Books (in progress)

Some Recent and Forthcoming Publications (penultimate drafts)

  • Inscrutability paper, Phil Stud, 2008.
  • “Centered Worlds and the Content of Perception”, Blackwell Companion, Hales, ed., 2009.
  • Some Knowledge-How paper, Bengson/Moffett vol., pending.
  • Some color perception paper, Wright and Pedersen vol., pending.
  • “Fitch's Paradox of Knowability,” with J. Salerno, in E. Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2008 Edition. Survey of proposals to resolve the knowability paradox.
  • “Knowledge-The and Propositional Attitude Ascriptions”, in F. Lihoreau, ed. Knowledge and Questions, 2008.  Determiner phrases embedded under a propositional attitude verb have traditionally been taken to denote answers to implicit questions.  For example, 'the capital of Vermont' has been thought to denote the proposition which answers the implicit question 'what is the capital of Vermont?'  Thus, where 'know is treated as a proposition attitude verb rather than as an acquaintance verb, 'John knows the capital of Vermont' is true iff john knows that Montpelier is the capital of Vermont.  The traditional view lost its popularity long ago, because it was thought to rest on the controversial assumption that determiner phrases embedded under a propositional attitude verb function semantically in the same way as the corresponding wh-clauses.  Here we defend the traditional assumption against objections.  We then argue that wh-clauses are not to be given a uniform treatment as indirect questions.  When occurring under a propositional attitude verb, wh-clauses are better treated as having a predicate-type semantic value.  We conclude by considering some possible objections to the predicate view. 
  • “In Defense of a Perspectival Semantics for 'Know' ”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming, 2008.  Uncorrected Proofs.  The paper defends a kind of relativism with respect to 'know' and replies to Jason Stanley's objections to relativism which appeared in Chapter 7 of his book Knowledge and Practical Interests.
  • “Counterfactuals and Context”, with J. Salerno, Analysis 68 (2008), 39-46.  We discuss what we take to be a contextual fallacy in the standard understanding of the logic of counterfactuals.
  • “Moral Contextualism and Moral Relativism”, Philosophical Quarterly, forthcoming, 2008.   Blackwell Online Early. The paper was presented at the moral contextualism conference, Aberdeen, July 2006.  It defends a new version of MacFarlane's non-indexical contextualism. 
  • “Remarks on Counterpossibles”, with J. Salerno, in J. van Bentham, V. Hendricks, J. Symons, and S. A. Pedersen (eds.) Between Logic and Intuition: David Lewis and the Future of Formal Methods in Philosophy, Synthese Library, forthcoming, 2008.  We provide reasons in support of a non-vacuity treatment of counterpossibles.  We then raise a problem for Nolan's treatment and argue that the problem requires for its solution a theory of subjunctives that treats subjunctive contexts as opaque.  We conclude by offering such a theory.
  • “That may be Jupiter: A Heuristic for Thinking Two-Dimensionally”, American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2007), 315-328.  The paper develops an heuristic for understanding two-dimensionalism non-descriptively.  This heuristic employs a version of David Lewis' counterpart theory in place of the standard theory of canonical descriptions.  Uncorrected Proofs.
  • “What Mary Did Yesterday: Reflections on Knowledge-wh”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, forthcoming.  Reductionists about knowledge-wh hold that 's knows-wh' (e.g. 'John knows who stole his car') is reducible to 'there is a proposition p such that s knows that p, and p answers the indirect question of the wh-clause'.  Anti-reductionists hold that 's knows-wh' is reducible to 's knows that p, as the true answer to the indirect question of the wh-clause'.  I argue that both of these positions are defective.  I then offer a new analysis of knowledge-wh as a special kind of de re knowledge. 
  • “Attitude Reports: Do You Mind the Gap?”, Philosophy Compass: Epistemology 3 (2008), 93-118, Tamar Szabo Gendler, topic ed.  Editor-in-chief: Brian Weatherson.   The paper discusses belief and knowledge reports and raises some objections to traditional analyses of such reports.   Blackwell Online Early.
