Considered a classic in the philosophy of language movement known variously as the New Theory of Reference or the Direct-Reference Theory, as well as in the metaphysics of modal essentialism that is related to this philosophy of language. This award-winning book is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation.

Nathan Salmon presents a selection of nineteen of his essays from the early 1980s to 2006, on a set of closely connected topics central to analytic philosophy. The book is divided into four thematic sections, on direct reference, apriority, belief, and the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. The volume concludes with four essays about the distinction between meaning and use, or more generally, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics.

This is the second edition of an award-winning 1981 book (Princeton University Press and Basil Blackwell, based on the author’s doctoral dissertation) considered to be a classic in the philosophy of language movement known variously as the New Theory of Reference or the Direct-Reference Theory, as well as in the metaphysics of modal essentialism that is related to this philosophy of language.

This is the 1991 (2nd) edition of the 1986 book (MIT Press), considered to be the classic defense of Millianism. The nature of the information content of declarative sentences is a central topic in the philosophy of language. The natural view that a sentence like "John loves Mary" contains information in which two individuals occur as constituents is termed the naive theory, and is one that has been abandoned by most contemporary scholars. This theory was refuted originally by philosopher Gottlob (...) Frege. His argument that the naive theory did not work is termed Frege's puzzle, and his rival account of information content is termed the orthodox theory. In this detailed study, Nathan Salmon defends a version of the naive theory and presents a proposal for its extension that provides a better picture of information content than the orthodox theory gives. He argues that a great deal of what has generally been taken for granted in the philosophy of language over the past few decades is either mistaken or unsupported, and consequently, much current research is focused on the wrong set of questions. Salmon dissolves Frege's puzzle as it is usually formulated and demonstrates how it can be reconstructed and strengthened to yield a more powerful objection to the naive theory. He then defends the naive theory against the new Frege puzzle by presenting an idea that yields both a surprisingly rich and powerful extension of the naive theory and a better picture of information content than that of the original orthodox theory. Nathan Salmon is Professor of Philosophy, University of California at Santa Barbara. (shrink)

A correct observation to the effect that a does not exist, where ‘a’ is a singular term, could be true on any of a variety of grounds. Typically, a true, singular negative existential is true on the unproblematic ground that the subject term ‘a’ designates something that does not presently exist. More interesting philosophically is a singular, negative existential statement in which the subject term ‘a’ designates nothing at all. Both of these contrast sharply with a singular, negative existential in (...) which the subject term is a name from fiction. I argue that such singular, negative existential statements are false. My account of fictional characters differs significantly from Kripke’s. It is shown that an objection to my account rests on a serious misunderstanding. Finally, a crucial aspect of the account is emphasized. (shrink)

The concept of a proposition is important in several areas of philosophy and central to the philosophy of language. This collection of readings investigates many different philosophical issues concerning the nature of propositions and the ways they have been regarded through the years. Reflecting both the history of the topic and the range of contemporary views, the book includes articles from Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, the Russell-Frege Correspondence, Alonzo Church, David Kaplan, John Perry, Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam, Mark Richard, Scott (...) Soames, and Nathan Salmon. (shrink)

A thesis (“weak BCP”) nearly universally held among philosophers of probability connects the concepts of objective chance and metaphysical modality: Any prospect (outcome) that has a positive chance of obtaining is metaphysically possible—(nearly) equivalently, any metaphysically impossible prospect has zero chance. Particular counterexamples are provided utilizing the monotonicity of chance, one of them related to the four world paradox. Explanations are offered for the persistent feeling that there cannot be chancy metaphysical necessities or chancy metaphysical impossibilities. Chance is objective but (...) contrary to popular opinion it is also largely epistemic. Chancy necessities are analogous to necessary a posteriori truths. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 99, Issue 3, Page 644-662, November 2019. (shrink)

Metaphysics, Mathematics, and Meaning brings together Nathan Salmon's influential papers on topics in the metaphysics of existence, non-existence, and fiction; modality and its logic; strict identity, including personal identity; numbers and numerical quantifiers; the philosophical significance of Godel's Incompleteness theorems; and semantic content and designation. Including a previously unpublished essay and a helpful new introduction to orient the reader, the volume offers rich and varied sustenance for philosophers and logicians.

