Fact-checked by Grok 2 weeks ago

Kit Fine

Kit Fine (born 26 March 1946) is a philosopher renowned for his contributions to metaphysics, , and the . Currently serving as Silver Professor of Philosophy and and University Professor at , where he has taught for the past two decades, Fine's work explores fundamental issues such as , , , truthmakers, and semantic relations. His innovative approaches, including developments in semantics and hylomorphic metaphysics, have profoundly influenced contemporary . Fine studied at University before pursuing philosophical research without formal graduate training, earning a from the University of Warwick in 1969 based on independent papers. His academic career includes early lectureships at Warwick (1967) and the University of Edinburgh, followed by positions at institutions such as , the , the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the , before joining NYU. A prolific scholar, Fine has authored over 100 articles and several monographs, including Semantic Relationism (2007), which advances a relational theory of meaning, and The Limits of Abstraction (2002), which proposes a Fregean foundation for mathematical abstraction. His seminal paper "Essence and " (1994) has shaped debates on the interplay between essential properties and possible worlds, garnering thousands of citations in metaphysical literature. Fine's philosophical outlook emphasizes precise logical analysis over grand systems, drawing inspiration from figures like and Arthur Prior while critiquing overly reductive approaches to metaphysics. He has extended his inquiries into interdisciplinary areas, including , , , and , often employing to address puzzles like the problem of possibilia and the semantics of vague predicates. Among his honors are the 2018 Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize, shared with for work on meaning, the 2014 Anneliese Maier Research Award from the , fellowships from the Foundation and the , and the 2025 Sanders Lecturer appointment from the American Philosophical Association. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Corresponding .

Biography

Early Life and Education

Kit Fine was born on 26 March 1946 in Farnborough, England. His family had a strong mathematical orientation, with his father having worked at an aeronautical establishment during the war and been influenced by the logician and mathematician Abraham Robinson; Fine grew up with five brothers, four of whom studied mathematics at Oxford. This intellectual environment fostered his early interest in logic and philosophy during high school, where he was inspired by Bertrand Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy and R. L. Goodstein's article on the Sheffer stroke in the Mathematical Gazette. Fine pursued his undergraduate studies at the , earning a B.A. in in 1967. Lacking a joint degree in and , he chose the PPE program, which allowed him to engage deeply with through attendance at philosophy clubs and lectures by prominent analytic philosophers such as Peter Strawson and . This exposure to the analytic tradition at laid a foundational influence on his developing interests in logical and . In 1966, Fine began teaching at the , while at , he developed independent research that formed the basis of his Ph.D., which was accepted in 1969 without formal enrollment in a graduate program. His thesis, titled For Some Proposition and So Many Possible Worlds, focused on graded modalities and propositional quantifiers within and was examined by William Kneale and under the supervision of Arthur Prior. At , Fine's immersion in advanced work on and under Prior's influence further shaped his early contributions to the field.

Personal Life

Kit Fine was married to the British children's author from 1968 until their divorce in the 1980s. The couple had two daughters during their marriage: Ione Fine, born in 1971, and , born in 1975 in , . Both daughters have established distinguished academic careers, continuing a family tradition of intellectual pursuit; is a professor in the program at the , while Ione Fine is a professor in the Department of at the . As of 2025, Fine resides in , where he maintains a private life focused on family and away from public scrutiny.

