determined by what is left open at a given stage of enquiry. Another involves a particular way of expressing modal claims, in terms of certain objects requiring others. Yet a third is an interest in a relativist conception of ontology, according to which no ontology stands out as being correct.
The paper concludes with a formal appendix, which attempts to make precise much of what can be made precise in the earlier informal part of the paper. Each part has been designed to be read independently of the other, although a proper understanding of either part depends upon reading them both."
The identity of material objects. In Topics in philosophy and artificial intelligence. Edited by Albertazzi Liliana and Poli Roberto. Bozen: Istituto Mitteleuropeo di Cultura 1991. pp. 33-37
Papers from the International Summer Schools in Bozen - 1989-1990.
"1. The Problem of Identity
What is a question of identity? Two responses to this meta-question of identity may be distinguished, which I call the comparative and the intrinsic. On the comparative conception, one answers a question of identity by saying when two objects of a given sort are the same. On the intrinsic conception, one answers a question of identity by saying what objects of a given sort are "in themselves".
The comparative conception goes back to Locke's famous chapter on identity. It was extended by Frege. Very roughly, we may say that Frege extended the application of the comparative conception from the identity of concrete objects to the identity of abstract objects. This conception is the dominant one of today; it informs the work of Strawson, Quine, Wiggins and of others.
The basic idea behind the comparative conception is to make the what of identity a when: to ask what an object of a given sort is is to ask when objects of that sort are the same. But to ask when two objects are the same invites the trivial answer: when they are the same. We need somehow to distinguish the intended answers to this question.
This can often be done by means of the concept of a presentation. I mean to use this term in a suitably abstract sense. Thus a sentence might be regarded as a presentation of a proposition; there is no need for a presentation to be something mental or even for it to be that by which we grasp the object.
An intended answer to an identity question then says when two presentations are presentations of the same object; and it says this in terms which do not presuppose the identity of the objects at issue.
Different questions of identity - e.g. at a time, across time, across worlds - turn on different accounts of how the objects are to be presented.
There is a fundamental criticism to be made of the comparative conception. For it says what kind of "career" the object has, not what kind of object it is that has the career. For example, a transtemporal criterion of identity for material things is compatible with a material thing being (a) a primitive substance, (b) a mereological sum of time-slices, (c) the embodiment of a form, (d) an event, and so on. Similarly, the extensional criterion of identity for sets is compatible with a set being (a) constructive, (b) "exclusive", i.e. determined by its non-members rather than by its members, (c) logical, i.e. determined by a property with the required extension rather than by its members.
What is missing from the comparative conception? I would like to suggest that often what is missing is an account of how the objects of the given kind are generated or analysed. Thus primitive substances are not generated from anything else at all, mereological sums are generated by aggregation, embodiments are generated by a suitable embodiment operator, and so on. In each case, we need to say how (if at all) the object is to be analysed; we need to say what the object is in itself." pp. 33-34.
"Aristotle on matter," Mind 101: 35-57 (1992).
"This paper attempts to give a systematic account of Aristotle's view on the relationship between a thing and the matter of which it is composed."
Transparency. In Proceedings of the Conference on logic in computer science 89. New York: Springer 1992.
Essence and modality. In Philosophical perspectives 8: Logic and language. Edited by Tomberlin James. Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing Co. 1994. pp. 1-16
"The concept of essence has played an important role in the history and development of philosophy; and in no branch of the discipline is its importance more manifest than in metaphysics.
Its significance for metaphysics is perhaps attributable to two main sources. In the first place, the concept may be used to characterize what the subject, or at least part of it, is about.
For one of the central concerns of metaphysics is with the identity of things, with what they are.
But the metaphysician is not interested in every property of the objects under consideration. In asking 'What is a person?', for example, he does not want to be told that every person has a deep desire to be loved, even if this is in fact the case.
What then distinguishes the properties of interest to him? What is it about a property which makes it bear, in the metaphysically significant sense of the phrase, on what an object is?
It is in answer to this question that appeal is naturally made to the concept of essence. For what appears to distinguish the intended properties is that they are essential to their bearers." p. 1.

