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Mind and Language

Northwestern has a large and lively community of scholars working in the philosophy of mind and language.

 

If you have any questions about the program, do not hesitate to contact one of the faculty members listed below.  Additional resources can be found on our LEMMings site.

 

Core Faculty

Fabrizio Cariani
(Philosophy): formal semantics (esp. modality), meta-semantics, propositional attitudes

Sean Ebels Duggan

(Philosophy): logic, philosophy of logic, and Quine-Carnap-Davidson

Sanford Goldberg

(Philosophy): attitude individuation, first-person authority, the semantics of attitude and speech reports, meaning, reference

Michael Glanzberg

(Philosophy) The nature of linguistic meaning (the nature of quantification, how lexical items encode concepts, relativism about linguistic content), the semantics-pragmatics-syntax interface, the role of mathematical techniques in the empirical study of language, truth and paradox, and the status of unrestricted quantification

Jennifer Lackey

(Philosophy): consciousness, mental causation

Peter Ludlow

(Philosophy): The Philosophy of Generative Linguistics, Microlanguages and the Dynamic Lexicon, Tensism and Presentism in the Metaphysics of Time, the syntax and semantics of intensional environments, the semantics of quantified noun phrases, the nature of fiction and fanfiction, expressivist foundations for natural language semantics

Axel Mueller

(Philosophy): semantic contextualism, semantic externalism, reference, and meaning

 

Sandy Goldberg (right) chats before Lee Goldsmith's PhLing Talk. October 2009.

 

Additional Faculty

Faculty with a very strong secondary interest in mind and language:

Brady Clark

(Linguistics): Semantics, Pragmatics, syntax, syntactic variation and change, focus and focus sensitivity

Dedre Gentner

(Psychology): Learning and Thinking; Analogy, Similarity and Metaphor; Concepts and Conceptual Structure; Language and Cognition; Language Acquisition

Sid Horton

(Psychology): Language Cognition; Memory Representations Underlying Routine Language Use; Pragmatics; Common Ground and Memory Processes in Language Production

Stefan Kaufmann

(Linguistics): Semantics, Pragmatics, and Computational Linguistics; Modality; Tense; Conditionals; Game Theory Approaches to Language

Cristina Lafont

(Philosophy): pragmatic theory, reference, meaning, truth

Doug Medin

(Psychology): Categorization And Reasoning; Decision-Making; Cultural and Biological Thought

Andrew Ortony

(Psychology, Education, and Computer Science): Knowledge Representation, Language Cognition, Metaphor, Emotion

David Rapp

(Psychology, Education): Language Comprehension of Written Texts; Memory

Lance Rips

(Psychology):  Concepts of Individual Entities; Mathematical Concepts (e.g., Natural Numbers or Groups); and Types of Reasoning Related to these Concepts (Typically Causal or Mathematical Reasoning, Counterfactuals)

Gregory Ward

(Linguistics): Pragmatic Theory, Information Structure, Intonational Meaning, and Reference/Anaphora

 

The audience at Robin Jeshion's Colloquia Talk. October 2009.

 

Recent Graduate Course Offerings in Philosophy of Mind and Language

Grad course: "Logic and Anti-Realism" (Ebels Duggan)

Grad course:  “Metaphysics” (Reed, Ludlow)

Grad course:  “Philosophy of Mind” (Goldberg, Lackey, Ludlow)

Grad course:  “Philosophical Psychology” (Ludlow, Goldberg)

Grad course: "Philosophy of Language" (Ludlow)

Grad course:  “Topics in Philosophy of Language: Reference” (Mueller, Lafont)

Grad course:  “Classics of Analytic Philosophy” (Ludlow, Mueller)

Grad Seminar: “Language, Thought, and Cognitive Significance” (Goldberg)

Grad Seminar: “Descriptions” (Ludlow)

Grad Seminar: “Metasemantics” (Cariani)

Grad Seminar: “Meaning and Context” (Mueller)

Grad Seminar: “Time: Semantics and Metaphysics” (Ludlow)

Grad Seminar: "Singular thought, belief, and the imagination" (Goldberg)

Grad Seminar: “Speech Act Theory” (Goldberg)

Grad Seminar: "Truth" (Glanzberg)

Grad Seminar: “Contextualism and Invariantism” (Reed)

 

Activities and Resources

In addition to graduate seminars, there are a number of other regular activities and resources.

• The Philosophy and Linguistics Workgroup (PhLing)

• Chicago-area Syntax-Semantics Circle

• The Cognitive Science Program

• Edinburgh Exchange Program

• LEMMings Site

• Metaphysics and Epistemology Reading Group

• NU Linguistics Department

• NU Psychology Department

• Great Lakes Mind and Science Consortium

 

Fabrizio Cariani reviews notes at Tim Sundell's PhLing Talk. October 2009.