There is an ongoing debate about the meaning of definiteness and the number and types of definite entities (e.g. Russell, 1905; Strawson, 1950; Hawkins, 1978; Löbner, 1985; and many others). Definite noun phrases (NPs) include definite descriptions, demonstratives, pronouns, possessive constructions, proper names, or NPs with a universal quantifier as determiner, and research has focused on whi...

In 1956, a series of BBC radio talks was published in London under the title The Revolution in Philosophy (Ayer et al. 1956). This short book included papers by prominent British philosophers of the day, such as Sir Alfred Ayer and Sir Peter Strawson, with an introduction by Gilbert Ryle. Although there is precious little in it concerning the precise nature of the ‘revolution’ alluded to in the...

It is commonly argued that weak negative polarity items (NPIs) (e.g., any) can occur in any (Strawson) downward-entailing environment. This generalization, however, is challenged byWagner’s (2006) observations with the NPI-licenser only: although an only-clause is (Strawson) downward-entailing in its unfocused part, NPIs are not necessarily licensed there. In particular, DPonly does not license...

The idea that incompatibilism is intuitive is one of the key motivations for incompatibilism. Not surprisingly, then, philosophers who defend incompatibilism often claim that incompatibilism is the natural, commonsense view about free will and moral responsibility (e.g., Pereboom 2001, Kane 1999, Strawson 1986). This claim has received some support from empirical studies that indicate that when...

Strawson (1994) and Peacocke (1992) introduced thought experiments that show that it seems intuitive that there is, in some way, an experiential character to mental events of understanding. Some (e.g., Siewert 1998, 2011; Pitt 2004) try to explain these intuitions by saying that just as we have, say, headache experiences and visual experiences of blueness, so too we have experiences of understa...

by introducing two counterexamples, gettier claims that it is possible that a person s has true justified belief that p but fails to know that proposition. the proposition p in gettier’s first counterexample includes a “definite description”. we try, in this article, to refute gettier’s first counterexample by means of what russell, strawson and donnellan have said on the analysis of the propos...

“Of Instagrammatology” starts with a trip to India I took my wife in 2019 as the starting point for meditation on experience of time passing. recount attempt finish reading Marcel Proust’s In Search Lost Time trip, having read first two thirds over thirty years ago, while mid-twenties. This allows me also reflect upon extraordinary technical and cultural changes that have taken place interval b...