On Denoting: 1905-2005
1st Edition
Published on 20. October 2005
Book
451 pages
978-3-88405-091-0 (ISBN)
Description
About this book
These new essays mark the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of Bertrand Russell's article "On Denoting" in the journal Mind. The contributors are an international collection of scholars of Russell and the topics that he discussed.
Starting with a reprint of the original article, the essays include historical studies of the antecedents of "On Denoting" in Russell's earlier manuscript writings, the details of Russell's arguments in the paper, including the notorious "Gray's Elegy Argument", Russell's rejection of alternative theories of Gottlob Frege and Alexius Meinong, as well as various ideas about logical form and natural language that arise from the essay. Russell's theory of definite descriptions still remains the "paradigm of philosophy" that Frank Ramsey called it, a model of analytic philosophy that has remained current from 1905 to 2005 and promises to continue to inspire philosophers.
Contributors
Oswaldo Chateaubriand
teaches at the Department of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He is president of the Brazilian Logic Society and is a member of the Center for Logic, Epistemology and the History of Science of the State University of Campinas.
He is the author of Logical Forms: Part 1 - Truth and Description (2001) and Logical Forms: Part II - Logic, Language, and Knowledge (2005).
Departamento de Filosofia, Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro,
Wolfgang Degen
works as a Computer scientist at the University of Erlangen in Germany. He has written on topics in Philosophy (also so called Ontology), in philosophical and mathematical logic. The more mathematical works include papers on model theory, proof theory, (recursive) combinatorics, and set theory, in particular on several aspects of the axiom of choice.
A main theme of Degen is formal versions of Logicism. He has also translated the Summulae Logicales of Peter of Spain into German and is the author of Systeme der Kumulativen Logik (1983).
IMMD 1, Universität Erlangen, Martensstr. 3, 91058, Erlangen, Germany,
Herbert Hochberg
Before teaching at the University of Texas, he taught at Northwestern, Indiana, Ohio State and Minnesota, and was a visiting professor at Göteborg.
His books include Introducing Analytic Philosophy: Its Sense and Its Nonsense, 1879-2002 (2003);
The Positivist and the Ontologist: Bergmann, Carnap and Logical Realism (2001);
Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein (2001), Complexes and Consciousness (2000);
Logic, Ontology and Language (1984);
and Thought, Fact and Reference: The Origins and Ontology of Logical Atomism (1978).
The University of Texas at Austin, Philosophy, 1 University Station C3500, Austin, TX 78712-0310
Guido Imaguire
received his Ph.D. in 2001 at the University of Munich. Since 2001 he teaches at the State University of Ceara, Brazil.
The main subject of his research is philosophy of logic and mathematics, language and metaphysics. His first book is Russells Frühphilosophie: Propositionen, Realismus und die Sprachontologische Wende (2001),
UFC, Fortaleza, Brazil
James Levine
is Senior Lecturer and head of the Philosophy Department at Trinity College, Dublin. His published articles have largely been in the area of early analytic philosophy.
Department of Philosophy, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
Bernard Linsky
is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta in Canada. He has written on topics in Philosophical logic arid Metaphysics, as well as Neo-Meinongian object theory.
His work on Russell includes Russell's Metaphysical Logic, CSLI 1999, and recent articles on Russell's notes on Frege in the Bertrand Russell Archives.
Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E5, Canada
Thomas Mormann
studied mathematics, linguistics and philosophy and obtained a PhD in mathematics. Numerous articles on philosophy of science, philosophy of Logical Empiricism and Neo-Kantianism.
In 2000 he published a book on Carnap.
In Recently he edited a volume of Carnap's early unpublished antimetaphysical writings (2004).
Presently he is completing a book on mereology.
Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, P0. Box 1249, 200.80 Donostia - San Sebastian, Spain
Francis Jeffry Pelletier
is a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science and Professor of both Philosophy and Linguistics at Simon Fraser University in Canada. He has written on many topics in Philosophy of Logic and Language, Formal Semantics, and Automated Reasoning. He is co-editor of The Generic Book (Univ. Chicago Press, 1995), and the author of various works on semantic compositionality, including "Did Frege Believe Frege's Principle?" (JoLLI, 2001).