  • “Sea Battle Semantics” The Philosophical Quarterly, forthcoming.  The final version is available for subscribers on Blackwell Online Early.  Abstract: MacFarlane has argued that our intuitions about future contingents motivate a shift from standard semantics to relativistic semantics. In this paper I defend standard semantics against MacFarlane's criticism. A shorter version of this paper was presented at the Pacific Meeting of the APA in San Francisco 2007.  Peter Ludlow was commenting.  Uncorrected pre-proofs. 
  • “On Keeping Blue Swans and Unknowable Facts at Bay. A Case Study on Fitch's Paradox”, in J. Salerno, ed. New Essays on the Knowability Paradox, Oxford University Press, forthcoming. The paper develops a Fitch-like paradox for strong modal fictionalism. It is argued that the most promising strategy to avoid paradox is to reject the claim that modal claims are to be analyzed in terms of the contents of the fiction of possible worlds. It is hoped that by looking at the parallel case of modal fictionalism light can be shed on the threat posed by Fitch's paradox to semantic anti-realism.
  • “The But Not All: A Partitive Account of Plural Definite Descriptions,” Mind and Language 22, 4 (September 2007), 402-426. The paper argues against the view that the semantic import of plural descriptions is existential quantification. It then argues that plural descriptions have the semantic import of partitive constructions with variable quantificational force. A shortened and slightly different version of this paper was presented at the Eastern Meeting of the APA in D.C. December 2006.  Zoltan Szabo was commenting.  Uncorrected proofs.
  • “Span Operators”, Analysis 67 (2007): 72-79. The paper argues that Lewis and Sider are too quick to deny the presentist the right to employ span operators.  Official published version. 
  • “Number Words and Ontological Commitment”, The Philosophical Quarterly 57, 1 (January 2007), 1-20. The paper examines a recent anti-Fregean line with respect to number discourse.
  • “Descriptions: Predicates or Quantifiers?”,Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2007), 117-136.  Here I examine the thesis that descriptions are predicates which Delia Graff Fara has recently defended.
  • “A Puzzle about Properties,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research LXXIV, 3 (May 2007), 635-650. The paper argues that the assumption that there are property designators, together with two theoretically innocent claims, leads to a puzzle, whose solution requires us to reject the position that all (canonical) property designators are rigid.  But if we deny that all (canonical) property designators are rigid, then the natural next step is to reject an abundant conception of properties and with it the suggestion that properties are the semantic values of predicates.  Uncorrected proofs.
  • “Sharvy's Theory of Definite Descriptions Revisited”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88 (2007), 160-180. The paper revisits Sharvy's theory of plural definite descriptions. An alternative account of plural definite descriptions, building on the ideas of plural quantification and non-distributive plural predication is developed. Finally, an application of the general account of plural definite descriptions in an account of generic uses of definite descriptions is provided.
  • “Two Modal -Isms: Fictionalism and Ersatzism,” Philosophical Perspectives 20, Metaphysics, John Hawthorne, ed. (2006), 77-94. The paper presents some problems for holistic Erzatzism and defends timid modal fictionalism against charges.
  • “Tensed Relations,” Analysis 66 (2006), 194-202. Here I try to make sense of irreducibly tensed properties and relations.Official published version.
  • “The Trivial Argument for Epistemic Value Pluralism. Or How I learned to Stop Caring about Truths”, ed., D. Pritchard, Alan Millar, and Adrian Haddock, Epistemic Value, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.  Abstract: Relativism offers a nifty way of accommodating most of our intuitions about epistemic modals, predicates of personal taste, color expressions, future contingents, and conditionals.  But in spite of its manifest merits relativism is squarely at odds with epistemic value monism: the view that truth is the highest epistemi goal.  I will call the argument from relativism to epistemic value pluralism the trivial argument for epistemic value pluralism.  After formulating the argument, I look at three possible ways to refute it.  I then argue that two of these are unsuccessful and defend the third, which involves denying that there are genuinely relative truths.