It is my aim in this paper to show that the contemporary assimilation of essence to modality is fundamentally misguided and that, as a consequence, the corresponding conception of metaphysics should be given up. It is not my view that the modal account fails to capture anything which might reasonably be called a concept of essence. My point, rather, is that the notion of essence which is of central importance to the metaphysics of identity is not to be understood in modal terms or even to be regarded as extensionally equivalent to a modal notion. The one notion is, if I am right, a highly refined version of the other; it is like a sieve which performs a similar function but with a much finer mesh.
I shall also argue that the traditional assimilation of essence to definition is better suited to the task of explaining what essence is. It may not provide us with an analysis of the concept, but it does provide us with a good model of how the concept works. Thus my overall position is the reverse of the usual one. It sees real definition rather than de re modality as central to our understanding of the concept." p. 3
"Compounds and aggregates," Noûs 28: 137-158 (1994).
"Some objects appear to be composed of parts: a quantity of sand of its grains, a throbbing pain of its throbs, a set of its members, and a proposition of its constituents.
There seem to be two fundamentally different ways in which an object can be composed of parts. One is nonstructural in character; the parts just merge. The other is structural; the parts hang together within a structure. Thus of the examples above, the first two, the sand and the pain, are composed from their parts in a nonstructural fashion, while the last two, the set and the proposition, are composed in a structural manner.
The notion of a nonstructural method of composition may be taken to be one which conforms to certain structure-obliterating identity conditions. These are as follows: order and repetition among the composing objects is irrelevant to the result; the composition of a single object is the object itself; and the composition of compositions of objects is the composition of those very objects'. Thus the first of these conditions excludes concatenation as a nonstructural method of composition; while each of the remaining conditions excludes the set-builder (the operation which composes a set from its members).
Let us agree to call any nonstructural method of composition a method of fusion. There is a particular such method, I call it aggregation, which has been very prominent in the literature on part-whole. It may be characterized as a method of composition which conforms to the identity conditions above and which also conforms to the following existence conditions: the aggregate of objects which exist in time exists at exactly those times at which one of the objects exists; and an aggregate of objects which are located in space occupies, at any given time at which it exists, exactly those places which are occupied by one of the objects.
It has often been supposed that aggregation is a legitimate method of composition, that objects may be composed from others in conformity with the conditions set forth above. What has made aggregation so attractive, apart from any intuitive appeal it may have, are two main factors (which will be discussed in more detail later in the paper). The first, and most important, is the identification of a thing with the content of its spatio-temporal extension. The second is the identification of a thing with the fusion of its time-slices. Both of these forms of identification require that the objects fuse in the manner of aggregation.
It has also often been supposed that aggregation is the only legitimate method of fusion. Part of the appeal of this further position may arise from a general hostility to different methods of composition, whether they be methods of fusion or not. Under the form of nominalism championed by Goodman, for example, there can be no difference in objects without a difference in their parts; and this implies that the same parts cannot, through different methods of composition, yield different wholes.
However, I suspect that many of those who would be open to structural methods of composition would still not be open to distinct nonstructural methods of composition. For it is hard to see, especially given the identification of a thing with its spatio-temporal content, what other methods of fusion there might be; and it is hard to see how there could be alternative conceptions of a fusion, of a whole at the same level as its elements and formed without regard to their order or repetition.
Let us call the extreme position, that there is only one method of composition, mereological monism; let us call the less extreme position, that there is only one method of fusion, fusion monism; and let us call that particular version of fusion monism according to which aggregation is the sole method of fusion aggregation monism.
The main purpose of this paper is to show that the last of these three positions is mistaken. I want to show that there is a method of fusion which is not aggregative, i.e. which does not conform to the characteristic existence conditions for aggregates. However, my attack on this position may be relevant to the two other positions as well. For granted that aggregation is itself a legitimate method of fusion, it follows that fusion monism should be dropped in favour of a pluralist position. And to the extent that the adoption of monism depended upon a general hostility to structural considerations, the way is then open to the admission of structural methods of composition.
It is also my intention to attack two related forms of monistic doctrine. For just as we can single out the aggregative method of nonstructural composition, so we can single out the aggregative way of being a nonstructural part and the aggregative kind of nonstructural whole. One might then maintain that not only does aggregation constitute the only nonstructural method of composition, but that it also constitutes the only nonstructural way of being a part and the only nonstructural way of being a whole. We therefore have three forms of monism, one with respect to composition, another with respect to part, and a third with respect to whole. As will later become clear, the two further forms of monism aresuccessively weaker than the original; and so their denials might be taken, in mimicry of Quine, to comprise three grades of mereological involvement.
From the discussion of monism will emerge objections to two other prominent doctrines: extensionalism and mereological atomism. According to the first of these, things are the same when their extensions (spatial, spatio-temporal, or modal-spatio-temporal) are the same; and according to the second, parts are prior to their wholes.
For the purposes of attacking the aggregation monist, I have assumed that aggregation is a legitimate method of fusion. Towards the end of the paper, I suggest that there is no such method and propose a form of fusion monism in which some other method of fusion takes the place of aggregation. However, my tentative endorsement of fusion monism is not meant in any way to lend support to a general monist position."
Senses of essence. In Modality, morality and belief. Essays in honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus. Edited by Sinnott-Armstrong Walter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994. pp. 53-73
"The notion of essence is clarified in an attempt to provide a firm foundation for the theory of essence"
A puzzle concerning matter and form. In Unity, identity, and explanation in Aristotle's metaphysics. Edited by Scaltsas Theodore, Charles David, and Gill Mary Louise. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1994. pp. 13-40
"Montgomery Furth has written (1), "given a suitable pair of individuals ... there is no reason of Aristotelian metaphysics why the very fire and earth that this noon composes Callias and distinguishes him from Socrates could not, by a set of utterly curious chances, twenty years from now compose Socrates ...". He does not specify what these "curious chances" might be. But we may suppose that Socrates eats Callias for his lunch and that, owing to the superiority of Callias' flesh and bone, it is the matter of this which remains in Socrates after the period of twenty years.
That such an exchange of matter is possible is a point on which many Aristotelian scholars could agree. However, I wish to argue that such a case gives rise to a fundamental difficulty; for its possibility runs into conflict with certain basic metaphysical principles which are commonly attributed to him and which would also be commonly accepted.
The problem consequently arises as to how this difficulty is to be resolved. This problem itself may be regarded in two somewhat different lights. On the one hand, it may be regarded as a difficulty for Aristotle. The question then is whether one can find a solution which would be acceptable to him, either in the sense that he would or that he could accept it. On the other hand, it may be regarded as a difficulty for a neo-Aristotelian, i.e. to someone who is sympathetic to the analysis of things into matter and form. The question then is to find a solution, regardless of whether or not it would be acceptable to Aristotle.
For the most part, my concern has been with the exegetical question; and even here, my purposes have been somewhat limited. For I have not attempted to settle on one solution as opposed to another. My aim has been to map out the exegetical space rather than to locate the views of Aristotle within it.
However, it should be mentioned that I count myself a neo-Aristotelian (and, indeed, it was my own commitment to hylomorphism which led me investigate Aristotle' views in the first place). It has therefore been of some importance for me to take the purely metaphysical question into account."

(1) Furth, M. Transtemporal Stability in Aristotelian Substances, Journal of Philosophy, 75 (1978), 624-646; repeated in Substance, Form and Psyche: An Aristotelian Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1988. (note abbreviated).
"Ontological dependence," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95: 269-290 (1994).
"The usual account of ontological dependence in terms of necessity is criticized; and an alternative account of terms of essence is proposed. Different notions of dependence are seen to correspond to different notions of essence."
"The logic of essence," Journal of Philosophical Logic 24: 241-273 (1995).
Part-Whole. In The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Edited by Smith Barry and Smith David Woodruff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1995. pp. 463-485
"The problem of mixture," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 76: 266-369 (1995).
Reprinted in: Frank A. Lewis and Robert Bolton (eds.) - Form, Matter and Mixture in Aristotle - Oxford, Blackwell, 1996, pp. 82-182.

