USC School of Philosophy

1

SCOTT SOAMES

USC School of Philosophy

3709 Trousdale Parkway

Los Angeles, CA 90089-0451

/ (213) 740-0798

December 2013

EDUCATION

Stanford University, BA., 1968

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ph.D. Philosophy, 1976

ACADEMIC HONORS

Phi Beta Kappa, 1967

Danforth Graduate Fellow, 1971-76

Woodrow Wilson Graduate Fellow, 1971

AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected to membership in 2010.

Albert S. Raubenheimer Award for excellence in research, teching, and service, 2009. The Raubenheimer is the highest faculty honor of the College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences of the University of Southern California.

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Fellowship 1998-99 Academic Year.

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship 1989- 90. Title of Project: "Truth and Meaning"

Class of 1936 Bicentennial Preceptorship, Princeton University, 1982-1985

National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship

for 1978-79. Title of Project: "The Philosophical Investigation of Linguistic Theory"

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

Director of the School of Philosophy, University of Southern California, August 2007 –

Distinguished Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Southern California, 2011 –

Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Southern California, 2004 - 2010

Professor, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, July 1989 - 2004

Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, July 1985 - June 1989

Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, September 1980 - June 1985

Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Yale University, January 1976 - June 1980

Instructor, Linguistics Department, M.I.T., 1974-75

VISITING POSITIONS

Visiting Professor, Department of Philosophy, Graduate School & University Center, City University of New York, Spring 1997.

Visiting Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Washington, Summer 1989

Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Washington, January 1986 - June 1986, Summers 87, 88

EDITING

Editor-in-Chief, The Princeton Series in the Foundations of Contemporary Philosophy -- a series of state-of-the-art books on the most important areas of research in contemporary analytic philosophy, written by leading experts in their fields. Each book is a high-level introduction to advanced thinking in an area. Although major questions and approaches are covered, the books are neither neutral surveys of the literature, nor highly specialized contributions filling gaps in already well-known research programs. Instead, each presents the author’s own unifying vision of a field or topic as it is exists today – its recent history and leading themes, its most exciting new developments, and its most important unanswered questions. The premise of the series is that with so much specialized work being done on so many different topics, there is a need to articulate synoptic views of active areas of research, with an eye to developing common understandings, and charting future progress. The books are designed to appeal to advanced undergraduates and graduate students, to provide specialists with the new ideas and unifying perspectives of the leaders of their own fields, and to offer compact and comprehensible explanations of neighboring fields to other working professionals.

In addition creating the series, choosing the authors and topics, and reviewing the manuscripts, I wrote the book in the philosophy of language. Other books in the series include philosophical logic, modality, truth, vagueness, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of physics, philosophy of biology, decision theory, philosophy and economics, normative ethics, meta-ethics, political philosophy, moral psychology, free will and moral responsibility, philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science, philosophy of law, aesthetics, and philosophy of religion.

International Advisory Board, Analytica, a journal for the study of analytic philosophy and its history, published by EL Centro do Estudios de Filosopfia Analitica, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos Press, Lima Peru.

Editorial Advisory Board for Philosophical Perspectives, 2004 -

Consulting Editor, Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Second Edition, Oxford University Press, 2003. In addition to contributing 2 articles, I selected, oversaw and edited 10 others.

Associate Editor, Linguistics and Philosophy, Reidel Publishing Company, April 1993 - Sept. 1997.

Consulting Editor, Bradford Books, M.I.T. Press, 1982-1992.

Associate Editor, Linguistics and Philosophy, Reidel Publishing Company, September 1982-1989.

Topic Editor, Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Oxford University Press, 1987-1989.

Editorial Board, Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, Reidel Publishing Company, 1984-1989

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Outside departmental reviewer and co-author of five-year report evaluating the Department of Philosophy, California State Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo, November 2005, October, 2011.

Member of the Nominating Board for The Philosopher’s Annual, which selects the 10 best articles in philosophy published each year, 2011 -

Member of the board of evaluators for philosophy of language, the history of analytic philosophy, and for overall departmental strength, for the Leiter Report, 2009 -

Advisory Committee to the Program Committee, Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, 2000 -- 2007

Chair of Program Committee for Philosophy of Linguistics, 10th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, 1995

Advisory Committee to the Program Committee, Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, 1993-97.