In Frege’s Puzzle (1986), Salmon analyzed ‘a withholds believing p’ in terms of a ternary relation BEL of x believing a proposition p under a guise g. The proposed analysis is the following: There is a proposition guise g such that a grasps p by means of g but a does not stand in BEL to p and g. Sean Crawford has made a proposal for Millians to evade propositional guises through second-order belief. Specifically, in effect, Crawford’s proposes to (...) analyze the crucial notion of withheld belief instead as believing that one does not believe: a believes that a does not believe p. Crawford’s clever proposal thus avoids explicit quantification over guises. However, it is shown that the proposal is inadequate to avoid guises. The resulting notion is too weak to capture the relevant notion of withheld belief. (shrink)

Four accounts, three of them Kantian, of true sentences of the form “ exists” are contrasted. Russell’s theory that such sentences are meaningless is contrasted with two other Kantian theories that are analogous to one another: Frege’s semantic-ascent theory and the Frege-inspired ungerade (indirect, “oblique”) theory. Frege’s objection to the semantic-ascent account of identity is applied, ironically with equal force, against his account of existence. A second argument favoring the ungerade theory is offered. The argument is then refuted through an (...) application of a general strategy suggested by Kripke. A fourth theory, the deeply anti-Kantian existence-as-predicate theory, fully accommodates these results. (shrink)

A new philosophical analysis is provided of the notorious Sleeping Beauty Problem. It is argued that the correct solution is one-third, but not in the way previous philosophers have typically meant this. A modified version of the Problem demonstrates that neither self-locating information nor amnesia is relevant to the core Problem, which is simply to evaluate the conditional chance of heads given an undated Monday-or-Tuesday awakening. Previous commentators have failed to appreciate the significance of the information that Beauty gains upon (...) waking, and which is relevant to the conditional chance of heads: de re acquaintance with the awakening itself and the non-locating knowledge that it is an experimental awakening. David Lewis and company are committed to several unjustifiable and unacceptable probability assessments. Previous commentators have in effect confused the information that Beauty undergoes this particular experimental awakening for the information that she undergoes some experimental awakening or other. Lewis in particular thereby illegitimately tips the scales both in favor of heads and in favor of Monday. The Sleeping Beauty Problem is equivalent to a ball-in-urn word problem in elementary probability theory. (shrink)

The dogma that the propositional logic of metaphysical modality is S5 is rebutted in related installments (previously published and unpublished essays).

An alternative to the classical Stalnaker-Lewis account of subjunctive conditionals is outlined. A distinction is drawn between a basic notion of “wouldness” and a more full-bloodedly modal variant, each with its own logic. Previous philosophers have challenged the alleged vacuity of counterpossibles using logico-mathematically impossible worlds. Here the vacuity thesis as well as other orthodox alleged logical principles are challenged instead through consideration of a logico-mathematically possible world. The impossible-world theorist’s Strangeness of Impossibility Condition is also challenged using the same (...) logico-mathematically possible world. The dogma that the truth-condition of a subjunctive invokes the antecedent worlds sufficiently “closest” to (most like) the actual world is also challenged through consideration of the same logico-mathematically possible world. The dogma is a variation on Lewis’s counterpart theory. (shrink)

Alonzo Church famously provided three principal competing criteria for “strict synonymy,” i.e., sameness of semantic content. These are his Alternatives (0), (1), and (2)—numbered in order of increasing course-grainedness of content. On Alternative (2), expressions are deemed strictly synonymous iff they are logically equivalent. This criterion seems hopeless as an account of the objects of propositional attitude. On Alternative (1), expressions are deemed synonymous iff they are λ-convertible. Alternative (1) also evidently conflicts with discourse about the attitudes. On Alternative (0), (...) expressions are deemed strictly synonymous iff they are “synonymously isomorphic” in Church’s sense. On Alternative (0), semantic content is so fine-grained that not even “Romeo loves Juliet” and “Juliet is loved by Romeo” qualify as strictly synonymous. A fourth alternative, here called “Alternative (3),” deems expressions strictly synonymous iff they are co-intensional, i.e., they have the same semantic extension with respect to the same possible worlds. This criterion’s notion of content is even more course grained than that of Alternative (2). Several objections to Alternative (3) are considered. (shrink)

The topic is time travel of the sort depicted in H. G. Wells’ classic novel, The Time Machine—Wellsian time travel. The range of proper applicability of the concept of Wellsian time travel is investigated. The results of this investigation are applied to provide a new argument against the metaphysical possibility of time travel in absolute time. Alternatively, the argument is against the possibility of Wellsian time travel relative to a single temporal frame of reference. The argument leaves open the prospect (...) that an object nontrivially moves relative to one temporal reference frame from one time to another relative to another temporal reference frame. The argument does not turn on closed timelike curves or “causal loops” of any kind. It does however invoke the prospect of backward causation—a consequence of backward time travel in conjunction with common sense—but it invokes this possibility only in the weak sense of mere logical consistency. (shrink)

German translation of Nathan Salmon, "The Crux of Frege's Puzzle".

German translation of Nathan Salmon, "How to Become a Millian Heir".

Korean translation of the 1st edition of Nathan Salmon, _Reference and Essence_.