"For Aristotle, the everyday world contains three main kinds of things: the elements, the homogeneous mixtures, and the heterogeneous substances. The topic of mixture was vigorously debated in medieval times (see Maier (1982): 142). But contemporary interest has focused on the objects at the extremes of his ontology -- the elements and the substances -- while the topic of mixture has been relatively neglected. This is unfortunate. For not only is the topic of great interest in its own right, it is also important for a wider understanding of Aristotle's scientific and metaphysical views.
The intrinsic interest of the topic largely arises from the difficulty in seeing how a non-atomistic conception of matter is to be reconciled with a plausible view of mixture. The exegetical interest has perhaps two main sources. The first resides in the special position occupied by mixtures in Aristotle's ontology. For all substances are composed of mixtures; and all elements compose mixtures, in so far as they compose anything at all. Thus the mixtures provide the cushion, as it were, between the elements and the substances; and any account of the role of the elements or of the nature of the substances should deal with the relationship of each to the mixtures.
The other source of exegetical interest lies in the relevance of the topic of mixture to other, more general, topics -- principally, potentiality and change. Just as mixtures occupy a kind of midpoint between the elements and the substances, so mixing occupies a kind of midpoint between accidental and substantial change; and the potentiality of the ingredients in a mixture is one of the more important and problematic forms of potentiality for Aristotle. Thus no exegesis of his views on either change or potentiality can be considered complete unless it takes into account his views on mixture.
We now know that Aristotle's views on mixture are mistaken, and badly mistaken at that. In rejecting atomism he made a critical (though understandable) error; and when one combines the rejection of atomism with the antiquated belief in the four elements, it is easy to conclude that his views are purely of scholarly interest with no real relevance to contemporary concerns. But even though his views may be much further removed from reality than those of modern science, they are much closer in many ways to common sense. In the laboratory we do not suppose that every part of some butter is butter. But in the kitchen we do; and it is convenient, though erroneous, assumptions of this sort that guide us in our everyday life. This therefore suggests that we treat these views of Aristotle as having their most direct bearing, not on the nature of reality, but on the structure of common sense.
There have been recent attempts in cognitive science to formalize the content of folk or naive physics; such a physics is meant to provide the principles that would enable one to construct a robot that could deal with the everyday world in much the same way as we do. If I am not mistaken, the contemporary interest of Aristotle's scientific views may lie as much in their connection with these developments within cognitive science as it does with the content of the established sciences. I might add that the recent attempt to rehabilitate the notion of capacity by Cartwright (1989) and others also gives a topical interest to Aristotle's general views on capacities and on the way they might compose or interact within a mixture.
The paper is in six sections. In the first, I state the problem with which Aristotle opens his discussion of mixture in Generation and Corruption: how is mixture possible? Aristotle thinks he has a solution; and our problem is to understand what that solution is. In the next section, I consider three interpretations of his views on mixture, those of Sharvy (1983), Gill (1989) and Bogen (1995), and find all of them wanting. The main defect with these proposals, from my own point of view, is that they do not take Aristotle's hylomorphic outlook sufficiently seriously. In the third section, I provide a sketch of that outlook and set out the two main accounts of mixture that are in conformity with it, Leveling and Ascent; one places mixture at the same level as the elements, the other at a higher level. The next two sections are the heart of the paper and constitute a sustained argument in favor of Leveling. It is shown how two doctrines -- the doctrines of intermediates and of derived parts -- enable Aristotle to avoid the apparently insuperable difficulties that lie in the way of its acceptance. The final section considers the problem of how mixing, as opposed to mixture, is possible and argues that Aristotle is also in a position to solve this problem." pp. 82-93.

References:

Bogen, 1995 "Fire in the belly: Aristotelian elements, organisms, and chemichal compounds", this volume
Gill, M. 1989 Aristotle on substance: the paradox of unity New Jersey: Pennsylvania University Press
Maier, A. 1982 On the threshold of exact science Philadelphia,: University of Pennsylvania Press
Sharvy, R. 1983 "Aristotle on mixtures", Journal of Philosophy, 80, 439-457
Transfer theorems for multimodal logics. In Logic and reality: essays on the legacy of Arthur Prior. Edited by Copeland Jack. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996. pp. 169-214
Co-author: Schurz Gerhard
"Mixing matters," Ratio 11: 278-288 (1998).
Reprinted in: David Oderberg - Form and matter. Themes in contemporary metaphysics - Oxford, Blackwell. 1999 pp. 65-75.

"Aristotle raised a puzzle about the possibility of mixing whose solution is by no means obvious. I here explicate his solution to the puzzle and attempt to make it plausible within the context of his thought. Although we now know that his specific views on mixing were mistaken, his discussion of the topic raises questions concerning the role of capacities and the relationship of part to whole that are still of interest."
"Cantorian abstraction: a reconstruction and defense," Journal of Philosophy 95: 599-634 (1998).
"In what follows I shall concentrate on the views of Cantor, though it should be clear how what I say will can be modified to apply to the views of Dedekind. I have not attempted to capture all of the nuances or tensions in Cantor's thought but merely to develop what I take to be its spirit, or central idea. And in developing this idea, I have been guided more by what the idea itself requires than by Cantor's own writings.
The plan of the paper is as follows. I begin by setting out what appear to be decisive objections to the Cantorian account. I then show how these objections can be overcome by making use of the theory of arbitrary objects developed in my book 'Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects' [Chapter] VII. The relevant parts of the theory are outlined in section 2; and the application to Cantor's account of number is made in section 3. I show, in section 4, how the approach may be extended to order types and to structure types in general. In the final two sections, I first compare the Cantorian approach to abstraction with the standard approaches of von Neumann and Zermelo, on the one side, and of Russell and Frege, on the other; and I then consider to what extent the Cantorian approach is capable of yielding a structuralist conception of number and order type. In a formal appendix, I briefly indicate how the present theory might be formalized within an extension of ZF[Zermelo-Frankel^]."
The limits of abstraction. In The philosophy of mathematics today. Edited by Schirn Matthias. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998. pp. 503-630
Papers from a conference held in Munich from June 28 to July 4, 1993
"Things and their parts," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 23: 61-74 (1999).
"Semantics for the logic of essence," Journal of Philosophical Logic 29: 543-584 (2000).
"This paper provides a possible worlds semantics for the system of the author's previous paper The Logic of Essence. The basic idea behind the semantics is that a statement should be taken to be true in virtue of the nature of certain objects just in case it is true in any possible world compatible with the nature of those objects. It is shown that a slight variant of the original system is sound and complete under the proposed semantics."
"Neutral relations," The Philosophical Review 109: 1-33 (2000).
"I argue for a nonstandard account of relations according to which their application is given, not by the order of the relata, but by the role of the relata within the resulting states of affair."
"A counter-exemple to Locke's thesis," The Monist 83: 357-361 (2000).
The question of realism. In Individuals, essence and identity. Themes of analytic metaphysics. Edited by Bottani Andrea, Carrara Massimiliano, and Giaretta Pierdaniele. Dordrecht: Kluwer 2002. pp. 3-48
The limits of abstraction. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002.
Contents: Preface V-VI; Introduction IX-X; 1. Philosophical introduction 1; 2. The Context Principle 55; 3: The analysis of acceptability 101; 4. The general theory of abstracion 165, References 193; Main Index 197; Index of first occurrences of formal symbols and definitions 200-203.
The varieties of necessity. In Conceivability and possibility. Edited by Gendler Tamar Szabo and Hawtorne John. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002. pp. 253-282
"Necessity abounds. There are the necessary truths of logic, mathematics and metaphysics, the necessary connections among events in the natural world, the necessary or unconditional
principles of ethics, and many other forms of necessary truth or connection. But how much diversity is there to this abundance?
Are all necessary truths and connections reducible to a single common form of necessity? And if not, then what are the different ways in which a truth might be necessary or a necessary connection might hold?
It is the aim of this paper to show that diversity prevails.
I shall argue that there are three main forms of necessity - the metaphysical, the natural and the normative - and that none of them is reducible to the others or to any other form of necessity. Thus what it is for a necessity or possibility of any of these forms to obtain does not consist in the obtaining of some other form or forms of necessity or possibility.
Although the focus of the paper falls squarely within the philosophy of modality, some of my arguments may be of broader interest. For certain currently fashionable views on scientific essentialism and ethical naturalism entail the collapse of forms of necessity that I would wish to keep distinct. Thus I have found it essential to indicate what it is in these views that I take to be in error; and this has required consideration of questions from within the metaphysics of natural kinds and the epistemology of ethical belief."
The problem of possibilia. In The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics . Edited by Loux Michael and Zimmerman Dean. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003. pp. 161-179
"Are there, in addition to the various actual objects that make up the world, various possible objects? Are there merely possible people, for example, or merely possible electrons, or even merely possible kinds?
We certainly talk as if there were such things. Given a particular sperm and egg, I may wonder whether that particular child which would result from their union would have blue eyes.
But if the sperm and egg are never in fact brought together, then there is no actual object that my thought is about.(1) Or again, in the semantics for modal logic we presuppose an ontology of possibilia twice over.(2) For first, we coutenance various possible worlds, in addition to the actual world; and second, each of these worlds is taken to be endowed with its own domain of objects. These will be the actual objects of the world in question, but they need not be actual simpliciter, i.e., actual objects of our world. What are we to make of such discourse? There are four options:
(i) the discourse is taken to be unintelligible; (ii) it is taken to be intelligible but nonfactual, i.e. as not in the business of stating facts; (iii) it is taken to be factual but reducible to discourse involving no reference to possibilia; (iv) it is taken to be both factual and irreducible.(3) These options range from a fullblooded form of actualism at one extreme to a full-blooded form of possibilism at the other. The two intermediate positions are possibilist in that they accept the intelligibility of possibilist discourse but actualist in that they attempt to dispense with its prima facie commitment to possibilia. All four positions have found advocates in the literature. Quine, in his less irenic moments, favours option (i); Forbes ([85], p. 94) advocates option (ii), at least for certain parts of possibilist discourse; many philosophers, including Adams [74] and myself, opt for (iii); while Lewis [86] and Stalnaker [75] have endorsed versions of (iv), that differ in how full-blooded they take the possible objects to be.
My focus in the present article is on the third option. I wish to see to what extent reference to possibilia might be understood in other terms. Can we regard talk of possibilia as a mere facon de parler, perhaps somewhat in the same manner as talk of the average man or of infinitesimals? (4) I shall not be concerned to argue directly against any of the other options.
However, any argument for the viability of (iii) is indirectly an argument against the plausibility of these other options.
For (iv), especially in its more extreme forms, offends against what Russell has called our 'robust sense of reality', (i) offends against our even more robust sense of what is intelligible, while (ii) offends against our somewhat less robust sense of what is factual. It is therefore preferable to go with the third option, if we possibly can."

