•  4
    Escaping Fiction
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 24 (70): 81-96. 2024.
    In this paper I argue that a norm of literary fiction is to compel the reader to form beliefs about the world as it is. It may seem wrong to suggest that the reason I believe p is because I imagined p, yet literary fiction can make this the case. I argue for an account grounded in indexed doxastic susceptibilities mapped between a fictional context and the particular properties of a reader, more specifically the susceptibilities in her beliefs, attitudes, and psychological states. Works of ficti…Read more
  •  287
    Subordination, Silencing, and Two Ideas of Illocution (review)
    Jurisprudence 2 (2): 379-440. 2011.
    This section gathers together five reviews of Rae Langton?s book Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification followed by a response from the author.
  •  364
    Metalinguistic Acts in Fiction
    In Emar Maier & Andreas Stokke (eds.), The Language of Fiction, Oxford University Press. pp. 301-324. 2021.
    This chapter identifies and explains several primary functions of the fictional use of metalinguistic devices and considers some difficult cases. In particular, this chapter argues that when real persons are quoted in a storyworld they are ‘storified’ as near-real fictions. In cases of the misquotation of real persons, near-real fictions and near-real quotations must adequately exploit resemblances between the real and the fictional. This concludes with a discussion of the similarities between f…Read more
  •  486
    The Abnegated Self
    In Virtue Narrative, and Self: Explorations of Character in the Philosophy of Mind and Action. 2021.
    Abstract: A self-abnegating person lacks contact with their agency. This can be against their will, in absence of their will, or voluntarily. This does not mean that they cannot provide reasons for or a narrative about their actions. It’s just that the reasons or narrative are someone else’s. People abnegate parts of their agency regularly; for example, within hierarchical institutions. In other cases, the self-abnegation is all-encompassing; for example, a victim of brainwashing. An agent in su…Read more
  •  253
    Reporting Practices and Reported Entities
    In Alessandro Capone, Ferenc Kiefer & Franco Lo Piparo (eds.), Indirect reports and pragmatics: interdisciplinary studies, Springer International Publishing. pp. 541-552. 2015.
    Abstract: This chapter discusses speakers’ conceptions of reported entities as evident in reporting practices. Pragmatic analyses will be offered to explain the diversity of permissible reporting practices. Several candidate theses on speakers’ conceptions of reported entities will be introduced. The possibility that there can be a unified analysis of direct and indirect reporting practices will be considered. Barriers to this unification will be discussed with an emphasis on the cognitive abili…Read more
  •  381
    Indirect Reports and Pragmatics
    In F. Lo Piparo & M. Carapezza A. Capone (ed.), Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy. pp. 389-411. 2013.
    Abstract: An indirect report typically takes the form of a speaker using the locution “said that” to report an earlier utterance. In what follows, I introduce the principal philosophical and pragmatic points of interest in the study of indirect reports, including the extent to which context sensitivity affects the content of an indirect report, the constraints on the substitution of co-referential terms in reports, the extent of felicitous paraphrase and translation, the way in which indirect re…Read more
  •  296
    Interpreting J.L. Austin: Critical Essays Edited by TsohatzidisSavas L.Oxford University Press, 2018. xii + 238 pp.
  •  125
    Agent and Object
    Social Theory and Practice 43 (3): 503-517. 2017.
    If a person has lost all or most of her capacities for agency, how can she be harmed? This paper begins by describing several ways in which a person loses, or never develops, significant capacities of agency. In contrast with other work in this area, the central analyses are not of fetuses, small children, or the cognitively disabled. The central analyses are of victims of mistreatment or oppressive social circumstances. These victims are denuded of their agential capacities, becoming, in an imp…Read more
  •  1358
    Parental Obligation
    Utilitas 23 (3): 249-267. 2011.
    The contention of this article is that parents do have obligations to care for their children, but for reasons that are not typically offered. I argue that this obligation to care for one’s children is unfair to parents but not unjust. I do not provide a detailed account of what our obligations are to our children. Rather, I focus on providing a justification for any obligation to care for them at all.
  •  755
    Context Sensitivity and Indirect Reports
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1): 40-48. 2010.
    In this paper, I argue that Contextualist theories of semantics are not undermined by their purported failure to explain the practice of indirect reporting. I adopt Cappelen & Lepore’s test for context sensitivity to show that the scope of context sensitivity is much broader than Semantic Minimalists are willing to accept. The failure of their arguments turns on their insistence that the content of indirect reports is semantically minimal.
  •  615
    Linguistic authority and convention in a speech act analysis of pornography
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (3). 2007.
    Recently, several philosophers have recast feminist arguments against pornography in terms of Speech Act Theory. In particular, they have considered the ways in which the illocutionary force of pornographic speech serves to set the conventions of sexual discourse while simultaneously silencing the speech of women, especially during unwanted sexual encounters. Yet, this raises serious questions as to how pornographers could (i) be authorities in the language game of sex, and (ii) set the conventi…Read more
  •  348
    Minimal propositions and real world utterances
    Philosophical Studies 148 (3). 2010.
    Semantic Minimalists make a proprietary claim to explaining the possibility of utterances sharing content across contexts. Further, they claim that an inability to explain shared content dooms varieties of Contextualism. In what follows, I argue that there are a series of barriers to explaining shared content for the Minimalist, only some of which the Contextualist also faces, including: (i) how the type-identity of utterances is established, (ii) what counts as repetition of type-identical utte…Read more