Research topic: Peter Frederick Strawson

Peter Frederick Strawson 1919-, British philosopher, grad. Oxford. An influential spokesman for so-called ordinary language philosophy, he began teaching at Oxford in 1947 and from 1968 to 1987 was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics. In an early article, "On Referring" ( Mind, 1950), he disputed Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions, drawing a distinction between referring to an entity and asserting its existence. He also disputed, on linguistic grounds, the correspondence theory of truth, maintaining that a "fact" is not something that corresponds to a true statement... Read more