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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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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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171Conversation 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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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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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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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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279Illocutionary 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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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Aesthetics |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Aesthetics |
Philosophy of Biology |