I am a philosopher of language, with growing side interests in epistemology and philosophy of mind. My work so far has focused on modal talk, on foundational issues in the study of meaning, and on the use of alternatives and scalar inferences in language. Many of my papers use formal techniques, but I am mainly interested in conceptual and philosophical issues.

During my fellowship at the Human Abilities Centre, I will be working on a project connecting modality and indeterminacy. On standard theories in logic and philosophy of language, the basic units of modal talk are possible worlds, construed as maximal consistent states of affairs. But other notions are available. For example, possibility semantics for modal logics are based on a notion of a possibility, i.e. a modal entity that settles some facts as true or false and leaves others indeterminate. I will explore uses of possibility semantics to explain some features of our modal talk. I am particularly interested in cases where indeterminacy is most prominent, such as talk about the future and counterfactual talk.