•  16
    Lies are assertions and presuppositions are not
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
  •  10
    This paper discusses some remarks Kaplan made in ‘Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice’ concerning empty names. I show how his objections to a particular view involving descriptions derived from Ramsification can be avoided by a nearby alternative framed in terms of discourse reference. I offer a treatment of empty names as variables carrying presuppositions concerning unique occupants of roles, or sets of properties, determined by the originating discourse.
  •  27
    Spatial Indexicals
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1-20. forthcoming.
    This paper offers a theory of spatial indexicals like _here_ and _there_ on which such expressions are variables associated with presuppositional constraints on their values. I show how this view handles both referential and bound uses of these indexicals, and I propose an account of what counts as the location of the context on a given occasion. The latter is seen to explain a wide range of facts about what the spatial indexicals can refer to.
  •  34
    Fiction as a defeater
    Philosophical Quarterly. forthcoming.
    This paper argues that no instances of acquiring knowledge from works of literary fiction are instances of the way we ordinarily learn from the testimony of others. The paper argues that the fictional status of a work is a defeater for the justification of beliefs formed on the basis of statements within that work, which must itself be defeated for such beliefs based on fiction to amount to knowledge. This marks a fundamental difference with learning from testimony, since regardless of one's vie…Read more
  •  62
    Fictional Names and Co-Identification
    Philosophers' Imprint 23 (n/a): 1-23. 2023.
    This paper provides an account of co-identification with fictional names, the way in which a fictional name can be used to talk about the same fictional character on disparate occasions. I develop a version of the view that fictional characters are roles constituted by sets of properties that is couched within a dynamic understanding of fictional discourse. I argue that this view captures what is right about both so-called name-centric and information-centric approaches to co-identification with…Read more
  •  43
    Fictional force
    Philosophical Studies 180 (10): 3099-3120. 2023.
    This paper argues for an account of fictional force, the central characteristic of the kind of non-assertoric speech act that authors of fictions are engaged in. A distinction is drawn between what is true in a fiction and the _fictional record_ comprising what the audience has been told. The papers argues that to utter a sentence with fictional force is to intend that its content be added to a fictional record. It is shown that this view accounts for phenomena such as conversational implicature…Read more
  •  319
    De Se Thinking and Modes of Presentation
    Belgrade Philosophical Annual 35 (2): 69-87. 2022.
    De se thoughts have traditionally been seen to be exceptional in mandating a departure from orthodox theories of attitudes. Against this, skeptics about the de se have argued that the de se phenomena demand no more of our theories of attitudes than traditional Frege cases. In this camp one view is that the de se can be accounted for by MOPs in the same way that MOPs can account for how it can be rational to believe, for instance, ”Hesperus is shining” while also believing ”Phosphorus is shining.…Read more
  •  33
    Features of referential pronouns and indexical presuppositions
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (8): 1083-1115. 2022.
    ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates that the presuppositions triggered by the 1st and 2nd persons behave differently in important ways from those triggered by the 3rd person and the genders. While the 1st and 2nd persons trigger indexical presuppositions, the 3rd person and the genders do not. I show that the presuppositions triggered by the 1st and 2nd persons are not susceptible to presupposition failure of the kind familiar from ordinary presuppositions. Such failures occur for the 3rd person an…Read more
  •  35
    Lying: Language, Knowledge, Ethics, and Politics (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    Philosophers have been thinking about lying for several thousand years, yet this topic has only recently become a central area of academic interest for philosophers of language, epistemologists, ethicists, and political philosophers. Lying: Language, Knowledge, Ethics, Politics provides the first dedicated collection of philosophical essays on the emerging topic of lying. Adopting an inter-subdisciplinary approach, this volume breaks new methodological ground in exploring the ways that a better …Read more
  •  307
    Free Indirect Discourse in Non-Fiction
    Frontiers in Communication 5 (606616). 2021.
