Papers Available Here
Extra sections on semantic paradox > Both "Understanding the Liar" and "Inconsistency Theories: The Significance of Semantic Ascent" were cut down before publication to produce papers of acceptable length. In both cases the material cut primarily concerned whether or not there is some sort of "revenge problem" for the account of belief my view assumes. I present the sections here. These two sections from around Summer 2005 discuss belief and the suggestion that we ought to view utterances as semantically evaluated relative to consistent sub-languages of natural language. This longer concluding section from the Inquiry piece, written Summer 2007, discusses revenge for belief and a few other objections.
Some Published Papers
Truth as Conceptually Primitive (Wright and Pedersen eds. New Waves in Truth, Palgrave-MacMillan, forthcoming) > I finally set out a positive view of truth to balance criticisms of deflationism and other views I have offered elsewhere. The view is that the concept of truth is circular and empty, but that its intension is settled by beliefs about the conditions under which particular sentences or utterances are true. This answers to the deflationist’s impression that ascriptions of truth-conditions are important without the burdens of including them within the conception of truth itself. I also argue that the circularity of the concept is the source of the typical flirtation of inflationary views with circularity, and along the way I make what I hope are some original remarks about pluralist theories of truth and forms of “minimalism” that focus on truth for propositions. I close by explaining how my view differs from Davidson’s in 1996’s “The Folly of Trying to Define Truth”.
Meaning, Communication and Knowledge by Testimony (Schantz ed., Prospects for Meaning, DeGruyter, forthcoming) > I present a direct argument that communication does not require that the words used mean what they seem to mean, and argue in particular that the falsehood of speaker and hearer impressions of or beliefs about meaning is compatible with the possibility of knowledge by testimony.
Inconsistency Theories of Semantic Paradox (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, September 2009) > A presentation of my approach to the paradoxes that links it to some larger philosophical issues, in particular criticizing the view that competent speakers cannot be wrong about the meanings of expressions of their language. Includes extensive discussions of the views of Kirk Ludwig and Matti Eklund.
Tarski's Conception of Meaning (Patterson, ed., New Essays on Tarski and Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2008) > I discuss Tarski's remarks on intuitive meanings, the sort of meaning expressed by formal definitions, and the sort of meaning a term has by having an extension, and then I apply the results of the investigation to questions such as whether on Tarski's view the T-sentences are necessary or logical truths and what the significance was, for Tarski in the 1930s, of the formal result that truth is not definable except under certain circumstances. The paper extends and clarifies remarks in both "Tarski on the Necessity Reading of Convention T" and "Tarski, the Liar, and Inconsistent Languages". See the Google Books limited preview here.
Truth Definitions and Definitional Truth (Truth and Its Deformities: Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXXII, 2008) > Putnam, Etchemendy, Heck and others have criticized Tarski's definitions of truth on the grounds that they turn what ought to be contingent truths about the truth conditions of sentences into logical, mathematical or necessary truths. I argue that this criticism rests on the misguided assumption that substitution in accord with a good definition preserves logical, mathematical or necessary truth. I give a number of examples intended to show that substitution in accord with good definitions need preserve none of these. The paper should be of interest not only to students of Tarski, but to anyone interested in definition and analyticity, and it includes some discussion of the contingent a priori, logicism, the nature of applied mathematics, and early Wittgensteinian doctrines about showing and saying.
Representationalism and Set-Theoretic Paradox (Protosociology 25, 2008, also published as Philosophy of Mathematics: Set Theory, Measuring Theories and Nominalism by Ontos Verlag) > I defend the "settist" view that set theory can be done consistently without any form of distinction between sets and "classes" (by whatever name), if we think clearly about belief and the expression of belief—and this, furthermore, entirely within classical logic. Standard arguments against settism in classical logic are seen to fail because they assume, falsely, that expressing commitment to a set theory is something that must be done in a meaningful language, the semantics of which requires, on pain of paradox, a more powerful set theory. I explore the consequences of this response to the standard argument against "classical logic settism" for our notion of belief, and argue that what is revealed is that representationalist theories of belief cannot be right as long as it is possible to believe of all sets that each is self-identical.
Understanding the Liar (Beall ed. The Revenge of the Liar, Oxford University Press, 2007) > The main presentation of my approach to the semantic paradoxes. I take them to show that understanding a natural language is sharing a cognitive relation to a logically false semantic theory with other speakers. (Note that there is a typesetting error in the published version: omit the "So," at the beginning of line 3 of the second numbered argument on page 219.) See the Google Books limited preview here.
Inconsistency Theories: The Significance of Semantic Ascent (Patterson ed., Inquiry 50: 6, 2007) > This is a discussion of different ways of working out the idea that the semantic paradoxes show that natural languages are somehow "inconsistent". I take the workable form of the idea to be that there are expressions such that a necessary condition of understanding them is that one be inclined to accept inconsistent claims (an conception also suggested by Matti Eklund). I then distinguish "simple" from "complex" forms of such views. On a simple theory, such expressions are meaningless, while on a complex theory they are not. I argue that complex theories are incompatible with truth conditional semantics and that simple theories are only coherent when the inconsistent claims are metalingusitic attributions of meaning. I close with a discussion of the version of the simple metalinguistic theory I have defended in "Understanding the Liar" and other papers.
On the Determination Argument Against Deflationism (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 2007) > Another look at Bar-On, Horisk and Lycan’s criticism of deflationism. I claim that their argument turns on a simple confusion about definitions and thereby fails to establish that deflationism somehow requires meaning to be explained in terms of truth conditions.
Tarski, the Liar, and Inconsistent Languages (The Monist 2006) > A discussion of Tarski's views on the semantic paradoxes. I argue that on Tarski's view no language in which the paradoxes can be formulated has a set of all and only true sentences at all and discuss how this view differs from more orthodox views found in the literature or attributed to him.
Tarski on the Necessity Reading of Convention T (Synthese 2006) > An extended argument that in the classic papers Tarski is not committed to the claim that Convention T states a necessary condition of adequacy on a definition of truth.
Deflationism and the Truth Conditional Theory of Meaning (Philosophical Studies 2005) > An early response to Bar-On, Horisk and Lycan’s criticism of deflationism in “Deflationism, Meaning and Truth Conditions” in which I argue that deflationism about truth is in fact incompatible with taking meaning to consist in truth conditions.
Learnability and Compositionality (Mind and Language 2005) > An argument against Fodor and Lepore’s claim that theories of meaning should be “reverse compositional” in the sense that the meanings of complex expressions should fully determine the meanings of the primitives out of which they are composed.
What is a Correspondence Theory of Truth? (Synthese 2003) > A relative of “Theories of Truth and Convention T”, this paper argues against the assumption that the T-sentences have something to do with a relation of correspondence between sentences and the world.
Theories of Truth and Convention T (Philosophers’ Imprint 2002) > It’s commonly assumed by proponents and opponents of deflationism alike that any theory of truth should imply the T-sentences. I argue that this is confused.
These are not all of my publications. Please see my CV for a full list.