  Sylvan was born in 1935 in Levin, New Zealand. He received his MA in Philosophy from the University of New Zealand (Wellington) in 1957 and the following year completed a first-class Honours degree in mathematics there. His MA thesis, a 385-page work entitled Moral Scepticism was given a mark of 95% by Arthur Prior, though he later commented that this was “not so much a mark as an exclamation mark” (quoted in D. Hyde, Introduction to Eckert (ed.) 2018, xiv). Blackwell agreed to publish a condensed version of the thesis but the required revisions were never undertaken.