Richard Kimberly Heck attended Duke University as an undergraduate, graduating summa cum laude , with distinction, with a B.S. in Mathematics. A Marshall Scholar, they then studied at Oxford University for two years, receiving a B.Phil. in philosophy. Heck received a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991 and taught at Harvard University from 1991-2005.
| HECK, RICHARD G. "CONSISTENCY AND THE THEORY OF TRUTH." The Review of Symbolic Logic, vol. 8, no. 03, 2015, pp. 424-466. |
| Heck, Richard G. "In Defense of Formal Relationism." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, vol. 3, no. 3, 2014, pp. 243-250. |
| Heck, Richard G. "Intuition and the Substitution Argument." Analytic Philosophy, vol. 55, no. 1, 2014, pp. 1-30. |
| Heck, R. G. "Predicative Frege Arithmetic and 'Everyday' Mathematics." Philosophia Mathematica, vol. 22, no. 3, 2014, pp. 279-307. |
| Heck, Richard G. "A Liar Paradox." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, vol. 1, no. 1, 2012, pp. 36-40. |
| Heck, Richard G. "More on ‘A Liar Paradox’." Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, vol. 1, no. 4, 2012, pp. 270-280. |
| Heck, R. G. "Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett, 1925-2011." Philosophia Mathematica, vol. 21, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1-8. |
| Heck, Richard G. "Ramified Frege Arithmetic." J Philos Logic, vol. 40, no. 6, 2010, pp. 715-735. |
| Heck, Richard G. "MACFARLANE ON RELATIVE TRUTH." Philosophical Issues, vol. 16, no. 1, 2006, pp. 88-100. |
| Heck, R. G. "Self-reference and the Languages of Arithmetic ." Philosophia Mathematica, vol. 15, no. 1, 2006, pp. 1-29. |
| Heck, Richard G. "Julius Caesar and Basic Law V." Dialectica, vol. 59, no. 2, 2005, pp. 161-178. |
| Heck, Richard G. "TRUTH AND DISQUOTATION." Synthese, vol. 142, no. 3, 2005, pp. 317-352. |
Professor Heck has worked extensively on various aspects of Frege's philosophy. Their first project concerned the question what, precisely, Frege proves in the little-read formal sections of Grundgesetze der Arithmetik. Heck has also written extensively on Frege's philosophy of logic, in particular on the question how we should understand Part I of Grundgesetze, in which. The book Reading Frege's Grundgesetze covers these topics. More recently, Heck has worked on how Frege's characteristic semantic doctrines develop. They have has written several papers on this subject with Robert May, of the University of California at Davis.
Professor Heck has also worked on technical problems connected to so-called neo-Fregean foundations for arithmetic. In 1996, Heck published a proof of the consistency of the predicative fragment of Frege's formal theory. That paper inspired a good deal of additional research by several people, which is summarized in John Burgess's Fixing Frege. In addition, Heck has also recently closed one of the few outstanding mathematical questions by proving that Frege's proofs of the axioms of arithmetic go through, with some changes, in ramified second-order logic plus a single axiom known as HP, induction being the sole exception. The book Frege's Theorem collects many of Heck's papers on these topics.
Professor Heck's work in philosophy of language proceeds along two lines. Their earliest papers in the area were concerned with defending Frege's claim that proper names and other referring expressions have "sense" as well as "reference". More recently, Heck has been arguing that we cannot properly understand human linguistic behavior, even from a "philosophical" point of view, without attributing semantic knowledge to speakers. Professor Heck also dabbles in philosophy of mind. They have published two papers on the question whether perceptual content is 'non-conceptual' and have also worked on the question whether the contents of beliefs are intensional. In philosophy of logic, Heck has worked primarily on truth. A book on that topic is in preparation.
Most recently, however, Professor Heck has been working on a range of issues concerning gender and sexuality. Concerning the former, Heck is primarily interested in understanding the notion of gender identity, that is, the subjective experience of oneself as a gendered person. Concerning the latter, Heck is working toward a book on pornography, with special attention to the transformative potential of queer and feminist pornography.
Books
Reading Frege's Grundgesetze (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)
Reviews:
Frege's Theorem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)
Reviews:
Language, Thought, and Logic: Essays in Honour of Michael Dummett (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), editor
Reviews:
Forthcoming
"The Basic Laws of Cardinal Number", forthcoming in P. Ebert and M. Rossberg, eds., A Companion to Frege's Grundgesetze.
"Formal Arithmetic Before Grundgesetze", forthcoming in P. Ebert and M. Rossberg, eds., A Companion to Frege's Grundgesetze.
"The Frontloading Argument", Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies.
"Introduction", in Crispin Wright, The Riddle of Vagueness, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
"Logicism, Ontology, and the Epistemology of Second-Order Logic", in Ivette Fred and Jessica Leech, eds, Being Necessary: Themes of Ontology and Modality from the Work of Bob Hale (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
"Speaker's Reference, Semantic Reference, and Intuition", Forthcoming in Review of Philosophy and Psychology.
"Truth In Frege" (with Robert May), forthcoming in M. Glanzberg, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Truth.
