Michael Kremer

Michael Kremer is Professor of Philosophy. He received his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1986. Prior to joining the University of Chicago department he taught at the University of Notre Dame for sixteen years. His chief research interests are in logic, philosophy of language, and early analytic philosophy. He also has a strong interest in issues concerning the relationship between reason and religious faith.

CV (RTF)


Contact

office: Stuart Hall, Room 224
office phone: 773/834-9884
email: kremer@uchicago.edu

Selected Publications

  • The Cardinal Problem of Philosophy
    in Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honour of Cora Diamond Ed. Alice Crary
    Link
  • Logicist Responses to Kant: (Early) Russell and (Early) Frege, forthcoming in Philosophical Topics (PDF)
  • Sense and Meaning: The Origins and Development of the Distinction, forthcoming in the Cambridge Companion to Frege, T. Ricketts and M. Potter, eds. (PDF)
  • To What Extent is Solipsism a Truth?, in Post-Analytic Tractatus, B. Stocker, ed., 2004 (PDF)
  • How Not to Argue for Incompatibilism, Erkenntnis 60 (2004), 1-26. (Link)
  • 'If' is Unambiguous
    Noûs, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), pp. 199-217 (Link)
  • The Multiplicity of General Propositions
    Noûs, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), pp. 409-426 (Link)
  • Wilson on Kripke's Wittgenstein
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 60, No. 3 (May, 2000), pp. 571-584 (Link)
  • Logic and Meaning: The Philosophical Significance of the Sequent Calculus
    Mind, New Series, Vol. 97, No. 385 (Jan., 1988), pp. 50-72 (Link)
  • Set-theoretic realism and arithmetic
    Philosophical Studies, Volume 64, Number 3 / December, 1991 (Link)
  • Frege's theory of number and the distinction between function and object, Philosophical Studies, Volume 47, Number 3 / May, 1985 (Link)
  • Logic and Language in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
    Philosophical Review 2002 111(2):327-330 (Link)
  • Soames on Russell’s logic: a reply
    Philosophical Studies (Link)
  • Judgment and Truth in Frege
    Journal of the History of Philosophy - Volume 38, Number 4, October 2000, pp. 549-581 (Link)
  • Some Supervaluation-based Consequence Relations
    Journal of Philosophical Logic Volume 32, Number 3 / June, 2003 (Link)
  • Marti on Descriptions in Carnap’s S2
    Journal of Philosophical Logic, Volume 26, Number 6, December 1997 , pp. 629-634(6) (Link)
  • Mathematics and Meaning in the Tractatus, Philosophical Investigations 25 (2002), 272-303.Link
  • The Purpose of Tractarian Nonsense, Noûs 35 (2001), 3973. Link
  • Judgment and Truth in Frege, Journal of the History of Philosophy 38 (2000), 549-581. Link
  • The Argument of 'On Denoting', Philosophical Review 103 (1994), pp. 249-297. Link
  • Kripke and the Logic of Truth, Journal of Philosophical Logic 17 (1988), pp. 225-278. Link

Please see my CV (RTF) for a complete list of publications.

Selected Reviews by Michael Kremer

  • Author(s) of Review: Michael Kremer
    Review of Scott Soames, Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century (2 volumes), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2005) Link
  • Author(s) of Review: Michael Kremer
    Reviewed Work(s): Signs of Sense: Reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus by Eli Friedlander
    The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 52, No. 209 (Oct., 2002), pp. 652-654 (Link)
  • Author(s) of Review: Michael Kremer
    Reviewed Work(s): Logic and Language in Wittgenstein's "Tractatus" by Ian Proops
    The Philosophical Review, Vol. 111, No. 2 (Apr., 2002), pp. 327-330 (Link)
  • Author(s) of Review: Michael Kremer
    Review of Gottlob Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic, Dale Jacquette (tr.), Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2008) Link

Recent Courses

20100/30000. Elementary Logic

Open to college and grad students. Course not for field credit. An introduction to the techniques of modern logic. These include the representation of arguments in symbolic notation, and the systematic manipulation of these representations in order to show the validity of arguments. If time permits there will be discussion of important early meta-theorems for these systems, including the Completeness Theorem for the predicate calculus, and the First Gödel Incompleteness Theorem. No prerequisites. Autumn 2004.