Visiting Committee for the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, M.I.T., 1985-1996.

Program Committee of the 9th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Section 14, Linguistics and Philosophy of Language, 1991.

NEH Review Panel for Philosophy and Linguistics, Summer Seminar Program for College Teachers, 1980.

Representative from philosophy on the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's "State of the Art Committee On Cognitive Science," 1978. I authored the section on the Philosophy of Language in the Committee's final report

FORTHCOMING PUBLICATIONS

BOOKS

Rethinking Language, Mind, and Meaning: The Hempel Lectures, (Princeton University Press) forthcoming 2015.

Analytic Philosophy in America, and Other Historical and Contemporary Essays, (Princeton University Press). Forthcoming in January of 2014.

The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Vol. 1, The Founding Giants: Frege, Moore, Russell,(Princeton University Press), forthcoming in February of 2014.

Articles

“Epistemic Intensions,” PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH.

“Preface,” Metasemantics, Alexis Burgess and Brett Sherman, eds., Oxford University Press.

“For Want of Cognitive Propositons: A History of Insights and Missed Philosophical Opportunities” in Analytic Philosophy in America, and Other Essays, Princeton University Press, also forthcoming in in Arapinis, Moltmann, and Textor, Act-Based Conceptions ofPropositional Content: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Oxford University Press.

“What is the Frege/Russell Analysis of Quantification?” in Analytic Philosophy in America, and Other Essays, Princeton University Press.

“Language, Meaning, and Information: A Case Study on the Path from Philosophy to Science,” in Analytic Philosophy in America, and Other Essays, Princeton University Press.

“Methodology in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Analytic Philosophy,” in Cappen, Gendler, and Hawthorne, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology, Oxford University Press.

“David Lewis’s Contributions to Philosophy,” forthcoming in David Lewis, edited byBarry Loewer and Jonathan Schaffer, Wiley-Blackwell.

PUBLICATIONS

2009 – to the present

BOOKS

New Thinking about Propositions, with Jeff Speaks, Jeff King (Oxford University Press), 2013.

Philosophy of Language, The Princeton Series in the Foundations of Contemporary Philosophy, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press), 189 pages.

What is Meaning?, Soochow Lectures in Philosophy, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press), 2010, 132 pages.

Philosophical Essays – Vol. 1: Natural Language: What it Means and How We Use It (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press), 2009, 428 pages.

Philosophical Essays-Vol. 2: The Philosophical Significance of Language, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press), 2009, 461 pages.

EDITED BOOK

With Andrei Marmor, Philosophical Foundations of Law and Language, (Oxford: Oxford University Pres), 2011.

Articles

“Cognitive Propositions,” PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES: PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, Volume 27, 2013, 1-23.

“Quine’s Position in the History of Analytic Philosophy,” for A Companion to W.V.O. Quine, edited by Gilbert Harman and Ernie Lepore, Wiley-blackwell, 2013, 432-464.

“Deferentialism: A Post-Originalist Theory of Legal Interpretation,” FORDHAM LAW REVIEW, Vol. 82, No. 2, November 2013, 597-617.

“Two Versions of Millianism” in, Campbell, Joseph, Michael O’Rourke, and Harry Silverstein, eds, Reference and Referring, Topics in Philosophy, Vol 10 (Cambridge: MIT Press), 2012, 83-118.

“Vagueness and the Law,” in Adnrei Marmor, ed., Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Law,(New York: Routledge), 2012, 95-108.

“Propositions,” in Delia Graff Fara and Gillian Russell, eds., The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Routledge Pres, 2012, 209-220.

“Toward a Theory of Interpretation,” THE NYU JOURNAL OF LAW AND LIBERTY, 2011, 6:231-259.

“Kripke on Epistemic and Metaphysical Possibility: Two Routes to the Necessary A Posteriori” for Saul Kripke, Alan Berger, ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 2011, 78-99.

