1
SCOTT SOAMES
USC School of Philosophy
3709 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA 90089-0451
/ (213) 740-0798
October 2017
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 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
Franklin Pease Garcia Visiting Professor, Department of Humanities, Catholic Pontifical University of Peru, Lima Peru, May 18 – June 25, 2015.
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 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 literature surveys, nor highly specialized contributions filling gaps in already well-known research programs. Instead, each presents the author’s unifying vision of a field or topic as it is exists today – its recent history and leading themes, its significant new developments, and its most important unanswered questions. The series premise is that with so much specialized work being done on so many topics, there is a need to articulate synoptic views of active research areas, 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 new ideas and unifying perspectives, and to offer comprehensible explanations of neighboring fields to other working professionals.
In addition to creating the series, choosing the authors and topics, and reviewing the manuscripts, I wrote the book in the Philosophy of Language. Otherpublished books in the series include Philosophical Logic, Philosophy of Law, Truth, Epistemology, Philosophy of Physics,Philosophy of Biology, and Philosophy of Mathematics. Books under contract and currently in progress include Philosophy of Natural Science, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind,Decision Theory, Ethics, Metaethics,Moral Responsibility,Philosophy of Religion, and Moral Psychologyand Agency.
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
The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Vol. 2, A New Philosophical Vision,(Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press)
El Surgimiento de la Filosophia Analytica (translation of the First Lima Lectures), Tecnos Press (a division of the Anaya Publishing Group in Spain) in cooperation with the University Press of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.
La Filosofia Analitica llega a la Mayoria de Edad: Wittgenstein, Schlick, Carnap, Godel, and Tarski(translation of the Second Lima Lectures), Tecnos Press (a division of the Anaya Publishing Group in Spain) in cooperation with the University Press of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.
ARTICLES
“Kripke on Mind-Body Identity,” forthcoming in Dale Jacquette, ed., The Bloomsbury Companion to the Philosophy of Consciousness, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing).
“Cognitive Propositions in Realist Linguistics,” forthcoming inProceedings of the the Foundations of Linguistics Conference, Braunschweig Institute of Technology, Braunschweig, Germany, June 27-27, 2015, Christina Behme and Martin Neef, eds.
“Rejecting Excluded Middle,” The Sorites Paradox, Oms and Zardini, eds., Cambridge University Press.
“Analytic Philosophy of Language: From First Philosophy to the Foundations of the Science of Language,” Cambridge History of Philosophy: 1945-2010, Becker and Thomson, eds. Cambridge University Press.
“Antonin Scalia’s Philosophy of Legal Interpretation,” Justice Scalia: Rhetoric and the Rule of Law, Brian Slocum, ed., Chicago University Press.
PUBLICATIONS
2014 – to the present
BOOKS
Rethinking Language, Mind, and Meaning: The Hempel Lectures, (Princeton University Press), 2015, 241 pages.
The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Vol. 1, The Founding Giants: Frege, Moore, Russell,(Princeton University Press), 2014, 657 pages
Analytic Philosophy in America, and Other Historical and Contemporary Essays, (Princeton University Press),2014, 350 pages.
New Thinking about Propositions, with Jeff Speaks, Jeff King (Oxford University Press), 2014, 252 pages.
Articles
“Deferentialism, Living Originalism, and the Constitution,” Brian Slocum, ed., The Nature of Legal Interpretation: What jurists can learn about legal interpretation from linguistics and philosophy,(Chicago: University of Chicago Press)2017,218-240.
“Reply to Rosen,” in Brian Slocum, ed., The Nature of Legal Interpretation, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 2017, 272-281.
“The Changing Role of Language in Analytic Philosophy,” in Aaron Preston, ed., Analytic Philosophy: An Interpretive History, (New York: Routledge)34-51.
Precis: Rethinking Language, Mind, and Meaning, PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, vol. 173, No. 9,2016, 2579-2532.
“Yes, Explanation is All We Have,” PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIEs, Vol. 173, No. 9, 2016, 2565-2573.
“Propositions, the Tractatus, and “The Single Great Problem of Philosophy,” CRITIC, vol. 48, No. 143, 2016, 3-19.
“Propositions as Cognitive Acts,” SYNTHESE: An International Journal of Epistemology, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science,2016, published first on Aug., 2, 2016 in the “Online First” electronic version of the journal.
“Methodology in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Analytic Philosophy,” in Cappelen, Gendler, and Hawthorne, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology, (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2016, 49-68. Reprinted in Soames, Analytic Philosophy in America, and Other Historical and Contemporary Essays, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton U. Press),2014, 139-166.
“Précis”; Symposium onThe Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Volume 1. By Scott Soames (Princeton University Press, 2015), PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, 2015, vol. 172, No. 6, pp. 1647-1650.
“Reply to Critics” (Beaney, Kelly and McGrath, Pigden), Symposium onThe Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Volume 1. By Scott Soames (Princeton University Press, 2015), PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, vol. 172, No. 6, pp. 1681-1696.
“David Lewis’s Place in Analytic Philosophy,” in A Companion to David Lewis, edited byBarry Loewer and Jonathan Schaffer, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, 80-98.
“Epistemic Intensions,” PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH, LXXXIX, No. 1, 2014, 986-994.
“Preface,” Metasemantics, Alexis Burgess and Brett Sherman, eds., Oxford University Press, 2014.
“For Want of Cognitive Propositons: A History of Insights and Missed Philosophical Opportunities” in Analytic Philosophy in America, and Other Essays, Princeton University Press, 2014, 71-103.
“What is the Frege/Russell Analysis of Quantification?” in Analytic Philosophy in America, and Other Essays, Princeton University Press, 2014, 191-199.
“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, 2014, 60-70.
2009-2013
BOOKS
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, 479-501.
“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 Andrei 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.
Articles
“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.