My dissertation, with the tentative title Lead sheets for a fake book, is comprised of three interrelated essays on some puzzles about words like fake and real. The first chapter deals with privative predicates like is fake. Given some standard assumptions, sentences like an apple in the bowl is fake can appear quite anomalous. Supposing that fake apples are not apples, that an apple is an existential quantifier over apples, and that sentences express propositions, these sentences seem to express contradictions. I give a solution
I've presented this work in various stages at a number of places over the past couple of years.
"Privative Reference"
New Work on Reference, King's College London, May 2025
"Slurs and Focus" (with Jonathan Caleb Kendrick)
1st Dortmund Conference on Philosophy and Society, TU Dortmund, October 2024
"Evidentially expressive adjectives"
3rd Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Language Association, UMass Amherst, September 2024
"Evidence representation and evidential expressivism"
Exploring Expressivism in Ethics Language and Metaphysics, York University, April 2023
"Knowledge, assertion, and judgements of personal taste"
WMU Graduate Conference, Western Michigan University, January 2023
Graduate Philosophy Colloquium, UT Austin, November 2022