Mitchell S

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

I am a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia. I have held fellowships and/or grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center, the American Philosophical Association, The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, The “Boots” Mead Endowment, the Squire Family Foundation, 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.

I serve on the University of Virginia’s Faculty Senate, and on the Steering Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences. I am also on the Advisory Board for the Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures.

Soon I’ll be offering my Know Thyself course on COURSERA.

My specializations are in Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, and Aesthetics. I am also interested in the philosophy of biology, the metaphysics of time, 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.

My current research interests include the evolutionary biology of communication, speech acts and their role in conversation, empathy, self-knowledge, self-expression, attitude ascription, and the epistemic value(s) of works of art. Click here for my curriculum vitae.

Projects:

For 2009-2013 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 (with Dorit Bar-On, UNC) of the Protolanguage Workshop, to be held March 30-1, 2012, at the University of Virginia.

I direct the High-Phi Project, which supports philosophical inquiry in America’s high schools. This Project includes an NEH-sponsored Philosophy Institute for high school teachers, an annual essay contest, and an undergraduate internship course.

I am working with the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities to develop Socratic Method Online, which enables users to explore philosophical problems in a dialectical online environment, and which is covered in a recent Time article.

Books:

Self-Expression, Oxford University Press (U.K.), 2007. Also available on Oxford Scholarship Online. Reviews may be found in the British Journal of Aesthetics, the Philosophical Quarterly, Metapsychology, Mind, the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and Analytic Philosophy.

Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality and the First Person, edited by myself and John Williams, Oxford University Press (U.K.), 2007. A review in Notre Dame Phil. Reviews may be found here.

Engaging Philosophy: A Brief Introduction (2006, Hackett Publishing). Also available as an e-book at e-books.com.

Public Fora:

‘On the Origins of Meaning and Communication,’ in the ACLS’s Focus on Research Series (2011)

‘How to Express Yourself: Refinements and Elaborations on the Central Ideas of Self-Expression,’ in Protosociology’s Contemporary Philosophy Forum (2011).

‘Can Socratic Method Be Digitized?’, podcast of a talk at the Humanities in a Digital Age Symposium, November, 2011. (Starts at 25 min. mark.)

Articles:

‘Perceiving Emotions,’ in the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, vol. 89 (2010), pp. 45-61.	‘Précis of Self-Expression,’ and ‘Replies to Eriksson, Martin and Moore,’ both in a special issue of Acta Analytica (vol. 25) containing a symposium on Self-Expression (2010).	‘Language Understanding and Knowledge of Meaning,’ in The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, Volume V (2010), pp. 1-17.	‘Lionspeak : Expression, Meaning and Communication ,’ with Dorit Bar-On, in E. Rubenstein (ed.) Self, Language and World (Ridgeview, 2010), pp. 89-106.	‘Showing and Meaning: How We Make Our Ideas Clear,’ in Meaning and Analysis: New Essays on 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) Acta Analytica, vol. 26 (2011): pp. 243-55.
“How and What Can We Learn from Fiction?” in Hagberg and Jost (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to the Philosophy of Literature (2010), pp. 350-66.	"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.