Ruth Barcan Marcus
Encyclopedia
Ruth Barcan Marcus is the American philosopher and logician after whom the Barcan formula
is named. She is a pioneering figure in the quantification of modal logic
and the theory of direct reference
. She has written seminal papers on identity, essentialism, possibilia, belief, moral conflict as well as some critical historical studies.
to first and second order; a major accomplishment in the development of 20th century logic. Lewis gives Marcus special recognition in his "Notes on the Logic of Intension", originally printed in Structure, Method, and Meaning: Essays in Honor of Henry M. Sheffer (New York, 1951). Here Lewis recognizes Barcan Marcus as the first logician to extend propositional logic as a higher order intensional logic.
according to which proper names are what Marcus termed mere "tags". ("Modalities and Intentional Languages" (Synthese, 1961)(and elsewhere). These "tags" are used to refer to an object (the bearer of the name). The meaning of the name is regarded as exhausted by this referential function. This view contrasts for example with late Bertrand Russell
description theory of proper names as well as John Searle
's cluster description theory of names which prevailed at the time. This view of proper names (presented in 1962 with Quine as commentator) has been identified by Quentin Smith
with the theory of reference given in Saul Kripke
's Naming and Necessity
. However, in a recent laudatio to Ruth Barcan Marcus, Professor Timothy Williamson says: "One of the ideas in them that resonates most with current philosophy of language is that of proper names as mere tags, without descriptive content. This is not Kripke's idea of names as rigid designators, designating the same object with respect to all relevant worlds, for ‘rigidified’ definite descriptions are rigid designators but still have descriptive content. Rather, it is the idea, later developed by David Kaplan and others, that proper names are directly referential, in the sense that they contribute only their bearer to the propositions expressed by sentences in which they occur."
later formally proved this result.
Dewey Lecture, APA, Dec 2009
Barcan formula
In quantified modal logic, the Barcan formula and the converse Barcan formula syntactically state principles or interchange between quantifiers and modalities; semantically state a relation between domains of possible worlds...
is named. She is a pioneering figure in the quantification of modal logic
Modal logic
Modal logic is a type of formal logic that extends classical propositional and predicate logic to include operators expressing modality. Modals — words that express modalities — qualify a statement. For example, the statement "John is happy" might be qualified by saying that John is...
and the theory of direct reference
Direct reference theory
A direct reference theory is a theory of meaning that claims that the meaning of an expression lies in what it points out in the world. It stands in contrast to mediated reference theories.- John Stuart Mill :...
. She has written seminal papers on identity, essentialism, possibilia, belief, moral conflict as well as some critical historical studies.
Education
- B.A., New York UniversityNew York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
(1941) - M.A., Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
(1942) - Ph.D., Yale University (1946)
Academic appointments
- Professor of philosophy and founding department chair, University of Illinois at ChicagoUniversity of Illinois at ChicagoThe University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...
(1962–1970) - Professor of philosophy, Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern UniversityNorthwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
(1970–1973) - Halleck professor of philosophy, Yale University (1973–1991)
- Professor emerita and senior research scholar, Yale University 1992-); Visiting distinguished professor, University of California, IrvineUniversity of California, IrvineThe University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
(one quarter each year, 1992–97)
Professional offices and service (partial list)
- Chair of the Board of OfficerExecutive officerAn executive officer is generally a person responsible for running an organization, although the exact nature of the role varies depending on the organization.-Administrative law:...
s, American Philosophical AssociationAmerican Philosophical AssociationThe American Philosophical Association is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarly activity in philosophy, to facilitate the professional work...
(1976–83) - President, Association for Symbolic LogicAssociation for Symbolic LogicThe Association for Symbolic Logic is an international organization of specialists in mathematical logic and philosophical logic—the largest such organization in the world. The ASL was founded in 1936, a crucial year in the development of modern logic, and its first president was Alonzo Church...