  • “Knowability and a Modal Closure Principle”, with J. Salerno, American Philosophical Quarterly 43 (2006), 261-270. This is a study of an alleged incompatibility (proposed by Sven Rosenkranz) between normal modal logic and factive conceptions of knowability.
  • “Knowability, Possibility and Paradox,” with J. Salerno, in V. Hendricks and D. Pritchard (eds.) New Waves in Epistemology, Palgrave Macmillan (2007), 270-299. Quantified expressions play a special role in modal contexts. On the account of this special role articulated by Stanley and Szabo, we propose a solution to the knowability paradoxes.
  • “Can Virtue Reliabilism Explain the Value of Knowledge?,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 36 (2006), 335-354.  To appear in translation in Philosophical Alternatives 3 (2008).  The paper develops the RR line that final value can make for a difference in value between knowledge and mere true belief.  It then argues that there is a further problem, viz. that of accounting for the difference in value between knowledge and mere justified true belief.  Finally, it offers a solution to the secondary value problem. 
  • “The ‘Gray’s Elegy’ Argument, and the Prospects for the Theory of Denoting Concepts,” Synthese 152 (2006), 47-79. The 'Gray's Elegy' argument rests on the premise that if a denoting concept occurs in a proposition, then the proposition is not about the concept. I argue that the premise is false.
  • “The Moral Status of the Human Embryo”, Howard B. Rades, ed., Biomedical Ethics: Humanist Perspectives of Humanism Today, Prometheus Books, (2006).  The article first appeared in a magazine called Free Inquiry.  It argues that 4-5 days old embryos do not have the moral status of human beings and was cited in A Report of the President's Council on Bioethics -- Washington D.C. 2004.  Apparently, President Bush wasn't convinced.  The Government citations to the article can be found here and here. 
  • “Anti-Realism, Theism, and the Conditional Fallacy,” with J. Salerno, Nous 39 (2005), 123-139.  Here we disagree with Plantinga and Rea that the best way to be an anti-realist is to be a theist. We argue, however, that without a massive revision of classical logic, the anti-realist will have to embrace an unwelcome form of idealism.
  • “On Luck, Responsibility and the Meaning of Life with B. Smith, Philosophical Papers 34 (2005), 443-58, special issue edited by Thad Metz, featuring solicited papers on the meaning of life.  We argue that final value can contribute to the meaning of your life.
  • “Fitch's Paradox of Knowability,” with J. Salerno, in E. Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2002 and Summer 2004 Editions. Survey of proposals to resolve the knowability paradox.
  • “Contextualism, Skepticism, and the Gettier Problem,” Synthese 139 (2004), 367-386.   Reflections on contextualism, sensitivity, safety, and all that.
  • “Epistemological Contextualism and the Problem of Moral Luck,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84 (2003), 371-83.  The paper argues that a form of moral contextualism solves the problem of moral luck.
  • “Clues to the Paradoxes of Knowability: Reply to Dummett and Tennant,” with J. Salerno, Analysis 62 (2002), 143-150. The paper develops some new paradoxes of knowability that, unlike Fitch's original paradox, are not blocked by the restricted brands of semantic anti-realism advocated by Dummett and Tennant.
  • “Presentist Four-Dimensionalism,” The Monist 83 (2000), 341-356.   An attempt to combine two theses I rather liked back in 1999, viz. presentism and perdurantism.  I still find presentism exceedingly intuitive and have spent some of my time defending it in print and elsewhere.
  • “A Unified Theory of Truth and Reference,” with B. Smith, Logique et Analyse 169-170 (2003), 49-93, special issue edited by Peter Forrest, featuring solicited papers on truth.  The paper deals with the problem of the many and other issues which threaten to undermine substantial theories of truth and reference.  When I co-authored the paper with Barrry in 2000, I was rather sympathetic to substantial theories of truth.  Since then I have been more sympathetic to less substantial theories.

Short Notes, Reviews and Editorials

  • “Handout on Presupposition”, The Rutgers Semantics Workshop October 2007.
  • “A Counterfactual Account of Essence”, with J. Salerno, The Reasoner vol. 1, no. 4 (2007).  Jon Williamson, ed.
