Mitchell S. Green
Department of Philosophy, 104 Cocke Hall, University of Virginia,
P.O. Box 400780, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4780.
(434) 924-6922; msg6m at virginia dot edu

I am the NEH/Horace Goldsmith Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Virginia.  I have held fellowships from the Andrew Mellon Foundation, The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, The Mead Endowment, The University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Philosophy of Science, the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, the University of Virginia’s Teaching Resource Center, and the University of Virginia’s Shannon Center for Advanced Studies.

My specializations are in Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, and Aesthetics. I am also interested in Metaphysics, Decision Theory, the Theory of Action, and the history of analytic philosophy. I have advised dissertations on the Philosophy of Language and Aesthetics, and, master's theses in the Philosophy of Law, Epistemology, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Mind, and Philosophy of Language. I regularly teach courses of interest to students in Cognitive Science and in Linguistics, and I sit on U.Va.'s Linguistics Committee.  I have supervised various Undergraduate Honors/Distinguished Majors Theses, Master's Theses, and Dissertations.   I am faculty advisor to the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society.

Click here for my curriculum vitae.

My current research interests include the evolutionary biology of communication, speech acts and their role in conversation, empathy, self-knowledge, self-expression, and attitude ascription. 

Projects:

For 2009-2012 I am a Co-PI (with Dorit Bar-On, UNC) on Grant #0925975 from the National Science Foundation in support of the project: Expression, Communication and the Origins of Meaning.

I am a co-organizer for ”Lies We Can Believe In,” a workshop at the University of Virginia, March 26-27, co-organized with Eve Danzinger (Anthropology) and Angeline Lillard (Psychology

For 2009-12 I am directing the Hi-Phi Project, which explores incorporating philosophical pedagogy into Virginia high schools.

I am a panelist on AskPhilosophers.org, where anyone can post questions for a panel of about thirty professional philosophers on any topic in philosophy.

Books:

Self-Expression, Oxford University Press (U.K.), 2007. Also available on Oxford Scholarship Online. This book will be the subject of a symposium in the journal Acta Analytica, with comments by John Eriksson, Mike Martin, and Joe Moore, and replies by me.	Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality and the First Person, edited by myself and John Williams, Oxford University Press (U.K.), 2007.	Engaging Philosophy: A Brief Introduction (2006, Hackett Publishing). Also available as an e-book at e-books.com.

Articles:

