Analytic philosophy in the mid-twentieth century underwent a major change of direction when a prior consensus in favour of extensionalism and descriptivism made way for approaches using direct reference, the necessity of identity, and modal logic. All three were first defended, in the analytic tradition, by one woman, Ruth Barcan Marcus. But analytic philosophers now tend to credit them to Kripke, or Kripke and Carnap. I argue that seeing Barcan Marcus in her historical context – one dominated by extensionalism and (...) descriptivism – allows us to see how revolutionary she was, in her work and influence on others. I focus on her debate with Quine, who found himself retreating to softened, and more viable, versions of his anti-modal arguments as a result. I make the case that Barcan's formal logic was philosophically well-motivated, connected to her views on reference, and well-matched to her overall views on ontology. Her nominalism led her to reject posits which could not be directly observed and named, such as possibilia. She conceived of modal calculi as facilitating counterfactual discourse about actual existents. I conclude that her contributions ought to be recognized as the first of their kind. Barcan Marcus must be awarded a central place in the canon of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

E.E.C. Jones’s early logical writings have recently been rescued from obscurity and it has been claimed that, in her works dating from the 1890s, she anticipated Frege’s distinction between sense and reference. This claim is challenged on the ground that it is based on a common but inadequate reading of Frege, which runs together his concept/object and sense/reference distinctions. It is admitted that a case can be made for Jones having anticipated something very like Frege’s analysis of categorical propositions, and (...) that she offered a sound rebuttal of Russell’s objection to Frege’s account of the informativeness of identity statements. However, these significant achievements should not be misrepresented as an anticipation of Frege on sense and reference, a claim that encourages a defective reading of both philosophers. (shrink)

E. E. Constance Jones was one of the first women to study philosophy at the University of Cambridge. This paper focuses on her claim from her first major work, Elements of Logic as a Science of Propositions, that each thing has a unique existence. Jones’s claim follows from claims about tropes and haecceities; but, I suggest, it’s not claims about tropes and haecceities that lead her to accept it. Rather, I suggest, it’s claims about what she calls the denomination of (...) names and the quantitiveness of things that lead her to accept it. Her claim that each thing has a unique existence thus fits within her more general views in Elements of Logic. (shrink)

This thesis explores the development of Bertrand Russell‘s theory of definite descriptions. It aims at demonstrating the connection between Russell‘s views on the subject of denoting and his attempt, in the period 1903-05, to develop a solution to 'the Contradiction'. The thesis argues that the discovery of the theory of descriptions, and the way in which it works, are best understood against the backdrop of Russell‘s work on the paradoxes. A new understanding of Russell‘s seminal paper 'On Denoting' is presented, (...) including a novel interpretation of the notorious 'Gray‘s Elegy Argument', in which Russell argues against his earlier theory of denoting. That Russell‘s work on denoting is connected to his work on the paradoxes is reasonably well-known: the nature of the connection has not, however, been adequately brought out in the literature. This is addressed through demonstrating the relationship between Russell‘s work on denoting and his development of the 'substitutional theory' of classes and relations. This theory eliminates classes and propositional functions in favour of matrices and substitutions. The role of the theory of descriptions in the development of the substitutional theory is commonly supposed to be merely that the theory of descriptions facilitates the ontological elimination of classes. But this elimination was equally possible on Russell‘s earlier theory of denoting. In the thesis it is suggested that the theory of descriptions brings with it a new conception of analysis, and that it is through the introduction of this new form of analysis—rather than through the elimination of classes—that the theory of descriptions facilitates the substitutional approach. (shrink)