Here you'll find all my papers. For an explanation of how they fit together, see my research statement.
Published or Forthcoming:
Why Must Incompatibility Be Symmetric? The Philosophical Quarterly. 2023.
Something's being red (all over) is incompatible with its being blue (all over), and just as well, something's being blue is incompatible with its being red. In general, it seems that whenever a is incompatible with b, b is also incompatible with a. Why is this the case? This question might not seem like the sort of question we'd be able to answer, and recent work in the philosophy of logic which appeals to the notion of incompatibility as primitive has assumed just that. In this paper, however, I provide an answer. (link to publication, pdf of final draft)
Sellars's Two Worlds. To appear in Reading Kant with Sellars, edited by Luz. C Seiberth and Mahdi Ranaee. Routledge.
This is a paper for a forthcoming anthology on Sellars and Kant. In it, I situate Sellars's Kantian picture in the context of the debate over "two worlds" vs. "two aspects" readings of transcendental idealism, arguing that Sellars has a two worlds conception of transcendental idealism, but he resolves the problems that traditionally plague such conceptions through his distinctive naturalistic spin on Kant. (pdf of final draft)
Considering the Exceptions: On the Failure of Cumulative Transitivity for Indicative Conditionals. Synthese. 2022.
All existing theories of indicative conditionals have it that, if "If A then B" is true and "If A and B, then C" is true, then "If A, then C" must also be true. Here, I provide a class of counterexamples to this principle. After spelling out how these cases pose a problem to existing theories of conditionals, I propose a new dynamic strict account of conditionals that accommodates them. (link to publication, pdf of final draft)
In Fall 2019, I was a visitor at Pittsburgh, working with Robert Brandom, and I sat in on Brandom's course on Wilfrid Sellars. One of Brandom's main claims in the course was that Sellars's ontological nominalism was unintelligible. I thought there was more to be said for it, so I decided to write this paper, arguing that Sellars's ontological nominalism is not only intelligible but that the theory of conceptual content that Brandom develops is actually just what is needed for us to make proper sense of it. (link to publication, pdf of final draft.)
The Normative/Agentive Correspondence. Journal of Transcendental Philosophy. 2020.
This is my attempt to bridge the gap between Robert Brandom's account of the mind, articulated in normative vocabulary, and the sort of account offered by some of his closest critics such as John McDowell, James Conant, and Sebastian Rödl, articulated in principally agentive modal vocabulary. On the account I propose, these two sorts of accounts are really two perspectival sides of the same multi-perspectival coin. (link to publication, open access pdf)
Pointing Out the Skeptic's Mistake and Reformulating the Two Aspects of Justification. Florida Philosophical Review. 2014, 2013.
These are two papers I wrote as an undergrad, which became chapters three and four of my undergrad thesis. In the first, which I still rather like, I defend Donald Davidson's transcendental argument against Cartesian skepticism by giving it a Moorean spin, drawing on work by Quill Kukla and Mark Lance. In the second, which I wish I wrote differently (I'd read the version in chapter four of the thesis, if you're curious), I develop an account of justification, drawing from W.V.O. Quine's work on observation sentences, where justification has two aspects, one connecting to belief qua state and one connecting to belief qua bearer of content, that fit together like the two sides of a seesaw.
Under Review:
How to Be a Hyper-Inferentialist. Revise and Resubmit at Synthese.
An inferentialist theory of meaning aims to account for the meanings of sentences in terms of the inferential rules governing their use. A "hyper-inferentialist" theory admits only "narrowly inferential" rules, relating sentences to other sentences. Such a version of inferentialism is widely thought to be a theoretical non-starter. I argue here, however, that not only is hyper-inferentialism theoretically viable, but it is really the only viable form of inferentialism there is. pdf.
A General Schema for Bilateral Proof Rules Revise and Resubmit at Journal of Philosophical Logic
A standard "unilateral" logical system provides rules for inferring sentences from other sentences. A bilateral system, by contrast, provides rules for inferring both affirmations and denials of sentences from other affirmations and denials. In this paper, I put forward a new sort of bilateral proof system in which all the rules for the classical connectives are determined by a single rule schema. I also prove some things about it, illustrating a new method of simplifying proof-theory by doing it at this schematic level of generality. pdf
.Can the Content of Perception be Conceptual? Revise and Resubmit at European Journal of Philosophy.
Several author's have criticized the sort of conceptualist account of perceptual content proposed by John McDowell on the grounds that the generality of conceptual content fails to do justice to the particularity of perceptual experience. In this paper, I defend the conceptualist account of perceptual content against this challenge, proposing and developing the agentive conception of perceptual experience that I also put forward in "The Normative/Agentive Correspondence" in response. (draft under major revisions, pdf of earlier paper on which this paper is based)
In the Works:
Bringing Bilateralisms Together
This paper brings together much of the technical work that I've with the ROLE working group. In it, I consider two distinct versions of "logical bilateralism," which take affirmation and denial to be equally basic in providing an account of the logical connectives. I argue that each has benefits when it comes to inferentialist semantics, and I put foward a new kind of logical system that enables us to have the benefits of both. (pdf of draft)
Normative Dynamics Reconsidered
I respond to this paper by Bernhard Nickel and provide a new dynamic formalization of the semantic theory put forward in Making It Explicit that is not subject to the criticisms Nickel raises and has a number of theoretical resources (draft coming soon).
