I am a philosopher of language working on metaphor, pragmatics, and communicative responsibility: how speakers communicate beyond literal meaning through metaphor, insinuation, dogwhistles, and paralipsis.
My dissertation (Ph.D., UT Austin, 2026; advisor Josh Dever) develops the Aspectual Construal View, on which a live metaphor does not convey a proposition but invites the hearer to construe its subject through a governing characterization. Its success is a matter of aptness, measured by uptake, rather than truth. The dissertation also defends a principle of Responsibility for Available Content: speakers are accountable not only for what th…
I am a philosopher of language working on metaphor, pragmatics, and communicative responsibility: how speakers communicate beyond literal meaning through metaphor, insinuation, dogwhistles, and paralipsis.
My dissertation (Ph.D., UT Austin, 2026; advisor Josh Dever) develops the Aspectual Construal View, on which a live metaphor does not convey a proposition but invites the hearer to construe its subject through a governing characterization. Its success is a matter of aptness, measured by uptake, rather than truth. The dissertation also defends a principle of Responsibility for Available Content: speakers are accountable not only for what they assert but for the construals their words foreseeably make available to a competent hearer. I am currently extending this framework to political rhetoric and plausible deniability.
I have taught undergraduate courses in logic, ethics, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, and technology ethics at UT Austin, including online.