“What Vagueness and Inconsistency Tell us about Interpretation” Marmor and Soames, eds., Philosophical Foundations of Law and Language, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2011, 31-57.

“True at,” ANALYSIS, 71, 1, 2010, 124-133.

“Coordination Problems,” PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Vol. 81, 2010, 464-474.

“What are Natural Kinds?” PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS Vol. 35, Nos: 1 & 2, 2007, 329-342. Actually published 2010.

“Interpreting Legal Texts: What is, and what is not, special about the law,” in Philosophical Essays, Vol. 1, 2009, 403-423.

“The Possibility of Partial Definition,” in Philosophical Essays Volume 2, 2009, 362-381.

“The Gap between Meaning and Assertion: Why what we literally say often differs from what our words literally mean,” in Philosophical Essays, Vol. 1, 2009, 278-297.

“Ontology, Analyticity, and Meaning: The Quine-Carnap Dispute,” in Chalmers, David; Manley, David; and Wasserman, Brian; eds., Metametaphysics: New Essays at the Foundations of Ontology;(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2009, 424-443.

“Meaning, Implicature, and Assertion,” in Dagfinn Follesdal and John Woods, eds., Logos and Language: Essays in Honor of Julius Moravcsik, (London: The Tribute Series, College Publications), 2009.

2004 – 2008

BOOK

Reference and Description: The Case Against Two-Dimensionalism, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press),2005,359 pages.

Articles

“Truth and Meaning – in Perspective,” in Peter French, ed., Truth and its Deformities, MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY, Vol. XXXII, 2008, 1-19. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 1.

“Truthmakers?”, Symposium Truth and Ontology by Trenton Merricks, PHILOSOPHICAL BOOKS, 49, 4, 2008, 317-27.

“Analytic Philosophy in America,” in The Oxford Handbook of American Philosophy, Cheryl Misak, ed., (Oxford University Press), 2008, 449-481.

“Drawing the Line Between Meaning and Implicature – and Relating both to Assertion”, NOUS,42:3, 2008, 529-554; also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 1.

“Why Propositions Can’t be Sets of Truth-Supporting Circumstances,” JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL LOGIC, 37, 2008, 267-276; also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

“No Class: Russell on Contextual Definition and the Elimination of Sets,” PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, 139, 2008, 213-218.

Précis for symposium on Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 2. By Scott Soames (Princeton University Press, 2003), PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, 135,3, 2007, 425-428.

“What we know now that we didn’t know then: Reply to Critics” for symposium on Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Vol. 2. By Scott Soames (Princeton University Press, 2003), PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, 135, 2007, 461-478.

“The Quine-Carnap Debate on Analyticity and Ontology,” SOOCHOW JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, Taipei Taiwan, Number 16, August 2007.

“Actually,” PROCEEDINGS OF THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY, Supplementary Vol. LXXXI, 2007, 251-277. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

“Saul Kripke” BRITANNICA CONCISE ENCYCLOPEDIA, 2007, Encyclopedia Britannica Online:http.britannica.com.ebc/article–259648.

“The Substance and Significance of the Dispute over Two-Dimensionalism: Reply to Dever, Jackson, and Lowe,” Symposium on my Reference and Description (Princeton University Press, 2005), in PHILOSOPHICAL BOOKS, vol. 48, January 2007, 34-49.

“Ambitious Two-Dimensionalism,” in Mathew Davidson, ed., On Sense and Direct Reference: A Reader in the Philosophy of Language, (McGraw-Hill), 2007, 690-718. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

“The Philosophical Significance of the Kripkean Necessary Aposteriori,” PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, Vol. 16, E. Sosa and E, Villanueva (eds.), (Blackwell Publishing Co.), 2006, 287-309. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

“Understanding Assertion,” in Judith Jarvis Thompson and Alex Byrne, eds., Content and Modality: Themes from the Philosophy of Robert Stalnaker, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 222-250. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

“Descriptive Names vs. Descriptive Anaphora,” Symposium on Terms and Truth, by Alan Berger (MIT Press, 2002), in PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH, LXXII, 3, 2006,

665-673.