    This paper considers some uses of Free Indirect Discourse within non-fictional discourse. It is shown that these differ from ordinary uses in that they do not attribute actual thoughts or utterances. I argue that the explanation for this is that these uses of Free Indirect Discourse are not assertoric. Instead, it is argued here that they are fictional uses, that is, they are used with fictional force like utterances used to tell a fictional story. Rather than making assertions about the actual …Read more
  •  111
    The Language of Fiction (edited book)
    with Emar Maier
    Oxford University Press. 2021.
    This volume brings together new research on fiction from the fields of philosophy and linguistics. Fiction has long been a topic of interest in philosophy, but recent years have also seen a surge in work on fictional discourse at the intersection between linguistics and philosophy of language. In particular, there has been a growing interest in examining long-standing issues concerning fiction from a perspective that is informed both by philosophy and linguistic theory. Following a detailed intr…Read more
  •  305
    Fiction and importation
    Linguistics and Philosophy 45 (1): 65-89. 2021.
    Importation in fictional discourse is the phenomenon by which audiences include information in the story over and above what is explicitly stated by the narrator. This paper argues that importation is distinct from generation, the phenomenon by which truth in fiction may outstrip what is made explicit, and draws a distinction between fictional truth and fictional records. The latter comprises the audience’s picture of what is true according to the narrator. The paper argues that importation into…Read more
  •  86
    Context as knowledge
    Mind and Language 37 (4): 543-563. 2022.
    It has been argued that common ground information is unsuited to the role that contexts play in the theory of indexical and demonstrative reference. This paper explores an alternative view that identifies shared information with what is common knowledge among the participants. We argue this view of shared information avoids the problems for the common ground approach concerning reference while preserving its advantages in accounting for communication.
  •  60
    Navigation and Indexical Thought
    Erkenntnis 87 (4): 1659-1681. 2022.
    This paper argues for a moderate form of essentialism about indexical thought. According to this moderate essentialism, there is a significant category of intentional action that necessarily involves indexical thought. This category of action is navigation, that is, intentionally moving from one location to another by using public information about the world such as a map or a set of directions. It is shown that anti-essentialists face a challenge in accounting for this kind of action without ac…Read more
  •  72
    Fictional names and individual concepts
    Synthese 198 (8): 7829-7859. 2020.
    This paper defends a version of the realist view that fictional characters exist. It argues for an instance of abstract realist views, according to which fictional characters are roles, constituted by sets of properties. It is argued that fictional names denote individual concepts, functions from worlds to individuals. It is shown that a dynamic framework for understanding the evolution of discourse information can be used to understand how roles are created and develop along with story content.…Read more
  •  31
    This thesis consists of four essays and an introduction dedicated to two main topics: indexicality and presupposition. The first essay is concerned with an alleged problem for the standard treatment of indexicals on which their linguistic meanings are functions from context to content. Since most indexicals have their content settled, on an occasion of use, by the speaker’s intentions, some authors have argued that this standard picture is inadequate. By demonstrating that intentions can be seen…Read more
  •  289
    And and And*
    In Laurence Goldstein (ed.), Brevity, Oxford University Press. 2013.
    This paper discusses a recent opposition between the influential dynamic semantic account of presupposition projection and a recent Gricean-pragmatic theory. The Gricean-pragmatic theory is partly motivated by an influential ob- jection to dynamic semantics based on the compatibility of dynamic systems with connectives and operators exhibiting deviant projection behaviors. By identifying key features of the role of prediction and explanation in semantics, it is argued that the objection is based…Read more
  •  989
    Truthfulness and Gricean Cooperation
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 93 (3): 489-510. 2016.
    This paper examines the Gricean view that quality maxims take priority over other conversational maxims. It is shown that Gricean conversational implicatures are routinely inferred from utterances that are recognized to be untruthful. It is argued that this observation falsifies Grice’s original claim that hearers assume that speakers are obeying other maxims only if the speaker is assumed to be obeying quality maxims, and furthermore the related claim that hearers assume that speakers are being…Read more
  •  130
    Intention-sensitive semantics
    Synthese 175 (3): 383-404. 2010.
