•  3
    A Most Useful Economy
    In Marcus P. Adams (ed.), A Companion to Hobbes, Wiley. 2021.
    Thomas Hobbes holds that there is an intimate connection between linguistic meaning and thought. This chapter provides a general overview of Hobbes's views on language, and argues that Hobbes holds an inchoate, but recognizable, version of an inferential role or functional role semantics. On Hobbes's theory of language use and linguistic meaning, the meaning of an expression is the functional role of that expression in cognition. The chapter describes Hobbes's account of use of names in cognitio…Read more
  •  7
    Introduction to the special issue: Skepticism, relativism, pluralism
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    The precise and proper territorial boundaries of skepticism, relativism, and pluralism have been perennial topics of debate in philosophy. Very few philosophers endorse these positions in an unqual...
  •  29
    hobbes’s views on the existence and nature of God have occasioned much controversy.1 He has been interpreted as holding positions ranging from sincere, if unconventional, Calvinism to out-and-out atheism.2 Of particular interest has been Hobbes’s apparent endorsement of a version of the cosmological argument. Take the following, for example:For he that from any effect he seeth come to pass should reason to the next and immediate cause thereof, and from thence to the cause of that cause, and plun…Read more