The dogma that the propositional logic of metaphysical modality is S5 is rebutted. The author exposes fallacies in standard arguments supporting S5, arguing that propositional metaphysical modal logic is weaker even than both S4 and B, and is instead the minimal and weak metaphysical-modal logic T.

In this candid autobiographical essay, Nathan Salmon recounts and assesses the impact of various philosophers and events on his philosophical development.

University of California, Santa Barbara.

Standard compositionality is the doctrine that the semantic content of a compound expression is a function of the semantic contents of the contentful component expressions. In 1954 Hilary Putnam proposed that standard compositionality be replaced by a stricter version according to which even sentences that are synonymously isomorphic (in the sense of Alonzo Church) are not strictly synonymous unless they have the same logical form. On Putnam’s proposal, the semantic content of a compound expression is a function of: (i) the (...) contentful component expressions; and (ii) the expression’s logical form. Kit Fine recently expanded and modified Putnam’s idea into a sweeping theory in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. The present paper is a detailed critique of Fine’s “semantic relationism.” Fine’s notion of coordination is explained in terms of the familiar pragmatic phenomenon of recognition. A serious error in Fine’s formal disproof of standard Millianism is exposed. It is demonstrated furthermore that Church’s original criticism of Putnam’s proposal can be extended to Fine’s semantic relationism. Finally, it is also demonstrated that the positive position Fine proffers to supplant standard Millianism is in fact exactly equivalent to standard Millianism, so that Fine’s overall position not only does not displace standard Millianism but is in fact inconsistent. (shrink)

The “somewhat vague, intuitive” notion from computability theory of an effective procedure (method) or algorithm can be fairly precisely defined even if it is not sufficiently formal and precise to belong to mathematics proper (in a narrow sense)—and even if (as many have asserted) for that reason the Church–Turing thesis is unprovable. It is proved logically that the class of effective procedures is not decidable, i.e., that there is no effective procedure for ascertaining whether a given procedure is effective. This (...) result is proved directly from the notion itself of an effective procedure, without reliance on any (partly) mathematical lemma, conjecture, or thesis invoking recursiveness or Turing-computability. In fact, there is no reliance on anything very mathematical. The proof does not even appeal to a precise definition of ‘effective procedure’. Instead, it relies solely and entirely on a basic grasp of the intuitive notion of an effective procedure. Though the result that effectiveness is undecidable is not surprising, it is also not without significance. It has the consequence, for example, that the solution to a decision problem, if it is to be complete, must be accompanied by a separate argument that the proposed ascertainment procedure invariably terminates with the correct verdict. (shrink)

Although Professor Schiffer and I have many times disagreed, I share his deep and abiding commitment to argument as a primary philosophical tool. Regretting any communication failure that has occurred, I endeavor here to make clearer my earlier reply in “Illogical Belief” to Schiffer’s alleged problem for my version of Millianism.1 I shall be skeletal, however; the interested reader is encouraged to turn to “Illogical Belief” for detail and elaboration. I have argued that to bear a propositional attitude de re (...) is to bear that attitude toward the corresponding singular proposition, no more and no less. If this is right, then according to Millianism every instance of the following modal schema is true. (shrink)

A sequel to the author’s book /Frege’s Puzzle/ (1986).

Quine’s criterion of theoretical ontological commitment is subject to a variety of interpretations, all of which save one yield incorrect verdicts. Moreover, the interpretation that yields correct verdicts is not what Quine meant. Instead the intended criterion unfairly imputes ontological commitments to theories that lack those commitments and fails to impute commitments to theories that have them. Insofar as Quine’s criterion is interpreted so that it yields only correct verdicts, it is trivial and of questionable utility. Moreover, the correct criterion (...) invokes analyticity, a notion that Quine spent most of his life tirelessly combating. This yields a dilemma for Quinean philosophy: Either his criterion of ontological commitment is incorrect, or else Quine is committed to a traditional philosophical notion that he emphatically rejected as disreputable. (shrink)

We defend hylomorphism against Maegan Fairchild’s purported proof of its inconsistency. We provide a deduction of a contradiction from SH+, which is the combination of “simple hylomorphism” and an innocuous premise. We show that the deduction, reminiscent of Russell’s Paradox, is proof-theoretically valid in classical higher-order logic and invokes an impredicatively defined property. We provide a proof that SH+ is nevertheless consistent in a free higher-order logic. It is shown that the unrestricted comprehension principle of property abstraction on which the (...) purported proof of inconsistency relies is analogous to naïve unrestricted set-theoretic comprehension. We conclude that logic imposes a restriction on property comprehension, a restriction that is satisfied by the ramified theory of types. By extension, our observations constitute defenses of theories that are structurally similar to SH+, such as the theory of singular propositions, against similar purported disproofs. (shrink)