Department of Philosophy, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.
Maria E. Reicher
born in 1966, received her Ph.D. in 1998 at the University of Graz. Her main fields of research are philosophy of logic, ontology, aesthetics, and the history of Austrian philosophy (in particular the school of Alexius Meinong). Recent book: Referenz, Quantifikation und ontologische Festlegung Frankfurt/Main:Ontos,2005.
Department of Philosophy, University of Graz, Heinrichstr. 26/VI, 8010 Graz, Austria,
Francisco Rodríguez-Consuegra
(Barcelona Ph.D., 1987) is currently Professor Titular at the Valencia University. He has been working on the foundations of analytic philosophy, the philosophy of logic and mathematics, and the philosophy of language.
Among his hooks there are The mathematical philosophy of Bertrand Russell (Birkhäuser, 1991) and Estudios de filosofia del lenguaje (Granada, Comares, 2002).
Peter Simons
is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leeds. After studying at Manchester, he emigrated to Austria where he lived for fifteen years, teaching at the University of Salzburg.
He is the author of Parts (1987) and Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski (1992) as well as numerous articles, chiefly on metaphysics, logic, and the history of Central European philosophy.
School of Philosophy, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT England,
Janet Farrell Smith
is professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston where her specialization is philosophy of language and logic. She has published on the exchange of arguments between Russell and Meinong and Russell's philosophy of language and scientific. knowledge.
Elena Tatievskaya
studied logic and philosophy at the University of St-Petersburg, Russia. Her postgraduate studies, carried out at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, were devoted to Russell's theory of universals and its role in the development of his logical and ontological views. Since her habilitation in 2004 she works as Privatdocent at the University of Augsburg, Germany. The main subject of her research has been the place of the notion of logical form by Russell, in analytical philosophy.
Institute of Philosophy, University of Augsburg, Universitätsstraße 10, 86159 Germany.
Alasdair Urquhart
teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.
He is also the editor of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Volume 4: Foundations of Logic, 1903-5.
He works in the areas of mathematical logic, complexity theory, and the history of logic.
These new essays mark the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of Bertrand Russell's article "On Denoting" in the journal Mind. The contributors are an international collection of scholars of Russell and the topics that he discussed.
Starting with a reprint of the original article, the essays include historical studies of the antecedents of "On Denoting" in Russell's earlier manuscript writings, the details of Russell's arguments in the paper, including the notorious "Gray's Elegy Argument", Russell's rejection of alternative theories of Gottlob Frege and Alexius Meinong, as well as various ideas about logical form and natural language that arise from the essay. Russell's theory of definite descriptions still remains the "paradigm of philosophy" that Frank Ramsey called it, a model of analytic philosophy that has remained current from 1905 to 2005 and promises to continue to inspire philosophers.
Contributors
Oswaldo Chateaubriand
teaches at the Department of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He is president of the Brazilian Logic Society and is a member of the Center for Logic, Epistemology and the History of Science of the State University of Campinas.
He is the author of Logical Forms: Part 1 - Truth and Description (2001) and Logical Forms: Part II - Logic, Language, and Knowledge (2005).
Departamento de Filosofia, Pontificia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro,
Wolfgang Degen
works as a Computer scientist at the University of Erlangen in Germany. He has written on topics in Philosophy (also so called Ontology), in philosophical and mathematical logic. The more mathematical works include papers on model theory, proof theory, (recursive) combinatorics, and set theory, in particular on several aspects of the axiom of choice.
A main theme of Degen is formal versions of Logicism. He has also translated the Summulae Logicales of Peter of Spain into German and is the author of Systeme der Kumulativen Logik (1983).
IMMD 1, Universität Erlangen, Martensstr. 3, 91058, Erlangen, Germany,
Herbert Hochberg
Before teaching at the University of Texas, he taught at Northwestern, Indiana, Ohio State and Minnesota, and was a visiting professor at Göteborg.
