Some of the philosophical work of Matthew Davidson

 

"A Demonstration Against Theistic Activism" Religious Studies, 1999

"Direct Reference and Singular Propositions" American Philosophical Quarterly, 2000

Introduction to Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality by Alvin Plantinga, ed. Matthew Davidson (Oxford University Press, 2003). (It was a joy to edit these wonderful essays. I counted 14 errors in my introduction; they're not my fault (long story!).) (I just noticed another error not corrected in printing--in discussion of the nature of a storyline, it should read "x is named 'George'")

"Presentism and the Non-Present" Philosophical Studies, 2003

A Critical Notice of Theodore Sider's _Four Dimensionalism Philosophical Books, January 2004

A draft of a review of Robert Mc Kim's Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity Philosophical Books, 2003

God and Other Necessary Beings in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Singular Propositions, Modality, and Picture-Thinking in On Sense and Direct Reference.

Knowledge and Reality:  Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga ed. Tom Crisp, Matthew Davidson, David Vander Laan

On Sense and Direct Reference (anthology), forthcoming on McGraw-Hill.

Here is a link to the publisher site on On Sense and Direct Reference


27. Matthew Davidson, "Singular Propositions, Modality, and Picture-Thinking"

On Sense and Direct Reference: Readings in the Philosophy of Language focuses on the debate between neo-Fregeans and neo-Russellians in philosophy of language. With a foreword by Nathan Salmon, the volume collects more than 40 of the most important papers in philosophy of language in the last 40 years; including David Kaplan's "Demonstratives" and "Afterthoughts", and a paper written by Scott Soames especially for the volume. It is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses.
Table of contents

Preface
Foreword

Introduction
1. Ben Caplan, On Sense and Direct Reference


The Background


2. Gottlob Frege, On Sense and Reference
3. John Stewart Mill, Of Names
4. Bertrand Russell, On Denoting
5. Gittlob Frege/BertrandRussell, Selection from the Frege-Russell Correspondence
6. Alonzo Church, Introduction to Mathematical Logic (excerpt)


The Attack on Frege


7. Saul Kripke, Identity and Necessity
8. Keith S. Donnellan, Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions
9. Michael Devitt, Designation (excerpt)
10. Hilary Putnam, The Meaning of 'Meaning’
11. Mark Richard, Taking the Fregean Seriously
12. Nathan Salmon, A Millian Heir Rejects the Wages of Sinn


The Development of the New Theory


13. David Kaplan, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice
14. Tom McKay, On Proper Names in Belief Ascriptions
15. Nathan Salmon, Frege's Puzzle
16. Scott Soames, Substitutivity
17. Mark Crimmons and John Perry, The Prince and the Phone Booth: Reporting Puzzling Beliefs
18. Mark Richard, Attitudes in Context


The Response to the New Theory of Reference


19. Stephen Schiffer, Belief Ascription
20. Graham Oppy, Why Semantic Innocence?
21. Michael Dummett, Note on a Attempted Refutation of Frege
22. Michael Devitt, Against Direct Reference
23. Jay David Atlas, Why Water Isn’t H2O, Much Less Isn’t Necessarily H2O
24. Brian Loar, The Semantics of Singular Terms
25. Michael Devitt, Brian Loar on Singular Terms
26. Brian Loar, Names and Descriptions: A Reply to Michael Devitt
27. Gareth Evans, The Causal Theory of Names
28. Alvin Plantinga, On Existentialism
29. Matthew Davidson, "Singular Propositions, Modality, and Picture-Thinking"


The Rebirth of Fregeanism


30. Graeme Forbes, The Indispensibility of Sinn
31. Alvin Plantinga, The Boethian Compromise
32. David Chalmers, On Sense and Intension


Replies to the Rebirth of Fregeanism


33. Scott Soames, Rigid Designation and Its Lessons for the Semantic Contents of Proper Names
34. Scott Soames, Ambitious Two-Dimensionalism


Indexicals


35. David Kaplan, Demonstratives: An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics, and Epistemology of Demonstratives and Other Indexicals
36. David Kaplan, Afterthoughts
37. John Perry, Frege on Demonstratives
38. Nathan Salmon, Demonstrating and Necessity


Empty Terms


39. Nathan Salmon, Nonexistence
40. David Braun, Empty Names


The Contingent a Priori and Necessary A Posteriori


41. Gareth Evans, Reference and Contingency
42. Nathan Salmon, How to Measure the Standard Metre
43. Scott Soames, The Necessary Aposteriori


Puzzles


44. Saul Kripke, A Puzzle About Belief
45. Nathan Salmon, Illogical Belief
46. Jennifer Saul, Substitution and Simple Sentences
47. Graeme Forbes, How Much Substitutivity?
48. Jennifer Saul, Reply to Forbes

 

A Draft of a "popular" piece on Roderick Chisholm

A Draft of a Paper on Structured Propositions

 

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