•  7
    Midway through How to Do Things With Words, J.L. Austin’s announces a “fresh start” in his efforts to characterize the ways in which speech is action, and introduces a new conceptual framework from the one he has been using up to that point. Against a common reading that portrays this move as simply abandoning the framework so far developed, Marina Sbisà contends that the text takes the argumentative form of a proof by contradiction, such that the initial framework plays an instrumental role as …Read more
  •  78
    An I without a You? An Exercise in Normative Pragmatics
    In Leo Townsend, Preston Stovall & Hans Bernhard Schmid (eds.), The Social Institution of Discursive Norms, Routledge. pp. 197-222. 2021.
    This essay attempts to extend the exercise in normative pragmatics undertaken by Robert Brandom to include consideration of the logical relations between the practices of making of claims involving the use of the first-person-singular pronoun (‘I-talk’) and the making of claims involving the second-person-singular pronoun (‘You-talk’). The first part of the essay makes the case that the implicit response found in Brandom’s work affirms the pragmatic independence of I-talk from You-talk, such tha…Read more
  •  117
    Varieties of Testimonial Injustice
    In Ian J. Kidd & Gaile Pohlhaus (eds.), The Routledge Handbook on Epistemic Injustice, Routledge. pp. 27-40. 2016.
  •  78
    Reading Brandom: on making it explicit (edited book)
    Routledge. 2010.
    Essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy of language and mind, Reading Brandom is also an excellent companion volume to Reading McDowell: On ...
  •  18
    Clarifying illocutionary force
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    The focus of this paper is on the practice of clarifying illocutionary force, the social activity of asking for and providing descriptions that make explicit what kind of act what done in speaking. Two forms of this practice are distinguished, one that takes place as part of the speech encounter that is the target of the practice, and one that takes place subsequent to that speech encounter. It is argued that the function of the practice differs between these forms, and that this yields two very…Read more
  •  24
    Illocution by example
    Synthese 202 (1): 1-22. 2023.
    According to a dominant understanding, the illocutionary domain is a bifurcated one, an amalgam containing both communicative speech acts (such as requesting and promising) and ceremonial speech acts (such as saying ‘I do’ in a marriage ceremony and naming a ship). Bifurcating the domain in this manner is commonly taken to be a primary lesson of Austin’s “How To Do Things With Words’, alongside that of according communicative speech acts a far greater prominence in terms of our core understandin…Read more
  • This chapter is an investigation into G. E. M. Anscombe's suggestion that there can be cases where belief takes a personal object, through an examination of the role that the activity of teaching plays in Anscombe's discussion. By contrasting various kinds of ‘teachers’ that feature in her discussion, it is argued that the best way of understanding the idea of believing someone personally is to situate the relevant encounter within the social, conversational framework of ‘engaged reasoning’. Key…Read more
  •  82
  •  45
    Alethic Holdings
    Philosophical Topics 42 (1): 63-84. 2014.
    An alethic holding is any speech act that functions to hold another person to acting for reasons that they already had prior to the performance of a speech act with this function. Although it is tempting to think of such acts as either informing another person of extant reasons for acting or as creating new reasons for that person to so act, a central goal of this paper is to suggest that this temptation should be resisted. First, alethic speech acts are situated within the broader terrain of pe…Read more
  •  48
    Anscombe's 'Teachers'
    Journal of Philosophy of Education 47 (2): 204-221. 2013.
    This article is an investigation into G. E. M. Anscombe's suggestion that there can be cases where belief takes a personal object, through an examination of the role that the activity of teaching plays in Anscombe's discussion. By contrasting various kinds of ‘teachers’ that feature in her discussion, it is argued that the best way of understanding the idea of believing someone personally is to situate the relevant encounter within the social, conversational framework of ‘engaged reasoning’. Key…Read more
  •  20
    Robert Brandom
    Mcgill-Queen's University Press. 2006.
    "Robert Brandom" is one of the most significant philosophers writing today, yet paradoxically philosophers have found it difficult to get to grips with the details and implications of his work. This book aims to facilitate critical engagement with Brandom's ideas by providing an accessible overview of Brandom's project and the context for an initial assessment. Jeremy Wanderer's examination focuses on Brandom's inferentialist conception of rationality, and the core part of this conception that a…Read more
  •  258
    Addressing Testimonial Injustice: Being Ignored and Being Rejected
    Philosophical Quarterly 62 (246): 148-169. 2012.
    I examine a distinctive kind of injustice which arises when people are maltreated in their capacity as potential conveyors of knowledge. Extant discussions of testimonial injustice usually assume that the injustice occurs when an audience ignores the claims made by a testifier. This assumption obscures the fact that there are occasions where the best framework for thinking about testimonial injustice is that of inappropriately rejecting, not ignoring, those claims; the injustice differs in these…Read more
  •  54
    Testimony and the Interpersonal
    International Journal of Philosophical Studies 21 (1). 2013.
    Critical notice of Paul Faulkner, "Knowledge on Trust" (OUP 2011) and Benjamin McMyler, "Testimony, Trust, and Authority" (OUP 2011).
  •  31
    Introduction: A Thicker Epistemology?
    with Ben Kotzee
    Philosophical Papers 37 (3): 337-343. 2008.
    Abstract The distinction between thick and thin concepts has been a central part of recent discussion in metaethics. Whilst there is a debate regarding how best to characterise the distinction, it is commonly accepted that ethical theorising traditionally focuses on the thin, leading some to contend that moving from considering thin to thick concepts leads to a very different, and preferable, conception of ethics. Not only does a similar distinction between thick and thin concepts suggest itself…Read more
  •  89
    Is it Rational to Trust?
    Philosophy Compass 8 (1): 1-14. 2013.
    It is common in popular depictions to portray the attitude of trusting and the norms associated with rationality as standing in some kind of tension. In this article, we suggest a way of capturing this tension, and explore some recent attempts at resolving it.
  •  36
    ‘The happy thought of a single man’: On the legendary beginnings of a style of reasoning
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 43 (4): 640-648. 2012.
    In this paper I direct attention to one feature of Hacking’s recent work on styles of reasoning and argue that this feature is of far greater philosophical significance than Hacking’s limited discussion of this suggests. The feature in question is his use of ‘legendary beginnings’ in setting out a given style, viz. the method of introducing a style of reasoning by recounting a popular and quasi-mythical narrative that ties the crystallisation of that style to a particular person in a particular …Read more