1. What were Russell’s reasons for adopting his theory of descriptions?
Were they any good?
2. Explain and assess Frege’s use of the notion of sense to analyze
indirect contexts.
3. ‘Benjamin Franklin might not have invented bifocal lenses. But
necessarily, the inventor of bifocal lenses invented bifocal lenses. So, by
Leibniz’s Law, Benjamin Franklin is not the inventor of bifocal lenses.’ Is
this a good argument?
4. Suppose that ‘◻A’ is to mean ‘from now on, A’. Describe a modal logic,
either axiomatically, or in terms of Kripke models, that might capture the
logic of this ‘◻’ operator. Justify your choices and suggest why S5 would
not be suitable.
5. EITHER (a) ‘To say something true, you have to say something. So an
uninterpreted theory cannot be true, whether or not it is consistent.’ Is
this a good argument?
OR (b) In what sense, if any, does a theory constitute a definition of its
primitive terms?
6. What should a correspondence theory make truth correspond to?
7. What is the logical form of action sentences?
8. ‘Meaning is compositional. Verification conditions are not. So meaning
cannot be constituted by verification conditions’. Discuss
9. Outline a deductive system of sentential logic. State the soundness and
completeness theorem for that system. Prove the completeness
theorem.
10. ‘Intuitionists complain that no justification can be given for treating the
law of excluded middle as a law of logic. But this is a poor complaint, for
no justification can be given of any of the supposed laws of logic.’ Is this
a good defence of classical logic?