PAPERS


Iconic and symbolic representation

The Iconic-Symbolic Spectrum
Philosophical Review 132 (4): 579-627 (2023)
A theory of iconic and symbolic representation.
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Varieties of Iconicity
with Valeria Giardino
Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6 (1):1-25 (2015)
An overview of the varieties of iconic representational systems and their functional properties.
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Contents of perception

Visual Objects (in progress)
Visual singular contents are intentional objects, not concrete referents or perceptual modes of presentation.
The Structure of Visual Content (under review)
A structured theory of visual content, in which clusters of objects and properties populate direction-filled visual arrays.
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Semantics of pictures and maps

Map Semantics and the Geography of Meaning
In Ernest Lepore & Luvell Anderson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Applied Philosophy of Language. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 489-522 (2024)
Situates maps within the broader landscape of semiotic meaning, then develops a projection-based semantics for maps, focusing on space, lines, and labels.
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Review of Modeling the Meanings of Pictures
Philosophical Review 131 (3):373-378 (2022)
Review of John Kulvicki's 2021 book on pictorial meaning.
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Semantics of Pictorial Space
Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (4):847-887 (2021)
Foundations of projection-based semantics for pictorial representation.
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Tagging: semantics at the iconic/symbolic interface
In Julian J. Schlöder, Dean McHugh & Floris Roelofsen (eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd Amsterdam Colloquium. pp. 11-20 (2019)
A compositional semantic analysis of tagging, in which regions of a picture are annotated with words or other symbols.
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Content and Target in Pictorial Representation
Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5 (33) (2018)
Introduces a view of pictorial representation which distinguishes a picture's target, its singular content, and argues against descriptivist theories of singular content.
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Beyond Resemblance
Philosophical Review 122 (2):215-287 (2013)
An extended argument against resemblance-based theories of depiction, and in favor of a projection-based approach.
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Film as discourse

Spatial Coherence in Narrative Film
In Gerhard Preyer (ed.), Discourse and Coherence
A theory of film space: its structure, what makes it coherent, and how spatial coherence interacts with viewpoint constraints.
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Showing Seeing in Film
with Samuel Cumming, Elsi Kaiser, and Rory Kelly
Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 7 (27):730-756 (2021)
An investigation of two film conventions for representing what a character sees: point-of-view (POV) and sight link; an extension of our project on viewpoint constraints in film.
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Conventions of Viewpoint Coherence in Film
with Samuel Cumming and Rory Kelly
Philosophers' Imprint 17 (1):1-28 (2017)
A defense of a semantic view of film, as against a purely pragmatic view, and a close analysis of two semantic conventions: the X-Constraint (a.k.a. the 180° rule) and the T-Constraint.
A video essay by Koby Leff based on this paper.
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Emoji, modality, and meaning

A semantics of face emoji in discourse
with Patrick Georg Grosz, Christian De Leon, and Elsi Kaiser
Linguistics and Philosophy 46 (4):905-957 (2023)
A semantic account of the contribution of face emoji to linguistic discourse.
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Counterfactuals and modality
Linguistics and Philosophy 44 (6):1255-1280 (2021)
An argument for the strict analysis of counterfactual conditionals, and against the variable analysis, based on interactions between subjunctive modals and counterfactual conditionals.
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Dissertation

The Semiotic Spectrum
Dissertation, (2011)
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On-line publications

Pictorial Grammar
with Dawn Chan
Paris Review Daily, 12/21/10
The Paris Review
Seven Puzzles of Pictorial Representation
Aesthetics for Birds, 9/7/14
A structured theory of visual content, in which clusters of objects and properties populate direction-filled visual arrays.
PDF

Editorial work

Special issue, "Pictorial and Diagrammatic Representation"
ed. with Valeria Giardino
Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 6 (1) (2015)
Contents
  1. Introduction: Varieties of Iconicity
    Valeria Giardino and Gabriel Greenberg
  2. Wayfinding: Notes on the 'Public' as Interactive
    Patrick Maynard
  3. The Mystery of Deduction and Diagrammatic Aspects of Representation
    Sun-Joo Shin
  4. Meaning and Demonstration
    Matthew Stone and Una Stojnic
  5. The Cognitive Design of Tools of Thought
    Barbara Tversky
  6. Diagrams as Tools for Scientific Reasoning
    Adele Abrahamsen and William Bechtel
  7. Street Signs and Ikea Instruction Sheets: Pragmatics and Pictorial Communication
    Marcello Frixione and Antonio Lombardi
  8. Pictures Have Propositional Content
    Alex Grzankowski
  9. Analog Representation and the Parts Principle
    John Kulvicki
  10. Trompe l'oeil and the Dorsal/Ventral Account of Pictorial Perception
    Bence Nanay
Springer