Properties without Problems
Our ordinary ways of talking and speaking seem to commit us to the claim that there are many different ways things are, and many ways that things could be but nothing actually is. In other words, it seems that there are many properties things have, and many uninstantiated properties that nothing has. There's no existing theory of this vast number of properties, however, that avoids the traditional metaphysical and epistemological problems associated with such things. In this paper, provide an account of properties that resolves these problems. On this account, which is metaphysically platonist but epistemologically nomianlist, properties are modal profiles that things might (or might not) have, and we know about them by mastering the rules governing the use of predicates. (draft coming soon)
Against Conceptual Svabhāva
According to the Madhyamaka tradition in Indian Buddhist Philosophy, all things are empty of "svabhāva," a term generally translated as "inherent existence" or "own-being." One of the basic arguments meant to establish this claim is an argument against the coherence of inherently existing things standing in causal relations. In this paper, I reconstruct an important objection against this view (put forward in Nagarjuna's Vigrahavyāvartanī) according to which an argument of just the same form can be applied to the thesis of emptiness itself standing in inferential relations to other theses (for instance, ruling out the claim that things have svabhāva). I argue that the Madhyamika should accept this conclusion, and I articulate an account of conceptual emptiness in response. (draft coming soon)
Unpublished:
Consequence, Coherence, and Consequence Again: Rethinking the Philosophical Significance of the Sequent Calculus. To eventually appear in a Festschrift for Michael Kremer.
I wrote this paper for Michael Kremer's retirement conference. In it, I consider the potential of the sequent calculus to provide an inferentialist account of the meanings of the logical connectives. I raise a problem regarding multiple conclusions in the classical sequent calculus, and I resolve it by putting forward a new kind of bilateral sequent calculus. Much of what appears here was drawn from and will appear in my paper "Bringing Bilateralisms Together." pdf
On the Self-Undoing of Madhyamaka Philosophy
The 2nd Century Indian Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna is the widely regarded as the most significant Buddhist philosopher after the Buddha himself. The core doctrine of Nāgārjuna's Madhymamaka (``middle way'') philosophy (insofar as there can be said to be a ``core doctrine'' at all) is that of ``emptiness." Nāgārjuna characterizes emptiness as "the expedient to get rid of all views" which, puzzlingly, includes emptiness itself. In this paper, I try to show how this puzzling "self-undoing" of Madhyamaka philosophy works, taking the vast majority of interpretative views as my target. (pdf)
I'm no longer happy with this paper, as it stands. I will rewrite it at some point in the future, but I plan to work on other stuff in Madhyamaka philosophy before that.
I'm no longer happy with this paper, as it stands. I will rewrite it at some point in the future, but I plan to work on other stuff in Madhyamaka philosophy before that.
Semantics without Contents
This paper reframes some of the core ideas of my dissertation. In it, raise a worry about the explanatory role that properties and relations play in contemporary semantic theories, and, I propose a radically different way of doing semantics that doesn't involve any appeal to properties, relations, propositions or anything else to serve as the contents of predicates or sentences. According to this semantic theory, which I "discursive role semantics," we think of the meanings of predicates and sentences directly in terms of what one does in uttering them, without appealing to any things one says. (pdf)
I now think this paper tries to do too much in one go, and the material from it is being broken up into "Normative Dynamics Reconsidered" and "Properties without Problems."
I now think this paper tries to do too much in one go, and the material from it is being broken up into "Normative Dynamics Reconsidered" and "Properties without Problems."
Frege and the Logical Notion of Judgment
In attempting to familiarize myself with Begriffsschrift notation, I ended up writing this paper. I argue here that there is a tension in Frege's mature philosophy concerning the place of the judgement stroke in his logical notation, but there were seeds of a very different conception of logic in his early writing--what James Conant calls a "Kantian conception of logic"--where the judgment stroke is not at all out of place. (pdf)
This was my "preliminary essay" for my Ph.D. program at University of Chicago. In it, I present a new argument for the act-based conception of propositions, arguing that propositions do not represent things as being certain ways, as is widely taken to be the case; rather, we represent things as being certain ways, and propositions are our acts of doing so. In subsequent work, I've radicalized the basic view put forward here, applying the act-based approach not just to propositions, but properties as well. (pdf)
The Skeptical Thought and Its Dissolution
I wrote this paper early in grad school when I found myself in the grips of philosophical skepticism. I'm not sure if it works as well for the reader as it did for the author, but I haven't worried about skepticism since writing it. (pdf)