Kit Fine: bibliography of the unpublished papers available on line

This part of the section Ontologists of 19th and 20th centuries includes the following pages:

Annotated bibliography of Kit Fine:

Books and Papers 1970-1981

Papers 1982-1998

Papers 1999-2011

Papers 2012-2022

Unpublished Papers (available on line) (Current page)

Kit Fine. Annotated bibliography of the studies on His Philosophy

Annotated bibliography of Kit Fine: Complete PDF Version on the website Academia.edu

1. Fine, Kit. 1969. For some Proposition and so many Possible Worlds, University of Warwick.

   Available at: For some Proposition and so many Possible Worlds

   "In this thesis, I deal with the notions of a condition holding for some proposition and a proposition being true in a certain number of possible worlds. These notions are called propositional quantifiers and numerical modalizers respectively.

   In each chapter, I attempt to dispose of a system. A system consists of: a language; axioms and rules of inference; and an interpretation. To dispose of a system is to prove its decidability and its consistency and completeness for the given interpretation. I shall, in passing, make applications to de finability, translatability and other topics." (From the Abstract)

2. ———. 2010. "The Structure of Joint Intention (Draft)."1-50.

   Available at The Structure of Joint Intention (Draft)

   "The topics of joint intention and response dependence are not normally thought to be connected. But it is my belief that that there are problems concerning the very possibility of joint intention that can only be satisfactorily resolved by providing a response dependent account of what it is. Our having a joint intention will in part be realized by our responding to it as a joint intention.

   I shall begin by outlining the problems and then consider various attempted solutions to them. None of them turns out to be satisfactory. I shall then outline a theory of response dependent concepts and show how it is able to solve the problems and provide a satisfactory account of joint attention. I conclude by briefly considering the application of the theory of response dependence to other topics in social philosophy, including the prisoners’ dilemma and the concept of law.

   The paper was hurriedly written and very rough. Many important topics are barely discussed and some are not even mentioned. But I hope I have said enough to make clear how a number of issues concerning joint intention can be put on a firmer footing and how a theory of response dependence can be of help in resolving them." (p. 1)

3. ———. 2012. "The Essential Glossary of Ground."1.

   Available at The Essential Glossary of Ground

   "ground - a philosophical foodstuff, considered by some to be the elixir of life and by others to be

   a deadly poison." (p. 1)

4. ———. 2015. "Mathematics and the Method of Abstraction."1-10.

   Available at Mathematics and the Method of Abstraction

   Public Lecture.

   "It is a familiar thought that mathematics derives from abstraction.

   (...)

   Abstraction may be a familiar idea but it is also vague. What exactly is abstraction?

   From what do we abstract? To what do we abstract? And how do we get from the one to the other?

   These are questions which have been discussed since the beginning of mathematics and philosophy. But what I want to consider is the discussion of the questions in a particular period and by a particular group of people. The period was the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. And the people in question were mathematicians who had a strong interest in foundational issues. They were not only concerned to do mathematics but also to put the subject on a firm foundation. All of the mathematicians involved - with one or two exceptions - were German. I do not know whether or not this was accidental, though it does speak to the great contribution that German mathematicians were then making to their subject." (p. 1)

5. ———. 2015. "A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content I: Conjunction, Disjunction and Negation."1-40.

   Available at A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content I: Conjunction, Disjunction and Negation

   "The semantic content of a statement is often taken to be its truth-conditional content, as constituted by the conditions under which it is true. But there are somewhat different ways to understand what these truth-conditions are. On the clausal approach, especially associated with the name of Davidson, the truth-conditions of a statement are not entities as such but the clauses by which a truth-theory specifies when a statement is true. On the objectual approach, by contrast, the truth-conditions are objects, rather than clauses, which stand in a relation of truthmaking to the statements they make true.

   Under the most familiar version of the objectual approach, the truth-conditions of a statement are taken to be possible worlds and the content of a statement may, accordingly, be identified with the set of possible worlds in which it is true. Under a somewhat less familiar version of the entity-based approach, the truth-conditions are not - or not, in general - possible worlds but possible states or situations - fact-like entities that make up a world rather than the worlds themselves; and the content of a statement may, in this case, be identified with the set of verifying states or situations in which it is true.

   In this paper I pursue the last of these options. However, my understanding of what it is for a state to verify a statement is somewhat unusual. It is often supposed that verification is monotonic; if a state verifies a statement then so does any more comprehensive state. But on the account that I wish to adopt, this will not be generally true. For it is to be a general requirement on verification that a verifier should be relevant as a whole to the statement that it verifies; and in extending a verifier with additional material, this holistic relevance of the verifier to the statement may be lost." (p. 1)

6. ———. 2015. "A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content II: Subject-matter, Common Content, Remainder and Ground."1-25.

