School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemThe Generalized Integration Challenge in Metaethics(WILEY, 2019-03)Abstract The Generalized Integration Challenge (GIC) is the task of providing, for a given domain of discourse, a simultaneously acceptable metaphysics, epistemology and metasemantics and showing them to be so. In this paper, we focus on a metaethical position for which (GIC) seems particularly acute: the brand of normative realism which takes normative properties to be (i) mind‐independent and (ii) causally inert. The problem is that these metaphysical commitments seem to make normative knowledge impossible. We suggest that bringing metasemantics into play can help to resolve this puzzle. We propose an independently plausible metasemantic constraint on reference determination and show how it can provide a plausible response to (GIC) for this brand of normative realism.
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ItemJazz Redux: a reply to Möller(Springer, 2014)This paper is a response to Niklas Möller’s (Philosophical Studies, 2013) recent criticism of our relational (Jazz) model of meaning of thin evaluative terms. Möller’s criticism rests on a confusion about the role of coordinating intentions in Jazz. This paper clarifies what’s distinctive and controversial about the Jazz proposal and explains why Jazz, unlike traditional accounts of meaning, is not committed to analycities.
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ItemKeeping track of what's right(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2018)In this paper, we argue that ordinary judgments about core normative topics purport to attribute stable, objective properties and relations. Our strategy is first to analyze the structures and practices characteristic of paradigmatically representational concepts such as concepts of objects and natural kinds. We identify three broad features that ground the representational purport of these concepts. We then argue that core normative concepts exhibit these same features.
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ItemTwo-Dimensional Semantics(Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2017)Two-dimensional (2D) semantics is a formal framework that is used to characterize the meaning of certain linguistic expressions and the entailment relations among sentences containing them. The 2D framework has also been applied to thought contents. This entry explains the 2D formalism and the philosophical theses the formalism has been used to support. The 2017 revisions to the entry involve significant new material (about 6,000 words) reflecting current debates over the philosophical applications of the 2D framework.
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ItemMetasemantics and Metaethics(Routledge, 2018)Metaethicists disagree about the semantic content of normative and evaluative terms. To adjudicate such disagreements, we need consider different metasemantic theories, which seek to explain what makes it the case that certain words (and the thoughts they express) have the semantic contents they do. In this chapter, we explain how answers to this metasemantic question impact on debates within metaethics.
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ItemRationalizing Self-Interpretation(PALGRAVE, 2015)
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ItemDo Emotions Represent Values?(WILEY-BLACKWELL, 2015-09)
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ItemA Third Way in Metaethics.( 2009)
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ItemReasons as right-makers(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2009)
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ItemJackson's Classical Model of Meaning(Oxford University PressOxford, 2010-05-01)Abstract Jackson often writes as if his account of public language meanings in terms of descriptivist conventions were just plain common sense. How else are we to explain how different speakers manage to communicate using a public language? And how else can we explain how individuals arrive at confident judgments about the reference of their words in hypothetical scenarios? This chapter shows just how controversial the psychological assumptions behind Jackson's semantic theory really are. First, it explains how Jackson's theory goes well beyond the commonsense platitudes he cites in its defence. Second, it sketches an alternative explanation of those platitudes, the improvisation model of meaning, which seems psychologically more realistic. The chapter concludes that the psychological picture presupposed by Jackson's semantic theory stands in need of a more substantial defence than he has so far offered.