Some recent papers

(Most links are to penultimate versions - for citation, check the journal or book)

Precis of Know How, and Replies to Imogen Dickie, Mark Schroeder, and Robert Stalnaker
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85.3: 733-778
This is my contribution to a book symposium on my latest book, Know How. Here is a link to Professor Dickie's contribution.

"Empirical Tests of Interest Relative Invariantism" (with Chandra Sripada)
Episteme 9.1, 2012: 3-26

"Singular Thoughts and Singular Propositions" (with Joshua Armstrong)
Philosophical Studies 154.2, 2011: 205-222

Knowing (How)
Nous 45.2, 2011: 207-238.

"Assertion" and Intentionality
Philosophical Studies 151.1, 2010: 87-113 (a symposium in honor of the 30th anniversary of the publication of Robert Stalnaker's "Assertion", with papers by myself and Philippe Schlenker, and replies by Stalnaker)

On 'Average' (with Christopher Kennedy)
Mind 118, 2009: 583-646

Abstract: This paper investigates the semantics of sentences that express numerical averages, focusing initially on cases such as “The average American has 2.3 children.” Such sentences have been used by both
linguists and philosophers to argue for a disjuncture between semantics and ontology. For example, Noam Chomsky and Norbert Hornstein have used them to provide evidence against the hypothesis
that natural language semantics includes a reference relation holding between words and objects in the world, whereas metaphysicians such as Joseph Melia and Stephen Yablo have used them to provide
evidence that apparent singular reference need not be taken as ontologically committing. We develop a fully general and independently justified compositional semantics in which such constructions
are assigned truth conditions that are not ontologically problematic, and show that our analysis is superior to all extant rivals. Our analysis provides evidence that a good semantics yields a sensible
ontology. It also reveals that natural language involves genuine singular term reference to numbers.

Knowledge and Certainty
Philosophical Issues 18, 2008: 33-55.
This paper is a companion piece to my earlier paper "Fallibilism and Concessive Knowledge Attributions". There are two intuitive charges against fallibilism. One is that it countenances the truth (and presumably acceptability) of utterances of sentences such as "I know that Bush is a Republican, though it might be that he is not a Republican". The second is that it countenances the truth (and presumably acceptability) of utterances of sentences such as "I know that Bush is a Republican, even though I'm not certain that he is", or "I know that Bush it a Republican, even though it isn't certain that he is." In "Fallibilism and Concessive Knowledge Attributions", I argue that fallibilism in epistemology does not countenance the truth of utterances of sentences such as "I know that Bush is a Republican, though it might be that he is not a Republican". In this paper, I argue that there are independent reasons for thinking that utterances of sentences such as "I know that Bush is a Republican, though I'm not certain that he is" and "I know that Bush is a Republican, though it's not certain that he is" are unassertible. More specifically, I argue that these are simply instances of Moore's Paradox, such as "Dogs bark, but I don't know that they do." The right account of Moore's Paradox does not involve the falsehood of the semantic content of the relevant utterances, but rather their pragmatic unacceptability. So the anti-fallibilist intuitions turn out to have pragmatic, rather than semantic import, and therefore do not tell against the truth of fallibilism.

Fallibilism in epistemology is often thought to be theoretically desirable, but intuitively problematic. My purpose with these two papers is to show that fallibilism is not intuitively problematic.

Knowledge and Action (with John Hawthorne)
The Journal of Philosophy 105.10, 2008: 571-590.

Philosophy of Language in the Twentieth Century
The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy (London: Routledge Press, 2008): 382-437
In this paper, I attempt to summarize philosophy of language in the Twentieth Century. It's a completely absurd task, and I fail miserably. The way I managed to complete the paper I wrote was to write a narrative I thought would be at least helpful for any graduate student in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and meta-ethics to read. Certainly, the topics I discuss, and the elementary lessons I draw from them, are ones that I would want  my own graduate students to master in their first year of graduate school. So if you feel curious about what I think introductory graduate students in Metaphysics and Epistemology broadly construed should minimally know about the philosophy of language, you would be interested in this paper.   

This is a first complete draft, and I'm sure there are typos and mistakes. For the mistake-free version, please purchase the Routledge guide.

Introduction to Language in Context
This is the introduction to my collection of essays, Language in Context. The introduction is a substantive piece, explaining my general project on context-dependence.

Precis of Knowledge and Practical Interests and Replies to Critics (Gilbert Harman, Ram Neta, and Stephen Schiffer)
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75.1 (2007)
This is my contribution to a book symposium for my first book, Knowledge and Practical Interests

Hornsby on the Phenomenology of Speech
The Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 79 (2005): 131-46.
This is a reply to Jennifer Hornsby's "Semantic Knowledge and Practical Knowledge", for the Joint Session in July, 2005. But it can also be
read as a free-standing paper criticizing the thesis that knowledge of meaning is a practical ability.

Fallibilism and Concessive Knowledge Attributions
Analysis 65.2, 2005: 126-31

Semantics in Context
Contextualism in Philosophy: Knowledge, Meaning, and Truth, Preyer and Peter (ed.) (OUP, 2005): 221-54.

On the Linguistic Basis for Contextualism
Philosophical Studies 119, 2004: 119-146

Context, Interest-Relativity, and the Sorites
Analysis 63.4 (2003): 269-80.

Modality and What is Said
Philosophical Perspectives 16: (2002):  321-44.

Hermeneutic Fictionalism
Midwest Studies 25, French and Wettstein (ed.) (Blackwell, 2001): 36-71

 Knowing How
(with Timothy Williamson)
The Journal of Philosophy 98.8 2001: 411-44.

This is a small piece I wrote for a conference at Princeton in June 2008, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Quine's birth. It is intended for a more general academic audience:

Quine at 100