•  678
    The Semantic Error Problem for Epistemic Contextualism
    with Patrick Michael Greenough
    In Jonathan Ichikawa (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism, Routledge. pp. 305--320. 2017.
    Epistemic Contextualism is the view that “knows that” is semantically context-sensitive and that properly accommodating this fact into our philosophical theory promises to solve various puzzles concerning knowledge. Yet Epistemic Contextualism faces a big—some would say fatal—problem: The Semantic Error Problem. In its prominent form, this runs thus: speakers just don’t seem to recognise that “knows that” is context-sensitive; so, if “knows that” really is context-sensitive then such speakers ar…Read more
  •  625
    Knowledge, Pragmatics, and Error
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 93 (3): 429-57. 2016.
    ‘Know-that’, like so many natural language expressions, exhibits patterns of use that provide evidence for its context-sensitivity. A popular family of views – call it prag- matic invariantism – attempts to explain the shifty patterns by appeal to a pragmatic thesis: while the semantic meaning of ‘know-that’ is stable across all contexts of use, sentences of the form ‘S knows [doesn’t know] that p’ can be used to communicate a pragmatic content that depends on the context of use. In this paper, …Read more
  •  378
    Knowledge embedded
    Synthese (5): 4035-4055. 2019.
    How should we account for the contextual variability of knowledge claims? Many philosophers favour an invariantist account on which such contextual variability is due entirely to pragmatic factors, leaving no interesting context-sensitivity in the semantic meaning of ‘know that.’ I reject this invariantist division of labor by arguing that pragmatic invariantists have no principled account of embedded occurrences of ‘S knows/doesn’t know that p’: Occurrences embedded within larger linguistic con…Read more
  •  126
    Relativism, sceptical paradox, and semantic blindness
    Philosophical Studies 162 (3): 585-603. 2013.
    Abstract   Relativism about knowledge attributions is the view that a single occurrence of ‘S knows [does not know] that p’ may be true as assessed in one context and false as assessed in another context. It has been argued that relativism is equipped to accommodate all the data from speakers’ use of ‘know’ without recourse to an error theory. This is supposed to be relativism’s main advantage over contextualist and invariantist views. This paper argues that relativism does require the attributi…Read more
  •  68
    The Fragmented Mind (edited book)
    with Cristina Borgoni and Andrea Onofri
    Oxford University Press. 2021.
    The thesis of mental fragmentation has recently attracted increased attention as a way of explaining facts about mind and language. This volume provides an accessible introduction and essays on foundations and applications of fragmentation.
  •  53
    Varieties of Centering and De Se Communication
    In Manuel García-Carpintero & Stephan Torre (eds.), About Oneself. De Se Thought and Communication, Oxford University Press. 2016.
    There has recently been a wave of attempts to make sense of the role of de se thoughts in linguistic communication. A majority of the attempts assume a Perryan or a Lewisian view of de se thought. Views with these assumptions, I suggest, come in four varieties: uncentering (Egan 2007, Kölbel 2013, Moss 2012), recentering (Heim 2004, Weber 2012), multicentering (Kindermann 2014, Ninan 2010, Torre 2009), and no centering (Kaplan 1989, Perry 1979). I argue first that all four varieties of centering…Read more
  •  47
    Coordinating perspectives: De se and taste attitudes in communication
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (8): 912-955. 2019.
    ABSTRACT. The received picture of linguistic communication understands communication as the transmission of information from speaker's head to hearer's head. This picture is in conflict with the attractive Lewisian view of belief as self-location, which is motivated by de se attitudes – first-personal attitudes about oneself – as well as attitudes about subjective matters such as personal taste. In this paper, I provide a solution to the conflict that reconciles these views. I argue for an accou…Read more
  •  41
    Perspective in context : relative truth, knowledge, and the first person
    Dissertation, University of St Andrews. 2012.
    This dissertation is about the nature of perspectival thoughts and the context-sensitivity of the language used to express them. It focuses on two kinds of perspectival thoughts: ‘subjective’ evaluative thoughts about matters of personal taste, such as 'Beetroot is delicious' or 'Skydiving is fun', and first-personal or de se thoughts about oneself, such as 'I am hungry' or 'I have been fooled.' The dissertation defends of a novel form of relativism about truth - the idea that the truth of some …Read more
  •  31
    Wahrheitsrelativismus
    In Nikola Kompa (ed.), Handbuch Sprachphilosophie, Metzler. pp. 106-13. 2015.
    The paper gives a short introduction to and overview of truth relativism in recent philosophy of language.
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  •  21
    Against ‘Hate Speech’
    Journal of Applied Philosophy 40 (5): 813-835. 2023.
    This article argues against the term and concept of ‘hate speech’ and in favour of using the concept and term ‘discriminatory speech’. ‘Hate speech’ is a misnomer; we should name the harmful speech in question by what it in fact does: it discriminates. The article argues for this conceptual replacement claim by identifying a number of functions the concept ‘hate speech’ has been meant to serve and by arguing that extant concepts of hate speech have not served this function well. Roughly, they do…Read more
  •  14
    Pragmatik in Geschmacksfragen? Kommentar zu Julia Zakkous Faultless Disagreement (review)
    Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 74 (2): 284-290. 2020.
    In ihrem wunderbar argumentierten Buch Faultless Disagreement ver- folgt Julia Zakkou zwei Hauptanliegen. Erstens, das Phänomen der fehlerlosen Meinungsverschiedenheit in Fragen des persönlichen Geschmacks zu erklären. Zweitens, die semantische Orthodoxie des indexikalischen Kontextualismus zu verteidigen, indem sie diesem ihren originellen, pragmatischen Überlegenheits- Ansatz zur Seite stellt. Ich möchte im Folgenden einige kritische Nachfra- gen zu Zakkous vorgeschlagener Arbeitsteilung zwisc…Read more
  •  12
    No way to WAM
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (7): 775-788. 2022.
    ABSTRACT Many epistemologists explain the empirically attested contextual variation in knowledge ascriptions by appeal to a kind of warranted assertability maneuver that finds the locus of variability in epistemic norms of assertion. I show that this way to WAM fails. It cannot explain the variability of embedded uses of knowledge sentences in assertoric speech acts in which the knowledge sentences are not themselves asserted.
  •  4
    Unstructured Content (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    The original essays in this volume present new research on unstructured theories of content, which have traditionally played a central role in linguistics and philosophy of language. The volume explores a wide range of themes related to unstructured content, including both the continued controversy over whether unstructured theories individuate contents too coarsely and various applications of unstructured theories to topics like rationality, epistemic commitment, semantic expressivism, relevanc…Read more