(1) Cf Gupta ([80], 20, n.15).
(2) See Kripke [63] for a standard exposition of the semantics.
(3) See Fine [01] for a general discussion of what these various options amount to.
(4) As should be clear from Fine [01], the viability of any reduction will also depend upon its success in accounting for our understanding of modal discourse and our knowledge of modal truth. See Peacocke [01] for a broader discussion along these lines.

Fine K., [01] 'The Question of Realism', to appear in Imprint. [see Fine 2002]
Gupta A., [80] 'The Logic of Common Nouns', Yale University Press, 20n.
Kripke S., [63] 'Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic', Acta Philosophica Fennica 16, 83-94, reprinted in 'Reference and Modality' (ed. L. Linsky), Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971.
Peacocke C., [01] 'Principles for Possibilia', to appear. [Noûs, vol. 36, 2002, pp. 486-508]
"The non-identity of a thing and its matter," Mind 112: 195-234 (2003).
"Many philosophers have thought that a material thing is, or may be, one and the same as its matter - that a statue, for example, may be the same as the clay from which it is made or a river the same as the water which flows through it. There appears to be a powerful argument against such views, for the thing in each of these cases would appear to have properties not possessed by its matter.
Thus the clay of a statue may exist even though the statue itself has ceased to exist and the river may be composed of different water at different times even though this cannot be true of the water that composes it at any given time. However, these philosophers have responded to this argument by claiming that the apparent difference in properties represents, not a difference in the objects themselves, but a difference in the descriptions under which they may be conceived. We may conceive of a given thing as a statue or some clay or as a river or a body of water, for example, and, depending upon how the object is conceived, we will say one thing about it rather than another.
It is the aim of this paper to show that this counter-response cannot be sustained and that the original argument against identity should therefore be allowed to stand. This is no easy task since there would appear to be nothing in the immediate linguistic data to settle the question one way or the other.
However, by working through the consequences of the counter-response for the rest of our language, I think it may be shown to be extremely implausible. The paper is in two main parts. The first (§§1-4) is largely concerned with setting up the problem. We characterize the different forms the identity theory can take (§1), explain how the argument in favor of non-identity might in principle break down (§2), present the most plausible versions of such arguments (§3), and then consider the most plausible counter-response to them (§4). The second part (§§5-8) embarks on a detailed investigation of the difficulties with the counter-response. It is shown to be unable to account for a wide variety of different linguistic data, that is loosely classified according as to how reference to a material thing might be achieved. Four main kinds of case will be considered: those in which a sort is explicitly invoked (§5); those in which it is implicitly invoked (§6); those in which the very notion of reference is itself used in securing reference(§7); and those in which there is reference to a plurality of things (§8)."
"The role of variables," Journal of Philosophy 50: 605-631 (2003).
Reprinted in the Philosopher's Annual 2003; revised in Joseph Almog, Paolo Leonardi (eds.) - The philosophy of David Kaplan - New York, Oxford University Press, 2009 pp. 109-133.
"It is generally supposed - by logicians and philosophers alike - that we now possess a perfectly good understanding of how variables work in the symbolism of logic and mathematics.
Once Frege had provided a clear syntactic account of variables and once Tarski had supplemented this with a rigorous semantic account, it would appear that there was nothing more of significance to be said. It seems to me, however, that this common view is mistaken. There are deep problems concerning the role of variables that have never been properly recognized, let alone solved, and once we attempt to solve them we see that they have profound implications not only for our understanding of variables but also for our understanding of other forms of expression and for the general nature of semantics.
It is my aim in the present lecture to explain what these problems are and how they are to be solved. I begin with an antimony concerning the role of variables which I believe any satisfactory account of our understanding of them should solve (§1). I then argue that the three main semantical schemes currently on the market - the Tarskian, the instantial and the algebraic - are unsuccessful in solving the puzzle (§2-3) or in providing a satisfactory semantics for first-order logic (§4-5). Finally, I offer an alternative scheme that it is capable of solving the antimony (§6) and of providing a more satisfactory semantics for first-order logic (§7). It is based upon a new approach to representational semantics, which I call semantic relationism; and in the remaining three lectures, I will discuss the implications of this approach for the semantics of names and belief-reports."
Modality and tense. Philosophical papers. New York: Oxford University Press 2005.
Contents: Preface; Introduction 1; I. Issues in the philosophy of language; 1. Reference, essence, and identity 19; 2. The problem of De Re modality 40; 3. Quine on quantifying in 105; II. Issues in ontology; 4. Prior on the construction of possible worlds and instants 133; 5. Plantinga on the reduction of possibilist discourse 176; 6. The problem of possibilia 214; III. Issues in Metaphysics; 7. The varieties of necessity 235; 8. Tense and reality 261; 9. Necessity and non-existence 321; IV. Reviews; 10. Review of Conterfactuals by David Lewis 357; 11. Review of The nature of necessity by Alvin Plantinga 366; References 371; Index 379-387.
"Replies," Philosophical Studies 122: 367-395 (2005).
Replies to critics about The limits of abstraction
"Precis," Philosophical Studies 122: 305-313 (2005).
Of The limits of abstraction
"Class and membership," Journal of Philosophy 102: 547-572 (2005).
"The reality of tense," Synthese 150: 399-414 (2006).
"Is reality somehow tensed? Or is tense a feature of how we represent reality and not properly a feature of reality itself? Although this question is often raised, it is very hard to say what it comes to. For both sides to the debate can agree to certain tensed claims. They can agree that I am sitting right now, for example, or that Queen Ann is dead. So in a clear and obvious sense there are tensed facts. And so how can it sensibly be denied that reality is tensed?
My own view is that the question can only be made clear by drawing a distinction between how things are (mere reality) and how things are in reality (metaphysical reality). Thus what the antirealist about tense wishes to dispute is not how things are, which should be common ground between him and his opponent, but how things are in reality. Of course, he will say, Queen Ann is dead but this representation of the facts is not faithful to how things are in reality; and this is so, not because of the reference to Queen Ann or to her being dead, but because of the tense. In a faithful representation of how things are in reality, there will be nothing that corresponds to our use of tense. (1)"

