• University of Calgary
    Department of Philosophy
    School of Languages Linguistics Literatures and Cultures
    Professor
Cornell University
Sage School of Philosophy
PhD, 2009
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics
Philosophy of Language
  •  28
    Alien Languages and Linguistic Structure.
  •  289
    Ambiguity Tests, Polysemy, and Copredication
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    A family of familiar linguistic tests purport to help identify when a term is ambiguous. These tests are philosophically important: a familiar philosophical strategy is to claim that some phenomenon is disunified and its accompanying term is ambiguous. The tests have been used to evaluate disunification proposals about causation, pain, and knowledge, among others. These ambiguity tests, however, have come under fire. It has been alleged that the tests fail for polysemy, a common type of ambiguit…Read more
  •  22
    Copredication and Meaning Transfer
    Journal of Semantics 40 (1): 69-91. 2023.
    Copredication occurs when a sentence receives a true reading despite prima facie ascribing categorically incompatible properties to a single entity. For example, ‘The red book is by Tolstoy’ can have a true reading even though it seems that being red is only a property of physical copies, while being by Tolstoy is only a property of informational texts. A tempting strategy for resolving this tension is to claim that at least one of the predicates has a non-standard interpretation, with the salie…Read more
  •  80
    Far from being of mere historical interest, concept horse-style expressibility problems arise for versions of type-theoretic semantics in the tradition of Montague. Grappling with expressibility problems yields lessons about the philosophical interpretation and empirical limits of such type-theories.
  •  192
    Partialhood
    In Karen Bennett & Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, . forthcoming.
    My bedroom window is a part of my house, but it is not a partial house. A half-built house is a partial house, but there is no house it is a part of. Being a part of something—parthood—is a familiar topic of philosophical inquiry. Being a partial something—partialhood—is not. The neglect of partialhood is a shame because it is intrinsically interesting as well as metaphysically and semantically important. After using fractions and counting constructions to identify partialhood in §1, I give a th…Read more
  •  118
    Attempting to deflate ontological debates, the proponent of Quantifier Variance (QV) claims that there are multiple quantifier meanings of equal metaphysical merit. According to Hirsch—the main proponent of QV—metaphysical merit should be understood intensionally: two languages have equal merit if they allow us to express the same possibilities. I examine the notion of metaphysical merit and its purported link to intensionality. That link, I argue, should not be supported by adopting an intensio…Read more
  •  425
    Generics and the Metaphysics of Kinds
    Philosophy Compass (7): 1-14. 2021.
    Recent years have seen renewed interest in the semantics of generics. And a relatively mainstream view in this work is that the semantics of generics must appeal to kinds. But what are kinds? Can we learn anything about their nature by looking at how semantic theories of generics appeal to them? In this article, we overview recent work on the semantics of generics and consider their consequences for our understanding of the metaphysics of kinds.
  •  118
    Double-counting and the problem of the many
    Philosophical Studies 178 (1): 209-234. 2020.
    There is a defeasible constraint against double counting. When I count colours, for instance, I can’t freely count both a colour and its shades. Once we properly grasp this constraint, we can solve the problem of the many. Unlike other solutions, this solution requires us to reject neither our counting judgments, nor the metaphysical principles that seemingly conflict with them. The key is recognizing that the judgments and principles are compatible due to the targeted effects of the defeasible …Read more
  •  99
    Meaning Transfer Revisited
    Philosophical Perspectives 32 (1): 254-297. 2018.
    Philosophical Perspectives, EarlyView.
  •  57
    Between Logic and the World, by Bernhard Nickel
    Mind 127 (505): 284-293. 2018.
    © Mind Association 2017In Between Logic and the World, Bernhard Nickel distinguishes two tasks in understanding generics. The first task is to give a compositional semantics—ideally, one that coheres with independent theories of semantic phenomena like plurality and conjunction. Between Logic and the World undoubtedly makes a substantial contribution to this task. Nickel argues that his proposed semantics allows us to understand logically complex generics as well as generics containing gradable …Read more
  •  232
    Simple Generics
    Noûs 45 (3): 409-442. 2011.
    Consensus has it that generic sentences such as “Dogs bark” and “Birds fly” contain, at the level of logical form, an unpronounced generic operator: Gen. On this view, generics have a tripartite structure similar to overtly quantified sentences such as “Most dogs bark” and “Typically, birds fly”. I argue that Gen doesn’t exist and that generics have a simple bipartite structure on par with ordinary atomic sentences such as “Homer is drinking”. On my view, the subject terms of generics are kind-r…Read more
  •  166
    Causation and the canberra plan
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (2): 232-242. 2011.