   Available at A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content II: Subject-matter, Common Content, Remainder and Ground

   "We continue with the development of the theory of truth-conditional content begun in part I, dealing with such ‘non-standard’ topics as subject matter, common content, logical remainder and ground. This is by no means an exhaustive list of topics that might have been considered but it does provide an indication of the nature and scope of the theory. As before, the paper is divided into an informal exposition and a technical addendum. Both can be read independently of the other but it would be helpful, in either case, to have the first part at hand.

   One feature of great interest in the present account is that it deals with a number of the topics that lack an adequate treatment either within the possible worlds account or under a structural conception of propositions. The notion of common content, for example, can be readily handled within the present framework but cannot be properly handled in the other two frameworks without either introducing or deriving something like the present conception of verification. Thus we should not simply regard the present ‘extensional’ conception of content as a mere approximation to a structural conception but as an important conception in its own right." (p. 1)

7. ———. 2015. "The Sorites."

   Available at The Sorites

   "No treatment of vagueness is complete without an account of the sorites argument. This argument, in a familiar form, starts with the premiss that a given man (with no hairs on his head) is bald, it proceeds to the intermediate conclusion that a man with very slightly fewer hairs on his head is bald, given the assumption that a slight difference in the number of cranial hairs can make no difference to whether someone is bald, and it then proceeds, by a large number of further steps of this sort, to the final conclusion that a man with a full head of hair is bald, which is clearly absurd." (p. 1)

8. ———. 2016. "Acts and Embodiment." In, 1-17.

   Available at Acts and Embodiment

   "I wish in this paper to consider how the theory of embodiment outlined in some of my earlier papers (Fine [1982], [1999]) [2006]) can be applied to questions concerning the identity of acts. This will involve going over some old ground. But I also hope to elaborate on what I previously said and to relate it to some of the more recent literature on the topic." (p. 1)

   References

   Fine K., [1982] "Acts, Events and Things," Language and Ontology Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky (1982), 97-105 as part of the proceedings of the Sixth International Wittgenstein Symposium 23rd to 30th August 1981, Kirchberg/Wechsel (Austria).

   Fine K., [1999] "Things and Their Parts", Mid-west Studies XXIII (ed. French & Wettstein), 61-74.

   Fine K., [2006] ‘In Defense of Three-dimensionalism’, Journal of Philosophy , CIII.12, 699-714.

9. ———. 2017. "Mathematical Existence."1-10.

   Available at Mathematical Existence

   "Anyone who has thought about the nature of mathematics has probably been puzzled over the status of its objects. Are the objects with which mathematics deals - numbers, sets, functions and the like - created or are they discovered? Should we think of them in the manner of the stars and the planets, whose character and existence is entirely independent of our investigations and activities? Or should we think of them in the manner of the objects of fiction, whose existence and character is entirely dependent upon what their authors make of them?" (p. 1)

10. ———. 2019. "Chisholm's Puzzle and Unconditional Obligation."1-19.

    Available at Chisholm's Puzzle and Unconditional Obligation

    "In this paper, I would like to suggest a new angle on Chisholm’s puzzle concerning contrary-to-duty obligations. It differs from previous approaches in its conception of what the problem is and how it is to be solved. I shall argue that the problem is, in no small part, about unconditional, rather than conditional, obligation and that, once it is viewed in this light, we obtain a somewhat different perspective on how the puzzle might be solved." (p. 1)

11. Fine, Kit, and Martin, Errol. 2020. "Progressive Logic." In, 1-45.

    Available at Progressive Logic

    "An argument is commonly taken to be circular when the truth of its conclusion is presupposed by its premisses. But exactly what is meant by such an account is not at all clear. For there is a sense in which the truth of the conclusion of any deductively valid argument is presupposed by its premisses. Thus if there is to be a significant distinction between those valid arguments that are circular and

    those that are not, then some basis must be found for distinguishing between the trivial kind of presupposition and one that is more substantive." (p. 1)

12. Fine, Kit. 2021. "A Theory of Partial Truth." In.

    Available at A Theory of Partial Truth

    "I develop a theory of partial truth within the framework of truth-conditional content developed in two earlier papers (Fine [2015a] and [2015b]). It will be helpful, though not essential, to have these two other papers at hand, and especially the first, while reading the present paper. The paper should have interest both as an account of partial truth and as a partial vindication of the truth-conditional framework within which it is developed. For without something like the present framework, it is hard to see how a reasonable alternative account of partial truth might be developed. The concept of partial truth is intimately related to the concept of partial content, since we naturally suppose that a proposition is partially true when some part of it is true. The connection between the two concepts can also be put to work in the opposite direction, since we may provide a semantics for the logic of partial content by appeal to partial truth (as in §9 of Fine [2015]).