(1) I have in mind that there is a sentential operator 'in reality, __' by means of which the various realist claims are to be made (Fine [ Questions of reality]). This paper should be regarded as a summary of views which are elaborated at much greater length in Fine ['Tense and Reality', in 'Papers on Modality and Tense',] and I have made no attempt to engage with the extensive literature on the topic.
Our knowledge of mathematical objects. In Oxford sstudies in epistemology. Vol. 1. Edited by Gendler Tamar Szabo and Hawthorne John. Oxford: Clarendon Press 2006. pp. 89-110
"I have recently been attempting to provide a new approach to the philosophy of mathematics, which I call 'procedural postulationism'. It shares with the traditional form of postulationism, advocated by Hilbert and Poincare, the belief that the existence of mathematical objects and the truth of mathematical propositions are to be seen as the product of postulation.
But it takes a very different view of what postulation is. For it takes the postulates from which mathematics is derived to be imperatival, rather than indicative, in character; what is postulated are not propositions true in a given mathematical domain, but procedures for the construction of that domain.
This difference over the cognitive status of postulates has enormous repercussions for the development and significance of the postulational view. The philosophy of mathematics is faced with certain fundamental problems. How are we capable of acquiring an understanding of mathematical terms? How do we secure reference to mathematical objects? What is the nature of these objects? Do they exist independently of us or are they somehow the products of our minds? What accounts for the possibility of applying mathematics to the real world? And how are we capable of acquiring knowledge of mathematical truths? The procedural version of postulationism, in contrast to the propositional version, appears to be capable of providing plausible answers to each of these questions. By going procedural, we convert a view that has appeared completely untenable to one that is worthy of serious consideration.
In what follows I shall focus on the last question concerning our knowledge of mathematics (although this will inevitably involve the other questions). I do this, not because this question is the most interesting or even because it provides the most convincing illustration of the value of our approach, but because it helps to bring out what is most distinctive - and also most problematic - about the approach. If one can go along with what it recommends in this particular case, then one is well on the way to accepting the view in its entirety.
As with the 'big three' traditional approaches to the philosophy of mathematics - logicism, formalism, and intuitionism - the present one rests upon a certain technical program within the foundation of mathematics. It attempts to derive the whole of mathematics - or a significant part thereof - within the limitations imposed by its underlying philosophy. Since the interest of the underlying philosophy largely depends upon the possibility of carrying out such a program, it will be helpful to give a sketch - if only in the barest form - of what the program is and of how it is to be executed. In this way, one may acquire a more concrete understanding of what the philosophical issues are and of why they might matter."
Modal logic and its application. Moschovakis Yiannis. EOLSS survey of mathematical logic 2006.
"Arguing for non-identity: a response to King and Frances," Mind 115: 1059-1082 (2006).
"Jeffrey King and Bryan Frances are both critical of my paper, 'The Nonidentity of a Thing and its Matter' (Fine 2003), though in rather different ways. King engages in carpet bombing; his aim is to destroy every argument in sight, even to the extent of showing that the linguistic data cited by the paper favours the monist rather than the pluralist. Frances, by contrast, engages in strategic warfare; by 'taking out' certain key arguments, he attempts to demolish the paper as a whole.
I remain unmoved -- and, I hope, unscathed -- by their attacks.
King's carpet bombing may cause a great deal of collateral damage but not to its intended target; and Frances's strategic bombing may hit its target but without inflicting much harm. Still, their papers raise many interesting issues not discussed -- or, at least, not properly discussed -- in my original paper; and I am grateful to them for providing me with the opportunity to take these issues into account.
My response will be in three main parts: I begin by outlining the central line of argument of my original paper (Sect. 1); I then discuss King's criticisms of the paper (Sects 2, 3, 4); and finally I turn to Frances's criticisms (Sect. 5). I have tried to make my response reasonably self-contained and to bring out the independent significance of the issues under discussion but it would be helpful, all the same, if the reader had all three papers at hand."

Fine, K. 2003: 'The Non-identity of a Material Thing and its Matter' Mind 112, pp. 195-234.
Frances, Bryan 2006: 'The New Leibniz's Law Arguments for Pluralism' Mind 115, pp. 1007-1022.
King, Jeffrey C. 2006: 'Semantics for Monists'. Mind 115, pp. 1023-1058.
"In defence of three-dimensionalism," Journal of Philosophy 103: 699-714 (2006).
"Much of the work for this paper was done around fifteen years ago in preparation for an as yet unpublished book on the metaphysics of material things. Some of the work was recently presented in a seminar at New York University, a metaphysics workshop at Glasgow University, a talk at the University of Aberdeen, and a conference on Being at the University of Leeds. I should like to thank the participants at those meetings for much helpful discussion; and I am especially grateful to Ruth Chang and Peter Simons for their detailed comments."

