English and many other languages contain a distinction between the singular (e.g. ‘John’, ‘a man’) and the plural (e.g. ‘Mary and Jane’, ‘two women’). The course offers an overview of the analysis of plurals in philosophy, logic, and semantics. In the course of doing so, we are led to discuss a variety of questions in the philosophies of logic, language, and mathematics, as well as metaphysics, for example:
- What is the relation between logic and metaphysics? Is logic in some important sense prior to metaphysics or are the two disciplines on a par?
- Are there sets, and if so, how should they be understood?
- Are there composite objects, and if so, how should they be understood?
- Is it possible to formulate absolutely general thoughts or statements, that is, thoughts or statements concerned with absolutely everything there is?
- Is there a “determinate totality” of absolutely all sets or objects whatsoever?
The course will be structured around a book in progress, namely:
Florio and Linnebo, The Many and the One: A Philosophical Study, under contract with Oxford University Press
This book manuscript will be supplemented with a variety of other relevant Readings.
"Please see "Reading list in detail" for more detailed information".