PHILOSOPHY: people
City University of New York Graduate Center
Michael Devitt
Distinguished Professor
Ph.D. Harvard University
mdevitt [at-sign-here] gc [put-a-dot-here] cuny [put-a-dot-here] edu
Links:
Research Interests
- Philosophy of Language
- Philosophy of Mind
- Metaphysics
- Current projects include:
- the philosophy of linguistics
- foundational issues in semantics
- the semantics of definite descriptions and demonstratives
- semantic externalism
- contemporary debates about scientific realism
Courses Recently Taught
- Psychological Reality of Language (Fall 2008, Fall 2006)
- Animal Cognition (Spring 2008)
- Meaning (co-taught with Stephen Neale) (Fall 2007)
- Philosophy of Biology (Spring 2007)
- Reference (Spring 2006, 2004)
- Meaning (Spring 2005)
- Scientific Realism (Fall 2004, Fall 2001)
- Psychological Reality of Language (Fall 2003, Spring 2001)
- Naming and Necessity and Its Background; co-taught with Saul Kripke (Spring 2002)
Representative Publications
- Designation. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981, xiii, 311 pp.
- Realism and Truth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984, ix, 250 pp. (Princeton: Princeton University Press). 2nd edn revised, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991, xii, 327pp. Reprinted "with a new afterword," Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, xii, 371pp.
- Coming to Our Senses: A Naturalistic Program for Semantic Localism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, x, 338pp.
- "Meanings Just Ain't in the Head." Method, Reason and Language: Essays in honour of Hilary Putnam, George Boolos, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1990), pp. 79-104. Reprinted in Croatian in Filozofskim Istrazivanjima 45 (1992), pp. 425-45.
- "A Shocking Idea about Meaning." Revue Internationale de Philosophie, a special issue devoted to Hilary Putnam, in press.
- "The Metaphysics of Truth." In The Nature of Truth, Michael Lynch, ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (2001).