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office:              H.C. Coombs Building, #4103 phone:             +61 2 6125 8318 email:              brian.rabern{[at]}gmail.com address:          Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences                         Coombs Building, The Australian National University                         Canberra ACT 0200, Australia

 

 

I did my masters thesis on two-dimensional semantics at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I then spent a few years doing graduate course work in southern California (where I learned a lot about Frege, Russell, Kaplan, Kripke, direct reference theory, proper names, attitude reports, Kalish & Montague logic, etc.). Then I came to Canberra to write my dissertation in the Philosophy Program at RSSS in early 2008.  From September 2009 to January 2010 I will be a visiting scholar at Arche, philosophical research centre for logic, language, metaphysics and epistemology, at the University of St. Andrews.

 

My dissertation project is on the foundations of intensional semantics and context-dependence, under the supervision of David Chalmers. My main interests are in language, semantics, logic and any related philosophical issues, especially things like indexicality and context-dependence, modal and epistemic logics, two-dimensionalisms and multi-indexing, quotation and metalinguistics, relativistic and other non-traditional semantics, hyperintensionality and context-shifting operators ( i.e. `monsters`) and general issues relating to self-location and perspective. I am also very drawn towards certain methodological questions in these areas.  And I still spend a lot of time thinking about puzzles and paradoxes.

 

 

Publications:

 

A simple solution to the hardest logic puzzle ever [with L. Rabern], Analysis 68(298), 105-112, 2008. (preprint)

 

(and for the unpublished sequel see `In defense of the two question solution to the hardest logic puzzle ever`)

 

 

 

In progress:

 

Relative truth and utterance validities [with L. Leontyev]

 

Relativists maintain that utterances of sentences like `Avocados are tasty` are true relative to some assessors and false relative to others.  But the relativist will thereby be committed to the claim that utterances of sentences like `If avocados are tasty, then they are tasty to me` are also true relative to some assessors and false relative to others – whereas these sentences seem to be true whenever uttered. We explore the implications on the notion of utterance validity (or logical truth) within a relativistic semantics.

 

 

Monsters in the semantic

 

Begins with a survey of the different ways that context-shifting operators relate to the semantic frameworks of the three pioneers of intensional semantics: Montague, Kaplan, and Lewis. I show how a semantics can both technically include monsters but not run afoul of the spirit of the monster prohibition and technically lack monsters yet run afoul of the spirit of the monster prohibition. This leads to a discussion of von Stechow on Schlenker and other current literature on monsters. The paper attempts to shed new light on the nature of monsters and provide an improved formulation of what a prohibition against them should be.

 

 

Attitude-reports and the bifurcation of sense

 

This is a short note explaining that the strategy of sense-bifurcation can only succeed if attitude-operators take the relevant hyperintensions (characters, primary intensions, ingredient senses, etc.) as argument.

 

 

The names as predicates hypothesis

 

In sentences such as `The controversial Noam Chomsky delivered a lecture`, `That Aristotle was a shipping magnate not a philosopher`, `Most Wolfgangs are German`, and `A defeated Napoleon went into exile` the proper names therein occur in syntactic predicate position and have predicative semantic values, i.e. they seem to be general terms. But proper names are traditionally thought to be singular terms or referential devices whose primary semantic function is to designate a single object. Assuming, instead, that the names as predicates hypothesis is empirically and theoretically motivated, I address two main challenges. The first problem is syntactic in character: if names are predicates, then how/why do they seem to occur unmodified in syntactic argument position? The second problem is a follow up to the first but is semantic in character: how does the claim that names in syntactic argument position are covertly modified, square with Kripke`s semantic rigidity thesis? I survey the different responses to these challenges.

 

 

A graph-theoretic approach to semantic paradoxes [with L. Rabern & M. Macauley]

 

This is a side project I am working on using graph theoretic resources to pin down exactly when a ``reference structure`` can support a paradox, (i.e. finding graph theoretical necessary and sufficient conditions for paradoxicality). The difficult problem is with infinite collections of sentences with acyclic reference graphs (e.g. Yablo`s omega paradox). We have been playing around with it for a few years but hope to have a presentable draft available soon.