I work mainly on philosophy of language, philosophy of mind (including philosophy of psychology), and philosophy of logic. My current research concerns three topics: the nature of assertion; non-propositional varieties of representation; and the relation between computational and mental processes. Comments on all papers (especially unpublished drafts) are welcome.

Selected Bibliography

PUBLISHED PAPERS

• “Church’s Thesis and the Conceptual Analysis of Computability,” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 
  
  Church’s thesis asserts that a number-theoretic function is intuitively computable if and only if it is recursive. A related thesis asserts that Turing’s work yields a conceptual analysis of the intuitive notion of numerical computability. I endorse Church’s thesis, but I argue against the related thesis. I argue that purported conceptual analyses based upon Turing’s work involve a subtle but persistent circularity.
  
  
• “Assertion and its Constitutive Norms,” forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

  Alston, Searle, Williamson, and many others advocate the restrictive model of assertion, according to which certain constitutive assertoric norms restrict which propositions one may assert. Sellars and Brandom advocate the dialectical model of assertion, which treats assertion as constituted by its role in the game of giving and asking for reasons. Sellars and Brandom develop a restrictive version of the dialectical model. I explore a non-restrictive version of the dialectical model. On such a view, constitutive assertoric norms constrain how one must react if an interlocutor challenges one’s assertion, but they do not constrain what one should assert in the first place.

• “A Linguistic Reason for Truthfulness,” in Truth and Speech Acts, ed. Dirk Greimann and Geo Siegwart

  This paper further develops the non-restrictive dialectical perspective. Many philosophers hold that truthfulness is somehow constitutive of assertion. I argue against this view while simultaneously attempting to ground truthfulness in assertion’s essential features. I argue that truthfulness is the prima facie best way to avoid decisive counter-arguments against what one says. Moreover, avoiding decisive counter-arguments is a constitutive goal of rational dialectic. Thus, while truthfulness is not constitutive of assertion, it is the rational default strategy for achieving a goal that is constitutive of assertion.

• “Shifting the Burden of Proof?" forthcoming in The Philosophical Quarterly

  Dialectical foundationalists, including Adler, Brandom, Leite, and Williams, claim that some asserted propositions do not require defense just because an interlocutor challenges them. By asserting such a proposition, the speaker shifts the burden of proof to her interlocutor. Dialectical egalitarians claim that all asserted propositions require defense when challenged. I elucidate the dispute between dialectical foundationalists and egalitarians, and I defend a broadly egalitarian stance against several prominent objections.

• “Epistemic and Dialectical Regress,” forthcoming in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy

  Dialectical egalitarianism apparently generates a vicious “regress of justifications,” since an interlocutor can challenge the premises through which a speaker defends her original assertion, and so on ad infinitum. I argue that the putative regress is not worrisome and that egalitarianism can handle it quite satisfactorily. I also defend a positive view that combines an anti-foundationalist conception of dialectical interaction with a foundationalist conception of epistemic justification.

• “Predication and Cartographic Representation,” forthcoming in Synthese

  I argue that maps do not feature predication, as analyzed by Frege and Tarski. I take as my foil Casati and Varzi’s Parts and Places, which attributes predication to maps. I adduce intuitions about cartographic truth-conditions that militate against this attribution. I conclude that attaching a marker to map coordinates is a different mode of semantic composition than attaching a predicate to a singular term.

• “Cognitive Maps and the Language of Thought,” forthcoming in the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science

  Fodor advocates a view of cognitive processes as computations defined over the language of thought (or Mentalese). Even among those who endorse Mentalese, considerable controversy surrounds its representational format. What semantically relevant structure should scientific psychology attribute to Mentalese symbols? Researchers commonly emphasize logical structure, akin to that displayed by predicate calculus sentences. To counteract this tendency, I discuss computational models of navigation drawn from probabilistic robotics. These models involve computations defined over cognitive maps, which have geometric rather than logical structure. They thereby demonstrate the possibility of rational cognitive processes in an exclusively non-logical representational medium. Furthermore, they offer much promise for the empirical study of animal navigation.

• "Chrysippus's Dog as a Case Study in Non-Linguistic Cognition," forthcoming in Philosophy of Animal Minds, ed. Robert Lurz. Cambridge: Cambridge
  University Press
  
  I critique an ancient argument for the possibility of non-linguistic deductive inference. The argument, attributed to Chrysippus, describes a dog whose behavior supposedly reflects disjunctive syllogistic reasoning. Drawing on contemporary robotics, I urge that we can equally well explain the dog's behavior by citing probabilistic reasoning over cognitive maps. I then critique various experimentally-based arguments from scientific psychology that echo Chrysippus's anecdotal presentation.
  
  

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

• Review of Christopher Gauker's Words without Meaning, Philosophical Review, Vol. 115, No. 1, January 2006, 121-124.
  
  
• "Convention," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

WORKS IN PROGRESS

• “Computation and Intentional Psychology” 
  
  The computational theory of mind holds that psychological processes are computational. The formal conception of computation holds that computational processes are formal manipulations of symbols, where “formal” means that the processes are not sensitive to semantic properties. These two doctrines jointly entail the formal conception of psychological processes (FCP): psychological processes are not sensitive to semantic properties of mental representations. FCP’s proponents include Frances Egan, Jerry Fodor, Zenon Pylyshyn, Stephen Stich, and many others. FCP’s opponents commonly object that it is incompatible with robust intentional psychological laws. Some of FCP’s proponents respond that we do not require such laws. Others respond that the apparent incompatibility is illusory. I rebut the first response by articulating a rationale for scientific psychology to isolate intentional laws. I then argue that any proposed reconciliation of FCP and intentional explanation faces tenacious difficulties. My conclusion: FCP precludes a scientific psychology that achieves our explanatory ends.
  
  
• “Is Computation Formal?”
  
  Several authors pursue a “semantically-laden” alternative to the formal conception of computation. On this alternative approach, computation can be sensitive to semantic as well as syntactic properties. I criticize the semantically-laden theories of Ned Block, Amir Horowitz, and Christopher Peacocke.
  
  
• “Mental Syntax”
  
  I develop my own positive alternative to FCP. Philosophers almost universally assume that syntactic types manipulated during computation are semantically barren: they do not have their semantic properties essentially. On my view, computations can be defined over semantically saturated symbols: syntactic types that have their semantic properties essentially. Such computations are sensitive to semantic as well as syntactic properties. I argue that my approach is compatible with existing mathematical theories of computation, as well as with the “realization” relation between abstract computational models and physical systems. Finally, I argue that my approach licenses a more plausible version of the computational theory of mind.