This paper discusses Michael Dummett’s criticism of the Neo-Fregean conception of the context principle. I will present four arguments by Dummett that purport to show that the context principle is incompatible with platonism. I discuss and ultimately reject each argument. I will close this paper by identifying what I take to be a deeprooted tension in the Neo-Fregean project which might have mo...

In this paper, I argue that various disputes in ontology have important ramifications and so are worth taking seriously. I employ a criterion according to which whether a dispute matters depends on how integrated it is with the rest of our theoretical projects. Disputes that arise from previous tensions in our theorizing and have additional implications for other issues matter, while insular di...

Mathematical concepts play at least three roles in the application of mathematics: an inferential role, a representational role, and an expressive role. In this paper, I argue that, despite what has often been alleged, platonists do not fully accommodate these features of the application of mathematics. At best, platonism provides partial ways of handling the issues. I then sketch an alternativ...

this paper examines the semantic contribution of -?r and -andeh suffixes in persian based on lieber’s (2004) lexical semantic representation. this framework using six semantic features ([material], [dynamic], [location], [ieps] , [b] and [ci] and a principle called coordination principle studies the semantic contribution of lexical items including affixes and their functions in compounding, der...

In one of Krylov’s fables, a small dog Moska barks at the elephant who pays no attention whatsoever to Moska. This image comes to my mind when I think of constructive mathematics versus “classical” (that is mainstream) mathematics. In this article, we put a few words into the elephant’s mouth. The idea to write such an article came to me in the summer of 1995 when I came across a fascinating 19...

Received June 6, 1994, and in revised form October 20, 1994. Expanded version of the Retiring Presidential Address presented to the annual meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic at the University of Florida, Gainesville, March 7, 1994. Material from this paper was also presented in lectures to the Fifteenth Annual Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria, and at the Univer...