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Professor Peter Simons

Fellow Emeritus (Philosophy)

 peter.simons@tcd.ie

 

Fellow Emeritus (Sch Office Social Sciences & Philosophy)


Biography

Peter Simons studied Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of Manchester, supervised by Wolfe Mays. There he co-founded, with Kevin Mulligan and Barry Smith, the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy (1975-85). After working briefly as a librarian he became Lecturer in Philosophy at Bolton Institute of Technology (now the University of Bolton). He then moved to Austria and lectured at the University of Salzburg from 1980-1995, gaining his Habilitation in 1986 and being granted Austrian citizenship in 1988. Visits to the University of California, Irvine and the University of Texas at Austin were interspersed with teaching in Neuchâtel, Geneva, Fribourg, Berne and Innsbruck. In 1995 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at Leeds. From 1989-2001 he worked as a consultant to the software company Ontek Corporation. In 2004 he was elected FBA, and in 2013 MRIA. He is married with two adult children, and his hobbies include walking, skiing, choral singing, and reading history.

Research Tags

  Applied Philosophy   History of anlytical philosophy   History of Philosophy   METAPHYSICS   Philosophy   Philosophy of logic and language   Philosophy of science   Wittgenstein

Languages

Language Skill Reading Skill Writing Skill Speaking
English Fluent Fluent Fluent
French Fluent Medium Fluent
German Fluent Fluent Fluent
Italian Basic Basic Basic
Polish Basic Basic Basic

Memberships

Membership of Professional Institutions, Associations, Societies

Details Date From Date To
American Philosophical Association
European Society for Analytic Philosophy
Österreichische Gesellschaft für Philosophie
Gesellschaft für analytische Philosophie
Salzburger Philosophische Gesellschaft
Internationale Bernard-Bolzano-Gesellschaft
The Ontology and Logic of Higher-Order Multitudes in, editor(s)Massimiliano Carrara, Alexandra Arapinis and Friederike Moltmann , Plurality and Unity. Logic, Philosophy, and Linguistics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp55 - 69, [Peter Simons], Book Chapter, IN_PRESS  TARA - Full Text
External Relations, Causal Coincidence and Contingency in, editor(s)Anna Marmodoro and David Yates , The Metaphysics of Relations, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, pp113 - 126, [Peter Simons], Notes: [Published online 5 January 2016], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI  URL
Applications of Complex Numbers and Quaternions: Historical Remarks, with a Note on Clifford Algebra in, editor(s)Philip Ebert and Marcus Rossberg , Abstractionism in Mathematics: Status belli, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016, [Peter Simons], Book Chapter, ACCEPTED  TARA - Full Text
Armstrong and Tropes in, editor(s)Francesco F. Calemi , Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong, Berlin, de Gruyter, 2016, pp71 - 83, [Peter Simons], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  URL
Ingarden on Causation in, editor(s)Oliver Malherbe and Sébastien Richard , Forme(s) et modes d'être: l'ontologie de Roman Ingarden, Brussels, Peter Lang, 2016, pp229 - 242, [Peter Simons], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text
Peter Simons, Bolzano's Monadology, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2016, Notes: [Published online 24 June 2015], Journal Article, PUBLISHED  DOI
Makers and Models: Two Approaches to truth, and their Merger in, editor(s)Miroslaw Szatkowski , God, Truth, and other Enigmas, Berlin, de Gruyter, 2015, pp153 - 166, [Peter Simons], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  URL
Media and their Emergence: the Ontology in, editor(s)Juliet Floyd and James E. Katz , Philosophy of Emerging Media: Understanding, Appreciation, Application, New York, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp49 - 58, [Peter Simons], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  URL
Frege 2.0. Was Frege gesagt hätte, wenn er gewusst hätte, was wir heute wissen (und was er vielleicht hätte sagen sollen). in, editor(s)Dieter Schott , Frege: Freund(e) und Feind(e). Proceedings of the International Conference 2013., Berlin, Logos, 2015, pp187 - 200, [Peter Simons], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text
Meaning and Dummett's Austrians in, editor(s)Bernhard Weiss , Dummett on Analytical Philosophy, Basingstoke, Palsgrave-Macmillan , 2015, pp195 - 210, [Peter Simons], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED  TARA - Full Text  DOI
  

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The Importance of Classification in Empirical Science in, editor(s)Anna Brożek and Jacek Juliusz Jadacki , Nauka i język (seria druga). Księga pamiątkowa Marianowi Przełęckiemu w darze na 90-lecie urodzin. , Lublin, Norbertinum, 2014, pp145 - 157, [Peter Simons], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Edgar Morscher, Otto Neumaier and Peter Simons, Ein Philosoph mit "Bodenhaftung". Zu Leben und Werk von Joseph M. Bocheński, 1, Sankt Augustin, Germany, Academia, 2011, Notes: [Editor and contributor (contribution listed elsewhere)], Book, PUBLISHED
Bochenski and Balance: System and History in Analytic Philosophy in, editor(s)Edgar Morscher, Otto Neumaier and Peter Simons , Ein Philosoph mit "Bodenhaftung". Zu Leben und Werk von Joseph M. Bochenski., Sankt Augustin, Germany, Academia, 2011, pp61 - 78, [Peter Simons], Notes: [First published in Studies in East European Thought 55 (2003), 281-297. ], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Ontic Generation: Getting Everything from the Basics in, editor(s)Alexander Hieke and Hannes Leitgeb , Reduction - Abstraction - Analysis. Proceedings of the 31st International Wittgenstein Symposium , Frankfurt am Main, Ontos, 2009, pp137 - 152, [Peter Simons], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Why there are no states of affairs in, editor(s)Maria Elisabeth Reicher , States of Affairs, Frankfurt/Main, Ontos, 2009, pp111 - 128, [Peter Simons], Book Chapter, PUBLISHED
Peter Simons, Analītiska filozofija: kādēļ tā ir vislabākā filozofija, 2008, -, Notes: [English translation of title: Analytic Philosophy: Why it's the Best Philosophy], Miscellaneous, PUBLISHED

  

Awards and Honours

Award Date
Kulturpreis der Stadt Salzburg 1986
Honorary Professor of Philosophy, University of Salzburg 1996
Fellow of the British Academy 2004
Member of the Academia Europaea 2006
Ph.D. (honoris causa), University of Bolton 2012
Member, Royal Irish Academy 2013
Honorary Professor, University of Nottingham 2011-17
Foreign Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences 2017

Research Interests

Description Of Research Interests

Metaphysics and Ontology: Pure (systematization, categories, nominalism, tropes, naturalism, emergence, quantities, ) Applied, to various disciplines (database design, manufacturing engineering, enterprise design, physical geography, music, ) Philosophy of Language and Logic (truthmakers, nominalist semantics, term logic, Lesniewskian logic, categorial grammar) Philosophy of Mathematics (abstraction, structuralism, numbers, sets, vectors, geometrical algebra) History of Analytic Philosophy (Bolzano, Frege, Whitehead, Russell, Wittgenstein) History of Philosophy and Logic in Central Europe (Bolzano, Brentano, Frege, Meinong, Husserl, Twardowski, Lukasiewicz, Lesniewski, Tarski)