Max Cresswell

Max Cresswell
Born	19 November 1939 Wellington, New Zealand
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic
Main interests	Modal logic, metaphysics, formal semantics
Notable ideas	Semantics of degree
Influences A. N. Prior

Maxwell John Cresswell (born 19 November 1939) is a New Zealand philosopher and logician, known for his work in modal logic. He is the older brother of Lyell Cresswell.

Education and career

Cresswell received his B.A. in 1960 and M.A. in 1961 from the University of New Zealand and then with the support of a Commonwealth Scholarship attended the Victoria University of Manchester, where he received in 1964 his PhD under the supervision of A. N. Prior. Cresswell's thesis was titled General and Specific Logics of Functions of Propositions. After returning to New Zealand, Cresswell was at the Victoria University of Wellington in 1963–1967 lecturer, in 1968–1972 senior lecturer (also receiving in 1972 Lit.D. from the Victoria University), in 1973 reader, and in 1974–2000 professor, interrupted by several visiting professorships. In 2001 he became professor emeritus and a member of the Centre for Logic, Language and Computation, Victoria University of Wellington and has been a visiting or fixed-term professor at several universities.

Cresswell's research deals with the philosophy of logic, modal logic and formal semantics. He has also published on ancient Greek philosophy, on the logic of the nineteenth century, and on the philosophy of John Locke. Cresswell was the co-author with his colleague and former teacher G. E. Hughes, of An Introduction to Modal Logic, London, Methuen, 1968); this was the first modern textbook on modal logic and introduced many students to Kripke semantics. As a standard introduction to the subject it was replaced by A New Introduction to Modal Logic (London, Routledge, 1996); again with G. E. Hughes, who died prior to publication.

Publications

Monographs and collections

• with G. E. Hughes, An Introduction to Modal Logic, London, Methuen, 1968, German trans.: Einführung in die Modallogik. Berlin, New York : de Gruyter, 1978
• Logics and Languages, London, Methuen, 1973, German trans.: Die Sprachen der Logik und die Logik der Sprache, Berlin, New York : de Gruyter, 1979
• with G. E. Hughes, A Companion to Modal Logic, London, Methuen, 1984
• Structured Meanings: The Semantics of Propositional Attitudes, Bradford Books/MIT Press, 1985
• Adverbial Modification, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1985
• Semantical Essays: Possible Worlds and Their Rivals, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988
• Entities and Indices, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1990
• Language in the World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994
• Semantic Indexicality, Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1996
• with G. E. Hughes, A New Introduction to Modal Logic, London, Routledge, 1996