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41Objectivity SocializedIn Sean Morris (ed.), The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine, Cambridge University Press. pp. 92-113. 2022.Do Quine and Carnap distort the social nature of inquiry by privileging individual epistemic subjects? This objection is at the heart of Donald Davidson’s claim that Quine fails to grasp the significance of the concept of truth. In Carnap’s case, the objection may be detected in Charles Morris’s call to ground scientific philosophy in semiotics, the science of signs, rather than syntax, the formal investigation of languages. Drawing out the challenge from Morris’s proposal requires examining a n…Read more
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36What Welby WantedIn Jeanne Peijnenburg & Sander Verhaegh (eds.), Women in the History of Analytic Philosophy, Springer. pp. 23-43. 2022.Although the significs movement that Victoria, Lady Welby (1837–1912) inspired was dedicated to better understanding meaning, she has largely been forgotten by analytic philosophers of language. Significs was to educate “the great world of hearers and the growing world of readers” to better interpret science and philosophy, evincing a focus on the audience for intellectual activity that it remains vital for academics to consider. Her arguments that the metaphorical associations of terminology ar…Read more
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528Writing Conversationalists into HistoryJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 10 (6). 2022.Burton Dreben taught a generation of scholars the value of closely attending to the recent philosophical past. But the few papers he authored do little to capture his philosophical voice. In this article, I turn instead to an unpublished transcript of Dreben in conversation with his contemporaries. In addition to yielding insights into a transitional period in W.V. Quine’s and Donald Davidson’s thought, I argue that this document showcases Dreben in his element, revealing the way that he shaped …Read more
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21Review of Matt LaVine, Race, Gender, and the History of Early Analytic Philosophy (review)Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 10 (2). 2022.~
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45Review of Sandra Lapointe (Ed) "Logic from Kant to Russell: Laying the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy" (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2019.
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41James McElvenny. Language and Meaning in the Age of Modernism: C. K. Ogden and His Contemporaries. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. Pp. 200. $110.00 (review)Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 9 (1): 193-198. 2019.
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492Could a Heptapod Act? Language and Agency in ArrivalFilm and Philosophy 23 48-68. 2019.Arrival offers a useful thought experiment in the philosophy of mind and language. Assessing human linguists' interpretive efforts to understand the alien heptapod form of life in both the movie and the novella from which it was adapted (Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life”) teach us how our understanding of selfhood shapes our conception of agency. Arrival’s reflexive commentary on the cinematic experience is also an argument for the value of learning to communicate in cinematic language.
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499Carnap, Explication, and Social HistorySocial Theory and Practice 43 (4): 741-774. 2017.A. W. Carus champions Rudolf Carnap’s ideal of explication as a model for liberal political deliberation. Constructing a linguistic framework for discussing social problems, he argues, promotes the resolution of our disputes. To flesh out and assess this proposal, I examine debate about the social institutions of marriage and adoption. Against Carus, I argue that not all citizens would accept the pragmatic principles underlying Carnap’s ideal. Nevertheless, explication may facilitate inquiry in …Read more
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28Disagreement by Bryan Frances (review)Philosophy East and West 66 (1): 357-359. 2016.Attention to the question of whether testimony is a distinctive source of knowledge is a comparatively recent development in Western epistemology. Does being told that p constitute reason for you to believe that p, independently of what you empirically establish about the speaker’s reliability, sincerity, and evaluative position? Still more recently — in just the last decade — Western epistemologists have become occupied with related problems concerning disagreement. What is the rational respons…Read more
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305Distinguishing WV Quine and Donald DavidsonJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 1 (1): 1-22. 2011.Given W.V. Quine’s and Donald Davidson’s extensive agreement about much of the philosophy of language and mind, and the obvious methodological parallels between Quine’s radical translation and Davidson’s radical interpretation, many—including Quine and Davidson—are puzzled by their occasional disagreements. I argue for the importance of attending to these disagreements, not just because doing so deepens our understanding of these influential thinkers, but because they are in fact the shadows thr…Read more
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52Caring for Quine's Don't CaresThe Monist 100 (2): 266-287. 2017.In Word and Object, W.V. Quine dismisses connotations that result from the work of explicating expressions as “don’t-cares.” This paper traces the history of this phrase to an algorithm that Quine developed in the 1950s, which became important in early computer engineering. Computer programmers eventually came to realize that it was in their best interests to abandon the “don’t-care” attitude. Similarly, I argue that naturalists who properly appreciate the communal nature of their inquiries have…Read more
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26Review of William Demopoulos "Logicism and Its Philosophical Legacy" (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2013.
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106Asking Students What Philosophers TeachTeaching Philosophy 36 (1): 31-49. 2013.This essay argues for the value of teaching a unit that questions what it is that philosophers teach as a way of encouraging students to reflect on the nature of philosophy. I show how using ancient philosophy to frame this unit makes it especially urgent, since an important (and often overlooked) consequence of Socrates’s demarcation of philosophy from oratory is that philosophers are not in a position to teach anything. I have found that students are eager to engage the challenge that this see…Read more
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31Gilbert Harman and Ernie Lepore, eds. A Companion to W.V.O. Quine (review)Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 4 (2). 2016.
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68Interpreting Disturbed Minds: Donald Davidson and The White RibbonFilm-Philosophy 16 (1): 1-15. 2012.Thomas Elsaesser claims the late Haneke as a director of ‘mind-game’ films, but his diagnosis of the appeal of such films fails to account for The White Ribbon . In this paper, I draw on the theory of radical interpretation developed by American philosopher Donald Davidson to uncover the film’s power. I argue that the focus on charity in Davidson’s account of the conditions under which an interpreter is able to find a foreign community intelligible illuminates the exquisite discomfort the specta…Read more
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36Review of Benjamin Schnieder and Moritz Schulz "Themes From Early Analytic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Wolfgang Kunne" (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. 2012.
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29Review of the book Disagreement by Bryan Frances. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014
Areas of Specialization
1 more
20th Century Analytic Philosophy |
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Philosophy of Language |
Donald Davidson |
W. V. O. Quine |
Rudolf Carnap |
Areas of Interest
1 more
20th Century Analytic Philosophy |
Donald Davidson |
W. V. O. Quine |
Rudolf Carnap |
George Herbert Mead |
Film and Television |