Fixing Reference (OUP, 2015)
This book develops an account of aboutness-fixing for thoughts about ordinary objects, and reference-fixing for the singular terms we use to express them. Extant discussions of this part of meta-semantics tread a weary path through descriptivist proposals, causalist alternatives, and attempts to combine the most attractive elements of each. The account developed here is a new beginning. The first part of the book proves a principle which brings out the significance for accounts of aboutness of the fact that justification is truth conducive. The remaining chapters use this principle to explain how the relations to objects that enable us to think about them – perceptual attention; understanding of proper names; grasp of descriptions – do their aboutness-fixing and thought-enabling work.
‘The Subtle Lives of Descriptive Names’ (Pending Revisions)
This is for Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Language. It develops the discussion of descriptive names from Fixing Reference in response to some really terrific feedback on this material from James Shaw, Karen Lewis, and Calvin Normore.
Replies to Heck, Hofweber, and Ninan
My part of a book symposium on Fixing Reference, starting with a précis of the book, and including replies to Richard Heck, Thomas Hofweber, and Dilip Ninan. Richard’s and Dilip’s contributions are here and here.
‘The Essential Connection between Epistemology and the Theory of Reference’ for Philosophical Issues 26
This paper develops the central proposal of Fixing Reference in a way designed to locate it relative to debates in traditional 'S knows that p' epistemology.
‘Everybody Needs to Know?’ Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies (symposium on Ernie Sosa Judgment and Agency)
‘Cognitive Focus’ in Mental Files and Singular Thought (OUP, forthcoming)
The main body of the paper is a shortish-form presentation of one of the central lines of thought from Fixing Reference, though the paper also contains an alternative to the argument for one of the book’s central principles (a principle that brings out the significance for accounts of aboutness of the fact that justification is truth-conducive). The paper also has an appendix which explains why I don’t frame my account of singular thought in terms of the notion of a ‘mental file’.
‘Perception and Demonstratives’ in Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception (OUP, 2015)
This is my attempt to comply with the editor’s request to provide an ‘opinionated introduction’ to the question of how perceptual links with objects enable us to think about them.
‘A Practical Solution to the Problem of Empty Singular Thought’ in Empty Representations (OUP, 2014)
This is an instalment in my attempt to get straight on what we should say about cases of apparent singular thought where there is no object the thought is about. I suggest that these cases are best understood as like cases of failed reaching – it is as if you reach out with the hand of your mind to grab hold of something to think about, but the world conspires against you and you close your grip on the empty air.
‘Comments on Stanley Know How from the APA Pacific 2012’
A shorter and later version entitled 'Skill Before Knowledge' appeared in the Philosophy and Phenomenological Research symposium on Stanley's book.
‘Visual Attention Fixes Demonstrative Reference by Eliminating Referential Luck’ in Attention (OUP, 2011)
‘How Proper Names Refer’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 2011
§1 argues that a right account of reference-fixing for proper names should respect an intuitive claim: the claim that my uses of NN stand for o only if I am committed to using NN in ways that match the representationally relevant ways it is possible for o to behave. §2 provides a new account of how proper names refer that meets this condition. (This is the 'proper names' companion piece to the view of demonstratives developed in 'We Are Acquainted With Ordinary Things', and was the jumping-off point for the view of proper-name-based thought in Fixing Reference.)
‘The Sortal Dependence of Demonstrative Reference’ The European Journal of Philosophy, (2011 online; 2014 in print)
‘Sense, Communication, and Rational Engagement’ (co-authored with Gurpreet Rattan) Dialectica, 2010.
‘We Are Acquainted With Ordinary Things’ in New Essays on Singular Thought (OUP, 2010)
‘Negation, Anti-Realism, and the Denial Defence’ Philosophical Studies (2009 online; 2010 in print)
‘The Generality of Particular Thought’ The Philosophical Quarterly (2009 online; 2010 in print)
‘Informative Identities in the Begriffsschrift and ‘“On Sense and Reference”’ The Canadian Journal of Philosophy (2008)
This argues for an account of the topic in the title in terms of Frege’s lifelong obsession with proofs in which each move is a step (rather than a leap) in the natural order of thought.
