Arthur N. Prior and Leśniewski’s Concept of Names: Why Prior Adopted It and Why He Left It in His Temporal Ontology

For a certain period, the concept of names that Stanisław Leśniewski and his followers developed had a certain impact on the concept that appeared in Arthur Prior’s temporal ontology. However, this impact seemed to vanish in time. The aim of this paper is to present why Prior was interested in Leśniewski’s concept of names and quantification and to discuss why in Prior’s later works Leśniewski’s influence is not as apparent as it was in the first works on temporal logic. Namely, the paper suggests three possible solutions; the differences that were between Prior and Leśniewski’s views on time and determinism, new concepts of names that occurred at that time, and Leśniewski’s extensionalism that opposed Prior’s preference for intensional logic

Handbook of the First World Congress on Logic and Religion

This is the handbook of abstracts of the 1st World Congress on Logic and Religion, which took place in João Pessoa, Brazil, April 01-05, 2015

The Metaphysics of Mental Representation

The representational theory of mind (RTM) explains the phenomenon of intentionality in terms of the existence and nature of mental representations. Despite the typical characterisation of mental representations in terms of their semantics, RTM is best understood as a metaphysical – more specifically formal ontological – theory whose primary defining feature is stipulating the existence of a class of mental particulars called representations. In this regard it is false, since mental representations do not exist. My argument is primarily methodological. Using an extended analysis of mereology and its variants as paradigmatic examples of a formal ontological theory, I argue for a 'synthetic’ approach to ontology which seeks to form a sound descriptive characterisation of the relevant phenomena from empirical data, to which philosophical analysis is applied to produce a rigorous theory. The value and necessity of this method is proved by example in our discussion of mereology which is shown to be defensible given certain assumptions, in particular perdurantism, but still inadequate as an account of parthood without considerable supplementation. We also see that there are viable alternatives which adopt a more synthetic approach and do not require the same assumptions. Having effectively demonstrated the value of a synthetic approach in ontology I critically examine the methodology employed by RTM and find it severely lacking. In the guise of ‘commonsense psychology’ RTM cavalierly imposes a theoretical framework without regard to empirical data, and this results in a severe distortion of the phenomenon of intentionality it purports to explain. RTM is methodologically unsound, and so its commitment to the existence of mental representations is utterly undermined. Furthermore the most attractive aspect of RTM – its semantics – can be separated from any commitment to mental representations existing. Even RTM’s strongest advocates lack motivation to believe that mental representations exist