I am an associate professor in the Barnard-Columbia philosophy department, and department chair of the Barnard side of the department. My research is mainly in the philosophy of language and philosophical linguistics. A common theme in my work is the interaction between context and content. I work on topics in dynamic vs. static semantics, the nature of semantic vs. pragmatic explanations, pronominal anaphora, counterfactual conditionals, gradable adjectives, and context-sensitivity. My recent projects involve looking at context and the pragmatics of communication on social media, as well as other non-paradigmatic kinds of conversations.  

I am also a member of core messaging team at The Interstellar Foundation,  where I work with an interdisciplinary team on messages to be sent into interstellar space.  I am particularly interested in the questions of how to create context in an otherwise context-less message and how to create a message that is as close to universally understandable as possible, given the intended audience of intelligent extra-terrestrials and distant future humans.  Our inaugural message, ASPIRE 1, aimed at (distant) future humans, is set to launch to the moon in December 2024 on the NASA CLPS mission Blue Ghost 1 (Firefly) lunar lander.  

Before coming to Barnard, I was a graduate student at Rutgers, where I wrote my dissertation, Understanding Dynamic Discourse, under the direction of Jeffrey C. King, and an assistant professor in the school of philosophy at USC.

Publications

Discourse Referents in a Dynamic Pragmatics
Forthcoming. Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Language, Volume 4. Eds. Ernie Lepore and David Sosa.

Imagined Audiences and Common Ground
Forthcoming. Conversations Online, OUP. Eds. Patrick Connolly, Sanford Goldberg, and Jennifer Saul.

Pronouns, Descriptions, and Uniqueness
2022. Linguistics and Philosophy. Vol. 45, pp. 559-617
Published version

Metasemantics without semantics intentions
2022. Inquiry Vol. 65, pp. 991-1019
Published version

Anaphora and Negation
2021. Philosophical Studies. Vol. 178, pp. 1403-1440
Published version

The speaker authority problem for context-sensitivity (or: you can't always mean what you want)
2020. Erkenntnis. Vol. 85, pp.1527-1555
Published version

Counterfactual Discourse in Context
2018. Noûs. Vol. 52, Issue 3, pp. 481-507
Published version

Dynamic Semantics
2017. Oxford Handbooks Online.
Published version

Counterfactuals and Knowledge
2017.The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism. Ed. Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa. pp.411-424

Anaphora
2016. (with Jeffrey C. King) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2016 Edition) Ed. Edward N. Zalta.

Elusive Counterfactuals
2016. Noûs. Vol. 50 Issue 2, pp. 286-313.
Published version

Do we need dynamic semantics?
2014. Metasemantics: New Essays on the Foundations of Meaning, Eds. Alexis Burgess and Brett Sherman, OUP, pp. 231-258

Speaker's Reference and Anaphoric Pronouns
2013. Philosophical Perspectives: Philosophy of Language. Vol. 27, Issue 1, pp. 404-437
Published version

Discourse dynamics, pragmatics, and indefinites
2012. Philosophical Studies. Vol. 158, Issue 2, pp. 313-342
Published version

Reviews

Review of François Recanati, Truth-Conditional Pragmatics, Oxford University Press, 2010.
2014. Mind 123 (492), pp.1234-1238.
Published version

Teaching

Fall 2024:
Introduction to Philosophy of Language 

Spring 2025:
Graduate seminar on Non-Paradigmatic Pragmatics (co-taught with Dan Harris and Andy Egan)
First-year seminar: Language and Power

 

 

 

Updated 10/25/2024