(1983–86) - President, International Institut de Philosophie (1989–92) and Presidente Honoraire (continuing)
- Served on various visoring committees for programs and departments
- Serves on various editorial boards
Quantified Modal Logic
Ruth Barcan Marcus' earliest published work was the publication of the first axiomatic study of modal logic with quantifiers. These three ground-breaking articles were "A Functional Calculus of First Order Based on Strict Implication", Journal of Symbolic Logic (JSL, 1946), "The Deduction Theorem in a Functional Calculus of First Order Based on Strict Implication" (JSL, 1946), "The Identity of Individuals in a Strict Functional Calculus of Second Order", (JSL, 1947). The three articles are published under Marcus' maiden name: Ruth C. Barcan. The widely discussed Barcan Formula is introduced as an axiom in QML. The papers of 1946 and 1947, were the first systems of quantified modal logic, which extended some propositional modal systems of Clarence Irving LewisClarence Irving Lewis
Clarence Irving Lewis , usually cited as C. I. Lewis, was an American academic philosopher and the founder of conceptual pragmatism. First a noted logician, he later branched into epistemology, and during the last 20 years of his life, he wrote much on ethics.-Early years:Lewis was born in...
to first and second order; a major accomplishment in the development of 20th century logic. Lewis gives Marcus special recognition in his "Notes on the Logic of Intension", originally printed in Structure, Method, and Meaning: Essays in Honor of Henry M. Sheffer (New York, 1951). Here Lewis recognizes Barcan Marcus as the first logician to extend propositional logic as a higher order intensional logic.
Direct Reference
Ruth Barcan Marcus proposed the view in the philosophy of languagePhilosophy of language
Philosophy of language is the reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language. As a topic, the philosophy of language for analytic philosophers is concerned with four central problems: the nature of meaning, language use, language cognition, and the relationship between language...
according to which proper names are what Marcus termed mere "tags". ("Modalities and Intentional Languages" (Synthese, 1961)(and elsewhere). These "tags" are used to refer to an object (the bearer of the name). The meaning of the name is regarded as exhausted by this referential function. This view contrasts for example with late Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
description theory of proper names as well as John Searle
John Searle
John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher and currently the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.-Biography:...
's cluster description theory of names which prevailed at the time. This view of proper names (presented in 1962 with Quine as commentator) has been identified by Quentin Smith
Quentin Smith
Quentin Persifor Smith is an American contemporary philosopher, scholar and professor of philosophy at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He has worked in the philosophy of time, philosophy of language, philosophy of physics and philosophy of religion...
with the theory of reference given in Saul Kripke
Saul Kripke
Saul Aaron Kripke is an American philosopher and logician. He is a professor emeritus at Princeton and teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center...
's Naming and Necessity
Naming and Necessity
Naming and Necessity is a book by the philosopher Saul Kripke that was first published in 1980 and deals with the debates of proper nouns in the philosophy of language. The book is based on a transcript of three lectures given at Princeton University in 1970...
. However, in a recent laudatio to Ruth Barcan Marcus, Professor Timothy Williamson says: "One of the ideas in them that resonates most with current philosophy of language is that of proper names as mere tags, without descriptive content. This is not Kripke's idea of names as rigid designators, designating the same object with respect to all relevant worlds, for ‘rigidified’ definite descriptions are rigid designators but still have descriptive content. Rather, it is the idea, later developed by David Kaplan and others, that proper names are directly referential, in the sense that they contribute only their bearer to the propositions expressed by sentences in which they occur."