Academic Career

Early Appointments

Kit Fine began his academic career with a lectureship in at the starting in 1967, where he pursued his without formal graduate training. After completing his at the in 1969 under the supervision of A. N. Prior, whose influence shaped his early work in , Fine took up his first post- teaching position as a at the from 1970 to 1975. During this time, he faced a demanding teaching load of up to 18 hours per term, collaborated with the Epistemics research group on topics like negation as failure in , and edited Arthur N. Prior's posthumous manuscript Worlds, Times and Selves (1977), a seminal text in tense logic that originated from Prior's unfinished work, despite the department's challenging environment, including a lack of emphasis on logic. Key publications from this period include his 1975 paper "Vagueness, Truth and Logic," which emerged from seminars at and advanced discussions on semantic paradoxes. In 1975, Fine relocated to the United States and joined the University of California, Irvine (UCI), where he served until the early 1980s. At UCI, he focused on formal semantics, producing works such as "Model Theory for Modal Logic—Part II: The Elimination of de re Modality," published that same year, which built on his prior research in modal systems. This appointment marked the beginning of his sustained engagement with American philosophy departments, contributing to UCI's growing reputation in logic and metaphysics through his seminars and publications. Fine then moved to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, around 1982, holding a position there until 1990. His contributions helped strengthen Michigan's philosophy program, as noted in departmental newsletters highlighting his role before his departure. In 1990, Fine accepted an appointment at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he taught until 1997. At UCLA, he engaged in collaborations with prominent philosophers such as David Kaplan and Rogers Albritton, fostering interdisciplinary discussions in logic and metaphysics. Publications from this era, including early explorations of essence and modality, reflected his deepening focus on ontological issues while contributing to UCLA's analytic philosophy strengths through graduate supervision and seminars.

Later Positions and Affiliations

In 1997, Kit Fine was appointed as a professor of and at (NYU), where he has since established a prominent presence in the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Mathematics. He was later promoted to Silver Professor, a distinguished title recognizing sustained excellence in research and teaching, and to University Professor in 2010, reflecting his broad contributions across disciplines. These roles at NYU have facilitated interdisciplinary engagement between and , enhancing collaborative inquiries into foundational questions. Fine also holds the position of Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the , an appointment made in 2012 to support advanced research initiatives in metaphysics and . He teaches in the Master in Philosophy program at the (USI) in , contributing through specialized courses on metaphysics, , and . No major administrative or departmental leadership roles at NYU have been reported for Fine as of 2025.

Philosophical Contributions

Metaphysics

Kit Fine has made seminal contributions to metaphysics, particularly in the areas of , , ontological dependence, and the ontology of arbitrary objects. His work challenges traditional views by emphasizing the primacy of actuality over possibility and introducing rigorous frameworks for understanding how entities depend on one another. Fine's approach integrates essentialist insights to explain metaphysical necessities, arguing that provides a more fundamental basis for than possible worlds semantics alone. A central element of Fine's metaphysics is his development of , which posits that all possible worlds are concrete totals of the actual world, rejecting the possibilist commitment to non-actual entities as fully-fledged objects. This view combines —the irreducibility of notions—with , where actuality is metaphysically prior to possibility, allowing possibilist discourse to be reduced to actualist terms through suppositional reinterpretation rather than proxy entities. For instance, Fine rephrases possibilist claims like "possibly Wittgenstein’s daughter loathed philosophy" as "possibly Wittgenstein’s daughter (actually) loathed philosophy," thereby avoiding to unrealized individuals while preserving intuitions. This distinguishes his position from possibilism, which he critiques for failing to capture de re modalities without introducing superfluous entities, as elaborated in his 1989 paper "The Problem of De Re Modality," where he addresses Quine's about essential predication. Fine's theory of ontological dependence further structures metaphysical reality through the concept of grounding, where one entity depends on another if the latter determinatively explains the former's or . He conceives grounding as a non-causal form of metaphysical explanation, often tied to ; for example, the of an object grounds its accidental properties, such that Aristotle's being a is grounded in his features of rationality and animality. A notable application is his discussion of "variable embodiments," such as temporal compounds like statues, which persist through changes in matter while their is grounded in non-variable structures, avoiding mereological paradoxes in . This framework, detailed in works like "Essence and Modality" (1994), reverses the modal account by arguing that grounds rather than vice versa, providing a foundation for metaphysical dependence that applies across domains like sets (dependent on members) and instances (dependent on bearers). In addressing abstract entities, Fine proposes a treatment of arbitrary objects that avoids ontological commitment to their independent existence by viewing them as non-referential placeholders in reasoning. This approach accommodates mathematical and logical discourse—such as arbitrary triangles in or indefinite bisectors—without positing them as real objects, instead treating them as devices for that cohere within a variable-free . Developed in his 1985 monograph Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects, this theory defends the legitimacy of such objects against objections, refining earlier ideas from and Euler to integrate them into contemporary metaphysics.

