Research
Klee, "Room with Northern Exposure" 1932
Published Articles
A Groundedness Predicate for Kripke's Theory of Truth, Journal of Philosophical Logic 2026 [published version] [preprint]
The object language of Kripke’s 1975 semantic theory of truth, based on the Strong Kleene valuation scheme, cannot contain a predicate that expresses the notion “ungroundedness” that Kripke provides an analysis of. This is unfortunate; it means that, in the object language of Kripke’s theory, there is no obvious way to express Kripke’s diagnostic insight about what causes semantic pathology. This paper shows how to introduce a “groundedness” predicate, G, to a Kripkean theory of truth that can fill this expressive gap. In the fixed-point construction that gives an interpretation for G, G’s anti-extension tracks networks of sentences that, due to predications of truth, result in non-terminating graphs of semantic dependence. In the fixed-point models that provide a class of intended interpretations for G: (i) every sentence with a classical semantic value is in the extension of G, (ii) every sentence in the anti-extension of G receives the value 1/2 , and (iii) the anti-extension of G includes all the sentences that receive 1/2 in the corresponding model of Kripke’s original theory. A language augmented with predicates for truth and groundedness possesses sufficient expressive resources to articulate Kripke’s diagnostic insight as it applies to itself.
Can sentential quantification tell us what truth is? Inquiry 2025
Traditional theories of truth attempt to answer the question ‘What is truth?’ This question can be taken as a request for a real definition or a conceptual analysis. I assess whether MOD, Künne 2003's definition of truth in terms of sentential quantification ∀𝑥(True(𝑥)↔∃𝑝(𝑥=[𝑝]∧𝑝)), succeeds as an explanation of either of these kinds. I argue that MOD does not succeed as a conceptual analysis: it does not reduce the concept truth to its more primitive constituents, nor does it supply an explanation of truth in terms of concepts that are better understood. Whether it succeeds as a real definition depends on some subtle issues regarding how to understand the semantic values of sentential variables. I show that, on some ways of extending a Fregean analysis of quantification to sentential quantifiers, MOD will be circular if understood as a real definition.
Open Texture and Capacious Pluralism about Content, Inquiry 2025
[published version] [preprint]
The traditional view of propositional content presupposes that there is a privileged classification of token representations that partitions them with respect to sameness of content. I argue that there is no such thing: we utilize multiple distinct standards of sameness of content, none of which is privileged. My argument is based on the existence of semantic underdetermination. Plausibly, we use expressions (e.g. “sandwich”) that do not have determinate extensions and that are open to precisification in multiple directions. This gives rise to indefinitely many possible cases of content fission, where a semantically underdetermined token is identified as having the same content as two tokens that are precisified in opposite ways. Content fission requires recognizing a huge variety of legitimate notions of sameness ofcontent.
The Problem of Unarticulated Truths, Philosophical Studies 2023
[published version] [preprint]
In recent years, a variety of philosophers have argued that the fundamental bearers of representational properties like truth are concrete particulars produced by cognitive agents—representational vehicles (“RVs”), as I will call them. This view apparently conflicts with other judgments that are part of our common sense understanding of truth. For instance, it is plausible that there are truths about the Milky Way that have and never will never be articulated by anyone. Whatever these truths are, it looks like they cannot be RVs, because an RV is articulated just in case it exists. In this paper, I argue that it is consistent to hold that the fundamental truth-bearers are representational vehicles, while also acknowledging the existence of unarticulated truths. I argue that truth is a property that derivatively holds of kinds of RVs, that these provide the basis for our judgments that there are unarticulated truths, and I defend the view against putative counter-examples.
Works in Progress
Mere Trying: Goals without Desires
It is possible to try to do something without desiring that you succeed. (Call this “Mere Trying.”) For instance, I can try to hit a golf ball straight, intending to exhibit to you the left-bias in my swing. This indicates that, in general, goal-setting in action can come apart from our desires. This paper defends the existence of Mere Trying from objections and discusses the interplay of goal-setting states exhibited by Mere Trying. Finally, I argue that the fact that acting on a goal need not imply desiring success undermines Nguyen’s (2019, 2020) suggestion that “striving play” involves forming a desire for instrumental reasons.
Counting Many as One: the Ontological Insignificance of Grammatical Number
Are there objects that are both one F and many Gs? (Say, one pile and many grains of sand?) The suggestion that there are—call it theOne-Many Thesis—has been endorsed by many philosophers, from Plato to Frege. However, on standard developments of Plural Logic, the One-Many Thesis appears to be logically false, since its natural formalization contradicts the axioms governing the logical constant inclusion (“is one of”). I respond to this objection and argue that the One-Many Thesis should not rejected on purely
logical or semantic grounds. I develop a semantics for numeral noun constructions, following Landman 2016, according to which counting is always relative to a principle of individuation supplied by the content of anoun. According to such a semantics, distinctions of grammatical number need not reflect any distinction in what is represented and the One-Many Thesis can be true.On the Back Burner
Thinking in Symbols and Leibniz's Theory of Demonstration
From his earliest to his latest writings, Leibniz maintainedthat reasoning is calculation and that much of human thought is carried out in symbols. However, unlike “mental language” theorists like Ockham and Fodor, Leibniz does not think that human cognition is constituted as such bythe production and manipulation of mental symbols. Through his whole career, he contrasts thinking in symbols with thinking by means of ideas and claims that humans engage in both. I explicate Leibniz’s distinction between symbolic andideational thought as a distinction between thought that involves an intermediate sensible medium and thought that does not. In addition to marking an interesting psychological contrast, I argue that this distinction is of fundamental importance to Leibniz’s epistemology—specifically, his development of a non-Cartesian account of distinct cognition. According to Leibniz, distinct knowledge is manifested in an ability to give definitions and construct demonstrations. For Leibniz, both of these operations, I argue, must take place in symbolic rather than ideational thought. For Leibniz, symbolic thought is the mode in which the vast majority of cognitive achievement takes place for finite minds, because it is the medium in which we can develop the deductive systems that constitute distinct cognition.
