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680The realpolitik of referencePacific Philosophical Quarterly 89 (1). 2008.What are the conditions for fixing the reference of a proper name? Debate on this point has recently been rekindled by Scott Soames, Robin Jeshion, and others. In this paper, I sketch a new pragmatic approach to the justification of reference-fixing procedures, in opposition to accounts that insist on an invariant set of conditions for fixing reference across environments and linguistic communities. Comparing reference to other relations whose instances are introduced through "initiation" proced…Read more
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761Sortals and criteria of identityAnalysis 72 (3): 474-478. 2012.In a recent article, Harold Noonan argues that application conditions and criteria of identity are not distinct from one another. This seems to threaten the standard approach to distinguishing sortals from adjectival terms. I propose that his observation, while correct, does not have this consequence. I present a simple scheme for distinguishing sortals from adjectival terms. I also propose an amended version of the standard canonical form of criteria of identity
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503Grounds, Convention, and the Metaphysics of Linguistic TokensCroatian Journal of Philosophy 9 (1): 45-67. 2009.My aim in this paper is to discuss a metaphysical framework within which to understand “standard linguistic entities” (SLEs), such as words, sentences, phonemes, and other entities routinely employed in linguistic theory. In doing so, I aim to defuse certain kinds of skepticism, challenge convention-based accounts of SLEs, and present a series of distinctions for better understanding what the various accounts of SLEs do and do not accomplish.
Medford, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
| Metaphysics |
| Philosophy of Language |
| Philosophy of Social Science |