Dorit Bar-On

University of Connecticut
University Of Connecticut, Storrs
Storrs, Connecticut, United States
  •  18
    ‘Pragmatics First’: Animal Communication and the Evolution of Language
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1-28. forthcoming.
    Research on the evolution of language is often framed in terms of sharp discontinuities in syntax and semantics between animal communication systems and human language as we know them. According to the so-called “pragmatics-first” approach to the evolution of language, when trying to understand the origins of human language in animal communication, we should be focusing on potential pragmatic continuities. However, some proponents of this approach (e.g. Seyfarth and Cheney Animal Behavior 124: 3…Read more
  • Ethical Neo-Expressivism
    Oxford Studies in Metaethics 4 133-166. 2009.
  •  9
    No-‘How’ Privileged Self-Knowledge
    Erkenntnis 1-25. forthcoming.
    Ordinarily, if a person produces a nonreflective, ‘unstudied’ self-attribution of a present mental state – an avowal – we do not presume that they have produced the avowal on some specific epistemic basis; and we do not expect them to know how they know the self-attribution to be true. This no-‘how’ character of basic self-knowledge is puzzling, given that we regard avowals as manifesting factual, and indeed privileged, knowledge. I am here interested in views that accommodate both the baseless,…Read more
  •  8
    Semantic Eliminativism and the Theory-Theory of Linguistic Understanding
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 30 158-199. 2004.
    Suppose, familiarly, that you and a friend have landed in an alien territory, amidst people who speak a language you do not know. Upon seeing you, one of them starts yelling, seemingly alarmed. You say to your friend, “She thinks we want to hurt her. She's scared. We must seem very strange to her.” Your friend, who is facing you, says, “No, I think she's actually trying to warn you: there's a snake right above your head, on that tree. You see the sling in her hand? I think she's going to try to …Read more
  •  5
    Language, Concepts and Culture: Between Pluralism and Relativism
    Facta Philosophica 6 (2): 183-221. 2004.
  •  654
    Recent discussions of animal communication and the evolution of language have advocated adopting a ‘pragmatics-first’ approach, according to which “a more productive framework” for primate communication research should be “pragmatics, the field of linguistics that examines the role of context in shaping the meaning of linguistic utterances”. After distinguishing two different conceptions of pragmatics that advocates of the pragmatics-first approach have implicitly relied on, I argue that neither…Read more
  • Deflationism
    In Ernest Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2006.
  •  230
    (How) Is Ethical Neo-Expressivism a Hybrid View?
    In Guy Fletcher & Michael Ridge (eds.), Having It Both Ways: Hybrid Theories and Modern Metaethics, Oxford University Press. pp. 223-247. 2014.
    According to ethical neo-expressivism, all declarative sentences, including those used to make ethical claims, have propositions as their semantic contents, and acts of making an ethical claim are properly said to express mental states, which (if motivational internalism is correct) are intimately connected to motivation. This raises two important questions: (i) The traditional reason for denying that ethical sentences express propositions is that these were thought to determine ways the world c…Read more
  •  45
    Neo-Expressivism: (Self-)Knowledge, Meaning, and Truth
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 86 11-34. 2019.
    Philosophers are often interested in explaining significant contrasts between ordinary descriptive discourses, on the one hand, and discourses – such as ethics, mathematics, or mentalistic discourse – that are thought to be more problematic in various ways. But certain strategies for ‘saving the differences’ can make it too difficult to preserve notable similarities across discourses. My own preference is for strategies that ‘save the differences’ without sacrificing logico-semantic continuities…Read more
  •  2
    Epistemological Disjunctivism: Perception, Expression, and Self-Knowledge
    In Casey Doyle, Joe Milburn & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism, Routledge. pp. 317-344. 2019.
    So-called basic self-knowledge (ordinary knowledge of one's present states of mind) can be seen as both 'baseless' and privileged. The spontaneous self-beliefs we have when we avow our states of mind do not appear to be formed on any particular epistemic basis (whether intro-or extro-spective). Nonetheless, on some views, these self-beliefs constitute instances of (privileged) knowledge. We are here interested in views on which true mental self-beliefs have internalist epistemic warrant that fal…Read more
  •  120
    Avowals and First‐Person Privilege
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (2): 311-335. 2001.
