Background
MARCUS, Ruth was born on August 2, 1921 in New York, United States. Daughter of Samuel Barcan and Rose Post.
MARCUS, Ruth was born on August 2, 1921 in New York, United States. Daughter of Samuel Barcan and Rose Post.
New York and Yale Universities.
Chairman Department, of Philosophy, University of 111. 1964-1970; Professor Northwestern University 1970-1973. Reuben Post Halleck Professor, of Philosophy, Yale University since 1973.
Adviser, Oxford University Press New York since 1980. Guggenheim Fellow 1953-1954. N.S.F. Fellow 1963-1964.
Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies, Stanford University 1979. Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh 1983, Wolfson College Oxford 1985, 1986, Clare Hall, Cambridge 1988. Fellow, American Academy, of Arts and Sciences.
President Institute Institute de Philosophie, Paris. Chairman National Board of Officers. American Philosophical Association 1977-1983.
President Association for Symbolic Logic 1983-1986. President Elizabethan Club 1988-1990. President since 1988), Steering Committee, Federation Institute Society de Philosophie since 1985 (President since 1990).
Professional.
Ruth Marcus made major contributions to the development of modal logic. Some of the best known modal systems had already been axiontatised by C. I. Lewis in 1918, but it was Marcus who extended them by providing modal predicate logic. She also favoured what is known as ‘substitutional’ quantification over ‘objectual quantification, regarding the former as helping to resolve certain problems arising from mixing quantifiers with modal operators and with verbs of attitude like ‘believes’.
Controversially, she maintained that extensionality in logic was a matter of degree.
Some ten years ahead of Saul Kripke she put forward the theorem to the effect that all genuine identity statements, if true, were necessarily truc. She also anticipated later work on the notion ot direct reference, treating proper names as ‘tags, as not as equivalent in meaning to descriptions. Additionally, she originated the thesis which now bears her name—the ‘Barcan formula’ which, informally, states that if it is possible that there is an object with a given property, then it follows that there is an object which possibly has that property.
A feature of these theses, which attracted much discussion, is their prima fac*e commitment to essentialism, that is to say the view that entities have at least some of their properties of necessity.
Years later, evincing a freshness of response to some of the developments she had helped to stimulate, she recommended substitutional quantification as the most appropriate for the nc" ‘Meinongian’ logics which had been deve - oped by Terence Parsons and others. Throughout, however, her most distinguished opponent has been W. V. O. Quine, who remained convinced tha modality and essentialism were suspect and ha no place in any scientific account of the wori - Not even Ruth Marcus escaped the charge tn modal logic had been conceived in the sin confusing use and mention, but Quine huns would be the first to acknowledge the significance and calibre of the work of this sometimes neglected philosophical logician.
Council on Philosophical Studies. Numerous editorial boards.
Married Jules A. Marcus in 1942 (divorced in 1976).