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.
‘Specificity and Resolution in the Communicative Use of Singular Terms’ forthcoming in Linguistic Luck
Draft contribution to C. Montemayor and A. Fairweather (eds.) Linguistic Luck. I use (a) patterns of use involving ‘felicitous underspecification’ and (b) first principles to argue for a model of communication using singular terms built around what I call ‘joint cognitive focus’..
‘How Wrong Can You Be?’ forthcoming in Analysis
This is my contribution to a symposium on Robbie Williams’s The Metaphysics of Representation. I focus on Williams’s solution to Putnam-type ‘permutation puzzles’. The symposium is forthcoming in Analysis, with other contributions from David Chalmers and Adam Pautz, and Robbie’s replies.
‘A Lemma From Nowhere’ forthcoming in a special issue of Critica
This paper uses cases involving empty singular terms (on the one hand, cases of what I call ‘accidental aboutness-failure’; on the other, cases involving proper names occurring in fictions) to argue for a claim about the goal of ordinary belief-forming activity, and shows how this claim generates new foundations for the theory of reference.
‘Understanding Singular Terms’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 2020
This is a first instalment towards extending the framework of Fixing Reference to address foundational questions about the nature of linguistic understanding. The basic idea is that what your language-understanding information processing is in the business of doing is tuning in on the speaker as a fellow subject of consciousness….
‘Cognitive Focus’ in Mental Files and Singular Thought (OUP, 2020)
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’.
‘The Subtle Lives of Descriptive Names’ Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Language 1, 2019
Most people think that if a descriptive name refers, it refers to the satisfier of the associated reference-fixing description. I argue against this standard claim, and explore what we should say instead.
‘Everybody Needs to Know?’ Philosophical Studies (symposium on Ernie Sosa Judgment and Agency), 2017
Replies to Heck, Hofweber, and Ninan Philosophy and Phenomenology Research, 2017
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, 2016
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.
‘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)
This paper is about how visual selective attention to objects enables perceptual demonstrative reference, arguing for the claim stated in the title, and engaging more closely with the psychology than some of my other work on reference.
‘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)
This is about the relationship between the capacity to lock on to objects as the subject matter of demonstrative thoughts, and the capacity to classify them according to their kinds. I argue that the most basic kind of locking-on (which I call ‘appropriation’) does not require the capacity for sortal classification, but actually thinking a thought about an object – ascribing a property to it does, in a way…. (I grew up on the question of how much truth there is in ‘sortalism’ about demonstrative reference. I have a go at it from a different direction in Fixing Reference ch 4 sect. 4.1.)
‘Sense, Communication, and Rational Engagement’ (co-authored with Gurpreet Rattan) Dialectica, 2010
This is about how to extend the intra-personal notion of sameness of sense to the inter-personal case, treating Heck’s discussion in ‘The Sense of Communication’ as a stalking horse.
‘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)
Assesses the extent to which a bilateral logic, which allows denials as well as assertions to figure as premisses and conclusions in inferences, allows for a realist defence against Dummett’s attack on classical negation.
‘The Generality of Particular Thought’ The Philosophical Quarterly (2009 online; 2010 in print)
Argues against a strong version of Evans’s Generality Constraint, and for a weak version.
‘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.
‘Specificity and Resolution in the Communicative Use of Singular Terms’ forthcoming in Linguistic Luck
Draft contribution to C. Montemayor and A. Fairweather (eds.) Linguistic Luck. I use (a) patterns of use involving ‘felicitous underspecification’ and (b) first principles to argue for a model of communication using singular terms built around what I call ‘joint cognitive focus’..
‘How Wrong Can You Be?’ forthcoming in Analysis
This is my contribution to a symposium on Robbie Williams’s The Metaphysics of Representation. I focus on Williams’s solution to Putnam-type ‘permutation puzzles’. The symposium is forthcoming in Analysis, with other contributions from David Chalmers and Adam Pautz, and Robbie’s replies.
‘A Lemma From Nowhere’ forthcoming in a special issue of Critica
This paper uses cases involving empty singular terms (on the one hand, cases of what I call ‘accidental aboutness-failure’; on the other, cases involving proper names occurring in fictions) to argue for a claim about the goal of ordinary belief-forming activity, and shows how this claim generates new foundations for the theory of reference.
‘Understanding Singular Terms’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 2020
This is a first instalment towards extending the framework of Fixing Reference to address foundational questions about the nature of linguistic understanding. The basic idea is that what your language-understanding information processing is in the business of doing is tuning in on the speaker as a fellow subject of consciousness….
‘Cognitive Focus’ in Mental Files and Singular Thought (OUP, 2020)
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’.
‘The Subtle Lives of Descriptive Names’ Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Language 1, 2019
Most people think that if a descriptive name refers, it refers to the satisfier of the associated reference-fixing description. I argue against this standard claim, and explore what we should say instead.
‘Everybody Needs to Know?’ Philosophical Studies (symposium on Ernie Sosa Judgment and Agency), 2017
Replies to Heck, Hofweber, and Ninan Philosophy and Phenomenology Research, 2017
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, 2016
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.
‘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)
This paper is about how visual selective attention to objects enables perceptual demonstrative reference, arguing for the claim stated in the title, and engaging more closely with the psychology than some of my other work on reference.
‘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)
This is about the relationship between the capacity to lock on to objects as the subject matter of demonstrative thoughts, and the capacity to classify them according to their kinds. I argue that the most basic kind of locking-on (which I call ‘appropriation’) does not require the capacity for sortal classification, but actually thinking a thought about an object – ascribing a property to it does, in a way…. (I grew up on the question of how much truth there is in ‘sortalism’ about demonstrative reference. I have a go at it from a different direction in Fixing Reference ch 4 sect. 4.1.)
‘Sense, Communication, and Rational Engagement’ (co-authored with Gurpreet Rattan) Dialectica, 2010
This is about how to extend the intra-personal notion of sameness of sense to the inter-personal case, treating Heck’s discussion in ‘The Sense of Communication’ as a stalking horse.
‘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)
Assesses the extent to which a bilateral logic, which allows denials as well as assertions to figure as premisses and conclusions in inferences, allows for a realist defence against Dummett’s attack on classical negation.
‘The Generality of Particular Thought’ The Philosophical Quarterly (2009 online; 2010 in print)
Argues against a strong version of Evans’s Generality Constraint, and for a weak version.
‘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.
