Professor and Chair
bernard.linsky@ualberta.ca
Humanities Centre 4-107
(780) 492-0616
 

AB (General Honors, Philosophy)
            University of Chicago 1971
PhD (Philosophy) Stanford University 1975
 

Research Interests

My research interests are at the intersection of Metaphysics and Logic.  The questions I work on have arisen out of writing a dissertation on "Natural Kinds and Natural Kind Terms", and continue with an interest  in the relationship between universals as treated in metaphysics and predicates in logic. This interest led me to studying the metaphysics underlying Bertrand Russell's theory of types and has resulted in my forthcoming book "Russell's Metaphysical  Logic''.  As well, I have written papers on other topics  in  Early Analytic Philosophy, Philosophical Logic and the Philosophy of Mathematics. While working with Edward Zalta on a series of joint papers on abstract and possible objects, I became associated with his Metaphysics Research Lab . My interest in philosophy that makes use of the methods of logic and mathematics has led to my long membership in the Society for Exact Philosophy, which I am currently serving as President.

Publications

"Logical Constructions" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (1997) http://plato.stanford.edu/

"Metaphysics II (1945 to the present)" (1996) in Philosophy of Meaning, Knowledge and Value in the 20th Century, Routledge History of Philosophy, Vol. X, John Canfield ed.,  London: Routledge, 108-133.

"In Defense of the Contingently Nonconcrete" Philosophical Studies 84: 283-294 (with Edward N. Zalta)

"Naturalized Platonism versus Platonized Naturalism" (1995) The Journal of Philosophy XCII: 525-555. (with Edward N. Zalta)

"The Vienna Circle and German Speaking Culture Before and After World War II" (1995) Acta   Analytica (Slovenia) 14: 189-194.

"Russell's Logical Constructions" (1995) Studies in Dialectics of Nature (Beijing), Vol. 11   Supplementary Issue, 129-148. Reprinted in Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments Vol.3, A.D. Irvine ed., London and New York: Routledge, 1999, 128-150.

"Truth Makers for Modal Propositions" (1994) The Monist 77(2): 192-206.

"In Defense of the Simplest Quantified Modal Logic" (1994) Philosophical Perspectives, 8, Logic and Language, J.E. Tomberlin, ed. Atascadero: Ridgeview, 431-58. (with Edward N. Zalta)

"Why Russell Abandoned Russellian Propositions" (1993) in Russell and Analytic Philosophy,   A.D. Irvine and G.A.Wedeking, eds., Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1993, 193-209.

"The Logical Form of Descriptions" (1992) (Critical Notice of Stephen Neale's Descriptions),    Dialogue  XXXI: 677-83.

"A Note on the 'Carving up Content' Principle in Frege's Theory of Sense" (1992) Notre Dame Journal  of Formal Logic, 33: 126-35. Chinese translation by Wang Xuegang in Zhexue Yicong  [Philosophical Translations] (Beijing) 1993, 60-65.

"Is Lewis a Meinongian?" (1991) Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69: 438-53. (with Edward N. Zalta)

"Truth at a World is a Modality" (1991) Philosophia: Philosophical Quarterly of Israel, 20: 387- 94.

"Was the Axiom of Reducibility a Principle of Logic?" (1990) in Russell: The Journal of the Bertrand   Russell Archives 10, Winter 1990-91, 125-40. Reprinted in Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments Vol. 2, A.D. Irvine, ed., London and New York: Routledge, 1999, 250-264.

"Propositional Functions and Universals in Principia Mathematica" (1988) Australasian Journal of Philosophy 66: 447-60.

Philosophy and Biology (Canadian Journal of   Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 14) (1988) Mohan Matthen & Bernard Linsky, eds., Calgary: Univ. of Calgary Press. "Introduction" by the editors, 1-25.

"Factives, Blindspots and Some Paradoxes"(1986) Analysis  64: 10-15.

"General Terms as Designators" (1984) Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 65: 259-76.

"Phenomenal Qualities and the Identity of Indistinguishables" (1984) Synthese 59: 363-80.

"Is Transmutation Possible?"(1982) Philosophical Studies 41: 367-81.

"Putnam on the Meaning of Natural Kind Terms" (1977) Canadian Journal of Philosophy  7: 819-28.