“Is H2O a liquid, or Water a gas?,” PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Vol. 72, No. 3, 2006, 635-639.

“Hacker’s Complaint,” PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Vol. 56, No. 224, July 2006, pp. 426-435.

Précis” for Symposium on Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Vol. 1: The Dawn of Analysis by Scott Soames (Princeton University Press, 2003), PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, Vol. 129, No. 3, 2006, 605-608.

“What Is History For?: Reply to Critics of The Dawn of Analysis” for Symposium on Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 1, (Princeton University Press, 2003),PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, Vol. 129, No. 3, 2006, 645-665.

“Saul Kripke, the Necessary Aposteriori, and the Two Dimensionalist Heresy” in M. Garcia-Carpintero and J. Macia, eds., The Two-Dimensional Framework: Foundations and Applications, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2006, 272-292.

“Précis” for Symposium on Beyond Rigidity, by Scott Soames (Oxford University Press, 2002), in PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, 128, 2006, 645 – 654.

“Reply to Critics,” (Linsky, Richard, Braun and Sider) for Symposium on Beyond Rigidity in PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, 128, 2006, 711 – 738.

“Philosophical Analysis,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Second Edition, Macmillan, 2006, Volume 1, 144 – 157.

“Propositional Attitudes,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Second Edition, Macmillan, 2006, Volume 8, 74 – 79.

“Entailment, Presupposition, and Implicature,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Second Edition, Macmillan, 2006, Volume 3, 250–254.

“Reply to Pincock,” _RUSSELL_: THE JOURNAL OF BERTRAND RUSSELL STUDIES, Vo. 25, No. 2, winter 2005-06, 172-7.

“Why Incomplete Definite Descriptions do not Defeat Russell’s Theory of Descriptions,” TEOREMA, Vol. XXIV, No. 3, 2005, 7-30. TEOREMA is a Spanish Journal, the issue is special edition commemorating 100th anniversary of “On Denoting.” Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 1.

“Reference and Description”, Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, Frank Jackson and Michael Smith, editors, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 397- 425.

“Beyond Rigidity: Reply to McKinsey,” CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, March 2005, 169-178.

“Reply to Ezcurdia and Gomez-Torrente,” Response to review essays on my Beyond Rigidity (New York: Oxford University Press) 2002, in the Spanish / English journal CRITICA, Vol. 36, Issue 108, December, 2004, 83-114.

“Knowledge of Manifest Natural Kinds,” FACTA PHILOSOPHICA, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2004, 159-181. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

“Naming and Asserting” in Semantics vs. Pragmatics edited by Zoltan Szabo, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2004, 356-382. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 1.

1999 - 2003

BOOKS

Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 1: The Dawn of Analysis, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press), 2003, 430 pages.

Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volume 2:The Age of Meaning (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press), 2003, 501 pages.

Beyond Rigidity: The Unfinished Semantic Agenda of Naming and Necessity, (New York: Oxford University Press) 2002, 379 pages.

Understanding Truth, (New York: Oxford University Press)1999, 268 pages.

Ariticles

“Higher-Order Vagueness for Partially Defined Predicates,” in Liars and Heaps: New Essays on Paradox, edited by J.C. Beall and Michael Glanzberg, (New York and Oxford: OUP) 2003, 128-50. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

“Understanding Deflationism,” PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES, Vol. 17, 2003, 369-383. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

“Truth and Meaning: The Role of Truth in the Semantics of Propositional Attitude Ascriptions,” in Proceedings of the 7th International Colloquium on Cognitive Science, edited by Kepa Korta and Jesus M. Larrazabal, (Dordrecht: Kluwer),2003, 21-44.

“Philosophy of Language,” Overview article in the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Second Edition, William Frawley Editor in Chief, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), 2003, 268-275.

“Pragmatics and Contextual Semantics,” Overview article in the Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Second Edition, William Frawley Editor in Chief, (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press), 2003, 379-381.

“Précis to Understanding Truth”, and “Replies to Gupta, McGrath, Tappenden, and Williamson,” Book Symposium in PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH Vol. LXV, No. 2, September 2002, 397-401 and 429-452.

