This page lists my published and forthcoming work. For work in progress, see my Work in Progress page.
“Epistemic Modals Are Assessment-Sensitive” (version of May 9, 2008; forthcoming in Epistemic Modality, edited by Brian Weatherson and Andy Egan, Oxford University Press)
This is my latest effort to tell the story sketched in my 2003 manuscript “Epistemic Modalities and Relative Truth”.
“Double Vision: Two Questions About the Neo-Fregean Program”, forthcoming in Synthese.
Much of The Reason’s Proper Study is devoted to defending the claim that simply by stipulating an abstraction principle for the “number-of” functor, we can simultaneously fix a meaning for this functor and acquire epistemic entitlement to the stipulated principle. In this paper, I argue that the semantic and epistemological principles Wright and Hale offer in defense of this claim may be too strong for their purposes. For if these principles are correct, it is hard to see why they do not justify platonist strategies that are not in any way “neo-Fregean,” e.g. strategies that treat “the number of Fs” as a Russellian definite description rather than a singular term, or employ axioms that do not have the form of abstraction principles.
“Boghossian, Bellarmine, and Bayes”, forthcoming in a Philosophical Studies book symposium on Paul Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge.
“Nonindexical Contextualism”, forthcoming in Synthese.
Philosophers on all sides of the contextualism debates have had an overly narrow conception of what semantic context sensitivity could be. They have conflated context sensitivity (dependence of truth or extension on features of context) with indexicality (dependence of content on features of context). As a result of this conflation, proponents of contextualism have taken arguments that establish only context sensitivity to establish indexicality, while opponents of contextualism have taken arguments against indexicality to be arguments against context sensitivity. Once these concepts are carefully pulled apart, it becomes clear that there is conceptual space in semantic theory for nonindexical forms of contextualism that have many advantages over the usual indexical forms.
“Truth in the Garden of Forking Paths”, forthcoming in Relative Truth, ed. Max Kölbel and Manuel García-Carpintero (Oxford University Press).
Many philosophers have supposed that if possible worlds overlap and branch (as opposed to having qualitatively identical pasts and then “diverging”), our common sense talk about the future is deeply misguided. Some of them plump for common sense, others for branching. In this paper, I argue that the dilemma is a false one. It is possible to develop a semantics for tense and the historical modalities that vindicates common sense talk about the future and historical possibility, even if there is branching. However, this can only be done in a semantic framework that relativizes truth to contexts of assessment. (Note: The core ideas come from my earlier paper “Future Contingents and Relative Truth,” but I now believe the argument of that paper to be inadequate. Much of this paper is devoted to explaining why, and to developing a more robust argument for the same conclusion.)
“Semantic Minimalism and Nonindexical Contextualism,” in Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism: New Essays on Semantics and Pragmatics, ed. G. Preyer and G. Peter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 240–50.
According to Semantic Minimalism, every use of “Chiara is tall” (fixing the girl and the time) semantically expresses the same proposition, the proposition that Chiara is (just plain) tall. Given standard assumptions, this proposition ought to have an intension (a function from possible worlds to truth values). However, speakers tend to reject questions that presuppose that it does. I suggest that semantic minimalists might address this problem by adopting a form of “nonindexical contextualism,” according to which the proposition invariantly expressed by “Chiara is tall” does not have a context-invariant intension. Nonindexical contextualism provides an elegant explanation of what is wrong with “context-shifting arguments” and can be seen as a synthesis of the (partial) insights of semantic minimalists and radical contextualists.
“The Logic of Confusion,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2007), 700–708 (book symposium on Joseph Camp, Jr., Confusion: A Study in the Theory of Knowledge). Published version
In Confusion: A Study in the Theory of Knowledge, Joseph Camp argues that the reasoning of a person who has confused two objects in her thought and talk ought to be appraised using a four-valued relevance logic. I discuss two key moves in Camp’s argument: the assumption that charity to the reasoner requires recognition of her arguments as valid, and the argument that validity for a truth-valueless discourse should not be defined in terms of truth preservation. I then question whether Camp’s four-valued semantics satisfies his own desiderata for a logic of confusion.
“The Things We (Sorta Kinda) Believe,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2006), 218–224, (book symposium on Stephen Schiffer’s The Things We Mean). Published version
In Chapter 5 of The Things We Mean, Stephen Schiffer rejects semantic approaches to vagueness, proposing instead a “psychological” theory that analyzes our attitudes toward vague propositions as a mixture of standard (uncertainty-related) partial belief (SPB) and a special kind of vagueness-related partial belief (VPB). I show that Schiffer’s theory of SPBs and VPBs is inconsistent, and I argue that his reasons for rejecting semantic approaches (particularly degree theories) are inconclusive.
“Relativism and Disagreement”, Philosophical Studies 132 (2007), 17–31.
In arguing about whether some food is “delicious,” whether some joke is “funny,” or whether some outcome is “likely,” we take ourselves to be disagreeing with each other. This disagreement goes missing on contextualist accounts of these adjectives, which take them to express relations to the speaker. Relativist accounts claim to do better, securing genuine disagreement in discourse about what is “delicious,” “funny,” or “likely,” while respecting the “subjectivity” of such discourse. But do relativist accounts really make sense of disagreement? If the proposition that apples are delicious can be true from one perspective but false from another, why should we say that one who accepts this proposition while occupying the first perspective disagrees with one who rejects it while occupying the second perspective? Answering this question requires thinking carefully about what it is to disagree with someone.
“The Assessment Sensitivity of Knowledge Attributions,” in Tamar Szabó Gendler and John Hawthorne (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 197–233.