‘Précis of Self-Expression,’ forthcoming in an issue of Acta Analytica containing a symposium on Self-Expression, 2010.	‘Replies to Eriksson, Martin and Moore,’ forthcoming in an issue of Acta Analytica containing a symposium on Self-Expression, 2010.	‘Language Understanding and Knowledge of Meaning,’ forthcoming in The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, Volume IV.	‘Lionspeak: Expression, Meaning and Communication,’ with Dorit Bar-On, forthcoming in E. Rubenstein (ed.) Self, Language and World (Ridgeview).	‘Showing and Meaning: How We Make Our Ideas Clear,’ to appear in Meaning and Analysis: Themes from H.P. Grice, edited by Klaus Petrus (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010).	‘Moore’s Paradox, Truth and Accuracy: A Reply to Lawlor and Perry’ (with J. Williams) to appear in Acta Analytica.
“How and What Can We Learn from Literature?” in Hagberg and Jost (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Literature.	"Speech Acts, the Handicap Principle and the Expression of Psychological States," Mind and Language, vol. 24 (April, 2009): 139-63.	"Empathy, Expression, and What Artworks Have to Teach," in G. Hagberg (ed.) Art and Ethical Criticism (Blackwell, 2008): 95-122.	"Expression, Indication and Showing What’s Within," Philosophical Studies 137 (2008): 389-98.	“How Do Speech Acts Express Psychological States?,” in Tsohatzidis (ed.) John Searle's Philosophy of Language: Force, Meaning and Mind (Cambridge, 2007): 267-84.	"Direct Reference, Empty Names, and Implicature," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (2007): 419-37.
“Speech Acts,” in the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007).	"Moorean Absurdity and Showing What's Within," in Moore's Paradox (2007): 189-214.	"Introduction," with John Williams, in Moore's Paradox (2007): 3-35.	"You Don’t See With Your Eyes, You Perceive With Your Mind," in D. Darby and T. Shelby (eds.) Hip Hop and Philosophy, with a preface by Cornel West (Open Court, 2005): 27-37.	"Intention and Authenticity in Facial Expressions of Pain", in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (2003): 460-1. (Click here for the full text of the BBS symposium in which this is a peer commentary.)	"Grice's Frown: On Meaning and Expression", in G. Meggle and C. Plunze (eds.) Saying, Meaning, Implicating (University of Leipzig Press, 2003): 100-119.
"The Inferential Significance of Frege's Assertion Sign," Facta Philosophica Vol. 4, No. 2 (2002): 201-229.	"The Status of Supposition," Nous Vol. 34 (2000): 376-399.	"Illocutionary Force and Semantic Content," Linguistics and Philosophy Vol. 23 (2000): 435-473.	"Attitude Ascription's Affinity to Measurement", International Journal of Philosophical Studies, vol. 7 (1999), pp. 323-348.	"Moore's Many Paradoxes," Philosophical Papers Vol. 28 (1999): 97-109.	"On the Autonomy of Linguistic Meaning," Mind Vol. 106 (April, 1997), pp. 217-244.
"Direct Reference and Implicature," Philosophical Studies Vol. 91 (July, 1998), pp. 61-90.	"Illocutions, Implicata, and What a Conversation Requires," Pragmatics and Cognition Vol. 7 (1999), pp. 65-91.	"Symmetry Arguments for Cooperation in the Prisoners' Dilemma" (with C. Bicchieri) in Contemporary Action Theory: The Philosophy and Logic of Social Action (Kluwer, 1997, pp. 229-49). Reprinted in R. Jeffrey, B. Skyrms, and C. Bicchieri (eds.) The Logic of Strategy (Oxford, 1999).	"Indeterminism and the Thin Red Line," (with N. Belnap) in Philosophical Perspectives 8: Logic and Language (1994), pp. 365-388. Reprinted in Facing the Future (Oxford University Press, 2001).	"Quantity, Volubility, and Some Varieties of Discourse," Linguistics and Philosophy, vol. 18 (1995), pp. 83-112.	"Reflections on Reflection: Van Fraassen on Belief," (with C. Hitchcock) Synthese, vol. 98 (1994), pp. 297-324.

Book Reviews:

Review of N. Zangwill, Aesthetic Creation (Oxford, 2007), Analysis, vol. 69 (2009): 399-401.

Review of W. Davis, Implicature: Intention, Convention, and Principle in the Failure of Gricean Theory (Cambridge, 1998), Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 65 (2002): 241-4.

Review of Michael Beaney, Frege Making Sense (Duckworth, 1996), Mind, vol. 108 (1999): 567-70.

Review of Michael Dummett, Origins of Analytic Philosophy (Harvard, 1994), The Philosophical Review, vol. 104 (1995), pp. 613-615.

Encyclopedia Entries:

‘Speech Acts,’ forthcoming in O’Connor (ed.) A Companion to the Philosophy of Action (Wiley-Blackwell).

‘Saul Kripke,’ in E. Lepore (ed.) The Thoemmes Dictionary of Major American Philosophers (2005).

‘Assertion,’ in the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2^nd Ed. (2005).

‘Imperative Logic’ , in E. Craig (ed.) The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1997).

‘Truthtelling’ , in E. Freeman and P. Werhane (eds.) The Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethics, 2nd Ed. (1997).

Some Recent Talks:

•’The Evolution of Language: Some Constraints On a Theory,’ Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, October 27, 2009.

