•  45
    Explaining Attitudes: A Practical Approach to the Mind
    Philosophical Review 106 (4): 614. 1997.
    When I started the book, I thought that if there are beliefs, then they are brain states. I still believe that. I express three caveats about the book.
  •  40
    Inscrutability
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27 (sup1): 165-209. 1997.
  •  38
    Reply to Lynch, Miščević, and Stojanović
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 11 (2): 197-208. 2011.
    This paper responds to discussions of my book When Truth Gives Out by Michael Lynch, Nenad Miščević, and Isidora Stojanović. Among the topics discussed are: whether relativism is incoherent (because it requires one to think that certain of one’s views are and are not epistemically superior to views one denies); whether and when sentences in which one slurs an individual or group are truth valued; whether relativism about matters of taste gives an account of “faultless disagreement” superior to c…Read more
  •  37
    What Isn’t a Belief?
    Philosophical Topics 22 (1/2): 291-318. 1994.
  •  36
    Thirteen seminal essays by Mark Richard develop a nuanced account of semantics and propositional attitudes. The collection addresses a range of topics in philosophical semantics and philosophy of mind, and is accompanied by a new Introduction which discusses attitudes realized by dispositions and other non-linguistic cognitive structures.
  •  27
    Languages of Possibility (review)
    Philosophical Review 103 (1): 139. 1994.
  •  26
    Opacity
    In Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.
    There seems to be a lot of opacity in our language. Quotation is opaque. The modal idioms are apparently opaque. Propositional attitude ascriptions seem opaque, as do the environments created by verbs such as ‘seeks’ and ‘fears’. Opacity raises a number of issues — first and foremost, whether there is such a thing. This article concentrates on the question of whether there is any opacity to be found in natural language, examining various reasons one might have for denying that apparent opacity i…Read more
  •  24
    Context, Vagueness, and Ontology
    In Patrick Greenough & Michael P. Lynch (eds.), Truth and Realism, Oxford University Press. pp. 162. 2006.
  •  23
    The book under review consists of a “Problems” section, with chapters entitled “Ontology,” “Thought” and “Language”; and a “Proposals” section, with like-titled chapters. The first section is a survey; as might be expected of one of 126 pages, compression is the watchword. The reviewer felt that it did not live up to dust jacket copy, heralding a book “easily accessible to undergraduates.”
  •  22
    Precis of When Truth Gives Out
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 11 (2): 143-147. 2011.
    When Truth Gives Out discusses some of the relations between performative and expressive aspects of language and those aspects of language that determine truth conditions. Among the topics it takes up are slurring speech, the ‘Frege-Geach’ objection to expressivism, vagueness, and relativism. It develops an alternative to standard truth conditional semantics, one based on the notion of a commitment.
  •  22
    Meanings as Species
    Oxford University Press. 2019.
    Mark Richard presents an original theory of meaning, as the collection of assumptions speakers make in using it and expect their hearers to recognize as being made. Meaning is spread across a population, inherited by each new generation of speakers from the last, and evolving through the interactions of speakers with their environment.
  •  21
    Explaining Attitudes (review)
    Philosophical Review 106 (4): 614-617. 1997.
  •  20
    Demonstratives, Indexicals, and Tensed Attributions of Belief
    Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst. 1982.
    Sentences of natural languages are often said to express propositions and to have meanings . This work is about the nature of such entities and their role in an account of the truth conditions of tensed attributions of belief containing demonstratives and indexicals. ;In Chapter I, I discuss the temporal properties of propositions. Two views concerning the temporal properties of propositions--temporalism and eternalism--are characterized; eternalism is defended as the correct view. I show that t…Read more
  •  20
    Taking the Fregean seriously
    In D. F. Austin (ed.), Philosophical Analysis, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 219--239. 1988.
  •  14
    Knowing Who
    Noûs 27 (2): 235-243. 1993.
  •  11
    Commitment
    Noûs 32 (S12): 255-281. 1998.
  •  4
    Truth and truth bearers
    Oxford University Press. 2015.
    This book collects nine seminal essays by Mark Richard published between 1980 and 2014, alongside four new essays and an introduction that puts the essays in context. Each essay is an attempt, in one way or another, to understand the idea of a proposition. Part I discusses whether the objects of thought and assertion can change truth value over time. Part II develops and defends a relativist view of the objects of assertion and thought; it includes discussions of the nature of disagreement, mora…Read more
  •  4
    Semantic pretense
    In T. Hofweber & A. Everett (eds.), Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-Existence, Csli Publications. pp. 205--32. 2000.
  •  3
    Analysis, Synonymy, and Sense
    In C. Anthony Anderson & Michael Zelëny (eds.), Logic, Meaning and Computation: Essays in Memory of Alonzo Church, Springer. pp. 545-571. 2001.
  •  1
    Truth and Truth Bearers: Meaning in Context, Volume Ii
    Oxford University Press UK. 2015.
    This book collects nine seminal essays by Mark Richard published between 1980 and 2014, alongside four new essays and an introduction that puts the essays in context. Each essay is an attempt, in one way or another, to understand the idea of a proposition. Part I discusses whether the objects of thought and assertion can change truth value over time. Part II develops and defends a relativist view of the objects of assertion and thought; and Part III discusses issues having to do with relations b…Read more
  • Indeterminacy and Truth Value Gaps
    In Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and Clouds: Vaguenesss, its Nature and its Logic, Oxford University Press. 2010.