The Mechanism of Meaning

This is the first post in a series of five about my recent book, Talking About: An Intentionalist Theory of Reference (OUP, 2022). I will start things off by trying to convey the most basic motivation behind the book in terms that should be broadly accessible to theorists and philosophers …

Symposium on Joseph Gottlieb’s “Verbal Disputes in the Theory of Consciousness”

It’s my pleasure to introduce our next Ergo symposium, featuring Joseph Gottlieb’s “Verbal Disputes in the Theory of Consciousness“, including commentaries by Jonathan Farrell, Assaf Weksler, and Josh Weisberg. I’d like begin by thanking each of the participants for their great work.

Factive verbs and factive mental states

My last post went back to babies, to see if the dawn of mental state attribution might show us something about the relationship between knowledge and belief.  Even for those who take the concept of belief to be innate or very early-developing, belief attribution is weirdly dependent on knowledge attribution …

#MindsOnline 2015, Session 1: Social Cognition

The Minds Online conference has begun, and our first session will be open for discussion through September 4. It is on the theme of Social Cognition, and includes the following papers: Tony Jack and Jared Friedman (Case Western Reserve): “Mapping cognitive structure onto the landscape of philosophical debate: an empirical framework …

In the Beginning Was Touch, or How Touch Enables the Social Communicative Capacities behind Joint Attention

Throughout the 20th century we find several examples where, once it has been established that a mental capacity is expressed through a specific mode, this link becomes so strong that anyone who doesn’t engage in this mode will be described as not possessing that mental capacity. For example, the link …

The Impossibility of Hugging Yourself, or How Touch Opens the Doors of Perception in Apes and Humans

As I mentioned in my first post, I had the opportunity to conduct research at Gombe National Park several years ago. In one of the trips from the national park to town to get provisions (and experience the luxury of a cold soda and indoor plumbing where you are not …

CFA: Language at the Interface

Call for Abstracts: Language at the Interface Department of Philosophy, Simon Fraser University Vancouver, April 24-26, 2015 Speakers Peter Carruthers (Maryland) Wolfram Hinzen (Barcelona/Durham) Friederike Moltmann (CNRS/NYU) Anna Papafragou (Delaware) Conference Overview Serious and detailed proposals concerning the relationship between language and thought—or, as it might be put today, the …

Back to Top