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42Meaning, norms, and use: critical notice of Donald Davidson's Truth, Language, and HistoryPhilosophical Investigations 30 (2): 179-187. 2007.
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170Inferentialism, representationalism and derogatory wordsInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 15 (2). 2007.In a recent paper, after outlining various distinguishing features of derogatory words, Jennifer Hornsby suggests that the phenomenon raises serious difficulties for inferentialism. Against Hornsby, I claim that derogatory words do not pose any insuperable problems for inferentialism, so long as it is supplemented with apparatus borrowed from Grice and Hare. Moreover, I argue, derogatory expressions pose difficulties for Hornsby's favoured alternative theory of meaning, representationalism, unle…Read more
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3Charles Travis, Thought's Footing: Themes in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 27 (5): 383-385. 2007.
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663Reasons and GuidanceAnalytic Philosophy 57 (3): 214-235. 2016.Many philosophers accept a response constraint on normative reasons: that p is a reason for you to φ only if you are able to φ for the reason that p. This constraint offers a natural way to cash out the familiar and intuitive thought that reasons must be able to guide us, and has been put to work as a premise in a range of influential arguments in ethics and epistemology. However, the constraint requires interpretation and faces putative counter-examples due to Julia Markovits, Mark Schroeder, a…Read more
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288The normativity of meaning defendedAnalysis 67 (2): 133-140. 2007.Meaning, according to a significant number of philosophers, is an intrinsically normative notion.1 For this reason, it is suggested, meaning is not conducive to a naturalistic explanation. In this paper, I shall not address whether this is indeed so. Nor shall I present arguments in support of the normativity thesis (see Glock 2005; Kripke 1982). Instead, I shall examine and respond to two forceful objections recently (and independently) raised against it by Boghossian (2005), Hattiangadi (2006)…Read more
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303Meaning Holism and De Re AscriptionCanadian Journal of Philosophy 38 (4): 575-599. 2008.According to inferential role semantics (IRS), for an expression to have a particular meaning or express a certain concept is for subjects to be disposed to make, or to treat as proper, certain inferential transitions involving that expression.1 Such a theory of meaning is holistic, since according to it the meaning or concept any given expression possesses or expresses depends on the inferential relations it stands in to other expressions
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1614Particular and general: Wittgenstein, linguistic rules, and contextIn The later Wittgenstein on language, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.Wittgenstein famously remarks that ‘the meaning of a word is its use’ (PI §43). Whether or not one views this as gesturing at a ‘theory’ of meaning, or instead as aiming primarily at dissuading us from certain misconceptions of language that are a source of puzzlement, it is clear that Wittgenstein held that for certain purposes the meaning of an expression could profitably be characterised as its use. Throughout his later writings, however, Wittgenstein’s appeal to the notion of use pulls in tw…Read more
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47Meaning and Normativity, by Allan Gibbard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, xiv + 310 pp. ISBN 13: 978-0-19-964607-4 hb £30.00 (review)European Journal of Philosophy 23 (S1). 2015.
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629Keep Things in Perspective: Reasons, Rationality, and the A PrioriJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 8 (1): 1-22. 2014.Objective reasons are given by the facts. Subjective reasons are given by one’s perspective on the facts. Subjective reasons, not objective reasons, determine what it is rational to do. In this paper, I argue against a prominent account of subjective reasons. The problem with that account, I suggest, is that it makes what one has subjective reason to do, and hence what it is rational to do, turn on matters outside or independent of one’s perspective. After explaining and establishing this point,…Read more
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Eve Gaudet, Quine on Meaning: The Indeterminacy of Translation (review)Philosophy in Review 27 (1): 30. 2007.
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110Between primitivism and naturalism: Brandom’s theory of meaningActa Analytica 21 (3): 3-22. 2006.Many philosophers accept that a naturalistic reduction of meaning is in principle impossible, since behavioural regularities or dispositions are consistent with any number of semantic descriptions. One response is to view meaning as primitive. In this paper, I explore Brandom’s alternative, which is to specify behaviour in non-semantic but normative terms. Against Brandom, I argue that a norm specified in non-semantic terms might correspond to any number of semantic norms. Thus, his theory of me…Read more
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234Conceptual role semanticsInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006.In the philosophy of language, conceptual role semantics (hereafter CRS) is a theory of what constitutes the meanings possessed by expressions of natural languages, or the propositions expressed by their utterance. In the philosophy of mind, it is a theory of what constitutes the contents of psychological attitudes, such as beliefs or desires. CRS comes in a variety of forms, not always clearly distinguished by commentators. Such versions are known variously as functional/causal/computational ro…Read more
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304Spinoza, the No Shared Attribute thesis, and the principle of sufficient reasonBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (3). 2011.British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Issue 3, Page 543-548, May 2011
Areas of Specialization
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Meta-Ethics |
Aesthetics |
17th/18th Century British Philosophy |
Philosophy of Language |
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20th Century Philosophy |
Value Theory |