papers
Common Knowledge First.
2024. New draft en route.
Defining Common Ground.
2024. Forthcoming in Linguistics & Philosophy. (34 pages)
Review of Stalnaker, Knowledge and Conditionals.
2024. Mind. (12 pages)
A Paradox of Modal Knowledge.
2023. New draft en route.
Context-Sensitivity by Way of Parameters.
2022. In E. Lepore and E. Sosa (eds.) Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Language Volume 2. 267-304. (38 pages)
Modeling with Hyperplans.
2022. In B. Dunaway and D. Plunkett (eds.) Meaning, Decision, and Norms: Themes from the Work of Allan Gibbard. Maize Books. 271-303. (33 pages)
Metasemantic Relationism.
2021. Midwest Studies in Philosophy 45: 541-60. (25 pages)
Fragmented But Rational.
2021. In C. Borgoni, D. Kindermann, and A. Onofri (eds.) The Fragmented Mind. Oxford University Press. 156-179. (24 pages)
Semantics as Model-Based Science.
2018. In B. Rabern and D. Ball, The Science of Meaning. Oxford University Press, 334-360. (31 pages)
Expressivism by Force.
2018. In D. Fogal, D. Harris and M. Moss (eds.) New Work on Speech Acts. Oxford University Press, 400-429. (39 pages)
Belief as Question-Sensitive.
2018. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. XCVII (1): 23-47. Online version published in 2016. (25 pages)
On the Dynamics of Conversation. (with Daniel Rothschild)
2017. Noûs 51 (1): 24-48. Online version published in 2015. (25 pages)
Three Notions of Dynamicness in Language. (with Daniel Rothschild)
2016. Linguistics & Philosophy 39(4): 333-355. (23 pages)
Modalities of Normality.
2016. In N. Charlow and M. Chrisman (eds.) Deontic Modality. Oxford University Press, 230-55. (25 pages)
Epistemic Modality De Re.
2015. Ergo 2 (19): 475-527. (54 pages)
Quantifying In from a Fregean Perspective.
2015. Philosophical Review 124 (2): 207-53. (47 pages) N.B.: I am not a Fregean.
Actually, Actually.
2015. Analysis 75 (2): 185-191. (7 pages)
Semantics and Metasemantics in the Context of Generative Grammar.
2014. In A. Burgess and B. Sherman (eds.) Metasemantics. Oxford University Press, 17-54. (38 pages)
Epistemic Modals and Context. (with Joshua Knobe)
2014. Semantics & Pragmatics 7 (10): 1–21. (21 pages)
Bayesian Expressivism.
2012. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, CXII (2): 123-60. (38 pages)
Context Probabilism.
2012. Proceedings of the 18th Amsterdam Colloquium: 12-21. (10 pages)
A Counterexample to Modus Tollens.
2012. Journal of Philosophical Logic 41 (6): 1001-24. (24 pages)
Nonfactualism about Epistemic Modality.
2011. In A. Egan and B. Weatherson (eds.) Epistemic Modality. Oxford University Press, 295-332. (38 pages)
Probability Operators.
2010. Philosophy Compass 5 (11): 916-37. (22 pages)
Epistemic Modals.
2007. Mind 116 (464): 983–1026. (44 pages)
replies, reviews, overviews, notes, miscellany
Review of Stalnaker, Knowledge and Conditionals.
Forthcoming in Mind. (13 pages)
Comments on Moss.
2014. Slides for the Rutgers Semantics Workshop, on Sarah Moss's 'On the semantics and pragmatics of epistemic vocabulary'. (19 pages)
Introductory Notes on Dynamic Semantics.
2012/2013. Updated version of a paper that appeared in G. Russell and D. Fara (eds.) Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language. This paper contains a fairly detailed introduction to Heim’s file change semantics. (40 pages)
On the Dynamics of Conversation. (with Daniel Rothschild)
2012. This is the old version of the paper, which was cited in some places before the final 2015 version. (38 pages)
Stanley on the De Se.
2012. Read at an author-meets-critics session on Jason Stanley’s book Know How, Pacific APA. (10 pages)
Comments on Mark Schroeder, Being For.
2012. Read at an author-meets-critics session, Central APA. (13 pages)
Meaning in a Disoriented World.
2010. Course notes on orientational language, co-authored with Geoffrey Lee. (30 pages)
More on Epistemic Modals.
2009. Mind 118, 471: 785-793. (9 pages)
The Language of Probability.
2009. Notes for a talk to Berkeley linguistics. (16 pages)
More on the Language of Probability.
2009. NYU graduate seminar notes exploring the application of some ideas from the gradable adjectives literature to gradable epistemic modals. (7 pages)
Modality and Inquiry.
2008. MIT PhD dissertation. Most of the first chapter was published as ‘Epistemic Modals’ (2007). Most of the second chapter went into ’Nonfactualism about Epistemic Modality’ (2011). Versions of the third chapter were circulated for a while under the title 'Figure and Ground in Logical Space'. This material was eventually published as 'Belief as Question-Sensitive' (2018).
Notes for a talk to Amherst Linguistics.
2006. Inter alia these notes discuss some ideas about gradable epistemic modality. (16 pages)
Comments on MacFarlane.
2006. Read at the Michigan Philosophy and Linguistics Workshop. This discusses a 2006 draft of MacFarlane’s 2011 paper ‘Epistemic modalities are assessment-sensitive’. (11 pages)
Epistemic Modals.
2005. MITWPL 51. (42 pages)
New Work on Modality.
2005. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics, volume 51. (Co-edited with J. Gajewski, V. Hacquard, and B. Nickel.)
Of Metaphors and Darwinism: Deconstructing Genetic Programming’s Chimera. (with J. Daida, P. Litvak, G. Eickhoff, and J. Polito.)
1999. Proceedings of the 1999 Congress on Evolutionary Computation.