School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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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.
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ItemThe illusion of transparency(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2007-12)
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ItemWhy be an anti-individualist?(WILEY, 2008-07)Anti‐individualists claim that concepts are individuated with an eye to purely external facts about a subject’s environment about which she may be ignorant or mistaken. This paper offers a novel reason for thinking that anti‐individualistic concepts are an ineliminable part of commonsense psychology. Our commitment to anti‐individualism, I argue, is ultimately grounded in a rational epistemic agent’s commitment to refining her own representational practices in the light of new and surprising information about her environment. Since anti‐individualism is an implicit part of responsible epistemic practices, we cannot abandon it without compromising our own epistemic agency. The story I tell about the regulation of one’s own representational practices yields a new account of the identity conditions for anti‐individualistic concepts.