Philosophical Logic

Kit Fine's contributions to philosophical logic center on developing formal frameworks that capture fine-grained relations of truth, grounding, and entailment, moving beyond traditional possible-worlds semantics. One of his seminal innovations is truthmaker semantics, a system in which the truth of a is explained by its being made true by specific entities or states in the world, rather than merely holding at possible worlds. This approach allows for a more precise account of how truths are grounded, distinguishing between exact truthmakers that fully account for a 's truth and inexact ones that contribute partially. In his 2013 Gödel Lecture, delivered at the Association for Symbolic Logic's annual meeting, Fine outlined the core principles of truthmaker semantics, emphasizing its applicability to and its ability to handle hyperintensional phenomena where distinct truths share the same possible worlds but differ in their truthmakers. Building on this foundation, Fine advanced the logic of , an impure logic that formalizes the metaphysical relation of grounding while integrating it with truth-conditional semantics. Unlike pure logics that treat grounding as a separate , this impure approach embeds grounding within the object language, distinguishing strict entailment (via grounding) from non-strict entailment (mere ). Key axioms include non-circularity, which prohibits grounding loops to avoid infinite regresses, and , ensuring that if A grounds B and B grounds C, then A grounds C. In the collaborative work "A Semantics for the Impure Logic of " (2023), co-authored with Louis deRosset, Fine provides a sound and complete semantics for this logic, demonstrating its expressive power in modeling dependencies without collapsing into classical entailment. This framework has implications for understanding metaphysical dependence, where grounding relations clarify hierarchical structures among facts. More recently, Fine has explored exact entailment within truthmaker semantics, developing a notion of that is precise and avoids the inherent in standard Tarskian entailment. Exact entailment holds when every exact truthmaker for the premises is an exact truthmaker for the conclusion, capturing and exactness in . The foundational paper "Logic for Exact Entailment" (2019), co-authored with Mark Jago, establishes a compact and decidable system for this relation, with proof systems that extend to non-classical logics. Post-2023 developments include applications in Fine's 2024 work on conditional imperatives, where exact entailment formalizes conditions in deontic contexts, refining how commands and obligations interact logically. These contributions underscore Fine's emphasis on logics that are both metaphysically informed and formally rigorous.

Philosophy of Language

Kit Fine's work in the centers on semantic relationism, a theory that challenges the dominant intrinsicalist approach to meaning. According to intrinsicalism, the semantic properties of representations—such as what an says or a thought means—are fully determined by their intrinsic features alone, without dependence on relations to other representations. Fine argues that this view fails to account for certain semantic facts, proposing instead that semantic relations, such as co- or coordination between representations, play an irreducible role in determining content. For instance, two utterances of "" may co-refer to the same individual, but whether they contribute the same to the meaning of a larger depends on their relational coordination, not merely their individual reference. This relational aspect is exemplified in cases where " is " and " is Tully" (where Tully is Cicero's other name) have different cognitive significances despite identical truth conditions, as the former involves positive coordination (treating the occurrences as the same) while the latter involves negative coordination (treating them as distinct). In his seminal book Semantic Relationism (2007), Fine develops this framework through a series of lectures addressing puzzles in . The book argues that coordination—the strongest form of semantic sameness, where representations are linked as referring to the same object—is essential for understanding reference in names and s. Fine critiques standard Millian theories, which hold that the meaning of a proper name or is exhausted by its , for inadequately handling such relational differences. On a pure Millian view, "Cicero nominated Tully" should be semantically equivalent to "Cicero nominated " since both names refer to the same person, but Fine contends this ignores the intuitive distinction in how the names are coordinated within the sentence, leading to failures in explaining cognitive attitudes toward the propositions expressed. Similarly, for s like "the first emperor of ," Millianism overlooks how relational links to other representations affect semantic evaluation, such as in contexts of where a speaker relies on communal coordination rather than individual knowledge. Fine's relationism thus preserves the Millian commitment to direct reference while augmenting it with relational semantics to resolve these issues. The implications of semantic relationism extend to propositional attitudes and belief ascriptions, particularly in solving classic puzzles like Frege's and Kripke's. Fine applies coordination to thoughts, arguing that belief reports must respect relational links between mental representations; for example, a thinker may believe "Hesperus is a " and "Phosphorus is not a " without if the names are not coordinated in their mind, even though they co-refer to . In Chapter 2 of Semantic Relationism, Fine explores coordination within language, using it to address Frege's puzzle about identity statements. Chapter 3 extends this to coordination within thought, showing how attitudes depend on internal relational structures. Chapter 4, on coordination between speakers, introduces deference as a mechanism where semantic links are established externally (e.g., through communal use) but internalized only if compatible with the speaker's perspective, resolving Kripke's puzzle of beliefs. This relational approach to attitudes avoids reducing beliefs to mere de re relations while accommodating intuitive ascriptions. Fine's theory also ties briefly to his metaphysical views on arbitrary objects, where may involve relational selection from a domain, though the linguistic focus remains on semantic coordination.

