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How to Express Implicit AttitudesPhilosophical Quarterly 74 (1): 251-272. 2024.I argue that what speakers mean or express can be determined by their implicit or unconscious states, rather than explicit or conscious states. Further, on this basis, I show that the sincerity conditions for utterances can also be fixed by implicit states. This is a surprising result which goes against common assumptions about speech acts and sincerity. Roughly, I argue that the result is implied by two plausible and independent theories of the metaphysics of speaker meaning and, further, that …Read more
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Authentic Speech and InsincerityJournal of Philosophy 120 (10): 550-576. 2023.Many theorists assume that a request is sincere if the speaker wants the addressee to perform the act requested. I argue that this assumption predicts an implausible mismatch between sincere assertions and sincere directives and needs to be revised. I present an alternative view, according to which directive utterances can only be sincere if they are self-directed. Other-directed directives, however, can be genuine or fake, depending on whether the speaker wants the addressee to perform the act …Read more
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The Social Epistemology of IntrospectionMind and Language 38 (3): 925-942. 2023.I argue that introspection recruits the same mental mechanism as that which is required for the production of ordinary speech acts. In introspection, in effect, we intentionally tell ourselves that we are in some mental state, aiming thereby to produce belief about that state in ourselves. On one popular view of speech acts, however, this is precisely what speakers do when speaking to others. On this basis, I argue that every bias discovered by social epistemology applies to introspection and ot…Read more
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Talking About: An Intentionalist Theory of ReferenceOxford University Press. 2022.
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A Gricean Theory of MalapropsMind and Language 32 (4): 446-462. 2017.Gricean intentionalists hold that what a speaker says and means by a linguistic utterance is determined by the speaker's communicative intention. On this view, one cannot really say anything without meaning it as well. Conventionalists argue, however, that malapropisms provide powerful counterexamples to this claim. I present two arguments against the conventionalist and sketch a new Gricean theory of speech errors, called the misarticulation theory. On this view, malapropisms are understood as …Read more
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University of IcelandPrincipal Investigator
APA Eastern Division
Iceland
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Linguistics |
20th Century Analytic Philosophy |