His books include Introducing Analytic Philosophy: Its Sense and Its Nonsense, 1879-2002 (2003);
The Positivist and the Ontologist: Bergmann, Carnap and Logical Realism (2001);
Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein (2001), Complexes and Consciousness (2000);
Logic, Ontology and Language (1984);
and Thought, Fact and Reference: The Origins and Ontology of Logical Atomism (1978).
The University of Texas at Austin, Philosophy, 1 University Station C3500, Austin, TX 78712-0310
Guido Imaguire
received his Ph.D. in 2001 at the University of Munich. Since 2001 he teaches at the State University of Ceara, Brazil.
The main subject of his research is philosophy of logic and mathematics, language and metaphysics. His first book is Russells Frühphilosophie: Propositionen, Realismus und die Sprachontologische Wende (2001),
UFC, Fortaleza, Brazil
James Levine
is Senior Lecturer and head of the Philosophy Department at Trinity College, Dublin. His published articles have largely been in the area of early analytic philosophy.
Department of Philosophy, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
Bernard Linsky
is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta in Canada. He has written on topics in Philosophical logic arid Metaphysics, as well as Neo-Meinongian object theory.
His work on Russell includes Russell's Metaphysical Logic, CSLI 1999, and recent articles on Russell's notes on Frege in the Bertrand Russell Archives.
Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2E5, Canada
Thomas Mormann
studied mathematics, linguistics and philosophy and obtained a PhD in mathematics. Numerous articles on philosophy of science, philosophy of Logical Empiricism and Neo-Kantianism.
In 2000 he published a book on Carnap.
In Recently he edited a volume of Carnap's early unpublished antimetaphysical writings (2004).
Presently he is completing a book on mereology.
Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, P0. Box 1249, 200.80 Donostia - San Sebastian, Spain
Francis Jeffry Pelletier
is a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science and Professor of both Philosophy and Linguistics at Simon Fraser University in Canada. He has written on many topics in Philosophy of Logic and Language, Formal Semantics, and Automated Reasoning. He is co-editor of The Generic Book (Univ. Chicago Press, 1995), and the author of various works on semantic compositionality, including "Did Frege Believe Frege's Principle?" (JoLLI, 2001).
Department of Philosophy, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.
Maria E. Reicher
born in 1966, received her Ph.D. in 1998 at the University of Graz. Her main fields of research are philosophy of logic, ontology, aesthetics, and the history of Austrian philosophy (in particular the school of Alexius Meinong). Recent book: Referenz, Quantifikation und ontologische Festlegung Frankfurt/Main:Ontos,2005.
Department of Philosophy, University of Graz, Heinrichstr. 26/VI, 8010 Graz, Austria,
Francisco Rodríguez-Consuegra
(Barcelona Ph.D., 1987) is currently Professor Titular at the Valencia University. He has been working on the foundations of analytic philosophy, the philosophy of logic and mathematics, and the philosophy of language.
Among his hooks there are The mathematical philosophy of Bertrand Russell (Birkhäuser, 1991) and Estudios de filosofia del lenguaje (Granada, Comares, 2002).
Peter Simons
is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leeds. After studying at Manchester, he emigrated to Austria where he lived for fifteen years, teaching at the University of Salzburg.
He is the author of Parts (1987) and Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski (1992) as well as numerous articles, chiefly on metaphysics, logic, and the history of Central European philosophy.
School of Philosophy, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT England,
Janet Farrell Smith
is professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston where her specialization is philosophy of language and logic. She has published on the exchange of arguments between Russell and Meinong and Russell's philosophy of language and scientific. knowledge.
Elena Tatievskaya
studied logic and philosophy at the University of St-Petersburg, Russia. Her postgraduate studies, carried out at the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, were devoted to Russell's theory of universals and its role in the development of his logical and ontological views. Since her habilitation in 2004 she works as Privatdocent at the University of Augsburg, Germany. The main subject of her research has been the place of the notion of logical form by Russell, in analytical philosophy.
Institute of Philosophy, University of Augsburg, Universitätsstraße 10, 86159 Germany.
Alasdair Urquhart
teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.
He is also the editor of The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Volume 4: Foundations of Logic, 1903-5.
He works in the areas of mathematical logic, complexity theory, and the history of logic.