Research / Forschung

I typically work on issues that are located at the intersection of the philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and meta-philosophy.

Topics of interest to me include predicates and rigidity, Kripkeanism, two-dimensional semantics, modal epistemology, thought experiments and conceptual analysis, metaphysical modality, armchair methods of philosophical enquiry, conceptual engineering and the like.

• To learn about my publications and current work in progress, see my publications page.
• For research conducted in our „research group in theoretical philosophy“, see the group's website.
• For workshops and events, past and present, also see see the group's website.

I have just begun a project on open texture; see below.

Much of my more recent work clusters around issues related to an externalist approach I call paradigm term semantics; see the section below.

More recently, I have developed an interest in conceptual engineering and its normative contentions that broadens my former work on conceptual analysis. See the section below.

This project figures as sub-project B05 "Open Texture as a Scource of Linguistic Creativity" in the CRC 1646 "Linguistic Creativity in Communication" which you find here. I pursue this project together with Julia Zakkou (HHU Düsseldorf) and in collaboration with Steffen Koch (Bielefeld).

Similar to vagueness, open texture is the indeterminacy we often find when we consider whether a predicate applies to a new (or newly considered) object: Does ‘sandwich’ apply to burritos (Ludlow 2014), does ‘money’ apply to bitcoin (Vecht 2020), do ‘intelligence’ and ‘creativity’ apply to generative AI systems? The straightforward answer appears to be: there is no fact of the matter here. Nothing in the established meaning of these predicates or the properties of these objects settles the application one way or the other – there is nothing for us to find out, we rather need to decide.

If this is right, then our language is beset by a widespread indeterminacy besides vagueness, and we should inquire into its nature, its grounds, and its wider consequences - such as its foundational role in the emergence of linguistic creativity.

Combining approaches from semantics, pragmatics, and meta-semantics, this is precisely what our project is doing. We proceed by relating the phenomenon of open texture to well-explored theoretical issues in the philosophy of language and linguistics, notably the role of semantic indecision and the impact of semantic externalism (metasemantics), the relation of open texture to standard vagueness (semantics), and the strategies for speakers to extend application via metaphorical extension/meaning transfer/loose use and to contextually negotiate meanings (pragmatics). We expect our approach to explain how open texture grounds a specific type of linguistic creativity, and to bring out how open texture fares vis-à-vis rival explanations of language’s power to accommodate apparent indeterminacy.

• areas: semantics, meta-semantics, pragmatics, linguistics
• status: getting started

Conceptual analysis aims to solve philosophical problems by uncovering what key terms actually mean. Conceptual engineering rather focusses on ameliorating the meanings of these terms. Such an amelioration can concern diverse dimensions of evaluation – it can e.g. be representational, cognitive, practical, moral, and/or political.

Understood as a technique, conceptual engineering raises analytical issues, such as: What determines the meaning of a concept ‘F’, how can we tell how good ‘F’ fares along some pertinent dimension(s) of evaluation, how, if at all, can we intentionally change the meaning of a term already in use, and how can we justifiably balance representational goodness against political or moral aptness.

Understood as a methodology, conceptual engineering raises normative questions about the aims and methods of philosophy. Revisionist conceptual engineers insist that we move from philosophy understood as an essentially descriptivist venture inquiring “What is our concept of F?” to philosophy understood as a normative undertaking asking “What should our concept of F be?”.

My project explores the possibility, means and mechanisms of an intentional change in meaning. The main line of research, however, concerns the normative force and the methodological implications of conceptual engineering understood as a philosophical methodology, especially the ideas that theorists are obliged to ameliorate their concepts, and the revisionist idea that conceptual engineering supports a general shift from descriptive to normative questions when it comes to conceptual dealings in philosophy.

• areas: metaphilosophy, normative methodology

• status: One paper published with Inquiry. Presently, I'm working on two papers on conceptual engineering -- one on the importance of implementation (submitted) and one on conceptual engineering and linguistic relativity. More to come.

Unser Buch "Die dunkle Seite der Sprache. Wie Worte ausgrenzen, abwerten und manipulieren", geschrieben von Nikola Kompa, Tim Henning und mir, ist im März 2025 bei C.H.Beck erschienen.

Im Buch nehmen wir uns sechs sprachliche Phänomene vor - nämlich: Metaphern, generische Aussagen, Herabsetzungswörter, kommunkative Entmächtigung, Akkommodation, Lügen & Bullshitting - und erkunden die zugrundeliegenden Mechanismen in ihrer hellen und vor allem in ihrer dunklen Spielart.

Hier ein wenig Presseecho zum Buch. Viel Spaß!

• Kurzinterview zum Buch auf radioeins (rbb)
• Rezension in der taz.
• Gruppeninterview auf der Buchmessen im taz-Streaming.

This project is an ongoing concern of mine since about 2016. I deem it important: seeing that certain expressions are paradigm terms tells us much of how they work, and how we should treat them.

Paradigm terms are expressions whose application is governed by a specific relation and anchored in specific actual items or ‘paradigm(s)’. For illustration, think of how ‘is one meter long’ was set to apply to anything bearing is of the same length as to the actual prototype du metre, a metal bar stored in Paris. The semantics of a paradigm predicate ‘F’ is captured by its value structure <R, O@>, combining a relation R and a set of actual paradigms O@. A paradigm term ‘F’ with the value structure <R, O@> will apply to anything x anywhere bearing R to the F-paradigms in O@.

The research programme systematically explores the role and import of paradigm terms and their deceptively simple (meta-)semantics for vernacular and scientific language. Paradigm term semantics devises a novel way to realize the externalist conviction that linguistic meaning is regularly fixed by the world. It provides a unifying scheme for expressions as diverse as ‘is one meter long’, ‘is gold’ , ‘is a star’, ‘has been Tom-Sawyered’, and ‘is a revolution’, and it thereby brings out that the proper linguistic taxon is the category of paradigm terms, rather than the usually consider class of natural kind expressions. At the same time, paradigm term semantics solves classic problems for externalism, and it avoids committing to metaphysical essentialism in its semantic format.

This research has far reaching implications for a variety of intersecting issues across multiple areas of philosophy such as e.g. the philosophy of language (predicate meaning, rigidity, Kripkeanism, what form a two-dimensional semantics should take), epistemology (modal knowledge, conceptual knowledge, the interplay of conceptual and worldy factors in inquiry), and the philosophy of science (natural kind terms, scientific essentialism, conceptual structure in scientific theories).

• areas: philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of science, metaphilosophy.#
• status: three papers published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Quarterly and Erkenntnis. One paper in a volume on Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology.