A Logical Approach to Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Graham Solomon (The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science Book 69)

The Papers In This Collection Are United By An Approach To Philosophy. They Illustrate The Manifold Contributions That Logic Makes To Philosophical Progress, Both By The Application Of Formal Methods To Traditional Philosophical Problems And By Opening Up New Avenues Of Inquiry As Philosophers Sort Out The Implications Of New And Often Surprising Technical Results. Contributions Include New Technical Results Rich With Philosophical Significance For Contemporary Metaphysics, Attempts To Diagnose The Philosophical Significance Of Some Recent Technical Results, Philosophically Motivated Proposals For New Approaches To Negation, Investigations In The History And Philosophy Of Logic, And Contributions To Epistemology And Philosophy Of Science That Make Essential Use Of Logical Techniques And Results. Where The Work Is Formal, The Motives Are Obviously Philosophical, Not Merely Mathematical. Where The Work Is Less Formal, It Is Deeply Informed By The Relevant Formal Material. The Volume Includes Contributions From Some Of The Most Interesting Philosophers Now Working In Philosophical Logic, Philosophy Of Logic, Epistemology And Metaphysics. 1. Externalism, Anti-realism, And The Kk-thesis / Stewart Shapiro -- 2. Choice Principles In Intuitionistic Set Theory / John L. Bell -- 3. Assertion, Proof, And The Axiom Of Choice / David Devidi -- 4. Montague's Modal Completeness Theorem Of 1955 / B. Jack Copeland -- 5. On The Rational Reconstruction Of Our Theoretical Knowledge / William Demopoulos -- 6. Do We Have The Right Limitative Theorems? / A.p. Hazen -- 7. Empirical Negation In Intuitionistic Logic / Graham Solomon, David Devidi -- 8. Negation's Holiday : Aspectival Dialetheism / J.c. Beall -- 9. Monism : The One True Logic / Stephen Read. Edited By David Devidi And Tim Kenyon. Essays. Memorial Volume. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 210-218) And Index. Graham Solomon, to whom this collection is dedicated, went into hospital for antibiotic treatment of pneumonia in Oc- ber, 2001. Three days later, on Nov. 1, he died of a massive stroke, at the age of 44. Solomon was well liked by those who got the chance to know him—it was a revelation to ?nd out, when helping to sort out his a?airs after his death, how many “friends” he had whom he had actually never met, as his email included correspondence with philosophers around the world running sometimes to hundreds of messages. He was well respected in the philosophical community more broadly. He was for several years a member of the editorial board for the Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science. While he was employed at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, several of us at the University of Wat- loo always regarded our own department as a sort of second academic home for him. We therefore decided that it would be appropriate to hold a memorial conference in his honour. Thanks to the generous ?nancial support of the Humphrey Conference Fund, we were able to do so in May 2003. Many of the papers in this volume were presented at that conf- ence.