University of East Anglia

Faculty Member, School of Philosophy

Professor of Philosophy

About

Monograph

My latest book - The Unity of Linguistic Meaning - is now out with OUP.

Research Interests

(1) Philosophy of Linguistics

My principal research is in the philosophy of linguistics, especially recent syntactic theory and its potential impact on traditional issues in the philosophy of mind and language. My work in this area can be divided into three overlapping areas. Firstly, there are a bunch of issues in Chomsky interpretation and the history of the field. My monograph deals with these issues at length, as do a number of my papers. Secondly, I am concerned to clarify and defend internalism about language and a deflationary attitude towards knowledge of language. Thirdly, there are more language-specific issues that concern me, such as the nature of compositionality and the relation of syntax to logical form.

(2) Propositions

My latest book is on the unity of the proposition problem. I deal with figures from Frege and Russell and to King and Soames. My view is too complex to state here, so, er, read the book.

(3) The Concept of Truth

More or less independent of this work, I have kept up an interest in the concept of truth. I think something is profoundly mistaken about deflationism, although I don’t want to commend any of the standard alternatives. My thought is that the concept of truth allows us to indulge in different kinds of metarepresentational thinking rather than it being merely some generalisation device. I have elaborated on this theme in a number of papers.

(4) Philosophy of Science

I have a keen interest in a range of issues in the philosophy of science, especially the cognitive basis of science and the correct understanding of the notion of naturalism. I defend what I term meta-scientific eliminativism, a grand term for the simple thought that successful science typically leaves behind or is anyhow unconstrained by our given categories of understanding. This attitude animates much of my work in the philosophy of linguistics (‘But linguistics departs from what we mean by ‘language’.’ Of course it does – that’s the point.)

(5) Philosophy of Cognitive Science

Here I am concerned with the clarification of the notions of modularity, nativism, and computation. I think that the first and the last notions should be understand in much more abstract a way than is typical among philosophers. As for nativism, I think it amounts to not much more than the adoption of a biophysical perspective on the given phenomenon, i.e., it is not a epistemological thesis.

(6) Kant, etc.

I have a great interest in Kant and the history of science and mathematics. This shows up here and there in my writings, but I have yet to get around to writing anything proper on it. I should, for example, like to write something on science and beauty with reference to Kant’s aesthetics – one day.



Biography

I became interested in philosophy after reading Nietzsche, an interest that led me to the University of Warwick (1990-93), which had (at that time) a strength in Continental philosophy. Under the guidance of Michael Luntley and David Miller, however, I quickly realised that such philosophy was not for me (the Pauline moment was a Deleuze conference where no one seemed to understand what anyone – including themselves - was saying; worse, no one appeared to mind). During my undergraduate years, I developed an interest in Davidson, the concept of truth, and issues in the philosophy of content and logic. I stayed on at Warwick to do an MA (1993-94), specialising in advanced logic and the philosophy of psychology.

I did a PhD (1995-98) at Birkbeck College, London. My thesis was on two philosophical ideas stemming from Tarski’s foundational work on semantics: deflationism and Davidson’s ‘meaning via truth’ idea. I came down on Davidson’s side, although argued that Tarski’s work itself was neutral as regards the philosophical issues (as Tarski himself would have agreed, I’m sure). I also taught seminars in the philosophy of language, principally on Grice, Davidson, and Dummett.

After my doctorate, I became intrigued by generative linguistics, initially due to an interest in being more rigorous about Davidson’s semantic program, but it quickly became an end in itself. Unable to secure a permanent position, I got by on part-time teaching, including at Warwick, Anglia Polytechnic University (Cambridge), and some A-level colleges. To say that these years were deeply frustrating does not scratch the surface. On the plus side, I was able to develop my interests in my own time and deepen my understanding of current linguistics.

I eventually secured a permanent position at UEA in 2003. I have taught a cluster of units here, but have as my staple, Kant, Logic, and Language in Mind. I currently have five PhD students working on early Frege and Russell, Contextualism, modularity, structualism, and Kant.