  • “Williamson on Counterpossibles”, with J. Salerno, The Reasoner vol. 1, no. 3 (2007).  Jon Williamson, ed.  We discuss Timothy Williamson's defense of the vacuous treatment of counterpossibles (i.e., counterfactuals with impossible antecedents) and reply to Alan Baker. Official Version.
  • “Why Counterpossibles are Non-Trivial”, with J. Salerno, The Reasoner vol. 1, no. 1 (2007).  Jon Williamson, ed. Subjunctive conditionals with impossible antecedents (or counterpossibles) are standardly treated as vacuously true, the lore being that if an impossibility were to obtain, anything would follow.  Daniel Nolan (1997) and others have argued that there are several good reasons to steer clear of the standard reading.  In this note we provide further reasons.  Official Published Version.
  • Special Issue of Synthese on Relative Truth.  Scheduled to appear in the spring of 2008.  Contributors include David Capps, Andy Egan, Michael Glanzberg, Steven Hales, Max Kolbel, Peter Lasersohn, Michael Lynch, John MacFarlane, Daniel Massey, Sebastiano Moruzzi, Stephen Neale, Duncan Pritchard, Brian Weatherson and Crispin Wright.
  • Book Review for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:  Andrea Bottani and Richard Davies (eds.), Modes of Existence: Papers in Ontology and Philosophical Logic, Ontos, 2006, 237 pp. Contributors: Mulligan, Raspa, Kroon, van Inwagen, Varzi, Reicher, Barbero, Orillo, Spolaore.
  • Book Review for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Thomas Sattig, The Language and Reality of Time, Oxford UP, 2006.

Recent or Upcoming Talks (and other activities)

  • TBA, The Second Annual Midwest Epistemology Workshop, October 17-18, 2008, The University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska.
  • TBA, Auckland, NZ
  • TBA, Otago, NZ
  • TBA, Wellington, NZ
  • “Knowledge without Belief”, Australian Association of Philosophy, Melbourne.
  • “On the Knowledge Argument”, The Epistemology at the Beach Conference, Feb. 15-18, 2008, ANU's Kioloa Coastal Campus, hosted by Dave Chalmers' Centre for Consciousness and and Daniel Stoljar's Basic Knowledge grant and organized by Declan Smithies.
  • “Counterpossibles, Impossible Worlds, and Essence”, with Joe Salerno, Arizona Ontology Conference, Arizona, January 2008.  Organizer: L. A. Paul.  Commentator: Gillian Russell.
  • “An Extensional Approach to Quantifier Domain Restriction”, The Eastern Meeting of the APA, Baltimore, December 27-30, 2007.  Commentator: Jason Stanley.
  • “Making Sense of Ontological Commitment”, Ontological Commitment Conference, Sydney, November 30 - December 1, 2007.
  • TBA, PhilSoc, Philosophy RSSS, Australian National University, October 23, 2007.
  • Comments on Philippe Schlenker's "Be Articulate!", Rutgers Semantics Workshop, October 5-7, 2007.  Organizers: Lepore and Stanley. 
  • “Remarks on Counterpossibles”, with Joe Salerno, Synthese Annual Conference: Between Logic and Intuition: David Lewis and the Future of Formal Methods in Philosophy, Carlsberg Academy, Copenhagen, October 3-5, 2007.  Program Committee: Johan van Benthem, Vincent F. Hendricks, John Symons, and Stig Andur Pedersen.
  • “Structured Content”, Philosophy RSSS, Australian National University, September 13, 2007. 
  • “What Mary Did Yesterday: Remarks on Knowledge-wh,” Copenhagen Epistemology Conference, May 26-26, 2007, organizer: Klemens Kappel and Danish Epistemology Network.  Speakers: Duncan Pritchard, Erik Olsson, Nikolaj Nottelman, Erik Carsson, Kristoffer Ahlstrom, Berit Brogaard, and Esben Nedenskov.  Discussants (among others): Lars Bo Gundersen, Eline Busck Gundersen, Jesper Kallestrup, Klemens Kappel, and Anders Schoubye.
