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Realism vs Nominalism about theDispositional-Non-Dispositional DistinctionIn Michele Marsonet (ed.), The Problem of Realism, Ashgate. pp. 160. 2002.
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73A very large fly in the ointment: Davidsonian truth theory contextualizedIn Richard Schantz (ed.), Prospects for Meaning, Walter De Gruyter. 2012.one hand, it raises fundamental doubts about the Davidsonian project, which seems to involve isolating specifically semantic knowledge from any other knowledge or skill in a way reflected by the ideal of homophony. Indexicality forces a departure from this ideal, and so from the aspiration of deriving the truth conditions of an arbitrary utterance on the basis simply of axioms which could hope to represent purely semantic knowledge. In defence of Davidson, I argue that once his original idea for…Read more
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1Referring descriptionsIn Marga Reimer & Anne Bezuidenhout (eds.), Descriptions and beyond, Oxford University Press. pp. 369--89. 2004.
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10Lessons for Vagueness from Scrambled SoritesMetaphysica 14 (2): 225-237. 2013.Vagueness demands many boundaries. Each is permissible, in that a thinker may without error use it to distinguish objects, though none is mandatory. This is revealed by a thought experiment—scrambled sorites—in which objects from a sorites series are presented in a random order, and subjects are required to make their judgments without access to any previous objects or their judgments concerning them.
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8Understanding as immersionPhilosophical Issues 16 (1). 2006.Understanding has often been regarded as a kind of knowledge. This paper argues that this view is very implausible for understanding words. Instead, a proper account will be of the “analytic-genetic” variety: it will describe immersion in the practice of using a word in such a way that even those not previously equipped with the concepts the word expresses can become immersed. Meeting this condition requires attention to findings in developmental psychology. If you understand a declarative utter…Read more
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15Logical Forms: An Introduction to Philosophical LogicPhilosophical Quarterly 42 (167): 243. 1992.Logical Forms explains both the detailed problems involved in finding logical forms and also the theoretical underpinnings of philosophical logic. In this revised edition, exercises are integrated throughout the book. The result is a genuinely interactive introduction which engages the reader in developing the argument. Each chapter concludes with updated notes to guide further reading
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Areas of Interest
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Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
M&E, Misc |