•  147
    Holistic accounts of meaning normally incorporate a subjective dimension that invites the criticism that they make communication impossible, for speakers are bound to differ in ways the accounts take to be relevant to meaning, and holism generalises any difference over some words to a difference about all, and this seems incompatible with the idea that successful communication requires mutual understanding. I defend holism about meaning from this criticism. I argue that the same combination of p…Read more
  •  138
    I take up the task of examining how someone who takes seriously the ambitious programme of conceptual analysis advocated by the Canberra School can minimise the eliminative consequences which I argue the Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis recipe of conceptual analysis is likely to have for many folk discourses. The objective is to find a stable means to preserve the constative appearance of folk discourse and to find it generally successful in its attempts to describe an external world, albeit in non-scientifi…Read more
  •  77
    Lewis’s Synthesis
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 (1). 2008.
    This article criticises David Lewis's attempt to use his philosophical analysis of convention to reconcile the picture of languages as model-theoretic objects and the picture of languages as human social activity.
  •  75
    The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 18 (2): 303-306. 2010.
    This Article is a review of Barry Smith and Ernest Lepore's "Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language".
  •  72
    Understanding as endorsing an inference
    Polish Journal of Philosophy 2 (1): 35-54. 2008.
    Fodor & Lepore (2001) and Williamson (2003) attack the inferentialist account of concept possession according to which possessing or understanding a concept requires endorsing the inference patterns constitutive of its content. I show that Fodor & Lepore's concern – that the conception places an exorbitant epistemological demands on possessors of a concept – is met by Brandom's tolerance of materially bad nonconservative inferences. Such inferences themselves, as Williamson argues, present diffi…Read more
  •  49
    Types of negation in logical reconstructions of meinong
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 67 (1): 21-36. 2004.
    Russell's criticisms force Meinong to adopt a distinction between two types of negation. Logical expositions of Meinong's theory show the distinction is easily drawn in formal terms, but that alone does not justify the distinction intuitively.I criticise Routley'streatment of the distinction and argue that only Terence Parsons'theory retains and preserves the tight network of conceptual connections between the notions of negation, contradiction and impossibility. Hence, Parsons' approach best ex…Read more
  •  46
    Meinong’s much maligned modal moment
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 64 (1): 95-118. 2002.
    Russell's objections to object-theory have been refuted by the proofs of the consistency of Meinong's system given by various writers. These proofs exploit technical distinctions that Meinong apparently uses very little if at all. Instead, Meinong introduces a theoretical postulate called the modal moment. I describe this postulate and its place in Meinong's system, and I argue that it has been much under-rated by Meinong's logician expositors.
  •  29
    Robert Brandom , by Jeremy Wanderer
    Philosophical Papers 38 (2): 277-284. 2009.
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  24
    Meinong on Intending
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 21 (3): 415-427. 2013.
    In this paper I want to examine Meinong’s account of what it is to think about a particular object in the context of issues that have preoccupied twentieth-century philosophy of language. The central interpretive task is to determine what Meinong might have said about cases of intending where the object is referred to by means of a proper name. The two theoretical notions at the heart of Meinong’s account of intending, intending by way of being and intending by way of being-so, are a species of …Read more
  •  14
    Book reviews (review)
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 15 (4). 2007.
  •  12
    Understanding as Endorsing an Inference
    Polish Journal of Philosophy 2 (1): 35-54. 2008.
    Fodor & Lepore (2001) and Williamson (2003) attack the inferentialist account of concept possession according to which possessing or understanding a concept requires endorsing the inference patterns constitutive of its content. I show that Fodor & Lepore’s concern - that the conception places an exorbitant epistemological demands on possessors of a concept - is met by Brandom’s tolerance of materially bad nonconservative inferences. Such inferences themselves, as Williamson argues, present diffi…Read more
  • Meinong's Theory of Non-Existent Objects
    Dissertation, Temple University. 2002.
    The argument is an investigation of the philosophy of Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong. There are three chapters. The first chapter argues that there are non-existent objects. It is argued that negative existential statements have a simple subject-predicate logical form. The conclusion follows from this premise, together with realist assumptions about truth and predication. Positive and negative existential statements have subject-predicate logical form, I argue, because; that is the grammat…Read more