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58Semantic Eliminativism and the Theory-Theory of Linguistic UnderstandingCanadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (sup1): 159-199. 2004.
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56Knowing Selves: Expression, Truth, and KnowledgeIn Brie Gertler (ed.), Privileged Access: Philosophical Accounts of Self-Knowledge, Ashgate. pp. 179--212. 2003.
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55Sociality, Expression, and This Thing called LanguageInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (1): 56-79. 2016.Davidson’s well-known language skepticism—the claim that there is no such a thing as a language—has recognizably Gricean underpinnings, some of which also underlie his continuity skepticism—the claim that there can be no philosophically illuminating account of the emergence of language and thought. My first aim in this paper is to highlight aspects of the complicated relationship between central Davidsonian and Gricean ideas concerning language. After a brief review of Davidson’s two skeptical c…Read more
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54Neo-expressivism: avowals' security and privileged self-knowledgeIn Anthony Hatzimoysis (ed.), Self-Knowledge, Oxford University Press. 2008.Here are some things that I know right now: that I’m feeling a bit hungry, that there’s a red cardinal on my bird feeder, that I’m sitting down, that I have a lot of grading to do today, that my daughter is mad at me, that I’ll be going for a run soon, that I’d like to go out to the movies tonight. As orthodoxy would have it, some among these represent things to which I have privileged epistemic access, namely: my present states of mind . I normally know these states directly, immediately, non-i…Read more
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51Neo-Expressivism: (Self-)Knowledge, Meaning, and TruthRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 86 11-34. 2019.Philosophers are often interested in explaining significant contrasts between ordinary descriptive discourses, on the one hand, and discourses – such as ethics, mathematics, or mentalistic discourse – that are thought to be more problematic in various ways. But certain strategies for ‘saving the differences’ can make it too difficult to preserve notable similarities across discourses. My own preference is for strategies that ‘save the differences’ without sacrificing logico-semantic continuities…Read more
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46Transparency, Epistemic Impartiality, and Personhood: A Commentary on Simon Evnine's Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood 1Philosophical Books 50 (1): 1-14. 2009.
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36‘Pragmatics First’: Animal Communication and the Evolution of LanguageReview of Philosophy and Psychology 1-28. forthcoming.Research on the evolution of language is often framed in terms of sharp discontinuities in syntax and semantics between animal communication systems and human language as we know them. According to the so-called “pragmatics-first” approach to the evolution of language, when trying to understand the origins of human language in animal communication, we should be focusing on potential pragmatic continuities. However, some proponents of this approach (e.g. Seyfarth and Cheney Animal Behavior 124: 3…Read more
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27Is There Such a Thing as a Language?Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (2): 163-190. 1992.‘There is no such thing as a language,’ Donald Davidson tells us. Though this is a startling claim in its own right, it seems especially puzzling coming from a leading theorizer about language. Over the years, Davidson’s important essays have sparked the hope that there is a route to a positive, nonskeptical theory of meaning for natural languages. This hope would seem to be dashed if there are no natural languages. Unless Davidson’s radical claim is a departure from his developed views, the Dav…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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21Discrimination, individual justice and preferential treatmentPublic Affairs Quarterly 4 (2): 111-137. 1990.
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17No-‘How’ Privileged Self-KnowledgeErkenntnis. forthcoming.Ordinarily, if a person produces a nonreflective, ‘unstudied’ self-attribution of a present mental state – an avowal – we do not presume that they have produced the avowal on some specific epistemic basis; and we do not expect them to know how they know the self-attribution to be true. This no-‘how’ character of basic self-knowledge is puzzling, given that we regard avowals as manifesting factual, and indeed privileged, knowledge. I am here interested in views that accommodate both the baseless,…Read more
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17Here are some things that I know right now: that I’m feeling a bit hungry, that there’s a red cardinal on my bird feeder, that I’m sitting down, that I have a lot of grading to do today, that my daughter is mad at me, that I’ll be going for a run soon, that I’d like to go out to the movies tonight. As orthodoxy would have it, some among these represent things to which I have privileged epistemic access, namely: my present states of mind. I normally know these states directly, immediately, non-in…Read more
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16“Meaning” Reconstructed: Grice and the Naturalizing of SemanticsPacific Philosophical Quarterly 76 (2): 83-116. 1995.