Reprinted in: Robin Le Poidevin (ed.) - Being: developments in contemporary metaphysics - Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 1-16.
Relatively unrestricted quantification. In Absolute generality. Edited by Rayo Agustin and Uzquiano Gabriel. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006. pp. 20-44
"There are four broad grounds upon which the intelligibility of quantification over absolutely everything has been questioned-one based upon the existence of semantic indeterminacy, another on the relativity of ontology to a conceptual scheme, a third upon the necessity of sortal restriction, and the last upon the possibility of indefinite extendibility. The argument from semantic indeterminacy derives from general philosophical considerations concerning our understanding of language. For the Skolem-Lowenheim Theorem appears to show that an understanding of quantification over absolutely everything (assuming a suitably infinite domain) is semantically indistinguishable from the understanding of quantification over something less than absolutely everything; the same first-order sentences are true and even the same first-order conditions will be satisfied by objects from the narrower domain. From this it is then argued that the two kinds of understanding are indistinguishable tout court and that nothing could count as having the one kind of understanding as opposed to the other.
The second two arguments reject the bare idea of an object as unintelligible, one taking it to require supplementation by reference to a conceptual scheme and the other taking it to require supplementation by reference to a sort. Thus we cannot properly make sense of quantification over mere objects, but only over objects of such and such a conceptual scheme or of such and such a sort. The final argument, from indefinite extendibility, rejects the idea of a completed totality. For if we take ourselves to be quantifying over all objects, or even over all sets, then the reasoning of Russell's paradox can be exploited to demonstrate the possibility of quantifying over a more inclusive domain. The intelligibility of absolutely unrestricted quantification, which should be free from such incompleteness, must therefore be rejected.
The ways in which these arguments attempt to the undermine the intelligibility of absolutely unrestricted quantification are very different; and each calls for extensive discussion in its own right. However, my primary concern in the present paper is with the issue of indefinite extendibility; and I shall only touch upon the other arguments
in so far as they bear upon this particular issue. I myself am not persuaded by the other arguments and I suspect that, at the end of day, it is only the final argument that will be seen to carry any real force. If there is a case to be made against absolutely unrestricted quantification, then it will rest here, upon logical considerations of extendibility, rather than upon the nature of understanding or the metaphysics of identity."
Semantic relationism. Oxford: Blackwell 2007.
Contents: Preface VII; Introduction 1; 1. Coordination among variables 6; 2. Coordination within language 33; 3. Coordination within thought 66; 4. Coordination between speakers 86; Postscript: further work 122; Notes 133; References 141; Index 143.

"In this major contribution to the philosophy of language, Kit Fine argues for a fundamentally new approach to the study of representation in language and thought. His key idea is that there may be representational relationships between expressions or elements of thought that are not grounded in the intrinsic representational features of the expressions or elements themselves. This idea is shown to lead to solutions to many of the standard puzzles in the area - Frege's identity puzzle, Kripke's puzzle about belief, and Moore's paradox of analysis. It is also shown to lead to a more defensible form of direct reference theory - one that is immune to many of the objections that the Fregeans have leveled against it."
Coincidence and Form. 2008.

Notes: Paper read at the Kit Fine Day: Ontology Talks, February 11, 2008, Paris.

"Many philosophers are pluralists about material things. They believe that distinct material things may coincide at a time, i.e. that they may occupy the very same spatial region and be constituted by the very same matter at that time. A familiar example is that of an alloy statue and the piece of alloy from which it is made. They are clearly coincident and they would also appear to be distinct, given that the piece of alloy may exist before the statue is created or after it has been destroyed."
Towards a theory of Part. 2008.

Notes: Paper read at the Kit Fine Day: Ontology Talks, February 11, 2008, Paris.

"My aim in this paper is to outline a general framework for dealing with questions of part-whole.
My approach is very different from the more conventional approaches to the subject. For instead of dealing with the single notion of mereological part or sum, I have attempted to provide a comprehensive and unified account of the different ways in which one object can be a part of another. Thus mereology, as it is usually conceived, will become a relatively small aspect of a much larger subject."
The question of ontology. In Metametaphysics: New essays on the foundations of ontology. Edited by Chalmers David J., Manley David, and Wassermann Ryan. New York: Oxford University Press 2009. pp. 157-177
"There are a number of difficulties with the standard quantificational view. They are for the most part familiar but it will be worth spelling them out, if only to make clear how far removed our understanding of the ontological question is from our understanding of their quantificational counterparts. Philosophers may have learned to live with the disconnect between the two, but their tolerance of the situation should not lull us into thinking that it is tolerable."

"This account of our method for settling ontological dispute requires that we have a grasp not only of an absolute conception of reality, of there being nothing more than ..., but also of a relative conception, of there being nothing more to ... than ..., since it is through our assessment of the relative claims that we attempt to adjudicate the plausibility of the absolute claims. Many philosophers seem to have supposed that our having a good working grasp of such notions depends upon our being able to define them in other terms, so that questions of metaphysics or ontology thereby become questions of semantics or epistemology or total science. I consider this to be a serious methodological error: upon careful reflection we can see that our intuitive grasp of these notions is a sufficient guide in itself to their proper employment; and the attempt to define these notions in other terms has served merely to distort our understanding of the metaphysical questions and of the methods by which they are to be resolved."
Aristotle's Megarian maneuvers. To appear in a volume of recent work on Aristotle. Edited by White N. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2010.
"Towards the end of Theta, 4 of the Metaphysics (1047b14-b30), Aristotle attempts to establish two modal principles. The passage (with my paragraphing and square bracketing) goes as follows:
[Principle 1] At the same time it is clear that if, when A is B must be, then, when A is possible B also must be possible.
[Argument for Principle 1] For if B need not be possible, there is nothing to prevent its not being possible. Now let A be supposed possible. Then, when A is possible, nothing
impossible would follow if A were supposed to be; and then B must of course be. But we supposed B to be impossible. Let it be impossible, then. If, then, B is impossible, A also must be. But A was supposed possible; therefore B is also possible. If then A is possible, B also will be possible, if they were so related that if A is B must be. If, then, A and B being thus related, B is not possible on this condition, A and B will not be related as supposed.
[Principle 2] And if when A is possible B must be possible, then if A is B must also be.
[Argument for Principle 2] For to say that B must be possible if A is possible means that if A is both at the same time when and in the way in which it was supposed capable of being, B also must then and in that way be.
This passage raises severe exegetical problems. One of these problems is that the second principle seems obviously to be incorrect; and so it is not clear why Aristotle would have wanted to endorse it. For suppose that a fair coin is tossed and turns up heads. It is then plausible to maintain that when it is possible that the coin is fair and turns up heads it must be possible that it turn up tails and hence not turn up heads. By the principle it follows that when the coin is fair and turns up heads then it must not turn up heads; and from it follows that it is not true that it is both fair and turns up heads, contrary to our original supposition.

