Philosophy of Language

My work is oriented around the topic of meaning in language. I am particularly interested in the intersection of different traditions' approaches to the subject: 1) My main research area is analytic philosophy of language, with a focus on questions of truth and normativity. I advocate a form of radical Contextualism which challenges the foundations of contemporary semantic theory by drawing the semantics/pragmatics distinction in such a way as to make literal meaning unnecessary for many of our common explanatory tasks and linguistic puzzles. My work here addresses alleged "fringe" cases of language use, such as metaphors, malaprops, and misdescriptions. I show that such uses of language are largely explained by pragmatic factors -- and I argue for a continuity thesis between these and more "ordinary" uses, such as our prototypical uses of knowledge attributions. 2) I also have done extensive work in cognitive science, in both academic and industry research settings, with a focus on models of language processing. I have a strong technical background in artificial intelligence, especially in computational modeling of natural language; and I have working knowledge of empirical research in psycholinguistics, child language acquisition, and developmental psychology. My current research here seeks to explain how notions of distributed meaning based upon models of associative computation can provide an alternative to traditional semanticist notions of lexical meaning; in the process, I highlight ways in which cognitive science conceptions of meaning and intentionality have come apart from contemporary philosophical understandings of these notions. My first-hand experience developing computational systems and working with actual models complements more theoretical critiques of this broad enterprise. 3) Finally, my research integrates ideas from the continental tradition, with a focus on the subject of significance in language and art. My writing is influenced by the broad approach to meaning developed in the hermeneutic tradition, especially as applied to literary theory and aesthetics, and the social and normative considerations explored therein -- considerations which emphasize the role of the interpreter in creating meaning when applying a text to a particular context. My work finds value in this perspective even when addressing contemporary problems in the analytic and cognitive science traditions. It is important to me that my research also has some relevance to problems outside of philosophy of language and mind. The projects I am currently working on here are: a study of how Hermeneutic Contextualism applies to the way language is used in specifying ethical and legal principles, and especially its relevance to debates surrounding Moral Particularism; and the application of Meaning Relativism to questions of cultural relativism more broadly, addressing problems of cross-cultural communication and conflict negotiation.

My research focuses on thoughts and utterances that don’t fit standard propositional models. I am especially interested in cognitive "perspectives", in which one thought structures our overall understanding of a topic in a way that's similar to the way a concept like duck or rabbit can structure our perceptual experience. I've thought most about perspectives in our understanding of metaphor and fiction, but I'm also working on their role in emotions and the self. In addition, I am interested in the thought of non-human animals, in thought that takes place in maps rather than sentences, and in sarcasm and slurs.