Published
"The Logical Strength of Compositional Principles", Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 59 (2018), pp. 1-33.
"Cognitive Hunger: Remarks on Imogen Dickie's Fixing Reference", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (2017), pp. 738-44.
"The Existence (and Non-existence) of Abstract Objects", in P. Ebert and M. Rossberg, eds., Abstractionism: Essays in Philosophy of Mathematics(Oxford: Oxford Univerity Press, 2016), pp. 50-78; also in Frege's Theorem, pp. 200-26.
"Is Frege's Definition of the Ancestral Adequate?", Philosophia Mathematica 24 (2016), pp. 91-116.
"Consistency and the Theory of Truth", Review of Symbolic Logic 8 (2015), pp. 424-66.
"In Defense of Formal Relationism", Thought 3 (2014), pp. 243-50.
"Intuition and the Substitution Argument", Analytic Philosophy 55 (2014), pp. 1-30.
"Predicative Frege Arithmetic and "Everyday Mathematics"", Philosophia Mathematica 22 (2014), pp. 279-307.
"Semantics and Context-Dependence: Towards a Strawsonian Account", in A. Burgess and B. Sherman, eds., Metasemantics: New Essays on the Foundations of Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 327-64.
"The Function is Unsaturated" (with Robert May), in M. Beaney, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 825-50.
"Is Compositionality a Trivial Principle?", Frontiers of Philosophy in China 8 (2103), pp. 140-55.
"Sir Michael Anthony Eardley Dummett, 1925-2011", Philosophia Mathematica 21 (2013), pp. 1-8.
"A Liar Paradox", Thought 1 (2012), pp. 36-40.
"More On 'A Liar Paradox'", Thought 1 (2012), pp. 270-80.
"Solving Frege's Puzzle", Journal of Philosophy 109 (2012), pp. 132-74.
"The Composition of Thoughts" (with Robert May), Noûs 45 (2011), pp. 126-66.
"Frege's Theorem: An Overview", in Frege's Theorem, pp. 1-39.
"A Logic for Frege's Theorem", in Frege's Theorem, pp. 267-96; also to appear in a A. Miller, ed., Essays for Crispin Wright: Logic, Language and Mathematics.
"Ramified Frege Arithmetic", Journal of Philosophical Logic 40 (2011), pp. 715-35.
"Are There Different Kinds of Content?", in J. Cohen and B. McLaughlin, eds, Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Mind (Oxford: Blackwells, 2007), pp. 117-38.
"Frege and Semantics", Grazer Philosophische Studien 75 (2007), pp. 27-63; reprinted in The Cambridge Companion to Frege, ed. by T. Ricketts and M. Potter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 342-78; reprinted, more or less, as Chapter 2 of Reading Frege's Grundgesetze.
"Meaning and Truth-conditions", in D. Griemann and G. Siegwart, eds., Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 349-76.
"Self-reference and the Languages of Arithmetic", Philosophia Mathematica 15 (2007), pp. 1-29.
"Use and Meaning", in R. E. Auxier and L. E. Hahn, eds., The Philosophy of Michael Dummett (Chicago: Open Court, 2007), pp. 531-57.
"Frege's Contribution to Philosophy of Language" (with Robert May), in E. Lepore and B. Smith, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 3-39.
"Idiolects", in J. J. Thomson and A. Byrne, eds., Content and Modality: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert Stalnaker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 61-92.
"MacFarlane on Relative Truth", Philosophical Issues 16 (2006), pp. 88-100.
"Reason and Language", in C. Macdonald and G. Macdonald, eds., McDowell and His Critics (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 22-45.
"Julius Caesar and Basic Law V", Dialectica 59 (2005), pp. 161-78; reprinted in Frege's Theorem, pp. 111-26.
"Truth and Disquotation", Synthese 142 (2004), pp. 317-52.
"Frege on Identity and Identity-Statements: A Reply to Thau and Caplan", Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33 (2003), pp. 83-102 (Awarded the Canadian Journal of Philosophy's 2002 Essay Prize).
"Semantic Accounts of Vagueness", in J.C. Beall, ed., Liars and Heaps (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 106-27.
"Do Demonstratives Have Senses?", Philosophers' Imprint 2 (2002); reprinted in The Philosopher's Annual 25 (2002).
"Meaning and Truth-conditions: A Reply to Kemp", Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2002), pp. 82-87.
"Cardinality, Counting, and Equinumerosity", Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 41 (2000), pp. 187-209; reprinted in Frege's Theorem, pp. 156-79.
"Non-conceptual Content and the 'Space of Reasons'", Philosophical Review 109 (2000), pp. 483-523.
"Syntactic Reductionism", Philosophia Mathematica 8 (2000), pp. 124-49; reprinted in Frege's Theorem, pp. 180-99.
