Herbert Paul Grice and Ruth Charlotte Barcan -- on modalities and implicatures

Speranza


Modalities: Philosophical Essays
Ruth Barcan Marcus (Author)

Based on her earlier ground-breaking axiomatization of quantified modal logic, the papers collected here by the distinguished philosopher Ruth Charlotte Barcan Marcus (b. in the Bronx) cover much ground in the development of her thought, spanning from 1961 to 1990.

The first essay here
introduces themes initially
viewed as iconoclastic, such
as the necessity of identity

--- cfr. the Grice-Myro theory of relative identity, after Geach.

-- , the directly referential role of proper names as "tags", the Barcan Formula about the interplay of possibility and existence, and alternative interpretations of quantification.

Ruth Charlotte Barcan Marcus also addresses the putative puzzles about substitutivity and about essentialism.

The collection also includes influential essays on moral conflict, on belief and rationality, and on some historical figures.

Many of her views have been incorporated into current theories, while others remain part of a continuing debate.


"The essays collected here are enduring contributions that have deeply affected the course of twentieth-century philosophy. Reading them together reminds one forcefully of the ingenuity, power, and unity of thought of a most philosophical logician, and a most logical philosopher."
--Review of Metaphysics


"Collects most of Ruth Charlotte Barcan Marcus's profoundly influential attempts to illuminate the formal structure and metaphysical underpinnings of model discourse....Provides an extraordinary feast of reason and imagination; it is deeply provocative and contains some of the most influential philosophy of this century."--
Journal of Philosophy


"Ruth Charlotte Barcan Marcus's ideas on identity an naming that are so carefully presented in the essays of Modalities have become part of the fabric of contemporary philosophy. Her theory of belief is exciting and potentially just as important....Modalities unquestionably belongs on the bookshelf of every philosopher."
--British Journal for the Philosophy of Science


"[An] admirable book....Ruth Charlotte Barcan Marcus's contributions to philosophical logic, which have been relatively neglected, are impressive; and I hope the publication of this book will help give her work the recognition it deserves."--International Journal of Philosophical Studies


"I enthusiastically recommend this book to those interested in either contemporary or historical issues related to Ruth Charlotte Barcan Marcus's work....An interesting and relevant collection."--The Philosophical Review



About the Author
Ruth Charlotte Barcan Marcus was at Yale University.

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Product Details
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (June 29, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0195096576
ISBN-13: 978-0195096576
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches