My research consists of two projects: one about ways in which we semantically express evaluative attitudes; one about the ways in which we non-semantically display evaluative attitudes. In the former -- my dissertation project -- I give an account of evaluation according to which evaluative thought locates us in a space which has a lot of dimensions. In the latter, I give an account of the connection between social norms and socially significant discourse.
Publications.
The Normative Common Ground: Blame and Communication. Develops a normative analogue of the common ground, and argues that blame is communicative in that it both is made sense of with respect to it and updates it. With Taylor Madigan. Forthcoming, Ethics. Penultimate draft.
Drafts available. (All but Damn are under review.)
Thick as thin. Argues for a novel semantics and pragmatics for thick terms, terms like kind and generous. According my picture, thick terms lack descriptive entailments, and function as they do because evaluation is a more complex state than has been thought.
Beyond Language: Slurs and Social Norms. Argues that the best way to explain the range of situations in which slurring has a distinctive impact is by reference to our investment in social norms.
Damn. Argues that swearing displays our emotional states without semantically expressing them, by violating social norms of a peculiar sort: norms that are meant to be broken.
Slurs are pronunciation sensitive. Argues that the degree to which slurs have a distinctive impact is sensitive to the way they are pronounced, and argues that this is best explained in terms of social norms. With Elek Lane.
In progress.
Hyperevaluations. Introduces a new formal gizmo called a hyperevaluation; intuitively, the evaluative correlate of a possible world. A hyperevaluation represents the way that the evaluative depends on the non-evaluative given a multidimensional evaluative space. Hyperevaluations help to regiment intuitive properties discussed in the literature on thick terms, such as separability (see below.)
Separability as Factorizability. Intuitively, an evaluative concept is separable iff its evaluative parts can be disentangled from its descriptive parts. This paper takes issue with the intuitive notions of disentanglement and parts, and uses hyperevaluations to characterize a formal correlate of the intuitive property. Some upshots of the picture: (in)separability is a property of discourses as well as of meanings and mental states, and the question whether a concept is separable is distinct from questions about analysis and entailment.
The acquaintance inference and the structure of evaluative discourse. Argues that the acquaintance inference is due to a mismatch between the way that the relationship between factual and nonfactual content is represented personally and interpersonally. (In the language of the above blurb: mental states are separable; discourses are inseparable.)
Generics as nonfactual. Raises the following puzzle: generic beliefs with apparently weak truth conditions can rationalize actions that appear to be warranted only given strong assumptions. Our solution: generics lack truth conditions, and truth-conditional beliefs are not the only kind that rationalize action. Believing a generic of the form As are Bs sets one up to think of the property B when faced with the property A (and that is all.) With Milan Mossé.