Research

I was trained in philology, linguistics, and philosophy. 

My first research experience dates back to the time of my Master in Linguistics at the University of Cambridge (2006-2007), where I also became acquainted with analytic philosophy. Since that time, my work has explored the intersection between semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind.

My PhD thesis at Université libre de Bruxelles & EHESS (entitled 'Naming and Contingency: Towards an Internalist Theory of Direct Reference') addressed foundational issues about the articulation of meaning (semantics), knowledge (epistemology), and possibility (modality) that were left pending after Saul Kripke’s groundbreaking work, Naming and Necessity (1980). I argued that classic epistemic puzzles about linguistic meaning stem from a gap between language and thought: we know a priori what we think (a Cartesian thesis) but not what we say, because language is irreducibly social and external. Linguistics meanings and even words are not in the minds of speakers, but in the world.

After my PhD, since 2012, I have conducted post-doctoral research in philosophy and linguistics at eight institutions in Europe and the US.

In 2012-2014, I worked in philosophy of mind and epistemology on introspection and first-personal knowledge of our own thoughts, with Annalisa Coliva (COGITO Research Group, Philosophy Department, University of Bologna, 2012-2013) and then with Paul Boghossian (Philosophy Department, New York University, 2013-2014).

In 2014-2017, I came back to Université Libre de Bruxelles to investigate the underexplored links between the theses that competent speakers know what they say (‘transparency of meaning’) and that what they say is what they intend to say in using the words they do (‘contextualism’). I gradually became convinced that the key to reach a unified understanding of meaning, thought, knowledge, and possibility was to identify a novel, pragmatic account of context-dependence in both language and thought. I spent five months at the LOGOS Research Centre in Analytic Philosophy at the University of Barcelona to research with Manuel García-Carpintero on ‘semantic relativism’ (the view that truth and falsity can be relative to a local context in the world and/or to a subjective point of view on it). 

Having become fascinated by the phenomenon of 'indexicality', I started to develop a general theory of reference and content in language, thought, and perception — which I call 'pragmatic internalism' — purporting to combine various pragmatic insights due to John Austin, Robert Stalnaker, and François Recanati, with internalist ideas from David Lewis, John Searle, and Paul Boghossian. My research provided the theoretical basis for an interuniversity and interdisciplinary project on reference in Belgium, entitled 'Cognitive Transparency of Semantic Contents, Pragmatic Determination of Reference', funded by the FNRS (2016-2020), co-directed by Philippe De Brabanter (Linguistics, Université libre de Bruxelles) and Bruno Leclercq (Philosophy, Université de Liège), in which a PhD student, Antonin Thuns, was hired to write his doctoral dissertation on ‘Radical Contextualism’.

In 2017-2018, I started to enquire into the relations between language, thought, and consciousness. I worked at the University of Fribourg with Martine Nida-Rümelin on the links between indexical and phenomenal knowledge in philosophy of mind (group EXRE, ‘Experience and Reason’). After 2018, my work has focussed on the semantics of indexical thought, thanks to EURIAS Junior and Marie Curie fellowships in Paris, at the Institute for Advanced Institute (2018-2019) and at École normale supérieure (2019-2021). In those years, I was also preparing a book on linguistic reference, entitled 'Naming and Indexicality', which appeared in December 2021. 

In 2022-2023, I worked as an associate researcher at the Collège de France in Paris with Prof. François Recanati ("Chaire de Philosophie du langage et de l'esprit"). 

For 2023-2025, I am a post-doctoral researcher in an international project co-funded by ANR (Agence nationale de recherche, France) & FNS (Fond national scientifique, Switzerland). The project (which I co-authored with François Recanati, Martine Nida-Rümelin, and Julien Bugnon), entitled "Essential Indexicality and Thoughts about Experience", explores the links between various notions of "first-person perspective" in debates on indexicality and consciousness.

I have given over 70 talks in conferences, congresses, workshops, seminars, of which more than 50 in international settings and more than 20 as invited speaker. I have published articles in peer-reviewed international journals like Synthese, Philosophical Studies, Linguistics & Philosophy, and Philosophical Explorations, and in volumes edited by Routledge and Peter Lang. My first monograph, Naming and Indexicality (2021), is published by Cambridge University Press.

BOOK:

Bochner, G. (2021) Naming and Indexicality. Cambridge University Press (Collection: Key Topics in Semantics and Pragmatics). ISBN: 9781108428453. 

A review of the book, by Tadeusz Ciecierski, is available on Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/naming-and-indexicality/ 

SELECTION OF ARTICLES:

Bochner, G. (2023) "Fixing Internalism about Perceptual Content," Philosophical Explorations 26(3), pp. 404-419 

Bochner, G. (2022) “Contextual Analyticity,” Analytic Philosophy 63(4), pp. 268-276.

Bochner, G. (2022) “Externalism, Transparency, and Diagonal Propositions,” Synthese 200 (3): 1-23.

Bochner, G. (2021) “A Puzzle about Assertion,” in S. Biggs & H. Geirsson (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook on Linguistic Reference. New York: Taylor & Francis, 268-280. 

Bochner, G. (2018) “Singular Truth-Conditions without Singular Propositions,” Synthese 195(6): 2741-2760. 

Bochner, G. (2016) “Essential Indexicality without Self-Location”, in P. Stalmaszczyk (Ed.), Philosophical and Linguistic Analyses of Reference, Series: Studies in Philosophy of Language and Linguistics 2 (Peter Lang): 107-122. 

Bochner, G. (2014) “The Anti-Individualist Revolution in the Philosophy of Language,” Linguistics and Philosophy 37(2): 91-120. 

Bochner, G. (2013) “The Metasyntactic Interpretation of Two-Dimensionalism,” Philosophical Studies 163(3): 611-626.

Bochner, G. (2010) “Perry on Reference and Reflexive Contents,” Language and Linguistics Compass, Vol. 4, Issue 4 (April), Blackwell: 219-231.