I’m a professor of philosophy and linguistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
I’m currently working on a few papers on language and normativity. One extends semantic theories for normative modals like ‘must,’ ‘ought,’ and ‘may,’ paying special attention to indeterminacy and incomparability. Another refines Joseph Raz’s distinction between committed, detatched, and external utterances, developing a rigorous empirical theory that helps explain their behavior. A third paper argues that pro tanto reasons play crucial semantic and pragmatic roles in linguistic communication. I also have some nascent projects in the philosophy of artificial intelligence.
In the past my work has focused more on the interfaces of language and metaphysics, language and epistemology, and language and social and political philosophy, but the projects I mention above touch on all these themes in their own ways.
“Language and Ideology”
In Justin Khoo and Rachel Sterken (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language. London: Routledge, 2021.
“Channels for Common Ground”
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Online first 2020; DOI: 10.1111/phpr.12741.
“Omissive Implicature”
Philosophical Topics, vol. 45, no. 2 (2017): 117–137. DOI: 10.5840/ philtopics201745216
Critical notice of Jason Stanley’s How Propaganda Works
Mind, vol. 126, no. 503 (2017): 937–947. DOI: 10.1093/mind/fzw045
“Indeterminacy in Causation”
Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 268 (2017): 606–624. DOI: 10.1093/pq/pqw068
“Probability in Philosophy of Language”
In Alan Hájek and Chris Hitchcock (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Probability and Philosophy, 772–788. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
“Slurs and Ideologies”
Presented at the Yale Ideology Conference, 29 January 2016.
Slightly shortened version forthcoming in Analyzing Ideology. Robin Celikates, Sally Haslanger, and Jason Stanley, editors. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
“The Application of Constraint Semantics to the Language of Subjective Uncertainty”
Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 45, no. 2 (2016): 121–146. DOI: 10.1007/s10992-015-9367-5
“Ordering Supervaluationism, Counterpart Theory, and Ersatz
Fundamentality”
Journal of Philosophy, vol. 109, no. 6 (2014): 289–310.
“Subjunctive Biscuit and Stand-Off Conditionals”
Philosophical Studies, vol. 163, no. 3 (2013): 637–648. DOI: 10.1007/s11098-011-9836-9
“Conditional Excluded Middle without the Limit Assumption”
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 85, no. 2 (2012): 301–321. DOI: 10.1111/ j.1933-1592.2011.00507.x
“The Language of Causation”
In Delia Graff Fara and Gillian Russell (eds.), The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Language, 716–728. London: Routledge, 2012.
“Propositional Attitudes”
In Claudia Maienborn,
Klaus von Heusinger, and Paul Portner (eds.), Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning, vol. 2, 1538–1561. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2012.
“On the Treatment of Incomparability in Ordering Semantics and Premise Semantics”
Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 40, no. 6 (2011): 693–713. DOI: 10.1007/s10992-010-9157-z
“How Not to Theorize about the Language of Subjective Uncertainty”
In Andy Egan and Brian Weatherson (eds.), Epistemic Modality, 249–269. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
“Lessons from the Context Sensitivity of Causal Talk”
Journal of Philosophy, vol. 107, no. 5 (2010): 221–242.
“Structurally Defined Alternatives and Lexicalizations of XOR”
Linguistics and Philosophy, vol. 33, no. 1 (2010): 31–36. DOI: 10.1007/s10988-010-9074-1
“On Scope Relations between Quantifiers and Epistemic Modals”
Journal of Semantics, vol. 27, no. 4 (2010): 529–540. DOI: 10.1093/jos/ffq010
Review of Reflections on Meaning, by Paul Horwich
Philosophical Review, vol. 118, no. 1 (2009): 131–134.
“Modality
in Language”
Philosophy Compass, vol. 3, no. 6 (2008): 1193–1207. DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-9991 .2008. 00177.x
I’ve changed my mind about some things discussed in this article. On weak modals, and on the limit assumption, see “On the Treatment of Incomparability in Ordering Semantics and Premise Semantics”; on force, drop me an email.
“A Note on Gibbard’s ‘Rational Credence and the Value of Truth’”
Oxford Studies in Epistemology, vol. 2 (2007): 179–189.
“Biscuit Conditionals and Common Ground”
Second North American Summer School in Language, Logic and Information Student Session Proceedings (2003): 26–34.
“Imperative Force in the English Modal System” (handout)
Presented at the (first) 2012 Michigan Workshop in Philosophy and Linguistics, 5 May 2012.
“Constraint Semantics and the Language of Subjective Uncertainty” (handout and slides)
Presented at the Chambers Philosophy Conference on Epistemic Modals at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 16 April 2010.
“Constraint Semantics and its Application to Conditionals” (handout and slides)
Presented at the First Formal Epistemology Festival, 29 July 2008.
Interactions with Context
My dissertation (2006).
“Pronouns and Complex Demonstratives”
I’m currently teaching Minds and Machines and the Candidacy Seminar for dissertating graduate students. My office hours are Wednesdays from 12 to 2 on Zoom, and also by appointment.