STUDIES ABOUT HIS WORK

"The philosophy of Kit Fine," Dialectica.International Journal of Philosophy 61: 3-200 (2007).
Guest editor: Kevin Mulligan
Bergmann Michael, "A new argument from Actualism to Serious Actualism," Noûs 30: 356-359 (1996).
"Philosophers such as Kit Fine, Mark Hinchcliff and John Pollock deny that actualism -- the view that necessarily everything that there is exists -- entails serious actualism -- the view that necessarily no object has a property in a world in which it does not exist. I argue, first, that such a denial commits one to the thesis that transworld property exemplification (TPE) is possible.
TPE occurs when a property is exemplified in a world W, not by an object in W, but by an object that is in another world W*. Then I argue that TPE is not possible."
Cate Balder, " Expressivity of second order propositional modal logic," Journal of Philosophical Logic 35: 209-223 (2006).
"We consider second-order propositional modal logic (SOPML), an extension of the basic modal language with propositional quantifiers introduced by Kit Fine in 1970. We determine the precise expressive power of SOPML by giving analogues of the Van Benthem-Rosen theorem and the Goldblatt Thomason theorem. Furthermore, we show that the basic modal language is the bisimulation invariant fragment of SOPML, and we characterize the bounded fragment of first-order logic as being the intersection of first-order logic and SOPML."
Correia Fabrice, "Propositional logic of essence," Journal of Philosophical Logic 29: 295-313 (2000).
"This paper presents a propositional version of Kit Fine's (quantified) logic for essentialist statements, provides it with a semantics, and proves the former adequate (i.e. sound and complete) with respect to the latter."
Correia Fabrice. Existential dependence and cognate notions. München: Philosophia Verlag 2005.
"This is a work in analytic metaphysics. Its main purpose is to clarify a notion of central importance in metaphysics since Aristotle, to wit the notion of existential dependence. All currently available analyses of the notion are examined and then rejected, and a new account is defended. This work is the first comprehensive one on the topic. The first chapter is devoted to introducing and explaining some notions which are crucial for the central parts of the work, namely the notions of existence, necessity, (individual and plural) quantification and essence. In chapters 2 and 4 focus is made on the relation of " simple" existential dependence, the relation which holds between two objects when the first cannot exist without the other. Three accounts of simple dependence - each endorsed by some contemporary philosophers, among them Kit Fine, E. Jonathan Lowe, Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith - are presented and then rejected. A new account, inspired by suggestions by Fine and Lowe, is defended. According to that account - the " foundational" account - simple dependence is to be defined in terms of a relation called grounding, which is presented in chapter 3. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with relations belonging to the family of simple dependence, among others (i) generic dependence, (ii) various forms of temporal dependence, and (iii) supervenience, a complex dependence relation largely invoked in current debates on the philosophy of mind. It is shown that foundationalist accounts of these notions - i.e. accounts framed in terms of grounding - are superior to other existing accounts. These chapters also contain some applications of the foundational conception of dependence, in particular a characterization of substances and a formulation of the distinction between two well known conceptions of universals, the Aristotelian and the Platonician conception. The last part of the work is a technical appendix where one can find, among other things, a system for the logic of essence, which is proved to be sound and complete with respect to a possible world semantics."
Frances Bryan, "The new Leibniz' Law arguments for pluralism," Mind 115: 1007-1022 (2006).
"For years philosophers argued for the existence of distinct yet materially coincident things by appealing to modal and temporal properties. For instance, the statue was made on Monday and could not survive being flattened; the lump of clay was made months before and can survive flattening. Such arguments have been thoroughly examined. Kit Fine has proposed a new set of arguments using the same template. I offer a critical evaluation of what I take to be his central lines of reasoning."
Gorman Michael, "The essential and the accidental," Ratio 18: 276-289 (2005).
"The distinction between the essential and the accidental is nearly always understood in modal terms. After criticizing some recent writings by Kit Fine that question that understanding, I develop a theory according to which whether a given feature of a thing is essential turns on whether it is explained by other features of that thing. The theory differs from the modal view by leaving room for features that are accidental even though their bearers cannot exist without them. The theory has the additional advantage of being open to the results of scientific theory."
Hinzen W., "Constructive versus ontological construals of Cantorian ordinals," History and Philosophy of Logic 24: 45-63 (2003).
"In a recent paper, Kit Fine offers a reconstruction of Cantor's theory of ordinals. It avoids certain mentalistic overtones in it through both a non-standard ontology and a non-standard notion of abstraction. I argue that this reconstruction misses an essential constructive and computational content of Cantor's theory, which I in turn reconstruct using Martin-Löf's theory of types. Throughout, I emphasize Kantian themes in Cantor's epistemology, and I also argue, as against Michael Hallett's interpretation, for the need for a constructive understanding of Cantorian 'existence principles'."
Hudson Hud, "On a new argument from Actualism to Serious Actualism," Noûs 31: 520-524 (1997).
"In a recent "Nous" article, Michael Bergmann follows Alvin Plantinga in arguing that actualism -- the view that necessarily, everything that there is exists -- entails serious actualism -- the view that necessarily, no object has a property in a world in which it does not exist. Bergmann attempts (i) to show that the denial of this entailment thesis commits one to the possibility of transworld property exemplification (TPE), and (ii) to show that (TPE) is impossible.
I argue that Bergmann establishes (i) but not (ii) against his opponents in the literature, who include Kit Fine, John Pollock, and Mark Hinchliff."
King Jeffrey C., "Instantial terms, anaphora and arbitrary objects," Philosophical Studies: 239-265 (1991).
"In a number of recent works, Kit Fine has argued that instantial terms in applications of UG (Universal Generalization) and EI (Existential Instatiation), some uses of variables in mathematics, and some anaphoric pronouns refer to arbitrary objects. The author contrasts Fine's view with his own view according to which such expressions are context dependent quantifiers: quantifiers some of whose semantics features are determined by their linguistic contexts."
King Jeffrey C., "Semantics for monists," Mind 115: 1023-1058 (2006).
"Assume that the only thing before you is a statue made of some alloy. Call those who think that there is one thing before you in such a case monists. Call those who think there are at least two things before you in such a case pluralists. The most common arguments for pluralism run as follows. The statue is claimed to have some property P that the piece of alloy lacks (or vice versa), and hence it is concluded that they are distinct. Most often, the predicates employed in such arguments to express the crucial property are predicates expressing 'temporal properties', such as existing at a certain time; or 'modal properties', such as possibly being spherical; or 'constitution properties', such as being made of a certain sort of material. In a recent paper, Kit Fine has noted that such predicates suffer from various defects that make it possible for the monist to plausibly resist the relevant versions of the pluralist's arguments. For this reason, Fine considers a number of predicates that do not suffer from these defects, and constructs new versions of the above argument using them. Fine argues that any attempt on the monist's part to resist his versions of the argument force the monist to adopt implausible positions in the philosophy of language. As against this, I argue that the monist has perfectly plausible responses to Fine's arguments that require the monist to adopt only quite reasonable positions in the philosophy of language."
Kremer Philip, "Relevant predication: grammatical characterisations," Journal of Philosophical Logic 18: 349-382 (1989).
"This paper reformulates and decides a certain conjecture in Dunn's Relevant Predication 1: The Formal Theory (Journal of Philosophical Logic 16, 347-381, 1987). This conjecture of Dunn's relates his object-language characterisation of a property's being relevant in a variable x to certain grammatical characterisations of relevance, analogous to some given by Helman, in Relevant Implication and Relevant Functions (in Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Necessity, vol. 2, by Alan Ross Anderson, Nuel Belnap, and J. Michael Dunn et al.) In the course of the investigation this paper also investigates Kit Fine's semantics for quantified relevance logics, which appears in his appropriately titled Semantics for Quantified Relevance Logic."
Rieber Steven, "A defense of indeterminism," Acta Analytica 17: 75-82 (2002).
"My goal is to defend the indeterminist approach to vagueness, according to which a borderline vague utterance is neither true nor false. Indeterminism appears to contradict bivalence and the
disquotational schema for truth. I agree that indeterminism compels us to modify each of these principles. Kit Fine has defended indeterminism by claiming that ordinary ambiguous sentences are neither true nor false when one disambiguation is true and the other is false. But even if Fine is right about sentences, his point does not seem to generalize the utterances. What the indeterminist needs -- and what ordinary ambiguity does not provide -- is an ambiguous utterance where what is being said is indeterminate between two different propositions. I will show that such cases exist. These cases imply that the modifications that indeterminism makes to bivalence and the disquotational schema are required independently of indeterminism, in fact independently of vagueness."
Shapiro Stewart, "The nature and limits of abstractio," Philosophical Quarterly 54: 166-174 (2004).
"This article is an extended critical study of Kit Fine's The Limits of Abstraction, which is a sustained attempt to take the measure of the neo-logicist program in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics, founded on abstraction principles like Hume's principle.
The present article covers the philosophical and technical aspects of Fine's deep and penetrating study."
Shapiro Stewart, "Sets and abstracts – Discussion," Philosophical Studies 122: 315-322 (2005).
"The purpose of this article is to explore the bearing of the model-theoretic results in Kit Fine's The Limits of Abstraction to the philosophical goals of neologicism. The opening section analyzes particular results concerning abstraction principles, indicating consequences for acceptability of the neologicist program, at least as that program is articulated in the Fine study. The second section explores the role of set-theoretic metatheory generally in foundational programs like that of neologicism (and logicism). What is an advocate of neologicism, or a neutral outsider, to make of the whole enterprise of model theory as based on set theory? What is a mathematician watching the neologicist development from the outside to make of neologicism?"
Simons Peter. Modes of extension: comments on Kit Fine's 'In defence of three-dimensionalism'. In Being: developments in contemporary metaphysics. Edited by Le Poidevin Robin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008. pp. 17-22
Suster Danilo, "The modality principle and work-relativity of modality," Acta Analytica 20: 41-52 (2005).
"Davies argues that the ontology of artworks as performances offers a principled way of explaining work-relativity of modality. Object oriented contextualist ontologies of art (Levinson) cannot adequately address the problem of work-relativity of modal properties because they understand looseness in what counts as the same context as a view that slight differences in the work-constitutive features of provenance are work-relative. I argue that it is more in the spirit of contextualism to understand looseness as context-dependent. Davies also appeals to the modality principle -- an entity's essential properties are all and only its constitutive properties. Davies understands essentiality in a traditional way: a property P is an essential property of an object o iff o could not exist and lack P. Kit Fine has recently made a convincing case for the view that the notion of essence is not to be understood in modal terms. I explore some of the implications of this view for Davies's modal argument for the performance theory."
Tappenden Jamie, "On Kit Fine's The Limits of Abstraction – Discussion," Philosophical Studies 122: 349-366 (2007).
Wedgwood Ralph, "The essence of response-dependence," European Review of Philosophy 3: 31-54 (1998).
"Many philosophers appeal to "response-dependence" to capture a distinction between certain "less objective" properties (say, values or secondary qualities) and other "more objective" properties (like primary qualities or natural kinds). However, the ways in which Mark Johnston, Philip Pettit, and Crispin Wright have characterized the notion of "response-dependence" cannot capture this distinction, since their characterizations focus on concepts rather than on the properties themselves. The right way to capture this distinction is by characterizing "response-dependence" in terms of the essence of these properties, understanding "essence" in roughly the way that has been proposed by Kit Fine."
Wir Alan, "On Kit Fine's The Limits of Abstraction – Discussion," Philosophical Studies 122: 333-348 (2005).
"I ask whether the 'general theory of abstraction' Kit Fine develops in this book can answer some of the problems he and others have found in neologicism as a philosophy of mathematics, answering in the negative.
Among the problems are whether the general theory of abstraction enables one to derive mathematics from an ontologically unproblematic logical basis and whether it resolves the 'embarrassment of riches' problem that too many, pairwise inconsistent, theories can be legitimated using it as framework. I finish with some remarks on realism and relativism as they figure in Fine's book."

