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226Perceiving EmotionsAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 84 (1): 45-61. 2010.I argue that it is possible literally to perceive the emotions of others. This account depends upon the possibility of perceiving a whole by perceiving one or more of its parts, and upon the view that emotions are complexes. After developing this account, I expound and reply to Rowland Stout's challenge to it. Stout is nevertheless sympathetic with the perceivability-of-emotions view. I thus scrutinize Stout's suggestion for a better defence of that view than I have provided, and offer a refinem…Read more
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45Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-KnowledgeRoutledge. 2017.Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge takes the reader on tour of the nature, value, and limits of self-knowledge. Mitchell S. Green calls on classical sources like Plato and Descartes, 20th-century thinkers like Freud, recent developments in neuroscience and experimental psychology, and even Buddhist philosophy to explore topics at the heart of who we are. The result is an unvarnished look at both the achievements and drawbacks of the many attempts to better know one's own self. …Read more
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52Intention and authenticity in the facial expression of painBehavioral and Brain Sciences 25 (4): 460-461. 2002.Williams and the many studies she considers appear to assume that voluntary amplification in facial expression of pain implies dissimulation. In fact, the behavioral ecology model of pain expression is consistent with amplification when subjects in pain are in the presence of others disposed to render aid, and that amplification may well be voluntary.
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22Direct Reference, Empty Names and ImplicatureCanadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (3): 419-447. 2007.Angle Grinder Man removes wheel locks from cars in London. He is something of a folk hero, saving drivers from enormous parking and towing fines, and has succeeded thus far in eluding the authorities. In spite of his cape and lamé tights, he is no fiction; he's a real person. By contrast, Pegasus, Zeus and the like are fictions. None of them is real. In fact, not only is each of them different from the others, all differ from Angle Grinder Man. After all, Zeus throws thunderbolts but doesn't rem…Read more
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105The status of suppositionNoûs 34 (3). 2000.According to many forms of Externalism now popular in the Philosophy of Mind, the contents of our thoughts depend in part upon our physical or social milieu.1 These forms of Externalism leave unchallenged the thesis that the ~non-factive! attitudes we bear towards these contents are independent of physical or social milieu. This paper challenges that thesis. It is argued here that publicly forwarding a content as a supposition for the sake of argument is, under conditions not themselves guarante…Read more
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164Reflections on reflection: Van Fraassen on beliefSynthese 98 (2). 1994.In Belief and the Will, van Fraassen employed a diachronic Dutch Book argument to support a counterintuitive principle called Reflection. There and subsequently van Fraassen has put forth Reflection as a linchpin for his views in epistemology and the philosophy of science, and for the voluntarism (first-person reports of subjective probability are undertakings of commitments) that he espouses as an alternative to descriptivism (first-person reports of subjective probability are merely self-descr…Read more
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34Origins of Analytical Philosophy (review)Philosophical Review 104 (4): 613-615. 1995.Frege was the grandfather of analytical philosophy, Husserl the founder of the phenomenological school, two radically different philosophical movements. In 1903, say, how would they have appeared to any German student of philosophy who knew the work of both? Not, certainly, as two deeply opposed thinkers: rather as remarkably close in orientation, despite some divergence of interests. They may be compared with the Rhine and the Danube, which rise quite close to one another and for a time pursue …Read more
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128Illocutions, implicata, and what a conversation requiresPragmatics and Cognition 7 (1): 65-92. 1999.An approach is provided to the prediction and explanation of quantity implicata that, unlike the majority of approaches available, does not construe Quantity as requiring speakers to make the strongest claim that their evidence permits. Central to this treatment is an elaboration of the notion of what a conversation requires as appealed to in the Cooperative Principle and the Quantity maxim. What a conversation requires is construed as depending, at any given point, upon the aim of the conversat…Read more
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161How and what we can learn from fictionIn Garry Hagberg & Walter Jost (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature, Wiley-blackwell. 2007.This chapter contains sections titled: Literature, Fiction, and Truth Literary Cognitivism Thought Experiments Genres Learning by Supposing De se Suppositions.