Honors and Recognition

Fellowships and Elections

Kit Fine has received several prestigious fellowships and academy elections in recognition of his contributions to . Early in his career, he was awarded a Foundation Fellowship for 1978–1979, supporting his research in metaphysics and logic. He later held a Fellowship from the in 1981–1982, which facilitated advanced scholarly work in and related fields. In 2005, Fine was elected a Corresponding , an honor reflecting his international influence in and metaphysics. The following year, in 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, underscoring peer recognition of his groundbreaking work across . These elections highlight his status as a leading figure whose insights have shaped contemporary debates in the discipline.

Major Lectures and Prizes

Kit Fine has received several prestigious prizes and delivered major invited lectures recognizing his contributions to philosophy, particularly in semantics, logic, and metaphysics. In 2018, he was awarded the Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution, shared with Stephen Yablo, for their contrasting views on the topic "What is Meaning?". The prize, administered by the Phi Beta Kappa Society in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association (APA), included $25,000 for each recipient and funded a joint symposium at the 2019 APA Eastern Division meeting, where Fine and Yablo presented lectures exploring conditions for meaningful discourse, drawing on Fine's work in philosophy of language. In 2013, Fine delivered the Gödel Lecture, titled "Truthmaker Semantics," at the annual meeting of the Association for Symbolic Logic, honoring his influential development of truthmaker semantics as a framework for understanding logical and metaphysical relations. In 2014, he received the Anneliese Maier Research Award from the , a five-year grant supporting international research collaborations in , including workshops and postdoctoral fellowships focused on his work in metaphysics and logic. More recently, in 2025, Fine presented the Sanders Lecture at the Central Division meeting, entitled "The Myth of the Ungiven," addressing themes in and the foundations of knowledge that intersect with his semantics research. The lecture, sponsored by the Marc Sanders Foundation, included a $3,500 and travel support, underscoring Fine's ongoing impact on philosophical inquiry.