Current debates about the semantics of knowledge-attributing sentences center on whether the epistemic standards relevant to the truth of such sentences vary with the context of use, the circumstances of evaluation, or neither. I argue that although the strict invariantists are right that the standards do not vary in either of these ways, the contextualists are also right to think that there is some kind of contextual variation in the standards. On the semantics I propose, the relevant epistemic standard varies not with the context of use, but with the context of assessment: the concrete context in which an utterance is being assessed for truth or falsity. The price of this reconciliation of contextualism and invariantism is that I must explain what it means to talk of truth relative to a context of assessment. I discharge this obligation by describing the role assessment-relative truth plays in a normative account of assertion.
“Logical Constants,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published May 16, 2005). (Want a PDF version suitable for printing? Try sep-offprint.)
A critical survey of approaches to the problem of demarcating the “logical constants.”
“Making Sense of Relative Truth,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105 (2005), 321–39. To be reprinted in Relativism: A Compendium, ed. Michael Krausz (New York: Columbia University Press).
The goal of this paper is to make sense of relativism about truth. There are two key ideas. (1) To be a relativist about truth is to allow that a sentence or proposition might be assessment-sensitive; that is, its truth value might vary with the context of assessment as well as the context of use. (2) Making sense of relativism is a matter of understanding what it would be to commit oneself to the truth of an assessment-sensitive sentence or proposition.
“Knowledge Laundering: Testimony and Sensitive Invariantism,” Analysis 65 (2005), 132–8.
According to “sensitive invariantism,” the word “know” expresses the same relation in every context of use, but what it takes to stand in this relation to a proposition can vary with the subject’s circumstances. Sensitive invariantism looks like an attractive reconciliation of invariantism and contextualism. However, it is incompatible with a widely-held view about the way knowledge is transmitted through testimony. If both views were true, someone whose evidence for p fell short of what was required for knowledge in her circumstances could come to know that p simply by feeding her evidence to someone in less demanding circumstances and then accepting his testimony.
“McDowell’s Kantianism,” Theoria 70 (2004), 250–265.
In recent work, John McDowell has urged that we resurrect the Kantian thesis that “concepts without intuitions are empty.” I distinguish two forms of the thesis: a strong form that applies to all concepts and a weak form that is limited to empirical concepts. Because he rejects Kant’s philosophy of mathematics but is not willing to claim that all content is empirical, McDowell can accept only the weaker form of the thesis. But this position is unstable. Insisting that empirical concepts can have rational relation to their objects only if they are actualizable in passive experience makes it mysterious why the deployment of pure mathematical concepts is not a mere “game with symbols.” Historically, it was anxiety about the possibility of mathematical content, and not worries about the “myth of the given,” that spurred the retreat from Kantian views of empirical content. McDowell owes us some more therapy on this score.
Review of Myles Burnyeat, A Map of Metaphysics Zeta, The Philosophical Review 112 (2003), 97–99.
“Future Contingents and Relative Truth,” The Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2003), 321–36. (Winner of The Philosophical Quarterly Essay Prize 2002)
If it is not now determined whether there will be a sea battle tomorrow, can an assertion that there will be one be true? The problem has persisted because there are compelling arguments on both sides. If there are objectively possible futures witnessing the truth of the prediction and others witnessing its falsity, symmetry considerations seem to forbid counting it either true or false. Yet if we think about how we will assess the prediction tomorrow, when a sea battle is raging (or not), it seems we must assign the utterance a definite truth value. I argue that both arguments must be given their due, and that this requires relativizing utterance truth to a context of assessment. I show how this relativization can be handled in a rigorous formal semantics, and I argue that we can make coherent sense of assertion without assuming that utterances have their truth values absolutely.
Review of Colin McGinn, Logical Properties: Identity, Existence, Predication, Necessity, Truth, The Philosophical Review 111 (2002), 534–7.
“Frege, Kant, and the Logic in Logicism,” The Philosophical Review 111 (2002), 25–65. Reprinted in Gottlob Frege: Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, vol. 1, ed. Michael Beany and Erich Reck (Routledge, 2005).
In arguing that arithmetic is reducible to logic and definitions, Frege presents himself as contradicting a thesis of Kant’s. But Kant holds that (general) logic must be “formal,” and Frege’s logical system is not formal in Kant’s sense. Is their disagreement partly a verbal one, then, about the meaning of “logic”? Appealing to textual and historical evidence as well as philosophical reconstruction, I argue (a) that Kant and Frege mean the same thing by “logic,” and (b) that Kant’s claim that logic is formal is a substantive thesis of his critical philosophy, not part of a definition.
Review of Stephen Neale, Facing Facts, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2002.08.15.
Review of Michael Potter, Reason’s Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap, Journal of the History of Philosophy 39 (2001), 454–6.
“Aristotle’s Definition of Anagnôrisis,” American Journal of Philology 121 (2000), 367–383.
I argue for a new construal of Aristotle’s definition of anagnorisis (recognition) in Poetics 11. Virtually all translators and interpreters of the definition have understood the phrase ton pros eutuchian e dustuchian horismenon as a subjective genitive characterizing the persons involved in the recognition. I argue that it should instead be taken as a partitive genitive characterizing the genus of changes (metabolon) of which recognitions are a species. In addition to being preferable on philogical grounds, the construal I recommend helps illuminate the relation between recognition and reversal (peripeteia) and makes sense of Aristotle’s views about the relative values of various kinds of recognition.
What Does it Mean to Say that Logic is Formal? Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 2000. (View abstract)