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Ruth Barcan Marcus Passes Away

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Brian Leiter reports that Ruth Barcan Marcus passed away on February 19th, 2012. Marcus was a philosopher at Yale and focused on logic, ethics, metaphysics and epistemology. Barcan is the creator of what is called the Barcan formula which states that If everything is necessarily F, then it is necessary that everything is F. Timothy Willamson writes in his tribute,

“In reading her work, one has a strong sense that there is truth and falsity in philosophy, just as in other sciences, however hard it is to tell the difference. Sometimes, in sincerely honouring a genuinely distinguished philosopher, one nevertheless feels that in the end all their distinctive ideas will turn out to lie on the false side of the line. So it is a special pleasure to have been praising Ruth, many of whose main ideas are not just original, and clever, and beautiful, and fascinating, and influential, and way ahead of their time, but actually — I believe — true.”

Original post by Leiter is here.

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