UCI philosopher awarded National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship
UCI philosopher awarded National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship
- December 15, 2015
- Funding will support research on philosophical views on identity, necessity
Kai Wehmeier, UCI logic and philosophy of science professor and director of the Center
for the Advancement of Logic, its Philosophy, History and Applications (C-ALPHA),
has won a competitive fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to
re-examine conventional philosophical views on the logic, metaphysics and semantics
of identity and necessity.
“My alternative theory dispenses with identity in the sense of a two-place relation
that every object bears to itself, and to itself only, and proposes a more sophisticated
conception of logical form for necessity statements that accounts, by way of explicit
notation, for the distinction between indicative and non-indicative verb moods,” Wehmeier
said.
“I expect that a number of prominent philosophical theses, many of which were first
articulated by Saul Kripke in the 1970s, require substantial revision or become outright
untenable when the background logical framework is modified in this way – including
the necessity of identity, the existence of contingent a priori truths, and the principled
non-synonymy of proper names with definite descriptions.”
Findings will contribute to a book-length study that combines philosophical, logical
and linguistic approaches.
Wehmeier’s project is one of 295 recently announced studies that the NEH will be funding
with more than $21.8 million. Learn more online: http://www.neh.gov/news/press-release/2015-12-14.
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