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108Indeterminacy as Indecision, Lecture I: Vagueness and CommunicationJournal of Philosophy 117 (11/12): 593-616. 2020.I can say that a building is tall and you can understand me, even if neither of us has any clear idea exactly how tall a building must be in order to count as tall. This mundane fact poses a problem for the view that successful communication consists in the hearer’s recognition of the proposition a speaker intends to assert. The problem cannot be solved by the epistemicist’s usual appeal to anti-individualism, because the extensions of vague words like ‘tall’ are contextually fluid and can be co…Read more
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105A Map of Metaphysics Zeta (review)Philosophical Review 112 (1): 97-99. 2003.The central chapter of Burnyeat’s Map is organized like a commentary, moving through Metaphysics Ζ (and parts of Η) section by section. But unlike a commentary, it does not strive for comprehensiveness. Its aim is to describe the general lay of the land—what is being argued for where, in what way, and why— and so its exegesis is limited to Aristotle’s “signposts.” For example, every time Aristotle says “we must investigate” or “as we have seen,” Burnyeat asks “where?” As far as possible, he trie…Read more
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102Belief: What is it Good for?Erkenntnis 1-18. forthcoming.Abstract“Absolutely nothing,” say the radical Bayesians. “Simplifying decisions,” say the moderates. “Providing premises in practical reasoning,” say the epistemologists. “Coordinating with others,” say I. It is hard to see how to construct an adequate theory of rational behavior without using a graded notion of belief, such as credence. But once we have credence, what role is left for belief? After surveying some answers to this question, I will explore the idea that belief is in a different li…Read more
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84Replies to Raffman, Stanley, and WrightPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (1): 197-202. 2016.
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67Indeterminacy as Indecision, Lecture III: Indeterminacy as IndecisionJournal of Philosophy 117 (11/12): 643-667. 2020.This lecture presents my own solution to the problem posed in Lecture I. Instead of a new theory of speech acts, it offers a new theory of the contents expressed by vague assertions, along the lines of the plan expressivism Allan Gibbard has advocated for normative language. On this view, the mental states we express in uttering vague sentences have a dual direction of fit: they jointly constrain the doxastic possibilities we recognize and our practical plans about how to draw boundaries. With t…Read more
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66Précis of Assessment Sensitivity: Relative Truth and its ApplicationsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (1): 168-170. 2016.
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62Review: Potter, Reason's Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to CarnapJournal of the History of Philosophy 39 (3): 454-456. 2001.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 454-456 [Access article in PDF] Michael Potter. Reason's Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap.New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 305. Cloth, $45.00. This book tells the story of a remarkable series of answers to two related questions:(1) How can arithmetic be necessary and knowable a priori? [End Page 454](2) What accounts for the applicability of a…Read more
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47Indeterminacy as Indecision, Lecture II: Seeing through the CloudsJournal of Philosophy 117 (11/12): 617-642. 2020.One approach to the problem is to keep the orthodox notion of a proposition but innovate in the theory of speech acts. A number of philosophers and linguists have suggested that, in cases of felicitous underspecification, a speaker asserts a “cloud” of propositions rather than just one. This picture raises a number of questions: what norms constrain a “cloudy assertion,” what counts as uptake, and how is the conversational common ground revised if it is accepted? I explore three different ways o…Read more
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39Xiv *-making sense of relative truthProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 105 (1): 305-323. 2005.
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34Why future contingents are not all falseAnalytic Philosophy. forthcoming.Patrick Todd argues for a modified Peircean view on which all future contingents are false. According to Todd, this is the only view that makes sense if we fully embrace an open future, rejecting the idea of actual future history. I argue that supervaluational accounts, on which future contingents are neither true nor false, are fully consistent with the metaphysics of an open future. I suggest that it is Todd's failure to distinguish semantic and postsemantic levels that leads him to suppose ot…Read more
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26Reason's Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 39 (3): 454-456. 2001.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.3 (2001) 454-456 [Access article in PDF] Michael Potter. Reason's Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap.New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 305. Cloth, $45.00. This book tells the story of a remarkable series of answers to two related questions:(1) How can arithmetic be necessary and knowable a priori? [End Page 454](2) What accounts for the applicability of a…Read more
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20The Things We (Sorta Kinda) BelievePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (1): 218-224. 2006.
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19Equal Validity and Disagreement: Comments on Baghramian and Coliva’s Relativism1Analysis 82 (3): 499-506. 2022.I applaud Maria Baghramian and Annalisa Coliva (henceforth B&C) for writing this book. Like Baghramian’s earlier book of the same title (Baghramian 2004), i.
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18Philosophical Logic: A Contemporary IntroductionRoutledge. 2020."Philosophical logic" describes two distinct areas: the investigation of the fundamental concepts of logic, the formal investigation of alternatives and extensions to classical logic. The first is a philosophical discipline, concerned with notions like truth, propositions, necessity, logical consequence, vagueness, and reasoning. The second is a technical discipline, devoted to developing formal logical systems-modal logics, second-order logics, intuitionistic logics, relevance logics, logics of…Read more
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RelativismIn Delia Graff Fara & Gillian Russell (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language, Routledge. 2012.
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The Assessment Sensitivity of Knowledge AttributionsIn Tamar Szabo Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 1, Oxford University Press Uk. 2005.
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