Benson Mates (May 19, 1919 in
Portland, Oregon
Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...
– May 14, 2009 in
Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...
) was an
American philosopher
This is a list of American philosophers; of philosophers who are either from, or spent many productive years of their lives in the United States.
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, noted for his work in
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises ...
, the
history of philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...
, and
skepticism
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the pe ...
. Mates studied philosophy and mathematics at the
University of Oregon
The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...
,
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
, and the
University of California at Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...
. Some of his teachers included
J. Barkley Rosser
John Barkley Rosser Sr. (December 6, 1907 – September 5, 1989) was an American logician, a student of Alonzo Church, and known for his part in the Church–Rosser theorem, in lambda calculus. He also developed what is now called the "Rosser siev ...
,
Harold Cherniss
Harold Fredrik Cherniss (11 March 1904 – 18 June 1987) was an American classicist and historian of ancient philosophy. While at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he was said to be "the country's foremost expert on Plato and Aristot ...
, and
Alfred Tarski
Alfred Tarski (, born Alfred Teitelbaum;School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews ''School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews''. January 14, 1901 – October 26, 1983) was a Polish-American logician a ...
. From 1948 until his retirement in 1989, he was a professor of philosophy at Berkeley. He remained Professor Emeritus of philosophy at University of California at Berkeley until his death.
Mates's 1948 dissertation, "On the Logic of the Old Stoa", formed the basis for his 1953 book ''Stoic Logic'', of which
Peter Geach
Peter Thomas Geach (29 March 1916 – 21 December 2013) was a British philosopher who was Professor of Logic at the University of Leeds. His areas of interest were philosophical logic, ethics, history of philosophy, philosophy of religion and t ...
wrote, "Stoic logic is a difficult subject
..Dr. Mates's monograph is a strenuous and successful effort to overcome these difficulties." Mates's 1965 book, ''Elementary Logic'', remains a widely used introductory textbook in
symbolic logic
Mathematical logic is the study of formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory. Research in mathematical logic commonly addresses the mathematical properties of formal ...
. His 1986 study of
Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathema ...
is also highly regarded.
In his own philosophical work, Mates defends a stance akin to
Pyrrhonian skepticism
Pyrrhonism is a school of philosophical skepticism founded by Pyrrho in the fourth century BCE. It is best known through the surviving works of Sextus Empiricus, writing in the late second century or early third century CE.
History
Pyrrho of E ...
. He argues that the major problems of philosophy (such as the
liar paradox
In philosophy and logic, the classical liar paradox or liar's paradox or antinomy of the liar is the statement of a liar that they are lying: for instance, declaring that "I am lying". If the liar is indeed lying, then the liar is telling the truth ...
, the existence of an external world, and
free will
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to actio ...
) are intelligible and non-trivial yet utterly defy solution. Unlike the classical Pyrrhonists, however, Mates finds that skeptical arguments lead to unsatisfactory perplexity rather than
ataraxia
''Ataraxia'' (Greek: ἀταραξία, from ("a-", negation) and ''tarachē'' "disturbance, trouble"; hence, "unperturbedness", generally translated as "imperturbability", "equanimity", or "tranquility") is a Greek term first used in Ancient Gre ...
.
[''Ibid''., p. 158.]
Works
* ''Stoic Logic'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953 (second revised edition 1961).
* ''Elementary Logic'', 1965, second edition New York: Oxford University Press, 1972.
* ''Skeptical Essays'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
* ''The Philosophy of Leibniz. Metaphysics and Language'', New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
* ''The Skeptic Way: Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism'', Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
See also
*
American philosophy
American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevert ...
*
List of American philosophers
This is a list of American philosophers; of philosophers who are either from, or spent many productive years of their lives in the United States.
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*
Karl W. Aschenbrenner
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mates, Benson
1919 births
2009 deaths
University of Oregon alumni
Cornell University alumni
University of California, Berkeley alumni
University of California, Berkeley faculty
Philosophers from California
Philosophers from Oregon
American logicians