Thomas J. McKay

Who is Thomas J. McKay?

Thomas McKay is an American philosopher currently Professor of Philosophy and Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Philosophy of Syracuse University. He was chairman of the Department there from 1995-2002. He received his B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1969, his M.A. from University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1972, and his Ph.D., also from the University of Massachusetts, 1974, for a dissertation on "Essentialism and Quantified Modal Logic: Quine's Argument and Kripke's Semantics"

His work has primarily concerned the philosophy of logic and language. In 2006, Oxford University Press published his book, Plural Predicates a, in which he gives an account of a semantics for a plural logic. In particular he develops a Russellian account of plural definite descriptions.

He is also the author of the following textbooks:

Modern Formal Logic,

Reasons, Explanations and Decisions

and the following journal articles:

"Essentialism in Quantified Modal Logic," Journal of Philosophical Logic 4, 423-438.

"Counterfactuals with Disjunctive Antecedents," with Peter van Inwagen, Philosophical Studies 31, 353-356.