•’Evolutionary Biology Meets the Philosophy of Language,’ Washington University in St. Louis, September 17, 2009.

•’Language Understanding and Knowledge of Meaning,’ University of Missouri in St. Louis, September 18, 2009; and as a plenary lecture at the Meaning, Understanding and Knowledge Conference, Riga, Latvia, August, 2009.

•‘Philosophical Dimensions of the Evolution of Language,’ Sofia University, June 1-5.

•‘Replies to Bar-On and Martin,’ part of an Author Meets Critics session for Self-Expression, with comments from Dorit Bar-On (UNC), and Michael Martin (Berkeley/UCL), APA Central Division, Chicago, February, 2009.

• ‘Rand, Art and Metaphysical Mirroring,’ invited presentation to the Objectivist Discussion Group, APA Eastern Division, Philadelphia, December 28, 2008.

• ‘Expressive Communication,’ invited presentation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, September 12, 2008.

• ‘Semantic Compositionality As an Empirical Hypothesis,’ Lima/Virginia Philosophical Encounter, Tarma, Peru, August, 2008.

• ‘Learning from Fiction,’ invited presentation, Peruvian Society for Analytic Philosophy, Lima, August 18, 2008.

• ‘Brute Force: The Strategic Origins of Meaning and Speech Acts’, invited presentation, Arizona State University, October 3, 2008.

---invited presentation, Varna International Philosophical Conference, Varna, Bulgaria, June 2, 2008.

---invited presentation, Northwestern University Phil/Linguistics Working Group, December 7, 2007.

• ‘Imperatives, Implicature, and Ross’s “Paradox,”’ American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, March, 2008.

• ‘Illocutionary Norms,’ invited presentation, 10th International Pragmatics Conference, Goteborg, Sweden, July 12, 2007.

• ‘Stainton, Speech Acts, and Acts of Speech,’ invited presentation, Canadian Philosophical Association, Saskatoon, Canada, May 28, 2007.

• ‘Privileged Access, Neo-expressivism, and Qualia,’ invited presentation, Georgetown University, May 11, 2007.

• ‘Animal and Human Communication: Bridging the Gap,’

—invited presentation, Singapore Management University, January 5, 2007,

—invited presentation, National University of Singapore, January 16, 2007.

—invited presentation, Reunions Seminars, University of Virginia, June 2, 2007.

• ‘Rationality and the Unconscious’, invited presentation, Singapore Management University, January 12, 2007.

• ‘How Speech Acts Express Psychological States’

—competitive submission, Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie, VI, Berlin, September 13, 2006.

—invited presentation, Department of Philosophy, Western Michigan University, October 19, 2006.

—invited presentation, Virginia Philosophical Association, Richmond, VA, October 27, 2006.

—invited presentation, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, November 3, 2006.

—invited presentation, Department of Philosophy, Northwestern University, November 17, 2006.

—invited presentation, Department of Philosophy, Virginia Tech, December 1, 2006.

—invited presentation, Singapore Management University, January 19, 2007.

Some Upcoming Talks/Lectures/Workshops:

•’Norms of Assertion: A Perspective from Evolutionary Game Theory,’ a presentation to the Workshop on Assertion and Sincerity, Sheffield University, December, 2009.

•A series of invited talks at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, December, 2009.

•A commentator (responding to Liz Camp and Mark Richard) at a symposium on ‘Affective Language and Truth-Conditional Semantics,’ Eastern APA, New York, December, 2009.

•A presentation to a Workshop on Pictorial Representation and Meaning, National University of Singapore, January 15-6, 2010.

•”Lies We Can Believe In,” a workshop at the University of Virginia, March 26-27, co-organized with Eve Danzinger (Anthropology) and Angeline Lillard (Psychology).

•A presentation at the Joint Session of the Aristotelian Society, University College Dublin, July 2010.

Distractions: