09 APhEx num 9, anno 2014

Ruth Barcan Marcus was a logician and important philosopher whose pioneering contributions in the forties gave rise to the quantified modal logic. The so-called "Barcan formula" is a very controversial axiom of quantified modal logic. In this survey we retrace the important contributions of Barcan Marcus in debates in the philosophy of logic as to the essentialist implications of the use of quantifiers in modal logic, in philosophy of language (especially with his contributions on the reference and on proper names), and meta -Ethics (especially with respect to the arguments on the possibility of moral dilemma based sull'assiomatizzazione deontica and implications for the debate about the moral realism and the so-called "practical necessity").