    There is also a close connection with the concept of verisimilitude. For a proposition will be partially true when it has ‘more truth’ than a proposition that is not partially true; and the investigation of the concept of partial truth may, in fact, serve as a useful prolegomena to the investigation of the more complicated concept of verisimilitude.

    (...)

    I begin with an informal introduction to some of the main ideas and conclude with a formal appendix. The introduction and appendix can in principle be read in isolation from the other though they are best read together. The most extensive previous treatment of the topic that I know of is in Humbersone [2003]; and a related account of partial truth is given in §1.3 of [2014]. The major difference from Humberstone is that he stipulates the truth-tables for a logic of partial truth while I derive them from an underlying account of partial truth; and the major difference from Yablo is that I provide an account of partial truth directly in terms of truthmakers and not indirectly through the notion of partial content." (p. 1)

    References

    Fine K. [2014] ‘Truthmaker Semantics for Intuitionistic Logic’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 43.2, pp. 549-77 (2014); reprinted in Philosophers’ Annual for 2014.

    Fine K., [2015a] ‘A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content - I’, to appear

    Fine K., [2015b] ‘A Theory of Truth-Conditional Content - II’, to appear

    Fine K., [2015c] ‘Angellic Content’, to appear

    Humberstone L., [2003] ‘False Though Partly True - An Experiment in Logic’, Journal of Philosophical Logic 32: 613-665.

    Yablo S., [2014] ‘ Aboutness ’, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

13. ———. 2021. "Quine on Essence." In, 1-11.

    Available at Quine on Essence

    "There are already many excellent detailed accounts of Quine’s views on de re and de dicto modality, and my principal concern in the present chapter is not to add to them or to survey the field but to point to certain general features of Quine’s views which, in the fog of detail, may easily be overlooked." (p. 1, a note omitted)

14. Fine, Kit, and de Rosseet, Louis. 2021. "A Semantics for the Impure Logic of Ground."

    Avalaible at A Semantics for the Impure Logic of Ground

    "This paper establishes a sound and complete semantics for the impure logic of ground. Fine [2012a] sets out a system for the pure logic of ground, one in which the formulas between which ground-theoretic claims hold have no internal logical complexity; and it provides a sound and complete semantics for the system.

    Fine [2012b, §§6-8] sets out a system for an impure logic of ground, one that extends the rules of the original pure system with rules for the truth-functional connectives, the first-order quantiers, and λ-abstraction. However, it does not provide a semantics for this system. The present paper partly fills this lacuna by providing a sound and complete semantics for a system GG containing the truth-functional operators that is closely related to the truth-functional part of the system of [Fine, 2012b].(1)" (p. 1)

    (1) The main differences between the two systems are that we now only allow finitely many formulas to occur to the left of the ground-theoretic operator and that we have added the Irreversibility Rule, which should have been part of the original system.

    References

    K. Fine. Guide to Ground. In Benjamin Schnieder and Fabrice Correia, editors, Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality , pages 37-80. Cambridge University Press, 2012b. reprinted online in `Philosophers Annual' for 2012 (eds. P. Grim, C. Armstrong, P. Shirre, N-H Stear).

15. Fine, Kit, and Bacon, Andrew. 2022. "The Logic of Logical Necessity." In Saul Kripke on Modal Logic , edited by Weiss, Yale and Padró, Romina, 1-43. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Volume not yet published.

    Available at The Logic of Logical Necessity

    Abstract: "Prior to Kripke's seminal work on the semantics of modal logic, McKinsey offered an alternative interpretation of the necessity operator, inspired by the Bolzano-Tarski notion of logical truth. According to this interpretation, `it is necessary that A' is true just in case every sentence with the same logical form as A is true. In our paper, we investigate this interpretation of the modal operator, resolving some technical questions, and relating it to the logical interpretation of modality and some views in modal metaphysics. In particular, we present an hitherto unpublished solution to problems 41 and 42 from Friedman's 102 problems , which uses a different method of proof from the solution presented in the paper of Tadeusz Prucnal."

    References

    Harvey Friedman. One hundred and two problems in mathematical logic. Journal of Symbolic Logic , 40(2):113-129, 1975.

    Tadeusz Prucnal. On two problems of Harvey Friedman. Studia Logica , 38(3):247-262, 1979