PUBLICATIONS AVAILABLE ON LINE (in PDF format)

Kit Fine's Personal Page at the New York University:

Essence and modality (1994)
A puzzle concerning matter and form (1994)
Cantorian abstraction: a defense and reconstruction (1994)
The problem of Possibilia (2003)
The non-identity of a material thing and its matter (2003)
The role of variables (2003)
The varieties of necessity (2005) - Chapter 7 of Modality and tense
Tense and reality (2005) - Chapter 8 of Modality and tense
The reality of tense (2006)
Our knowledge of mathematical objects (2006)
Arguing for non-identity: a response to King and Frances (2006)
Relatively unrestricted quantification (2006)
The question of ontology (2009)
Aristotle's Megarian maneuvers (2007, not yet published)

Project Euclid - Four articles by Kit Fine published in the Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic

In so many possible worlds - Vol. 13 (1972), no. 4, 516-520
For so many individuals - Vol. 13 (1972), no. 4, 569-572
Normal forms in modal logic - Vol. 16 (1975), no. 2, 229-237
Analytic implication - Vol. 27 (1986), no. 2, 169-179

Logic and Formal Ontology in the Work of Edmund Husserl
- Selected bibliography on Husserl's conception of logic and ontology A - J
- Selected bibliography on Husserl's conception of logic and ontology K - Z

Last modified: Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Kit Fine and the Ontology of Modal Actualism

RELATED PAGES