  • Public Lecture, literary lecture series organized by Henrik Gade Jensen.  Place and time: 17:00-18:30, May 23, 2007, Palace Hotel, Raadhuspladsen, City, Copenhagen.
  • Adjectives Conference, St. Andrews, May 19-20, 2007, invited participant.  Organizers: Herman Cappelen and Jason Stanley.  Keynote addresses: Delia Graff Fara, John Hawthorne, Chris Kennedy, Peter Ludlow, Paul Pietoski, Daniel Rothschild, Jonathan Schaffer, Gabriel Segal, and Jason Stanley.
  • “Remarks on Counterpossibles”, with Joe Salerno, Epistemology Conference, University of Edinburgh, May 15, 2007.  Organizers: Jesper Kallestrup and Matthew Chrisman.  Speakers: Berit Brogaard, Ram Neta, Duncan Pritchard, Joe Salerno and Jonathan Schaffer.  Abstract: On David Lewis' theory of subjunctive conditionals, subjunctives with impossible antecedents are familiarly treated as vacuously true.  But as Daniel Nolan and others have argued, there are several good reasons to steer clear of a vacuity treatment of counterpossibles.  In this essay we provide further reasons in support of the thesis.  We then raise a problem for Nolan's treatment and argue that the problem requires for its solution a theory of subjunctives that treats subjunctive contexts as opaque.  We conclude by offering such a theory.
  • “What Mary Did Yesterday: Remarks on Knowledge-wh,” , the Linguistics and Epistemology Conference, Aberdeen, UK, May 12-13 2007, organized by Martijn Blaauw.  30 min talk.  Keynote speakers: Kent Bach, Peter Ludlow, Jonathan Schaffer, and Jason Stanley.  Abstract: reductionists about knowledge-wh hold that 's knows-wh' (e.g. 'John knows who stole his car') is reducible to 'there is a proposition p such that s knows that p, and p answers the indirect question of the wh-clause'.  Anti-reductionists hold that 's knows-wh' is reducible to 's knows that p, as the true answer to the indirect question of the wh-clause'.  I argue that both of these positions are defective.  I then offer a new analysis of knowledge-wh as a special kind of de re knowledge.
  • “Donkey Sentences and Quantifier Variability,” the Central Division of the APA in Chicago, April 19-21 2007. Commentator: Jessica Rett, Department of Linguistics, Rutgers. The paper proposes an account of conditional donkey sentences, such as 'if a farmer buys a donkey, he usually vaccinates it', which accommodates the fact that the adverb of quantification seems to affect the interpretation of pronouns that are not within its syntactic scope. The analysis defended takes donkey pronouns to go proxy for partitive noun phrases with varying quantificational force. The variation in the interpretation of donkey pronouns, it is argued, is determined by the linguistic environment in which the pronouns occur. A longer version of this paper can be found in the works in progress section below.
  • “Sea Battle Semantics” the Pacific Meeting of the APA in San Francisco, April 3-8, 2007. Commentator: Peter Ludlow, University of Michigan. Macfarlane has argued that our intuitions about future contingents motivate a shift from standard semantics to relativistic semantics. In this paper I defend standard semantics against MacFarlane's criticism. A longer version of the paper can be found in the works in progress section below.
  • “What Mary Did Yesterday: Reflections on Knowledge-wh”, Philosophy Department Colloquium, St. Louis University. March 30, 2007.
  • “What Mary Did Yesterday: Remarks on Knowledge-wh”, Knowledge and Questions Workshop, 15-16 March 2007 at the Archives H.-Poincaré, Nancy, France.  Keynote speakers: Berit Brogaard, Maria Aloni, Paul Egre, Pascal Engel, Christopher Hookway, Ian Rumfitt, Jonathan Schaffer, Claudine Tiercelin.
