15 Oct Daniel Dennett: His philosophical work and legacy
A short talk I gave on Dan Dennett and his work, for a Tufts symposium celebrating his life. In the talk I discuss his methodology, projects, and legacy....
Archive
16 Jul Replies to Hawley, Mikkola, and Hindriks
In these replies to Katherine Hawley, Mari Mikkola, and Frank Hindriks, I address the role of grounding in social metaphysics, the distinction between anchoring and grounding, and the actions and intentions of social groups....
23 Apr The Realpolitik of Reference
How do we fix the reference of a proper name? More importantly, why is that the way we fix reference? I sketch a new pragmatic approach to the justification of reference-fixing procedures. Comparing reference to other relations whose instances are introduced through "initiation" procedures, I...
23 Apr Sortals and Criteria of Identity
In a recent article, Harold Noonan argues that application conditions and criteria of identity are not distinct from one another. This seems to threaten the standard approach to distinguishing sortals from adjectival terms. I propose that his observation, while correct, does not have this consequence....
23 Apr Grounds, Convention, and the Metaphysics of Linguistic Tokens
My aim in this paper is to discuss a metaphysical framework within which to understand “standard linguistic entities” (SLEs), such as words, sentences, phonemes, and other entities routinely employed in linguistic theory. In doing so, I aim to defuse certain kinds of skepticism, challenge convention-based...
23 Apr The Internal and the External in Linguistic Explanation
I develop a functional theory of linguistic entities. Chomsky and others have denied the relevance of external linguistic entities, such as E-languages, to linguistic explanation, and have questioned their coherence altogether. I discuss a new approach to understanding the nature of linguistic entities, focusing in...
23 Apr Review of Language: A Biological Model by Ruth Millikan
Ruth Millikan is one of the most interesting and influential philosophers alive. Her work is also hard to penetrate. In this review, I try to present and assess her work on the nature of language, which is collected in this anthology. I also criticize her...