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38Normativity: Epistemic and Practical (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2018.What should I do? What should I think? Traditionally, ethicists tackle the first question, while epistemologists tackle the second. Philosophers have tended to investigate the issue of what to do independently of the issue of what to think, that is, to do ethics independently of epistemology, and vice versa. This collection of new essays by leading philosophers focuses on a central concern of both epistemology and ethics: normativity. Normativity is a matter of what one should or may do or think…Read more
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228Should I Believe the Truth?Dialectica 64 (2): 213-224. 2010.Many philosophers hold that a general norm of truth governs the attitude of believing. In a recent and influential discussion, Krister Bykvist and Anandi Hattiangadi raise a number of serious objections to this view. In this paper, I concede that Bykvist and Hattiangadi's criticisms might be effective against the formulation of the norm of truth that they consider, but suggest that an alternative is available. After outlining that alternative, I argue that it is not vulnerable to objections para…Read more
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105The Good and the True (or the Bad and the False)Philosophy 88 (2): 219-242. 2013.It is commonplace to claim that it is good to believe the truth. In this paper, I reject that claim and argue that the considerations which might seem to support it in fact support a quite distinct though superficially similar claim, namely, that it is bad to believe the false. This claim is typically either ignored completely or lumped together with the previous claim, perhaps on the assumption that the two are equivalent, or at least that they stand or fall together. Such assumptions, I argue,…Read more
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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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169Inferentialism, 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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644Reasons 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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273The 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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293Meaning 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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1612Particular 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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605Keep 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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46Meaning 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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Eve Gaudet, Quine on Meaning: The Indeterminacy of Translation (review)Philosophy in Review 27 (1): 30. 2007.
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Meta-Ethics |
Aesthetics |
17th/18th Century British Philosophy |
Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
20th Century Philosophy |
Value Theory |