This book develops an account of aboutness-fixing for thoughts about ordinary objects, and reference-fixing for the singular terms we use to express them. Extant discussions of this part of meta-semantics tread a weary path through descriptivist proposals, causalist alternatives, and attempts to combine the most attractive elements of each. The account developed here is a new beginning. The first part of the book proves a principle which brings out the significance for accounts of aboutness of the fact that justification is truth conducive. The remaining chapters use this principle to explain how the relations to objects that enable us to think about them – perceptual attention; understanding of proper names; grasp of descriptions – do their aboutness-fixing and thought-enabling work.
‘The Subtle Lives of Descriptive Names’ (Pending Revisions)
This is for Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Language. It develops the discussion of descriptive names from Fixing Reference in response to some really terrific feedback on this material from James Shaw, Karen Lewis, and Calvin Normore.
Replies to Heck, Hofweber, and Ninan
My part of a book symposium on Fixing Reference, starting with a précis of the book, and including replies to Richard Heck, Thomas Hofweber, and Dilip Ninan. Richard’s and Dilip’s contributions are here and here.
‘The Essential Connection between Epistemology and the Theory of Reference’ for Philosophical Issues 26
This paper develops the central proposal of Fixing Reference in a way designed to locate it relative to debates in traditional 'S knows that p' epistemology.
‘Everybody Needs to Know?’ Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies (symposium on Ernie Sosa Judgment and Agency)
‘Cognitive Focus’ in Mental Files and Singular Thought (OUP, forthcoming)
The main body of the paper is a shortish-form presentation of one of the central lines of thought from Fixing Reference, though the paper also contains an alternative to the argument for one of the book’s central principles (a principle that brings out the significance for accounts of aboutness of the fact that justification is truth-conducive). The paper also has an appendix which explains why I don’t frame my account of singular thought in terms of the notion of a ‘mental file’.
‘Perception and Demonstratives’ in Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception (OUP, 2015)
This is my attempt to comply with the editor’s request to provide an ‘opinionated introduction’ to the question of how perceptual links with objects enable us to think about them.
‘A Practical Solution to the Problem of Empty Singular Thought’ in Empty Representations (OUP, 2014)
This is an instalment in my attempt to get straight on what we should say about cases of apparent singular thought where there is no object the thought is about. I suggest that these cases are best understood as like cases of failed reaching – it is as if you reach out with the hand of your mind to grab hold of something to think about, but the world conspires against you and you close your grip on the empty air.
‘Comments on Stanley Know How from the APA Pacific 2012’
A shorter and later version entitled 'Skill Before Knowledge' appeared in the Philosophy and Phenomenological Research symposium on Stanley's book.
‘Visual Attention Fixes Demonstrative Reference by Eliminating Referential Luck’ in Attention (OUP, 2011)
‘How Proper Names Refer’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 2011
§1 argues that a right account of reference-fixing for proper names should respect an intuitive claim: the claim that my uses of NN stand for o only if I am committed to using NN in ways that match the representationally relevant ways it is possible for o to behave. §2 provides a new account of how proper names refer that meets this condition. (This is the 'proper names' companion piece to the view of demonstratives developed in 'We Are Acquainted With Ordinary Things', and was the jumping-off point for the view of proper-name-based thought in Fixing Reference.)
‘The Sortal Dependence of Demonstrative Reference’ The European Journal of Philosophy, (2011 online; 2014 in print)
‘Sense, Communication, and Rational Engagement’ (co-authored with Gurpreet Rattan) Dialectica, 2010.
‘We Are Acquainted With Ordinary Things’ in New Essays on Singular Thought (OUP, 2010)
‘Negation, Anti-Realism, and the Denial Defence’ Philosophical Studies (2009 online; 2010 in print)
‘The Generality of Particular Thought’ The Philosophical Quarterly (2009 online; 2010 in print)
‘Informative Identities in the Begriffsschrift and ‘“On Sense and Reference”’ The Canadian Journal of Philosophy (2008)
This argues for an account of the topic in the title in terms of Frege’s lifelong obsession with proofs in which each move is a step (rather than a leap) in the natural order of thought.