23011. Faith and Reason

Open to college students. Recently, a number of best-selling books, by professional philosophers like Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), scientists like Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), and popular writers like Sam Harris (The End of Faith) have argued that modern science shows that religious faith is fundamentally irrational. This argument has not gone unanswered (for example by Francis Collins in The Language of God and by Pope Benedict XVI, in his Regensburg lecture). This course will examine the relationship between religious faith and reason. We will discuss four positions: (1) reason and faith are in conflict, and it is best to abandon science in favor of faith (religious fundamentalism); (2) reason and faith are in conflict, and it is best to abandon faith in favor of science (scientific atheism); (3) reason and faith do not make cognitive contact, and one can freely choose faith without conflict with reason ("non-overlapping magisteria," fideism); (4) reason and faith do make cognitive contact but are mutually supporting, not in conflict (harmonious compatibilism). We will focus on contemporary debates but also consider their historical roots (for example, Aquinas, Leibniz, Voltaire, Hume, William James). Among the topics to be discussed will be the nature of reason and faith, arguments for and against the existence of God, the problem of evil, evolution and intelligent design, cosmology and the origin of the universe, the rationality of belief in miracles and the supernatural, and evolutionary and neuroscientific explanations of religious belief and religious experience. Spring 2008.

24600/34600. Analytic Philosophy: Frege to Late 20th Century

Open to college and grad students. Philosophy in the English language in the twentieth century has been dominated by questions of the "analysis of language," meaning, and logic. We survey the history of the analytic tradition, focusing as much on questions of philosophical method, fundamental presuppositions, and the nature of philosophical activity as on the specific philosophical issues that we discuss. Spring 2003.

24601/34601. Analytic Philosophy

Open to college and grad students. Philosophy in the English language in the 20th century has been dominated by questions of the "analysis of language," meaning, and logic. We will survey the history of the analytic tradition, focusing as much on questions of philosophical method, fundamental presuppositions, and the nature of philosophical activity as on the specific philosophical issues which we will discuss. We will begin with the historical background at the beginning of the 20th century: idealism in Britain (Bradley) and the development of new logical techniques (Frege). We will look at the use of these new logical techniques by Moore and Russell to argue against idealism, and their development of a classical paradigm of "analysis." We will consider the problematic place of Wittgenstein's early work in relation to this tradition, and its appropriation by the logical positivists (Carnap, Schlick). We will then examine the unraveling of this tradition in the diverse criticisms mounted by ordinary language philosophy (Ryle, Austin), later Wittgenstein, and American neo-positivist/neo-pragmatist philosophers (Quine, Sellars, Putnam, Davidson), ending with the question of the future of that tradition as it stands at what appears to be a crucial juncture in its history. Spring 2006.

29000/39700. Intermediate Logic-II: Incompleteness.

(=CHSS 34000, HIPS 20501). We study some more advanced topics in logic, building on Intermediate Logic I. Possible topics include: Gödel's incompleteness theorems; higher-order logics; Craig's interpolation theorem and Beth's definability theorem; natural deduction and normal form theorems; sequent calculus and cut-elimination theorems. Specific topics will be determined by student interest. Spring 2004.

29400/39600. Intermediate Logic - I

Open to college and grad students. This is a course in the science of logic. It presupposes a knowledge of the use of truth-functions and quantifiers as tools: such as the art of logic. Our principal task in this course is to study these tools in a systematic way. We cover the central theorems about first-order logic with identity: completeness, compactness, and Löwenheim-Skolem theorems. We introduce any necessary set-theoretic and mathematical apparatus as required. We also study the topic of definition in more detail than is customary in such courses, culminating with a proof of Beth's theorem on implicit and explicit definitions. Winter 2003.

29400/39600. Intermediate Logic - I

Open to college and grad students. Prerequisites: Permission of instructor.. _This is a course in the science of logic. It presupposes a knowledge of the use of truth-functions and quantifiers as tools: such as the art of logic. Our principal task in this course is to study these tools in a systematic way. We cover the central theorems about first-order logic with identity: completeness, compactness, and Löwenheim-Skolem theorems. We introduce any necessary set-theoretic and mathematical apparatus as required. We also study the topic of definition in more detail than is customary in such courses, culminating with a proof of Beth's theorem on implicit and explicit definitions. Spring 2005, Winter 2006, Winter 2007, Winter 2008.

