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610Keep 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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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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Eve Gaudet, Quine on Meaning: The Indeterminacy of Translation (review)Philosophy in Review 27 (1): 30. 2007.
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109Between 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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233Conceptual 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
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757The Glass is Half Empty: A New Argument for Pessimism about Aesthetic TestimonyBritish Journal of Aesthetics 55 (1): 91-107. 2015.Call the view that it is possible to acquire aesthetic knowledge via testimony, optimism, and its denial, pessimism. In this paper, I offer a novel argument for pessimism. It works by turning attention away from the basis of the relevant belief, namely, testimony, and toward what that belief in turn provides a basis for, namely, other attitudes. In short, I argue that an aesthetic belief acquired via testimony cannot provide a rational basis for further attitudes, such as admiration, and that th…Read more
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1111Nothing but the Truth: On the Norms and Aims of BeliefIn Timothy Chan (ed.), The Aim of Belief, Oxford University Press. 2013.That truth provides the standard for believing appears to be a platitude, one which dovetails with the idea that in some sense belief aims only at the truth. In recent years, however, an increasing number of prominent philosophers have suggested that knowledge provides the standard for believing, and so that belief aims only at knowledge. In this paper, I examine the considerations which have been put forward in support of this suggestion, considerations relating to lottery beliefs, Moorean beli…Read more
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322Epistemic value and achievementRatio 25 (2): 216-230. 2012.Knowledge seems to be a good thing, or at least better than epistemic states that fall short of it, such as true belief. Understanding too seems to be a good thing, perhaps better even than knowledge. In a number of recent publications, Duncan Pritchard tries to account for the value of understanding by claiming that understanding is a cognitive achievement and that achievements in general are valuable. In this paper, I argue that coming to understand something need not be an achievement, and so…Read more
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20Is there such a thing as a language?In William Irwin (ed.), Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy, Wiley. 2010.A paper aimed primarily at a non-academic audience in which I suggest that Lewis Carroll's Alice novels can be viewed, in part, as exploring two competing conceptions of language, conceptions that the philosopher Donald Davidson critically examines. According to the Institutional View, language is a system of rules regulating the use of words and words have the meanings that they do in virtue of those rules. According to the Invention View, what words mean is rather a matter of how the speaker i…Read more
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402Does belief (only) aim at the truth?Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (2): 279-300. 2012.It is common to hear talk of the aim of belief and to find philosophers appealing to that aim for numerous explanatory purposes. What belief 's aim explains depends, of course, on what that aim is. Many hold that it is somehow related to truth, but there are various ways in which one might specify belief 's aim using the notion of truth. In this article, by considering whether they can account for belief 's standard of correctness and the epistemic norms governing belief, I argue against certain…Read more
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35A Luxury of the Understanding: On the Value of True Belief, by Allan Hazlett (review)Mind 125 (499): 918-922. 2016.
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126The use of ‘use’Grazer Philosophische Studien 76 (1): 135-147. 2008.Many equate the meaning of a linguistic expression with its use. This paper investigates prominent objections to the equivalence claim and argues that they are unsuccessful. Once one suitably distinguishes the kind of use to be identified with meaning, the two do not diverge. Doing so, however, requires employing terms that are cognates of ‘meaning’ (if not ‘meaning’ itself). Nonetheless, I stress, this does not count against the equivalence claim. Moreover, one should not assume that the circul…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Meta-Ethics |
Aesthetics |
17th/18th Century British Philosophy |
Philosophy of Language |
Areas of Interest
20th Century Philosophy |
Value Theory |