John MacFarlane

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John MacFarlane is an American philosopher of language and logician who has made influential contributions to truth theoretic inferential semantics . He is a professor of philosophy at UC Berkeley . In 2015 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . John MacFarlane is the author and lead developer of the free document converter Pandoc .

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Normativity of Logic

With regard to the normativity of logic for human thought, MacFarlane defends the position that Frege's claim to have overcome the limitations of Kant's logic in the basic laws of arithmetic must be recognized. He elaborates the idea in Frege, Kant, and the Logic in Logicism (2002). The comparability of Frege's and Kant's systems, which is controversial in technical discourse, is accordingly achieved through the argument that both thinkers define logic as a central characteristic through its generality and that Frege's approach is therefore suitable to overcome Kant's.

In In What Sense (If Any) Is Logic Normative for Thought? (2004) MacFarlane turns to the problem raised by Gilbert Harman of the fundamental relationship between logic and human thought. He develops a crude methodology that seeks to contain Harman's position that there are no bridging principles and suggests an improved principle as a starting point for further conceptual research in the area.

The normativity of logic is a basic theme of MacFarlane's philosophy and preoccupied him in his Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh in 2000.

Language relativism

In Assessment Sensitivity , MacFarlane develops a three-tier language relativistic theory ( Semantics proper , Semantics post , Pragmatics ). The project tries to combine the respective advantages of the three traditional semantic positions - objectivism, contextualism, and expressionism - in a relative assessment position and thus avoid the respective disadvantages of the three existing positions. For this purpose, after rejecting the standard arguments against relativistic positions, MacFarlane expands the established context sensitivity of the established non-relativistic semantics to include judgment sensitivity in an analogous way. In doing so, the thinker avoids the problems normally associated with semantic relativism . The technical substructure that seeks to achieve judgment sensitivity of propositions with the help of index-based semantics is based on David Kaplan and David Lewis .

Fonts (selection)

  • Richard on Truth and Commitment , Philosophical Studies No. 106, 2012, pp. 445–453.
  • Double Vision: Two Questions About the Neo-Fregean Program , Synthesis No. 170, 2009, pp. 443-456.
  • Boghossian, Bellarmine, and Bayes , Philosophical Studies 141, 2008, pp. 391–398. An influential criticism of Paul Boghossian's ›Fear of the Truth‹, which is also referred to in Markus Gabriel's epilogue to the German edition.
  • Brandom's Demarcation of Logic , Philosophical Topics No. 36, 2008, pp. 55-62.
  • The Logic of Confusion , Philosophy and Phenomenological Research No. 74, 2007, pp. 700-708.
  • What does it mean to say logic is formal? , University of Pittsburgh, 2000.

literature

supporting documents

  1. ^ Frege, Kant, and the Logic in Logicism , The Philosophical Review 111 (2002), pp. 25-65, p. 57.
  2. ^ In What Sense (If Any) Is Logic Normative for Thought? (APA 2004), unpublished, p. 24. The work has already been received; see. z. B. Hartry Field: What is the normative role of logic? , Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary, Vol. Lxxxiii, doi: 10.1111 / j.1467-8349.2009.00181.x .
  3. ^ Dov M. Gabbay , Francis Jeffry Pelletier, John Woods: Logic: A History of its Central Concepts. Newnes, 2012, p. 59.
  4. ↑ Assessment sensitivity (unpublished): p. 78, online (PDF; 1.4 MB).
  5. ↑ Assessment sinsitivity (unpublished): pp. 35–37.
  6. ↑ Assessment sensitivity (unpublished): pp. 43–58.
  7. ↑ Assessment sinsitivity (unpublished): p. 77.
  8. ↑ Markus Gabriel : Epilogue: Abgesang und Auftakt, in: P. Boghossian : Fear of the truth. A plea against relativism and constructivism. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2013, pp. 135–156, here: 149.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME MacFarlane, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH 20th century