Search Marsden awards 2008–2017

Recipient(s): Prof ED Mares | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Prof MJ Cresswell | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Dr AA Rini | PI | Massey University

Public Summary: Where does necessity come from? From the world? From language? Different answers reflect
different views of science, and these can yield different attitudes towards logic. Aristotle regarded
necessity as part of the world and developed a logic of necessity, a 'modal' logic, to articulate his
science. But the empiricism that swept through Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries demanded the overthrow of Aristotelian science. Contra Aristotle, the empiricists did not see necessity as part of the world. To the extent that empiricism allowed necessity at all it explained it as a matter of how language classifies things, or a matter of relations between ideas in the mind. In the mid 20th century, W.V.O. Quine at Harvard argued strongly that genuinely modal notions like necessity and possibility simply cannot emerge from the empiricists' view of logic. His response was to throw away modality. But we argue that to give up necessity is to give up logic, and clearly that is too high a price. This project explains what is required in order to provide an adequate foundation for logic, and shows in detail why you cannot asssume the truths of logic without assuming that necessity is part of the world.

Recipient(s): Prof PR Anstey | PI | University of Otago
Dr RW Serjeantson | PI | Trinity College, Cambridge

Public Summary: This project will test the hypothesis that the dominant (though not the only) terms of reference by which philosophy was understood in the 17th and 18th centuries was the distinction between Speculative and Experimental philosophy. It will argue that these terms of reference provide a far richer way of partitioning early modern philosophy, and especially the knowledge of nature (natural science) and moral philosophy, than the traditional distinction between Rationalism and Empiricism. This will mark a significant advance in our understanding of 17th- and 18th-century philosophy and will provide an enhanced framework within which to generate new historical knowledge.

Recipient(s): Associate Professor AA Rini | PI | Massey University Manawatu
Professor MJ Cresswell | PI | Victoria University of Wellington
Professor ED Mares | AI | Victoria University of Wellington

Public Summary: In the 20th century, philosophy became a discipline which brought what we now call STEM fields into Humanities. A key figure was Bertrand Russell, originally a mathematician, but who increasingly wanted to show that mathematical rigour can be applied to philosophical problems by means of the mathematical logic developed in the late 19th century. Although logic has been part of philosophy since Aristotle, Russell’s logic was resisted by those who felt it did not fit the questions philosophers were asking. What was needed was someone who could extend Russell’s logic to reflect the concerns of mainstream philosophers.

The answer came from New Zealand’s most famous philosopher, Arthur Norman Prior (1914-1969). What Prior did was extend Russell’s logic to bring tense – past/present/future – into logic. This not only helped the clarification of philosophical issues about time but also proved invaluable in modelling the successive states of a computer program.

Our project will illuminate the significance of Prior’s work in its philosophical context for the first time. Through examining published and unpublished work, correspondence, handwritten notes, and interviews with his surviving contemporaries, we will be better able to understand and appreciate the place of philosophy as a bridge between science and the humanities.