Research Statement

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Why Art and Philosophy of Language?

According to Israel Scheffler, Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art “brought art and science into communication, providing an ingenious common framework for analyses of musical scores, literary scripts, scientific discourses, pictorial depictions, architecture and dance.”

Just as words and music form languages, so does language in its wider sense include a number of symbol systems, (e.g., maps, graphs, scores, and paintings). It is this view of language that is the foundation of my research interests. To begin any project in the philosophy of language requires that we  distinguish the languages of the sciences from natural language (languages that children naturally acquire) and artistic languages, while appreciating the role the arts play in how we understand our world. To some extent, I see art as a kind of experiment on human nature.  Our reactions to artworks are innate. The artists and their public seek universality. They are engaged in an experiment on human psychology.

I was fortunate enough to meet Nelson Goodman, his student Noam Chomsky, and more recently Philip Kitcher, who have all maintained similar views, i.e. that the arts contribute to human understanding. As Chomsky put it: "It is quite possible -- overwhelmingly probably, one might guess -- that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology."  James McGilvray focus on artistic creativity also influenced me substantially in this respect. 

I also have a very broad interest in sociological and socio-economic approaches to the study of language, as well as the following topics: communication between the members of other species, the evolution of language, language and identity, the politics of language, innate and learned concepts, meta-ethics and trolley problems, and artificial intelligence.

My area of specialization over the last few years has been the science of language; I contrast the innatist (rationalist) perspective (say, Noam Chomsky, Norbert Hornstein, Jerry Fodor, James McGilvray, Paul M. Pietroski) with cultural and behaviorist or empiricist or causal approaches (say, Ludwig Wittgenstein, W. v. o. Quine, Saul Kripke, and Hilary Putnam). 

My work as a doctoral candidate concerns semantics and specifically the distinction between innate concepts (if there are such things) and learned concepts. If innate concepts undergird our social and instituted linguistic meanings (and I am convinced they do) then we have a way to compare natural language-use and its involvement with the arts to concepts in scientific languages. There is no doubt that innateness constitutes a problem topic. When approached inadequately, either deliberately or involuntarily, it may result in erroneous conclusions that can be used to fight against progressive movements for greater equality. 

 “The ‘Is’ in Animal-is-m” 

 Eric T. Olson argues for a position in personal identity called animalism. Olson's definition of ‘what we are’ is what the biological community currently defines as the ‘human animal’. This article deals with the notoriously slippery quality of the copula 'is'.  In my conclusion, I follow Olson’s surprising admission by suggesting that I too have no idea what we are.