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53In his recent Philosophers’ Imprint paper “The (mostly harmless) inconsistency of knowledge attributions” [Weiner, 2009], Matt Weiner argues that the semantics of the expression “knows that”, as it is used in attributions of knowledge like “Hannah knows that the bank will be open,” are inconsistent, but that this inconsistency is “mostly harmless.” He presents his view as an alternative to the invariantist, contextualist and relativist approaches currently prevalent in the literature, (e.g. [Sta…Read more
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52Lessons from the logic of demonstratives: what indexicality teaches us about logic and vice versaIn Greg Restall & Gillian Kay Russell (eds.), New waves in philosophical logic, Palgrave-macmillan. 2012.This paper looks at what David Kaplan's work on indexicals can teach us about logic and the philosophy of logic, and also what Kaplan's logic (i.e. the Logic of Demonstratives) can teach us about indexicals. The lessons are i) that logical consequence is not necessary truth-preservation, ii) that that the linguistic doctrine of necessary truth (also called conventionalism about modality) fails, and iii) that there is a kind of barrier to entailment between non-context-sensitive and context-sens…Read more
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51Language, Locations and PresuppositionLinguistic and Philosophical Investigations 9 194-205. 2010.Could it ever be right to say that a language---as opposed to a speaker of the language---makes, or presupposes or somehow commits itself to certain claims? Such as that certain kinds of objects exist, or that things are a certain way? It can be tempting to think not, to think that languages are just the neutral media through which speakers make claims. Yet certain, surprisingly diverse, phenomena---analyticity, racial epithets, object-involving direct reference, arithmetic, and semantic paradox…Read more
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26New waves in philosophical logic (edited book)Palgrave-Macmillan. 2012.Machine generated contents note: -- Series Editors' PrefaceAcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsHow Things Are Elsewhere; W. Schwarz Information Change and First-Order Dynamic Logic; B.Kooi Interpreting and Applying Proof Theories for Modal Logic; F.Poggiolesi & G.Restall The Logic(s) of Modal Knowledge; D.Cohnitz On Probabilistically Closed Languages; H.Leitgeb Dogmatism, Probability and Logical Uncertainty; B.Weatherson & D.Jehle Skepticism about Reasoning; S.Roush, K.Allen & I.HerbertLessons …Read more
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15Barriers to Entailment: Hume's Law and other limits on logical consequenceOxford University Press. 2023.A barrier to entailment exists if you can't get conclusions of a certain kind from premises of another. One of the most famous barriers in philosophy is Hume's Law, which says that you can't get normative conclusions from descriptive premises, or in slogan form: you can't get an ought from an is. This barrier is highly controversial, and many famous counterexamples were proposed in the last century. But there are other barriers which function almost as philosophical platitudes: no Universal conc…Read more
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From Anti-exceptionalism to Feminist LogicHypatia (Online first): 1-19. forthcoming.Anti-exceptionalists about formal logic think that logic is continuous with the sciences. Many philosophers of science think that there is feminist science. Putting these together: can anti-exceptionalism make space for feminist logic? The answer depends on the details of the ways logic is like science and the ways science can be feminist. This paper wades into these details, examines five different approaches, and ultimately argues that anti-exceptionalism makes space for feminist logic in seve…Read more
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Analyticity in externalist languagesIn Sarah Sawyer (ed.), New waves in philosophy of language, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Language |
Epistemology |