Necessity of Identity
Marcus formally proved the necessity of identity in 1946 and informally argued for it in 1961 and thereafter thus rejecting the possibility of contingent identity. See Journal of Symbolic Logic, (1947) 12: pp 12–15Semantics of QML
Marcus prefers an interpretation where the domain of the interpretation comprises individual entities in the actual world. She also suggests that for some uses an alternative substitutional semantics is warranted (See below). She provides arguments against possibilia. See "Dispensing with Possibilia" (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Association, 1975–76); "Possibilia and Possible Worlds" (Grazer Philosophische Studien, 1985–86). TMoral Conflict
Marcus defines a consistent set of moral principles as one in which there is some "possible world " in which they are all obeyable. That they may conflict in the actual world is not a mark of inconsistency. As in the case of necessity of identity, there was a resistance to this interpretation of moral conflict. Her argument counts against a widely received view that systems of moral rules are inevitably inconsistent.Belief
It is proposed that believing is a relationship of an agent to a possible state of affairs under specified internal and external circumstances. Assenting to a quoted sentence (the disquotation account of belief) is only one behavioral marker of believing. Betting behavior is another. The wholly language centered account of belief (e.g. Davidson) is rejected. Where an agent behaves as if an impossibility obtained Marcus proposes that under those circumstances the agent, on the disclosure of the impossibility should say that she only claimed to believe an impossibility. In much the same way, when a mathematician discovers that one of his conjectures is false, and since if it is mathematically false it is impossible, he would say he only claimed to believe it. Odd as this proposal is, it is analogous to the widely accepted principle about knowing: if we claim to know P, and P turns out false, we do not say we used to know it, we say we were mistaken in so claiming.Essentialism
Aristotelian Essentialism is concerned with properties which Marcus defines in the context of a modal framework. One proposal is that a property is essential if something has it, not everything has it, if something has it then it has it necessarily, and it is not wholly individuating e.g. a natural kind property. It is otherwise claimed by Quine and others that modal logic or semantics is committed to essentialist truths. Marcus argues informally that there are interpretations of some modal systems in which all essentialist claims are false. Terence ParsonsTerence Parsons
Terence Parsons is an American contemporary philosopher of the analytic tradition. Parsons is also a Professor at UCLA in its Department of Philosophy....
later formally proved this result.
Substitutional Quantification
An alternative to Tarskian (model theoretic) semantics is proposed for some uses where "the truth conditions for quantified formuli are given purely in terms of truth with no appeal to domains of interpretation". (Later called by others "truth value semantics".) She shows that the claim that such a semantics leads to contradictions is false. Such a semantics may be of interest for mathematics e.g. Hartry Field, or for fictional discourse. Objectual quantification is required for interpretation of identity and other metaphysical categories.Awards and recognitions
- Guggenheim Fellow (1952)
- National Science FoundationNational Science FoundationThe National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
Fellow (1963) - Rockefeller Foundation Residency (BellagioBellagioBellagio is a comune in the Province of Como in the Italian region Lombardy, located on Lake Como. It has long been famous for its setting at the intersection of the three branches of the Y-shaped lake, which is also known as Lario....
, 1973 and 1990) - Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (1979)
- University of EdinburghUniversity of EdinburghThe University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...
Fellow, Humanities Institute (1983) - Wolfson CollegeWolfson College, OxfordWolfson College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Located in north Oxford along the River Cherwell, Wolfson is an all-graduate college with over sixty governing body fellows, in addition to both research and junior research fellows. It caters to a wide range of...
of Oxford University, Visiting FellowVisiting fellowA visiting fellow is an academic, often a senior academic, who is undertaking research at a different institution than his or her main institution for a limited period of time, often but not necessarily at a foreign institution. A visiting fellow can be paid or unpaid; sometimes the salary is paid...
(1985 and 1986) - Clare Hall of Cambridge University, Visiting Fellow (1988)
- National Humanities Center, Mellon Fellow (1992–93)
- Fellow, American Academy of Arts and SciencesAmerican Academy of Arts and SciencesThe American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...
(1977--) - Medal of the Collège de FranceCollège de FranceThe Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
(1986) - Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, University of Illinois at ChicagoUniversity of Illinois at ChicagoThe University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...
(1995) - Wilbur Cross Medal, Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
(2000) - Lauener Prize in Analytic Philosophy, Lauener Foundation, 2007-08.
- Permanent Member of the Common Room, Clare Hall (1986-)
- Phi Beta Kappa (1941)
- Membre, Institut International de Philosophie, Presidente 1989-92, President Honoraire 1992-
- Quinn Prize, American Philosophical AssociationAmerican Philosophical AssociationThe American Philosophical Association is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarly activity in philosophy, to facilitate the professional work...
2007, for service to the profession
Dewey Lecture, APA, Dec 2009
Books (written or edited)
- The Logical Enterprise, ed. with A. AndersonAlan Ross AndersonAlan Ross Anderson was an American logician and professor of philosophy at Yale University and the University of Pittsburgh....
, R. Martin, Yale, 1995 - Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of SciencePhilosophy of scienceThe philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
, VII, eds. R. Barcan Marcus et al., North Holland, 1986 - Modalities: Philosophical Essays, Oxford University PressOxford University PressOxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...
, 1993. Paperback; 1995 (contains many of Marcus's important papers)