  • Commentator on Delia Graff's "Coincidence By Another Name", Arizona Ontology Conference. Jan 18-21, 2007. Speakers: Ted Sider, Carolina Sartorio, David Chalmers, Delia Graff, Mike Rea, Cian Dorr, John Hawthorne, Sarah McGrath, and Ned Hall.  Preliminary draft of comments.
  • “The But not All: A New Account of Plural Definite Descriptions,” the Eastern Division of the APA in Washington D.C., December, 2006. Commentator: Zoltan Szabo, Yale University.  The paper argues against the view that the semantic import of plural descriptions is existential quantification. Then it argues that plural descriptions have the semantic import of partitive constructions with variable quantificational force. You can find a longer version of the paper in the works in progress section below.
  • Rutgers Semantics Workshop, Sep 29-30, 2006, invited participant.  Speakers: Mark Baker, Sarah Jane Leslie, Martin Hackl, Peter Lasersohn, Richard Larson. 
  • “In Defense of a Perspectival Semantics for 'Know'”, Philosophy department colloquium. Syracuse. September 22, 2006
  • “In Defense of a Perspectival Semantics for 'Know'”, NAMICONA Epistemology Workshop, University of Copenhagen, August 22, 2006.
  • “The Trivial Argument for Epistemic Value Pluralism.  Or How I Learned to Stop Caring about Truth”, Stirling Conference on Epistemic Value, August 2006. Commentator: Mikkel Gerken, University of California, Los Angeles.  Invited speakers: Jason Baehr, Berit Brogaard, Pascal Engel, Stephen Grimm, Ward Jones, Mark Kaplan, Martin Kusch, Alan Millar, Christian Piller, Wayne Riggs, Matt Weiner, W. Jay Wood.
  • “Moral Contextualism and Moral Relativism”, Aberdeen Conference on Moral Contextualism, July 2006. Organized by Peter Baumann, and Martijn Blaauw.  Commentator: Lars Binderup, University of Southern Denmark.  Keynote speakers: Berit Brogaard, John Greco, John Hawthorne, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Alan Thomas, Ralph Wedgwood.  The paper argues that a version of non-indexical contextualism is preferable to genuine moral relativism.  Carrie Jenkins took a number of pictures at the conference. They are available here. Check out the spoons!
  • “Adverbs and Quantifier Domain Restriction,” the Central Division of the APA in Chicago, April, 2006. Commentator: Andy Egan, University of Michigan.
  • “Knowability, Possibility and Paradox”, with J. Salerno. Book launch event for V. Hendricks and D. Pritchard's New Waves in Epistemology. Pacific Division of the APA. March 24, 2006.
  • “Russell's Theory of Descriptions vs. the Predicative Analysis: a Reply to Graff,” the Eastern Division of the APA in NY, December, 2005. Commentator. Delia Graff Fara, Princeton University.  A longer version of this paper has been accepted for publication in Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
  • “Anti-Realism, Theism and the Conditional Fallacy,” with J. Salerno, the Central Division of the APA in Chicago, April, 2003. Commentator: Michael Rea, Notre Dame.  A longer version of this paper appeared in Nous 2005.

Works in Progress (comments appreciated)

  • Transient Truths: an Essay in the Metaphysics of Propositions (monograph). As you might have guessed, I am here trying to defend temporalism, the view that propositions can change their truth-values over time.
  • The Missing Dimension: Two-Dimensional Approaches to Matters Epistemic, Monograph defending two-dimensional semantics.  Table of Contents available upon request. 
  • Impossible Thoughts.  Monograph on counterpossibles and epistemic modals, with Joe Salerno.  Sample chapters available upon request.
  • Paper on know-how, for Moffett volume.
  • Paper on truth for Wright and Pedersen volume.
  • Paper on ontological commitment for Price and Moretti volume.
  • Paper defending a unified theory of indicative and subjunctive conditionals. 
  • Paper on relativistic semantics for Hales volume.
  • Paper on normative requirements
  • “Epistemic Justification and Practical Ability”
  • “Quine on Commitment”
  • “The Missing Dimension”.
  • “I Know. Therefore, I understand”
  • “Donkey Sentences and Quantifier Variability”.
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