Research

I care about what it means to mean. My main research is on how we employ language to relate to objects in the actual world, but also to possible worlds. I work on the formal semantics, but also syntax and pragmatics, of referential expressions (definite descriptions, names, pronouns) and modal expressions (epistemic and deontic modals, propositional attitude reports, grammatical mood). This research has led me to questions within metaethics and metaphysics. I know a good deal of non-classical logic (especially relevance logics) and sometimes I think about the history of analytic philosophy (especially the early Wittgenstein).

Published:

• The Complex Lives of Proper Names, Linguistics and Philosophy (2023)
  On the semantics of proper names. I argue that names are predicates and that when they occur as arguments of a verb they are the predicative component of covert definite descriptions. I then rethink the  syntax and semantics of definite descriptions to account for  desiderata such as rigid designation.
  DOI: 10.1007/s10988-023-09389-y

Under Review:

• Paper 1
  I argue that conditionals with impossible antecedents (counterpossibles) are all false.

• Paper 2
  I give new reasons for analyzing modality in natural language as explicit quantification over possible worlds.

• Paper 3
  I defend necessitarianism, the view that propositions are necessarily true if true at all (under an operator view of modality).

• Paper 4
  I provide a counterpart semantics that explains the puzzling so-called third reading of attitude reports (non-specific de re).

Please, e-mail me for full drafts: agollieno at gmail dot com