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63Aesthetic creation • by N. ZangwillAnalysis 69 (2): 399-401. 2009.Definitions of art tend to take the phenomenon at face value, with philosophers aspiring to accommodate their theories to the artistic facts no matter how bizarre. The result, as for instance in the work of Dickie, is a definition of art neutral on the questions whether any of it is any good, and why anyone would bother to produce it. Zangwill bucks this trend by insisting that the method of definition-and-counterexample that drives much of the field is out of date, and by contending that any go…Read more
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238Speech acts, the handicap principle and the expression of psychological statesMind and Language 24 (2): 139-163. 2009.Abstract: One oft-cited feature of speech acts is their expressive character: Assertion expresses belief, apology regret, promise intention. Yet expression, or at least sincere expression, is as I argue a form of showing: A sincere expression shows whatever is the state that is the sincerity condition of the expressive act. How, then, can a speech act show a speaker's state of thought or feeling? To answer this question I consider three varieties of showing, and argue that only one of them is su…Read more
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101Précis of self-expression (oxford, 2007)Acta Analytica 25 (1): 65-69. 2010.I give a brief overview of the major contentions and methodologies of my book, Self-Expression.
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105Language Understanding and Knowledge of MeaningThe Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 5 4In recent years the view that understanding a language requires knowing what its words and expressions mean has come under attack. One line of attack attempts to show that while knowledge can be undermined by Gettier-style counterexamples, language understanding cannot be. I consider this line of attack, particularly in the work of Pettit and Longworth, and show it to be unpersuasive. I stress, however, that maintaining a link between language understanding and knowledge does not itself vindicat…Read more
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113Imagery, expression, and metaphorPhilosophical Studies 174 (1): 33--46. 2017.Metaphorical utterances are construed as falling into two broad categories, in one of which are cases amenable to analysis in terms of semantic content, speaker meaning, and satisfaction conditions, and where image-construction is permissible but not mandatory. I call these image-permitting metaphors, and contrast them with image-demanding metaphors comprising a second category and whose understanding mandates the construction of a mental image. This construction, I suggest, is spontaneous, is n…Read more
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13Empathy, expression, and what artworks have to teachIn Garry Hagberg (ed.), Art and Ethical Criticism, Blackwell. 2008.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Three Forms of Showing Showing How and Knowing How Perceiving Aspects and Affects Expressiveness and Showing How Congruence of Sensation and Affect Empathy and Epistemology Art and Skill.
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70Symmetry arguments for cooperation in the Prisoner's DilemmaIn Cristina Bicchieri, Richard C. Jeffrey & Brian Skyrms (eds.), The Logic of Strategy, Oxford University Press. pp. 175. 1999.
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87Replies to Eriksson, Martin and MooreActa Analytica 25 (1): 105-117. 2010.I reply to the main criticisms and suggestions for further clarification made by the contributors to this symposium on my book, Self-Expression . These replies are organized into the following sections: (1) What's in the name?, (2) Showing, expressing and indicating, (3) Expressing and signaling, (4) Perceiving emotions, (5) Voluntary/involuntary, (6) Expression and handicaps, (7) Expression and aesthetics, and (8) Looking ahead.