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15Indeterminacy of Translation—Theory and PracticePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (4): 781-810. 1993.
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14As I am sitting at my desk in front of my computer, a thought crosses my mind: There's water in the glass. The thought has a particular content: that there is water in the glass. And, if all is well, there is water in the glass, so my thought is true. According to external-world skepticism, I still do not know that there is water in the glass, because my way of telling what's in front of me does not allow me to rule out the possibility that I’m only under some kind of illusion about what's in fr…Read more
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11Semantic Eliminativism and the Theory-Theory of Linguistic UnderstandingCanadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 30 158-199. 2004.Suppose, familiarly, that you and a friend have landed in an alien territory, amidst people who speak a language you do not know. Upon seeing you, one of them starts yelling, seemingly alarmed. You say to your friend, “She thinks we want to hurt her. She's scared. We must seem very strange to her.” Your friend, who is facing you, says, “No, I think she's actually trying to warn you: there's a snake right above your head, on that tree. You see the sling in her hand? I think she's going to try to …Read more
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11Expression, truth, and reality : some variations on themes from WrightIn Annalisa Coliva (ed.), Mind, meaning, and knowledge: themes from the philosophy of Crispin Wright, Oxford University Press. 2012.Expressivism, broadly construed, is the view that the function of utterances in a given area of discourse is to give expression to our sentiments or other (non-cognitive) mental states or attitudes, rather than report or describe some range of facts. This view naturally seems an attractive option wherever it is suspected that there may not be a domain of facts for the given discourse to be describing. Familiarly, to avoid commitment to ethical facts, the ethical expressivist suggests that ethica…Read more
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9Expression and self-knowledgeWiley-Blackwell. 2023.This Great Debates volume grew out of exchanges that followed the 2012 publication of a Festschrift volume for Crispin Wright, just over a decade ago (Coliva 2012). As often happens in Philosophy, the process of trying to clarify and iron out apparently local points of disagreement between us has unearthed deeper divergences concerning larger issues in the philosophy of language and mind, in epistemology, and in the theory of action. Such is our profession.
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8Semantic Indeterminacy and Scientific UnderdeterminationPacific Philosophical Quarterly 67 (4): 245-263. 1986.
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8Language, Concepts and Culture: Between Pluralism and RelativismFacta Philosophica 6 (2): 183-221. 2004.
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6i. Introduction: Naturaiizing Semantics It seems as though everyone these days is in the business of ‘naituraIizing': apistamologists, philosophers of mind and language, even moral phi- `lcscpheers and philosophers of mathematics. Quine is cften cited as the one who started Et, but expressions of the naturalizing urge can no doubt be found much earlier in the history of phiioscphy. Lccsaly speaking, the- naturalizing urge is the desire to fashion human epistemic achievements in particular arcs a…Read more
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2Postscript to 'Deflationism, Meaning and Truth-Conditions'In J. C. Beall & B. Armour-Garb (eds.), Deflationary Truth, Open Court. 2005.
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2Epistemological Disjunctivism: Perception, Expression, and Self-KnowledgeIn Casey Doyle, Joe Milburn & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism, Routledge. pp. 317-344. 2019.So-called basic self-knowledge (ordinary knowledge of one's present states of mind) can be seen as both 'baseless' and privileged. The spontaneous self-beliefs we have when we avow our states of mind do not appear to be formed on any particular epistemic basis (whether intro-or extro-spective). Nonetheless, on some views, these self-beliefs constitute instances of (privileged) knowledge. We are here interested in views on which true mental self-beliefs have internalist epistemic warrant that fal…Read more
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Expression, truth, and reality : some variations on themes from WrightIn Annalisa Coliva (ed.), Mind, meaning, and knowledge: themes from the philosophy of Crispin Wright, Oxford University Press. 2012.
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DeflationismIn Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.
Dorit Bar-On
University of Connecticut
University Of Connecticut, Storrs
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University Of Connecticut, StorrsPhilosophy, University Of Connecticut, StorrsProfessor Of Philosophy
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Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
1 more
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Epistemology |
Pragmatics |
Truth |
Philosophy of Linguistics |
Areas of Interest
2 more
Philosophy of Action |
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Epistemology |
Linguistics |
Cognitive Sciences, Misc |
Psychology |