References

  1. [1]
    (PDF) Kit Fine's Autobiography - ResearchGate
    PDF | A short intellectual biography of Kit Fine, provided by himself. | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate.
  2. [2]
    Kit Fine - NYU Arts & Science
    Kit Fine (B.A., Oxford; Ph.D., Warwick) specializes in Metaphysics, Logic, and Philosophy of Language. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and ...Missing: biography | Show results with:biography
  3. [3]
    Kit Fine (New York University): Publications - PhilPeople
    ### Major Books and Notable Papers by Kit Fine
  4. [4]
    Kit Fine - THE NEW INSTITUTE
    BIO. Kit is a university professor and Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at New York University. His specialization is in Metaphysics, Logic, and ...
  5. [5]
    2018 Lebowitz Prize Awarded to Philosophers Fine and Yablo
    May 2, 2018 · From a pool of exceptional candidates, they secured the 2018 Lebowitz Prize with their topic, “What is Meaning?” exploring the conditions that ...Missing: notable | Show results with:notable
  6. [6]
    Philosophy's Kit Fine Receives Anneliese Maier Research Award
    Sep 23, 2014 · NYU Philosophy Professor Kit Fine has received a 2014 Anneliese Maier Research Award from the Bonn-based Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.Missing: notable | Show results with:notable
  7. [7]
    Kit Fine (1946—) - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
    By mid-2020 he had published over 130 journal articles, 5 books. At least half a dozen articles and 8 monographs are forthcoming. His work is at once of both ...Missing: publications | Show results with:publications
  8. [8]
    For some proposition and so many possible worlds - WRAP: Warwick
    For some proposition and so many possible worlds. Copy. Fine, Kit (1969) For some proposition and so many possible worlds. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
  9. [9]
    Telling Tales: biographical information about Anne Fine
    In 1971 my first daughter Ione ... I travelled with Kit Fine to California, Arizona, Michigan and Canada, where our second daughter, Cordelia, was born in 1975.
  10. [10]
    World of Anne Fine, author - The Telegraph
    Sep 14, 2010 · She has two grown-up daughters, Ione and Cordelia, and lives with her partner, Dick Warren, in County Durham. Her latest book, Our Precious ...
  11. [11]
    Prof Cordelia Fine - Find an Expert - The University of Melbourne
    Cordelia Fine is a professor in the History & Philosophy of Science Programme in the School of Historical & Philosophical Studies.
  12. [12]
    Ione Fine - University of Washington Department of Psychology
    My laboratory studies the computational and neurophysiological basis of visual processing, using a wide range of computational and experimental techniques.
  13. [13]
    Vagueness, truth and logic | Synthese
    University of Edinburgh, UK. Kit Fine. Authors. Kit Fine. View author publications. Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar. Additional information. I should ...
  14. [14]
    [PDF] Fine 1975
    KIT FINE occurred within the scope of 'D'. On the semantic side, it is a ... University of Edinburgh. NOTES. ¹ I should like to thank Gordon Baker for ...
  15. [15]
    Model theory for modal logic—part II the elimination of De re ...
    University of California, Irvine, USA. Kit Fine. Authors. Kit Fine. View author publications. Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar. Additional information. I ...
  16. [16]
    Worlds, Times and Selves - Arthur N. Prior, Kit Fine - Google Books
    Authors, Arthur N. Prior, Kit Fine ; Publisher, University of Massachusetts Press, 1977 ; Original from, the University of Michigan ; Digitized, Jul 21, 2010 ; ISBN ...
  17. [17]
    University Professors - NYU
    University Professors ; Kit Fine. FAS. 2010 ; K.R. Sreenivasan. FAS; Courant. 2009 ; Avital Ronell. FAS. 2008 ; Samuel Scheffler. FAS. 2008.Missing: CV | Show results with:CV
  18. [18]
    Seven new Distinguished Research Professors in Philosophy
    Dec 21, 2012 · The new Distinguished Research Professors will be: Paul Boghossian (NYU); Hartry Field (NYU); Kit Fine (NYU); Alison M.
  19. [19]
    Professors - Master in Philosophy | USI.ch
    Kit Fine. Professor of Metaphysics, Logic, and Philosophy of Language at New York University (USA). After graduating at Oxford University he received his PhD ...
  20. [20]
    [PDF] ESSENCE AND MODALITY Kit Fine Philosophy, NYU June, 1992