"Frege's Theorem: An Introduction", The Harvard Review of Philosophy 7 (1999), pp. 56-73; reprinted in S. Phineas Upham, ed., All We Need Is a Paradigm (Chicago: Open Court, 2009), pp. 41-61; Published in French, as "Introduction au théorème de Frege", tr. by L. Perrin, in M. Marion and A. Voizard, eds., Frege: Logique et philosophie (Montreal: Harmattan, 1998), pp. 33-61; reprinted, in Portuguese, as "O Teorema de Frege: uma Introdução", tr. by A. Abath and A. Zilhão, in A. Zilhão, ed., Do Círculo de Viena á Filosofia Analítica Contemporânea (Lisbon: Sociedade Portugesua de Filosofia, 2007), pp. 259-80; reprinted in Chinese, tr. by Liu Jingxian, in Philosophical Analysis 5 (2014), pp. 69--85.
"Grundgesetze der Arithmetik I §10", Philosophia Mathematica 7 (1999), pp. 258-92; reprinted, more or less, as Chapter 4 of Reading Frege's Grundgesetze.
"Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik §§82-83" (with George Boolos), in M. Schirn, ed., Philosophy of Mathematics Today (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 407-28; reprinted in George Boolos, Logic, Logic, and Logic (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 315-38; Reprinted, with a Postscript, in Frege's Theorem, pp. 69-89.
"The Finite and the Infinite in Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik", in M. Schirn, ed., The Philosophy of Mathematics Today (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 429-66; reprinted, more or less, as Chapter 8 of Reading Frege's Grundgesetze.
"Frege, Gottlob" (with Alexander George), in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 3 (New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 765-78.
"Grundgesetze der Arithmetik I §§29-32", Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 38 (1998), pp. 437-74; reprinted, more or less, as Chapter 3 of Reading Frege's Grundgesetze, though some material is contained in Chapter 5.
"That There Might Be Vague Objects (So Far as Concerns Logic)", The Monist 81 (1998), pp. 277-99.
"Finitude and Hume's Principle", Journal of Philosophical Logic 26 (1997), pp. 589-617; reprinted in R. T. Cook, ed., The Arché Papers on the Mathematics of Abstraction (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), pp. 62-84; Reprinted, with a Postscript, in Frege's Theorem, pp. 237-66.
"The Julius Caesar Objection", in Language, Thought, and Logic: Essays in Honour of Michael Dummett, pp. 273-308; reprinted in Frege's Theorem, pp. 127-55.
"Tarski, Truth, and Semantics", Philosophical Review 106 (1997), pp. 533-54.
"Communication and Knowledge: Rejoinder to Byrne and Thau", Mind 105 (1996), pp. 151-56.
"The Consistency of Predicative Fragments of Frege's Grundgesetze der Artithmetik", History and Philosophy of Logic 17 (1996), pp. 209-20.
"Definition by Induction in Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik", in W. Demopoulos, ed., Frege's Philosophy of Mathematics (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 295-333; reprinted in M. Schirn, ed., Frege: Importance and Legacy (New York: de Gruyter, 1996), pp. 200-33; reprinted, more or less, as Chapter 7 of Reading Frege's Grundgesetze.
"Frege's Principle", in J.Hintikka, ed., From Dedekind to Gödel: Essays on the Development of the Foundations of Mathematics (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), pp. 119-42; reprinted, with a Postscript, in Frege's Thoerem, pp. 90-110.
"The Sense of Communication", Mind 104 (1995), pp. 79-106.
"Critical Notice of Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics", Philosophical Quarterly 43 (1993), pp. 223-33.
"The Development of Arithmetic in Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik", Journal of Symbolic Logic 58 (1993), pp. 579-601; reprinted, with a postscript, in W. Demopoulos, ed., Frege's Philosophy of Mathematics (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 257-94; reprinted in M. Beaney and E. H. Reck, eds., Gottlob Frege: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, vol. III (New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 323-48; reprinted, with a new Postscript, in Frege's Theorem, pp. 40-68; reprinted, more or less, as Chapter 6 of Reading Frege's Grundgesetze.
"A Note on the Logic of Higher-order Vagueness", Analysis 53 (1993), pp. 201-8; reprinted in D. Graff and T. Williamson, eds., Vagueness (Dartmouth: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 315-22.
"Reply to Hintikka and Sandu: Frege and Second-order Logic" (with Jason Stanley), Journal of Philosophy 90 (1993), pp. 416-24.
"On the Consistency of Second-order Contextual Definitions", Noûs 26 (1992), pp. 491-4; reprinted, with a Postscript, in Frege's Theorem, pp. 227-36.
| Year | Degree | Institution |
|---|---|---|
| 1991 | PhD | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| 1987 | BA | Oxford University |
| 1985 | BS | Duke University |
Honorary Master of Arts, Brown University, 2005
British Academy Visiting Professor, University of St Andrews, January–February 2004
Awarded the Canadian Journal of Philosophy’s 2002 Essay Prize for the paper ‘Frege on Identity and Identity-Statements’
Paper ‘Do Demonstratives Have Senses’ selected for inclusion in The Philosopher’s Annual
Honorary Master of Arts, Harvard University, 1999
Marshall Scholar, 1985–87
Thought, Associate Editor for Philosophy of Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics
Philosophers' Imprint, Journal of Philosophical Logic, Philosophia Mathematica: member of the editorial board
Review of Symbolic Logic, Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy: member of the advisory board
Member of the American Philosophical Association, Association of Symbolic Logic, and Mind Association
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