"The Indeterminacy of Translation and the Inscrutability of Reference", THE CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Volume 29, Number 3, 1999, 321–370.

1994 - 1998

"The Modal Argument: Wide Scope and Rigidified Descriptions," NOUS, Vol. XXXII, No. 1, 1998, 1-22. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

"Facts, Truth Conditions, and the Skeptical Solution to the Rule-Following Paradox", in PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES, Vol. 12, Language, Mind and Ontology, James Tomberlin, ed., Blackwell, 1998, 313–348. Also in Philosophical Essays, Vol. 2.

"Skepticism about Meaning: Indeterminacy, Normativity, and the Rule Following Paradox", THE CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Supplementary Volume 23, (1997), Meaning and Reference, Ali A. Kazmi (ed.), 1998, 211–249. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

"More Revisionism about Reference," in The New Theory of Reference, P. W. Humphreys and J. H. Fetzer (eds.), Kluwer,

1998, 65-87.

"The Truth about Deflationism," PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, Vol. 8,

Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Ridgeview Publishing Co., Atascadero California, 1997, 1-44.

"Reply to Garcia-Carpintero and Richard," PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES, Vol. 8, Enrique Villanueva (ed.), Ridgeview Publishing Co., Atascadero California, 1997, 79-93.

"Beyond Singular Propositions?," THE CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 25, No. 4, 1995, 515-550.

"T-Sentences," in Modality, Morality, and Belief: Essays in

Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus, edited by Asher, Raffman, and

Sinnott-Armstrong, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 250-270.

“Revisionism about Reference: A Reply to Smith”, SYNTHESE, 104/2, 1995, 191-216.

"Donnellan's Referential / Attributive Distinction," PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, 73, 1994, 149-168. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 1.

"Attitudes and Anaphora, PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES, Vol. 8, Philosophy of Language and Logic, edited by James Tomberlin, Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1994, 251-272. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

1989 – 1993

"Introduction to Section on Truth and Meaning," in Basic

Topics in the Philosophy of Language: a collection of readings edited by R. M. Harnish, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993, 493-516.

"Truth, Meaning, and Understanding," PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, 65, 1992, 17-35. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 1.

"The Necessity Argument," LINGUISTICS AND PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 14, 1991, 575-580. Also in Philosophical Essays, Vol. 1.

"Philosophy of Language: An Overview," Oxford International Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Vol. 3, William Bright editor-in-chief, 1991, 188-92.

"Pronouns and Propositional Attitudes," in THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY, Vol. XC, 1990, 191-212.

"Belief and Mental Representation," in Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, Volume 1: Information, Language and Cognition, edited by Philip Hanson, University of British Columbia Press, 1990, 217-246. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 2.

"Semantics and Semantic Competence," PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES, Volume 3: Philosophy of Mind and Action Theory, 1989, 575-596. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 1.

"Direct Reference and Propositional Attitudes," in Themes from Kaplan, edited by Joseph Almog, John Perry, and Howard Wettstein, Oxford University Press, 1989, 393-419.

Chapter on Presupposition in Handbook of Philosophical Logic, Volume 4: Topics in the Philosophy of Language, edited by D. Gabbay and F. Guenthner, Reidel, 1989, 553-616. Also in Philosophical Essays, Volume 1.

"Subject-Auxiliary Inversion and Gaps in Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar," LINGUISTICS AND PHILOSOPHY, Volume 12, No. 3, 1989, 373-82.

Review of Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar by G. Gazdar, E. Klein, G. Pullum and I. Sag, THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW, Volume XCVIII, No. 4, 1989, 556-566.

Review of Collected Papers by Gareth Evans, THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, LXXXVI, No. 3, 1989, 141-156.

1984 – 1988

EDITED BOOK

Propositions and Attitudes, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, (New York: Oxford University Press) 1988. Edited, with an introduction, by Nathan Salmon and Scott Soames.

Aarticles

Review of Knowing Who, by Stephen Boer and William Lycan, THE JOURNAL OF SYMBOLIC LOGIC, Volume 53, No. 2, 1988, 657-659.