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39Origins of Analytic PhilosophyPhilosophical Review 104 (4): 613. 1995.Frege was the grandfather of analytical philosophy, Husserl the founder of the phenomenological school, two radically different philosophical movements. In 1903, say, how would they have appeared to any German student of philosophy who knew the work of both? Not, certainly, as two deeply opposed thinkers: rather as remarkably close in orientation, despite some divergence of interests. They may be compared with the Rhine and the Danube, which rise quite close to one another and for a time pursue …Read more
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27Illocutions, implicata, and what a conversation requiresPragmatics and Cognition 7 (1): 65-91. 1999.An approach is provided to the prediction and explanation of quantity implicata that, unlike the majority of approaches available, does not construe Quantity as requiring speakers to make the strongest claim that their evidence permits. Central to this treatment is an elaboration of the notion of what a conversation requires as appealed to in the Cooperative Principle and the Quantity maxim. What a conversation requires is construed as depending, at any given point, upon the aim of the conversat…Read more
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121How do speech acts express psychological states?In Savas L. Tsohatzidis (ed.), John Searle's Philosophy of Language: Force, Meaning and Mind, Cambridge University Press. 2007.forthcoming in S. L. Tsohatzidis (ed.) John Searle’s Philosophy of Language: Force, Meaning and Mind (Cambridge)
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170Conversation and common groundPhilosophical Studies 174 (6): 1587-1604. 2017.Stalnaker’s conception of context as common ground possesses unquestionable explanatory power, shedding light on presupposition, presupposition accommodation, the behavior of certain types of conditionals, epistemic modals, and related phenomena. The CG-context approach is also highly abstract, so merely pointing out that it fails to account for an aspect of communication is an inconclusive criticism. Instead our question should be whether it can be extended or modified to account for such a phe…Read more
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57From the point of view of ethics, truthtelling is not a matter of speaking the truth but is rather a matter of speaking what one believes to be the truth. So too liars do not necessarily say what is false; they say what they believe to be false. Further, one can mislead without lying. An executive answering in the affirmative the question whether some employees are in excessive danger on the job will mislead if he knows that in fact most employees are but does not say so. Yet he does not lie. Si…Read more
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26Lionspeak: communication, expression, and meaningIn James R. O'Shea & Eric Rubenstein (eds.), Self, Language, and World: Problems From Kant, Sellars, and Rosenberg, Ridgeview Publishing Co.. pp. 89--106. 2010.
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112Quantity, volubility, and some varieties of discourseLinguistics and Philosophy 18 (1). 1995.Grice's Quantity maxims have been widely misinterpreted as enjoining a speaker to make the strongest claim that she can, while respecting the other conversational maxims. Although many writers on the topic of conversational implicature interpret the Quantity maxims as enjoining such volubility, so construed the Quantity maxims are unreasonable norms for conversation. Appreciating this calls for attending more closely to the notion of what a conversation requires. When we do so, we see that esche…Read more
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46Moorean absurdity and showing what's withinIn Mitchell S. Green & John N. Williams (eds.), Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person, Oxford University Press. 2007.Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the University of Virginia and at Texas A&M University. I thank audiences at both institutions for their insightful comments. Special thanks to John Williams for his illuminating comments on an earlier draft. Research for this paper was supported in part by a Summer Grant from the Vice Provost for Research and Public Service at the University of Virginia. That support is here gratefully acknowledged.
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278Illocutionary force and semantic contentLinguistics and Philosophy 23 (5): 435-473. 2000.Illocutionary force and semantic content are widely held to occupy utterly different categories in at least two ways: Any expression serving as an indicator of illocutionary force must be without semantic content, and no such expression can embed. A refined account of the force/content distinction is offered here that does the explanatory work that the standard distinction does, while, in accounting for the behavior of a range of parenthetical expressions, shows neither nor to be compulsory. The…Read more
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132Expression, indication and showing what’s withinPhilosophical Studies 137 (3): 389-398. 2008.This essay offers a constructive criticism of Part I of Davis’ Meaning, Expression and Thought. After a brief exposition, in Sect. 2, of the main points of the theory that will concern us, I raise a challenge in Sect. 3 for the characterization of expression that is so central to his program. I argue first of all that a sincere expression of a thought, feeling, or mood shows it. Yet attention to this fact reveals that it does not go without saying how it is possible to show such things as though…Read more
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Aesthetics |
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Philosophy of Mind |
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