Ian Rumfitt is a British philosopher currently serving as a senior research fellow of

All Souls College, Oxford All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...

Life

He was educated at Victoria College, Jersey, at

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the f ...

, where he was also a junior research fellow, and at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. His graduate studies at Oxford were supervised by

Sir Michael Dummett Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett (27 June 1925 – 27 December 2011) was an English academic described as "among the most significant British philosophers of the last century and a leading campaigner for racial tolerance and equality." He wa ...

. He has taught at

Keele University Keele University, officially known as the University of Keele, is a public research university in Keele, approximately from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, England. Founded in 1949 as the University College of North Staffordshire, Keele ...

, the

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

University College, Oxford University College (in full The College of the Great Hall of the University of Oxford, colloquially referred to as "Univ") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It has a claim to being the oldest college of the univer ...

, where he served as a tutorial fellow from 1998 until 2005,

Birkbeck College, University of London , mottoeng = Advice comes over nightTranslation used by Birkbeck. , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £4.3 m (2014) , budget = £109 ...

, where he was professor of philosophy from 2005 until 2013, and the

University of Birmingham , mottoeng = Through efforts to heights , established = 1825 – Birmingham School of Medicine and Surgery1836 – Birmingham Royal School of Medicine and Surgery1843 – Queen's College1875 – Mason Science College1898 – Mason Univers ...

, where he was professor of philosophy from 2013 until 2016. He delivered the Nelson Lectures in Philosophy at the University of Michigan in 2004. He was founding co-director of the Centre for Logic and Language within the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Study, University of London. He was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2001. Since January 2016 he has been one of the editors of

Philosophers' Imprint ''Philosophers' Imprint'' is a refereed philosophy journal. The journal was launched by University of Michigan Philosophy professors Stephen Darwall (now at Yale University) and J. David Velleman (now at New York University and Johns Hopkins Uni ...

. His primary areas of research include the

philosophy of logic Philosophy of logic is the area of philosophy that studies the scope and nature of logic. It investigates the philosophical problems raised by logic, such as the presuppositions often implicitly at work in theories of logic and in their application ...

and the

philosophy of language In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...

. He also works in

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

model theory In mathematical logic, model theory is the study of the relationship between formal theories (a collection of sentences in a formal language expressing statements about a mathematical structure), and their models (those structures in which the s ...

, and the

philosophy of mathematics The philosophy of mathematics is the branch of philosophy that studies the assumptions, foundations, and implications of mathematics. It aims to understand the nature and methods of mathematics, and find out the place of mathematics in people's ...

, with an interest in the works of

Gottlob Frege Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic phil ...

. In July 2018 Rumfitt was elected a Fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars span ...

(FBA).

Works

Rumfitt's work in the philosophy of logic culminated in the publication of ''The Boundary Stones of Thought'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2015). This book presents a sustained defense of

classical logic Classical logic (or standard logic or Frege-Russell logic) is the intensively studied and most widely used class of deductive logic. Classical logic has had much influence on analytic philosophy. Characteristics Each logical system in this class ...

against such philosophers as

Michael Dummett Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett (27 June 1925 – 27 December 2011) was an English academic described as "among the most significant British philosophers of the last century and a leading campaigner for racial tolerance and equality." He wa ...

and

Crispin Wright Crispin James Garth Wright (; born 21 December 1942) is a British philosopher, who has written on neo-Fregean (neo-logicist) philosophy of mathematics, Wittgenstein's later philosophy, and on issues related to truth, realism, cognitivism, skep ...

. What makes Rumfitt's defense unusual is that he joins Dummett and Wright in rejecting the

principle of bivalence In logic, the semantic principle (or law) of bivalence states that every declarative sentence expressing a proposition (of a theory under inspection) has exactly one truth value, either true or false. A logic satisfying this principle is called ...

, the keystone of classical semantics. So Rumfitt presents and defends non-classical semantic theories for various problematical areas of discourse which nevertheless validate classical logic. The book also presents a solution to the

Sorites paradox The sorites paradox (; sometimes known as the paradox of the heap) is a paradox that results from vague predicates. A typical formulation involves a heap of sand, from which grains are removed individually. With the assumption that removing a sing ...

and a defense of

Kripke–Platek set theory The Kripke–Platek set theory (KP), pronounced , is an axiomatic set theory developed by Saul Kripke and Richard Platek. The theory can be thought of as roughly the predicative part of ZFC and is considerably weaker than it. Axioms In its fo ...

against the better-known

Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory In set theory, Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, named after mathematicians Ernst Zermelo and Abraham Fraenkel, is an axiomatic system that was proposed in the early twentieth century in order to formulate a theory of sets free of paradoxes such as ...

. Rumfitt's earlier work in logic includes a 'bilateral' formalization of classical logic which avoids problems that have been held to attend its familiar 'unilateral' formalization. In the philosophy of language, he is also known for his work on plural terms, on conditionals, on ascriptions of know how, on indirect speech reports, and for his views on the relationship between truth-conditional theories of meaning in the style of Donald Davidson and the intention-based theories championed by

Paul Grice Herbert Paul Grice (13 March 1913 – 28 August 1988), usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H. Paul Grice, or Paul Grice, was a British philosopher of language. He is best known for his theory of implicature and the cooperative prin ...

. *''The Boundary Stones Of Thought: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language'', (2015)* *"Truth and Meaning", ''Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society'' Supplementary Volumes (2014)* *"Old Adams Buried", ''Analytic Philosophy'' (2013)* *"Plural terms: another variety of reference?" in J. L. Bermudez (ed.) ''Thought, Reference and Experience: Themes from the Philosophy of Gareth Evans'', (OUP, 2005) *"Savoir Faire", ''The Journal of Philosophy'' (2003)* *"'Yes' and 'No'", ''Mind'' (2000)* *"Truth Conditions and Communication", ''Mind'' (1995)* *"Content and Context: The Paratactic Theory Revisited and Revised", ''Mind'' (1993)*

References

External links

"Ian Rumfitt"
''Philosophy Papers'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Rumfitt, Ian 21st-century British philosophers Philosophers of language Metaphysicians Academics of Keele University Princeton University alumni People educated at Victoria College, Jersey Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford University of Michigan faculty Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford Fellows of University College, Oxford 1964 births Living people Fellows of the British Academy