Ruth Barcan Marcus Quotes
Ruth Barcan Marcus was an American philosopher and logician and one of the principal architects of twentieth-century quantified modal logic. Her doctoral thesis, written in 1946, contained the formal system now known as the Barcan formula and laid the foundation for the philosophical interpretation of modal logic that would later be developed by Kripke, Lewis, and others. The quotes below are attributed to Ruth Barcan Marcus, organized by topic.
Ruth Barcan Marcus on Truth
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Attributed to Ruth Barcan Marcus:
“Modal logic must be taken seriously, not as a mere device.”
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Attributed to Ruth Barcan Marcus:
“Names are tags for objects; reference is fixed by use.”
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Attributed to Ruth Barcan Marcus:
“Possible worlds semantics requires modal commitment.”
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Attributed to Ruth Barcan Marcus:
“Logic is the most general framework for any rational thought.”
Ruth Barcan Marcus on Virtue
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Attributed to Ruth Barcan Marcus:
“Moral conflicts are real, even if no consistent set of rules can resolve them.”