Current Research
[title blinded: under review]
(email for draft)
Grammatical evidentiality, in particular reportative evidentiality, allows speakers in both Cuzco Quechua and Cheyenne to assert propositions they do not believe or believe to be false. I argue that this data means that we must reconceive what is required of speakers to make assertions and offer a solution that can capture the whole range of natural language assertion.
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[title blinded: under review]
(email for draft)
I argue, contra some recent proposals, that epistemic uses of 'should' can be modelling using the standard Kratzerian modal canon when we properly conceive of what makes up an epistemic modal base. I then proceed to provide the semantic model.
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Linguistic Theorizing and Epistemological Evidence
(email for draft)
In this I argue that the results of semantic theorizing, especially within the epistemic domain, ought to be seen as an accurate guide to reality. Due to this, we should be looking to natural language and the semantics of it in order to guide our epistemic theorizing. It uses results from the Condorcet Jury Theorem in order to generate this conclusion.
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Relativism co-authored with Brian Weatherson
(in A Companion to the Philosophy of Language 2nd Edition, Wiley-Blackwell: 2017)
A survey article that addresses the linguistic evidence that's been marshalled for and against Relativism within philosophy of language and the significance of this evidence.
Future Research
Below are some highlights of future research projects in my major areas of interest: philosophy of language, epistemology, and cognitive science. For a complete outline of my future research, you can download my research statement by clicking on the 'Research Statement' box above.
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Evidentiality in Asserting, Lying, and Testimony
While my dissertation research focused on assertion, my future research will use the linguistic data found in the dissertation and apply it to lying, epistemically hedged statements, and testimony. The lying side of the research will focus on the act within so-called evidential languages that allow speakers to felicitously assert sentences the content of which they know to be false without such statements being considered a lie. The hedged statements side of the research delves into the semantics of parenthetical-like remarks in English – such as the ‘reportedly’ found in ‘Reportedly, Hikaru is in Toronto.’ – and argue that they blur the lines between truth, assertion, and lying. I also plan on conducting research on testimony and testimonial evidence in light of the above work. In particular, I plan to study what the actual uptake of testimony using parenthetical-like remarks is and if this method of communication allows us to transfer information that a speaker takes to be false without actually “lying."
(A full outline of this research proposal can be found in the "Research Statement" link above)
What's Normality?
I examine the coherence of the oft-employed concept of a normal world or normality. In the end, I argue that the concept as it's current used cannot accomplish any meaningful philosophical explanations.
(See "Research Statement" link above for more detail)
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Theory-Laden Perception and Foundationalism in Epistemology
Uses contemporary work in neuroscience and psychology showing that human perception is inherently theory-laden to argue that the natural pairing of foundationalism with a perceptual foundation cannot be viable.
(See "Research Statement" link above for more detail)
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Reliabilism and Probabilism
Explores the relationship we should see as existing between reliabilism in traditional epistemology and the accuracy based probabilism views currently dominant within formal epistemology. I argue that this relationship ought to be much tighter than most would typically expect.
(See "Research Statement" link above for more detail)
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Can Free-Choice Permission Teach Us About Counterfactuals?
This essay explores the connections between the linguistic phenomena of disjunctive counterfactuals and one that might seem unrelated – the free choice permission phenomena – and argues that semantic insights into the latter can and should be used to guide the semantics of the former. The remainder of the essay will explore ways to use the insights found within the free-choice literature, potential problems, and areas that are in need of further and future exploration.
(See "Research Statement" link above for more detail)