Research Interests

• Philosophy of language
  Philosophy of linguistics
  Naturalized metaphysics: realism issues; biology
  Current projects include:
  • Biological Essentialism
  • Overlooking Conventions: The Trouble with Linguistic Pragmatism.
  • Experimental semantics
  • An ignored argument for scientific realism
     

Courses Recently Taught

• Naturalized Metaphysics (Spring 2019)
• Biological Essentialism (Spring 2018)
• Reference and Experimental Philosophy (Fall 2017)

• Designation. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981
• Realism and Truth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984 (Princeton: Princeton University Press). 2nd edn revised, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. Reprinted “with a new afterword”, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997.
• Ignorance of Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006.
• “Singular Terms”. Journal of Philosophy LXXI (1974), pp. 183‑205.
• “‘Ostrich Nominalism’ or ‘Mirage Realism’?” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 61 (1980), pp. 433‑39.
• “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.
• “The Metaphysics of Truth”. In The Nature of Truth, Michael Lynch, ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (2001), pp. 579-611.
• “Resurrecting Biological Essentialism”. Philosophy of Science 75 (2008), pp. 344-82.
• “No Place for the A Priori”. In What Place for the A Priori?, Michael J. Shaffer and Michael L. Veber, eds. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court Publishing Company (2011), pp. 9-32.
• “The Reference of Proper Names: Testing Usage and Intuitions” (with Nicolas Porot). Cognitive Science 42 (2018), pp. 1552-1585. doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12609.
• “Stirring the Possum: Responses to the Bianchi Papers”. In Language and Reality from a Naturalistic Perspective: Themes from Michael Devitt, Andrea Bianchi, ed. Cham: Springer (forthcoming)