29901. Senior Seminar I

Open to college students. Prerequisites: PQ: Consent of director of undergraduate studies. . _All students writing a B.A. Essay in the Philosophy Department must register for Philosophy 29901 ("Senior Seminar I") and Philosophy 29902 ("Senior Seminar II"). Philosophy 29901 is offered in both Autumn and Winter, and Philosophy 29902 is offered in both Winter and Spring. However: B.A. writers must EITHER register for Phil 29901 in the Autumn and Philosophy 29902 in the Winter, OR register for Phil 29901 in the Winter and Philosophy 29902 in the Spring. Students may not register for both courses in the Winter.
*Special note: B.A. writers must attend all meetings of the work-in-progress workshop, which meets periodically over all three quarters. Contact the director of undergraduate studies for details. Autumn 2005, Winter 2006, Autumn 2006, Winter 2007,

29902. Senior Seminar II

Open to college students. Prerequisites: PQ: Consent of director of undergraduate studies.. _All students writing a B.A. Essay in the Philosophy Department must register for Philosophy 29901 ("Senior Seminar I") and Philosophy 29902 ("Senior Seminar II"). Philosophy 29901 is offered in both Autumn and Winter, and Philosophy 29902 is offered in both Winter and Spring. However: B.A. writers must EITHER register for Phil 29901 in the Autumn and Philosophy 29902 in the Winter, OR register for Phil 29901 in the Winter and Philosophy 29902 in the Spring. Students may not register for both courses in the Winter.
*Special note: B.A. writers must attend all meetings of the work-in-progress workshop, which meets periodically over all three quarters. Contact the director of undergraduate studies for details. Winter 2006, Spring 2006, Winter 2007. Spring 2007.

52500. Truth and Paradox

Open to grad students. Prerequisites: Intermediate Logic (29400/39600) or equivalent.. _Since Epimenides the Cretan asserted that all Cretans are liars, the semantic paradoxes have been a persistent problem for philosophical reflection on truth. Theories of truth and the paradoxes were brought to a new level of logical sophistication with Kripke's "Outline of a Theory of Truth" (1975). Kripke's work has engendered a rapid growth of competing approaches to the problem of paradox. In this course we will study several such approaches. We begin with Tarski's classic papers on truth. We then move on to a careful study of Kripke's "fixed point" approach, and some of its descendants, particularly Gupta and Belnap's "revision" theory of truth and perhaps McGee's "vagueness" approach. The course presupposes only the level of logical sophistication acquired in Intermediate Logic (29400/39600). Additional logical material required to understand the theories to be presented (e.g. the theory of transfinite ordinal numbers) will be introduced as needed. Spring 2003.

53000. Frege

Open to grad students. Gottlob Frege was a mathematician by training, whose philosophical work was not widely known during his lifetime. His main philosophical project, the logicist reduction of arithmetic, collapsed at the height of his career with the discovery of Russell's paradox. Yet Michael Dummett credits Frege with a revolution in philosophy comparable to Descartes's. His innovations in logic and the philosophy of language have had a lasting influence on analytic philosophy, shaping thinkers as diverse as Russell, Wittgstein, Carnap, and Ryle. Recent years have seen attempts to revive his logicist project, fueled by careful attention to the details of his technical achievements in logic. We will study closely Frege's major writings: his innovative logic (Begriffsschrift, 1879); his logicist manifesto (Foundations of Arithmetic, 1884); his mature philosophy of logic and language ("Function and Concept," "On Sense and Meaning," "On Concept and Object," 1891-2); the final form of his logicist project (Basic Laws of Arithmetic, 1893, 1903); and his post-paradox writings (Logical Investigations, 1918-26) - supplemented from minor published works, correspondence, and unpublished writings. While major interpretations of Frege's thought will be discussed, the emphasis will remain on Frege's writings throughout. Time permitting, there may be a brief discussion of Frege's influence on the development of analytic philosophy.
*Special note: The requirement for the course will be a term paper. Interpretative and critical essays, as well as essays developing some aspect of Frege's thought in relation to contemporary issues, will be accepted. Spring 2007.

53900. Workshop: Wittgenstein

Open to grad students. Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. This Workshop meets over three quarters. Co-taught with Jim Conant. Autumn 2006, Winter 2005.