    A number of authors have argued that the fact that certain indexicals depend for their reference-determination on the speaker’s referential intentions demonstrates the inadequacy of associating such expressions with functions from contexts to referents (characters). By distinguishing between different uses to which the notion of context is put in these argument, I show that this line of argument fails. In the course of doing so, I develop a way of incorporating the role played by intentions into…Read more
  •  140
    Lying and Insincerity
    Oxford University Press. 2018.
    Andreas Stokke presents a comprehensive study of lying and insincere language use. He investigates how lying relates to other forms of insincerity and explores the kinds of attitudes that go with insincere uses of language. Part I develops an account of insincerity as a linguistic phenomenon. Stokke provides a detailed theory of the distinction between lying and speaking insincerely, and accounts for the relationship between lying and deceiving. A novel framework of assertion underpins the anal…Read more
  •  354
    Bullshitting, Lying, and Indifference toward Truth
    with Don Fallis
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 4 277-309. 2017.
    This paper is about some of the ways in which people sometimes speak while be- ing indifferent toward what they say. We argue that what Harry Frankfurt called ‘bullshitting’ is a mode of speech marked by indifference toward inquiry, the coop- erative project of reaching truth in discourse. On this view bullshitting is character- ized by indifference toward the project of advancing inquiry by making progress on specific subinquiries, represented by so-called questions under discussion. This ac- c…Read more
  •  87
    II—Conventional Implicature, Presupposition, and Lying
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 91 (1): 127-147. 2017.
    Responding to parts of Sorensen, it is argued that the connectives therefore and but do not contribute conventional implicatures, but are rather to be treated as presupposition triggers. Their special contributions are therefore not asserted, but presupposed. Hence, given the generic assumption that one lies only if one makes an assertion, one cannot lie with arguments in the way Sorensen proposes. Yet, since conventional implicatures are asserted, one can lie with conventional implicatures. Mor…Read more
  •  110
    Lies, Harm, And Practical Interests
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 98 (2): 329-345. 2019.
    This paper outlines an account of the ethics of lying, which accommodates two main ideas about lying. The first of these, Anti-Deceptionalism, is the view that lying does not necessarily involve intentions to deceive. The second, Anti-Absolutism, is the view that lying is not always morally wrong. It is argued that lying is not wrong in itself, but rather the wrong in lying is explained by different factors in different cases. In some cases such factors may include deceptive intentions on the pa…Read more
  •  300
    Lying, Deceiving, and Misleading
    Philosophy Compass 8 (4): 348-359. 2013.
    This article discusses recent work on lying and its relation to deceiving and misleading. Two new developments in this area are considered: first, the acknowledgment of the phenomenon of lying without the intent to deceive , and second, recent work on the distinction between lying and merely misleading. Both are discussed in relation to topics in philosophy of language, the epistemology of testimony, and ethics. Critical surveys of recent theories are offered and challenges and open questions fo…Read more
  •  50
    Review of Wright & Pedersen (eds.), New Waves in Truth (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. forthcoming.
  •  544
    What is Said?
    Noûs 50 (4): 759-793. 2015.
    It is sometimes argued that certain sentences of natural language fail to express truth conditional contents. Standard examples include e.g. Tipper is ready and Steel is strong enough. In this paper, we provide a novel analysis of truth conditional meaning using the notion of a question under discussion. This account explains why these types of sentences are not, in fact, semantically underdetermined, provides a principled analysis of the process by which natural language sentences can come to h…Read more
  •  81
    Metaphors and Martinis: a response to Jessica Keiser
    Philosophical Studies 174 (4): 853-859. 2017.
    This note responds to criticism put forth by Jessica Keiser against a theory of lying as Stalnakerian assertion. According to this account, to lie is to say something one believes to be false and thereby propose that it become common ground. Keiser objects that this view wrongly counts particular kinds of non-literal speech as instances of lying. In particular, Keiser argues that the view invariably counts metaphors and certain uses of definite descriptions as lies. It is argued here that both t…Read more