Research Interests

Philosophy of Language

Philosophy of Mind

Metaphysics

Current projects include:

the philosophy of linguistics

foundational issues in semantics

the semantics of definite descriptions and demonstratives

semantic externalism

contemporary debates about scientific realism

---

Courses Recently Taught

Linguistic Pragmatism (Fall 2010)

Psychological Reality of Language (Fall 2008, Fall 2006)

Animal Cognition (Spring 2008)

Meaning (co-taught with Stephen Neale) (Fall 2007)

Philosophy of Biology (Spring 2007)

Reference (Spring 2006, 2004)

Meaning (Spring 2005)

Scientific Realism (Spring 2010, Fall 2004, Fall 2001)

Psychological Reality of Language (Fall 2003, Spring 2001)

Naming and Necessity and Its Background; co-taught with Saul Kripke (Spring 2002)

---

Representative Publications

Designation. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981, xiii, 311 pp.

Realism and Truth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984, ix, 250 pp. (Princeton: Princeton University Press). 2nd edn revised, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991, xii, 327pp. Reprinted "with a new afterword," Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, xii, 371pp.

Coming to Our Senses: A Naturalistic Program for Semantic Localism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, x, 338pp.

"Meanings Just Ain't in the Head." Method, Reason and Language: Essays in honour of Hilary Putnam, George Boolos, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1990), pp. 79-104. Reprinted in Croatian in Filozofskim Istrazivanjima 45 (1992), pp. 425-45.

"A Shocking Idea about Meaning." Revue Internationale de Philosophie, a special issue devoted to Hilary Putnam, in press.

"The Metaphysics of Truth." In The Nature of Truth, Michael Lynch, ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (2001).