    ESSENCE AND MODALITY. Kit Fine. Philosophy, NYU. June, 1992; revised February, 1993. The concept of essence has played an important role in the history and ...
  21. [21]
    Kit Fine, Essence and modality - PhilPapers
    Fine, Kit (1994). Essence and modality. Philosophical Perspectives 8 ... Essence and modality.Edward N. Zalta - 2006 - Mind 115 (459):659-693. Where ...
  22. [22]
    Truthmaker Semantics. - Kit Fine - PhilPapers
    This chapter explains the basic framework of truthmaker or 'exact' semantics, an approach to semantics that has recently received a growing amount of interest.Missing: Gödel Lecture 2013
  23. [23]
    Gödel Lecturers - Association for Symbolic Logic
    The Twenty-Fourth Annual Gödel Lecture 2013. Kit Fine, Truthmaker sematics. The Twenty-Third Annual Gödel Lecture 2012. John Steel, The hereditarily ordinal ...
  24. [24]
    [PDF] Truth-maker Semantics for Intuitionistic Logic
    There is a semantics for classical logic in terms of possible worlds. The basic semantical notion is that of a statement being true at (or verified by) a ...Missing: Gödel Lecture
  25. [25]
    A Semantics for the Impure Logic of Ground
    Sep 10, 2022 · deRosset, L., Fine, K. A Semantics for the Impure Logic of Ground. J Philos Logic 52, 415–493 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10992-022 ...
  26. [26]
    [PDF] A Semantics for the Impure Logic of Ground
    A Semantics for the Impure Logic of Ground. Louis deRosset and Kit Fine. July 8, 2022. Abstract. This paper establishes a sound and complete semantics for the ...
  27. [27]
    LOGIC FOR EXACT ENTAILMENT | The Review of Symbolic Logic
    Feb 1, 2019 · In this paper, we set out formal semantics for exact truthmaking and characterise the resulting notion of entailment, showing that it is compact ...
  28. [28]
    COMPLIANCE AND COMMAND III: CONDITIONAL IMPERATIVES
    Dec 27, 2024 · KIT FINE. Show author details. KIT FINE*: Affiliation: DEPARTMENT OF ... The notions of exact entailment and equivalence can be extended to the multi ...
  29. [29]
    Semantic Relationism | Wiley Online Books
    Jul 17, 2007 · Introducing a new and ambitious position in the field, Kit Fine's Semantic Relationism is a major contribution to the philosophy of language.
  30. [30]
    [PDF] Review of Semantic Relationism, by Kit Fine - University of Toronto
    In Semantic Relationism, Kit Fine presents and defends his relationist view of the nature of thought and language. According to Fine, the relationist view.
  31. [31]
    [PDF] Review of Fine, Kit, Semantic Relationism, Malden, MA - Jim Pryor
    Jun 6, 2009 · Semantic Relationism presents a unified treatment of three related puzzles: Russell's antinomy of the variable, Frege's Puzzle and Kripke's ...
  32. [32]
    [PDF] Coordination Problems - USC Dornsife
    Kit Fine's semantic relationalism aims to extract a common idea uniting these comparisons, and to use it to provide a Millian solution to Frege's Puzzle ...
  33. [33]
    Professor Kit Fine FBA - The British Academy
    Professor Kit Fine FBA ; Fellow type: International Fellow ; Year elected: 2005 ; Sections: Philosophy ; Website: http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/object/kitfine ...
  34. [34]
    Member Directory | American Academy of Arts and Sciences
    Showing 97-128 of 214 results. Kit Fine. New York University. Area: Humanities and Arts. Specialty: Philosophy. Elected: 2006 ...
  35. [35]
    2018 Lebowitz Prize Awarded to Kit Fine and Stephen Yablo
    May 2, 2018 · This prize, awarded annually by the PBK in conjunction with the APA, recognizes outstanding achievement in the field of philosophy and comes, ...Missing: notable | Show results with:notable
  36. [36]
    Phi Beta Kappa Lebowitz Prize - PBK
    The Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize for philosophical achievement and contribution is awarded by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.
  37. [37]
    Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize
    2018. Kit Fine and Stephen Yablo, “What is Meaning?” (2019 Eastern). 2017. Nancy Cartwright and Elliott Sober, “Is there such a thing as the scientific method ...
  38. [38]
    Sanders Lecture - The American Philosophical Association
    The Sanders Lecture is presented annually at a divisional meeting of the APA ... Awardees. 2025. Kit Fine (New York University) - Central. 2024. Stephen Yablo ...
  39. [39]
    APA Announces Winners of 16 Prizes - Daily Nous
    Dec 23, 2024 · 2025 Sanders Lecture ($3500; travel stipend. Presented annually at a divisional meeting of the APA on a topic in philosophy of mind ...