about

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Associate Professor, Cornell Philosophy (They/Them)

Ph.D. Rutgers University (2010), B.A. Amherst College (2005)

Research Areas: philosophy of language, philosophical logic, semantics, cognitive science and social philosophy.

I try to understand how humans use language in a way that sheds light on the human mind and our social structures. This involves trying to integrate ideas from linguistics, computer science, psychology and sociology with the critical and historical perspective characteristic of philosophy. It began with my Ph.D. work in the philosophy department and center for cognitive science at Rutgers, and continued as a Bersoff Fellow at NYU. In Fall 2011, I joined the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell where I am now an Associate Professor.

news

June 2022: presenting "Decomposing 'As if'" (w/Jessica Rett) at SALT 32.
July 2020: "A Preference Semantics for Imperatives" published in Semantics and Pragmatics.
March 2020: "The Structure of Communicative Acts" (w/Sarah Murray) published in Linguistics & Philosophy.
January 2020: final draft of "Conditional and Counterfactual Logic", to appear in the Handbook of Rationality (MIT Press).
November 2019: presentation of "Modifying Speech Acts without Speech Act Modifiers" (w/Sarah Murray) at PhLip 6.
October 2019: presenting "Norms of Communication" at Dartmouth Workshop on Philosophy of Language and Social Philosophy.
April 2019: "Indicative Conditionals, Strictly" presented at UConn workshop.
January 2019: "Counterfactuals", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is live!

sage school of philosophy; cornell university; 218 goldwin smith hall; ithaca, ny; 14853