Outlines of Logic and Metaphysics.

Logic and Metaphysics∗

In this article, we canvass a few of the interesting topics that philosophers can pursue as part of the simultaneous study of logic and metaphysics. To keep the discussion to a manageable length, we limit our survey to deductive, as opposed to inductive, logic. Though most of this article will focus on the ways in which logic can be deployed in the study of metaphysics, we begin with a few rema...

The Methodology of Modal Logic as Metaphysics

Timothy Williamson’s Modal Logic as Metaphysics is, among much else, a detailed and complex defense of the metaphysical view he calls necessitism, the view that necessarily everything necessarily exists (is something), that although it may be a contingent matter how things are, what things there are is entirely a matter of necessity. The majority of contemporary modal metaphysicians reject this...

Prior on the Logic and the Metaphysics of Time

In this paper I explore three related topics emerging from Prior’s work on the logic of time. First, what is the proper province of logic, if any? Is temporal (modal) logic just logic, on a par with the paradigmatic case of first order quantification theory or even simple propositional logic? Second, what counts as an interpretation of a formal system? In particular, can formal semantics provid...

On Kinds of Indiscernibility in Logic and Metaphysics

Using the Hilbert–Bernays account as a spring-board, we first define four ways in which two objects can be discerned from one another, using the non-logical vocabulary of the language concerned. (These definitions are based on definitions made by Quine and Saunders.) Because of our use of the Hilbert-Bernays account, these definitions are in terms of the syntax of the language. But we also rela...

Overcoming of Metaphysics: Heidegger's Interpretation of Kant's Thought and the Problem of Metaphysics