    David Lewis has a general recipe for analysis: the Canberra Plan. His analyses of mind, color, and value all proceed according to the plan. What is curious is that his analysis of causation – one of his seminal analyses – doesn't. It doesn't and according to Lewis it can't. Lewis has two objections against using the Canberra Plan to analyze causation. After presenting Lewis' objections I argue that they both fail. I then draw some lessons from their failure
  •  243
    Predication as Ascription
    Mind 124 (494): 517-569. 2015.
    I articulate and defend a necessary and sufficient condition for predication. The condition is that a term or term-occurrence stands in the relation of ascription to its designatum, ascription being a fundamental semantic relation that differs from reference. This view has dramatically different semantic consequences from its alternatives. After outlining the alternatives, I draw out these consequences and show how they favour the ascription view. I then develop the view and elicit a number of i…Read more
  •  252
    Sider on existence
    Noûs 41 (3). 2007.
    In (2001), (2003), and elsewhere, Ted Sider presents two arguments concerning the existential quantifier which are justly central to the recent discussion of metaontology. What we will call Sider's indeterminacy argument is an attempted reductio of the suggestion that the existential quantifier might be semantically indeterminate. What we will call Sider's naturalness argument is an argument for the claim that the semantic value of the existential quantifier is the most eligible existence-like m…Read more
  •  102
    Does vagueness underlie the mass/count distinction?
    Synthese 193 (1): 185-203. 2016.
    Does vagueness underlie the mass/count distinction? My answer is no. I motivate this answer in two ways. First, I argue against Chierchia’s recent attempt to explain the distinction in terms of vagueness. Second, I give a more general argument that no such account will succeed
  •  110
    Counting as a Type of Measuring
    Philosophers' Imprint 16. 2016.
    There may be two and a half bagels on the table. When there are two and a half, it is false that there are exactly two. As obvious as these claims are, they can’t be accounted for on the most straightforward and familiar views of counting and the semantics of number words. I develop a view on which counting is a type of measuring. In particular, counting involves a specific measure function. I then analyze that function and show how it can account for the cases in which counting is sensitive to …Read more
  •  132
    Some Puzzles About Some Puzzles About Belief
    Analysis 72 (3): 608-618. 2012.
  •  68
    Jeffrey C. King, The Nature and Structure of Content (review)
    Philosophical Review 119 (2): 246-250. 2010.
  •  39
    Relations and Order-Sensitivity
    Metaphysica 15 (2): 409-429. 2014.
    I ate my broccoli, though my broccoli did not eat me. The eating relation, like many other relations, differentiates between its arguments. The fact that eating holds between a and b does not entail that it holds between b and a. How are we to make sense of this? The standard view is that relations are sensitive to the order of their arguments. As natural as this view is, it has been the target of a powerful objection from Kit Fine. I examine Fine’s objection and defend the standard view.
  •  61
    Converse and Identity
    Dialectica 67 (2): 137-155. 2013.
    Necessarily, if I ate a slice of pizza, then that slice of pizza was eaten by me. More generally, it is necessarily true that if a relation holds between two objects in some order, its converse holds of the same objects in reverse order. What is the intimate relationship that guarantees such necessary connections? Timothy Williamson argues that the relationship between converses must be identity, on pain of the massive and systematic indeterminacy of relational predicates. If sound, Williamson’s…Read more
  •  238
    We Do Not Count by Identity
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (1): 21-42. 2015.
    It is widely assumed in psychology, philosophy, and linguistics that we count by identity. For example, to count the dogs by identity, we correlate each dog that isn't identical to the rest with a natural number, starting with one and assigning each successive dog the successive natural number. When we run out of distinct dogs, we've yielded a correct count. I argue that this model of counting is incorrect. We do not count by identity.
  •  74
    Necessarily, Sherlock Holmes Is Not a Person
    Analytic Philosophy 55 (3): 306-318. 2014.
    In the appendix to Naming and Necessity, Kripke espouses the view that necessarily, Sherlock Holmes is not a person. To date, no compelling argument has been extracted from Kripke’s remarks. I give an argument for Kripke’s conclusion that is not only interpretively plausible but also philosophically compelling. I then defend the argument against salient objections.