    When people avow their present feelings, sensations, thoughts, etc., they enjoy what may be called “first‐person privilege.” If I now said: “I have a headache,” or “I'm thinking about Venice,” I would be taken at my word: I would normally not be challenged. According to one prominent approach, this privilege is due to a special epistemic access we have to our own present states of mind. On an alternative, deflationary approach the privilege merely reflects a socio‐linguistic convention governing…Read more
  •  238
    Varieties of Expressivism
    with James Sias
    Philosophy Compass 8 (8): 699-713. 2013.
    After offering a characterization of what unites versions of ‘expressivism’, we highlight a number of dimensions along which expressivist views should be distinguished. We then separate four theses often associated with expressivism – a positive expressivist thesis, a positive constitutivist thesis, a negative ontological thesis, and a negative semantic thesis – and describe how traditional expressivists have attempted to incorporate them. We argue that expressivism in its traditional form may b…Read more
  •  52
    Semantic Eliminativism and the Theory-Theory of Linguistic Understanding
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (sup1): 159-199. 2004.
  •  130
    Transparency, expression, and self-knowledge
    Philosophical Explorations 18 (2): 134-152. 2015.
    Contemporary discussions of self-knowledge share a presupposition to the effect that the only way to vindicate so-called first-person authority as understood by our folk-psychology is to identify specific “good-making” epistemic features that render our self-ascriptions of mental states especially knowledgeable. In earlier work, I rejected this presupposition. I proposed that we separate two questions: How is first-person authority to be explained? What renders avowals instances of a privileged …Read more
  •  7
    Quine (review)
    International Studies in Philosophy 22 (3): 117-118. 1990.
  •  100
    Scepticism: The external world and meaning
    Philosophical Studies 60 (3). 1990.
    In this paper, I compare and contrast two kinds of scepticism, Cartesian scepticism about the external world and Quinean scepticism about meaning. I expose Quine's metaphysical claim that there are no facts of the matter about meaning as a sceptical response to a sceptical problem regarding the possibility of our knowledge of meanings. I argue that this sceptical response is overkill; for the sceptical problem about our knowledge of meanings may receive a treatment similar to the naturalistic tr…Read more
  •  109
    Speaking my mind
    Philsophical Topics 28 (2): 1-34. 2000.
  •  143
    Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge
    Oxford University Press UK. 2004.
    Dorit Bar-On develops and defends a novel view of avowals and self-knowledge. Drawing on resources from the philosophy of language, the theory of action, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, she offers original and systematic answers to many long-standing questions concerning our ability to know our own minds. We are all very good at telling what states of mind we are in at a given moment. When it comes to our own present states of mind, what we say goes; an avowal such as "I'm feeling so a…Read more
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  •  12
    Is There Such a Thing as a Language?
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (2): 163-190. 1992.
    ‘There is no such thing as a language,’ Donald Davidson tells us. Though this is a startling claim in its own right, it seems especially puzzling coming from a leading theorizer about language. Over the years, Davidson’s important essays have sparked the hope that there is a route to a positive, nonskeptical theory of meaning for natural languages. This hope would seem to be dashed if there are no natural languages. Unless Davidson’s radical claim is a departure from his developed views, the Dav…Read more
  •  9
    Indeterminacy of Translation—Theory and Practice
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (4): 781-810. 1993.
  •  15
    Quine (review)
    International Studies in Philosophy 22 (3): 117-118. 1990.
  •  47
    Sociality, Expression, and This Thing called Language
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (1): 56-79. 2016.
    Davidson’s well-known language skepticism—the claim that there is no such a thing as a language—has recognizably Gricean underpinnings, some of which also underlie his continuity skepticism—the claim that there can be no philosophically illuminating account of the emergence of language and thought. My first aim in this paper is to highlight aspects of the complicated relationship between central Davidsonian and Gricean ideas concerning language. After a brief review of Davidson’s two skeptical c…Read more
  •  17
    Here are some things that I know right now: that I’m feeling a bit hungry, that there’s a red cardinal on my bird feeder, that I’m sitting down, that I have a lot of grading to do today, that my daughter is mad at me, that I’ll be going for a run soon, that I’d like to go out to the movies tonight. As orthodoxy would have it, some among these represent things to which I have privileged epistemic access, namely: my present states of mind. I normally know these states directly, immediately, non-in…Read more