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320Thought by descriptionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (1): 83-102. 2008.No Abstract
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27Consequences of Reference FailureRoutledge. 2019.This book defends the Direct Reference (DR) thesis in philosophy of language regarding proper names and indexical pronouns. It uniquely draws out the significant consequences of DR when it is conjoined with the fact that these singular terms sometimes fail to refer. Even though DR is widely endorsed by philosophers of language, many philosophically important and radically controversial consequences of the thesis have gone largely unexplored. This book makes an important contribution to the DR l…Read more
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21Skepticism and Content ExternalismStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2018.Hilary Putnam (1981) proposed an interesting and much discussed attempt to refute a skeptical argument that is based on one form of the brain-in-a-vat scenario. In turn, Putnam’s attempted refutation is based on content externalism (also known as semantic externalism). On this view, the referents and meanings of various types of singular and general terms, as well as the propositions expressed by sentences containing such terms, are determined by aspects of the speaker’s external environment. In…Read more
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616On Knowing Our Own MindsPhilosophical Quarterly 52 (206): 107-116. 2002.This is an anthology of ?fteen papers concerning various philosophical problems related to the topic of self-knowledge. All but one of the papers were previously unpublished, and all but two are descendants of presentations at a conference on self-knowledge held at the University of St Andrews in 1995. The collection.
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314The semantic basis of externalismIn Sorin Costreie & Mircea Dumitru (eds.), Meaning and Truth, Pro Universitaria. 2015.1. The primary evidence and motivation for externalism in the philosophy of mind is provided by the semantic facts that support direct reference theories of names, indexi- cal pronouns, and natural kind terms. But many externalists have forgotten their sem- antic roots, or so I shall contend here. I have become convinced of this by a common reaction among externalists to the main argument of my 1991 paper AAnti-Individual- ism and Privileged Access.@ In that argument, I concluded that externalis…Read more
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453Forms of externalism and privileged accessPhilosophical Perspectives 16 199-224. 2002.In my 1991 paper
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231The grammar of beliefIn William J. Rapaport & F. Orilia (eds.), Thought, Language, and Ontology, Essays in Memory of Hector-Neri Castaneda, Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1998.
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463Divided reference in causal theories of namesPhilosophical Studies 30 (4). 1976.Gareth evans has proposed a type of case which shows that kripke's sketch of a causal theory of proper names is in need of modification. Kripke has himself suggested a way in which the modification might proceed, But I argue that this suggestion leads in the wrong direction. I consider a development of kripke's view by michael devitt which may overcome evans' case, But which is shown false by a different sort of case. The latter kind of case also shows that a view of names recently proposed by d…Read more
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1037The semantics of belief ascriptionsNoûs 33 (4): 519-557. 1999.nated discussion of the semantics of such verbs. I will call this view.
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327Psychologism in SemanticsCanadian Journal of Philosophy 13 (1). 1983.According to grice, Semantic concepts like meaning and reference should be explicated in terms of the propositional attitudes. In this paper, I argue that grice's program is mistaken in principle. I first motivate a gricean strategy for defining denotation, Or semantic reference, In terms of rules that govern what speakers may refer to with the terms they use. I then express three paradigm gricean theories of denotation and introduce considerations which show that these theories are false.
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407Curing folk psychology of arthritisPhilosophical Studies 70 (3): 323-36. 1993.Tyler Burge's (1979) famous thought experiment concerning 'arthritis' is commonly assumed to show that all ascriptions of content to beliefs and other attitudes are dependent for their truth upon facts about the agent's social and linguistic environment. It is also commonly claimed that Burge's argument shows that Putnam's (1975) result regarding natural kind terms applies to all general terms whatever, and hence shows that all such terms have wide meanings.1 But I wish to show here, first, that…Read more
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297Michael Devitt, Designation Reviewed by Michael McKinsey (review)Philosophy in Review 3 (3): 112-116. 1983.
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407Externalism and privileged access are inconsistentIn Jonathan Cohen & Brian McLaughlin (eds.), Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. 2023.
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751A Refutation of Qualia-PhysicalismIn Michael O'Rourke Corey Washington (ed.), Situating Semantics: Essays on the Philosophy of John Perry, . pp. 469. 2007.
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2296Understanding proper namesLinguistics and Philosophy 33 (4): 325-354. 2010.There is a fairly general consensus that names are Millian (or Russellian) genuine terms, that is, are singular terms whose sole semantic function is to introduce a referent into the propositions expressed by sentences containing the term. This answers the question as to what sort of proposition is expressed by use of sentences containing names. But there is a second serious semantic problem about proper names, that of how the referents of proper names are determined. This is the question that I…Read more
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1228Kripke's Objections to Description Theories of NamesCanadian Journal of Philosophy 8 (3). 1978.In “Naming and Necessity” Saul Kripke describes some cases which, he claims, provide counterexamples both to cluster theories and, more generally, to description theories of proper names. My view of these cases is that while they do not provide counterexamples to cluster theories, they can be used to provide evidence against single-description theories. In this paper I shall defend both of the claims involved in my view.
Detroit, Michigan, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |