Paul Boghossian

Ph.D., Princeton, 1987

philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology

I am Silver Professor of Philosophy at NYU's Philosophy Department, and Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Birmingham in the UK.  I am the director of the New York Institute of Philosophy and the Director of NYU's Global Institute for Advanced Study. I was Chair of Philosophy from 1994-2004.

My research interests are primarily in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.  

I have written on a variety of topics, including color, rule-following, eliminativism, naturalism, self-knowledge, a priori knowledge, analytic truth, realism, relativism, the aesthetics of music and the concept of genocide. 

I have held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Magdalen College (Oxford), the School of Advanced Study (University of London), and the Australian National University (Canberra). I have been a Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a Fulbright Senior Specialist and am a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

I have also taught at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and at Princeton.

I served on the Global Citizenship Commission headed by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and currently on the University of London's School of Advanced Study Strategic Advisory Board.

Books

• Debating the A Priori (with Timothy Williamson), forthcoming with Oxford University Press
• Content and Justification: Philosophical Papers, Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism, Oxford University Press, 2006, 2007; also available in German, Italian, French, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese and Albanian translations.
• New Essays on the A Priori, (edited, with Christopher Peacocke), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Interviews

• On Truth, Intuition and Beyond, The Institute of Art and Ideas, 2019
  

A Priori

• “Inferentialism and the Epistemology of Logic: Reflections on Casalegno and Williamson, (PDF)” in dialectica, 66(2), 2012, pp. 221–236.
• “Williamson on the A Priori and the Analytic,” in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 82(2), 2010, pp. 488–497.
  
• “Introduction, (PDF)” (with Christopher Peacocke), in Boghossian and Peacocke (eds.): New Essays on the A Priori (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 1–10.

Aesthetics

• “Is Aesthetic Value Objective?” forthcoming in Hanson and Evers (eds.): Aesthetics and Metaethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• “The Perception of Music: Comments on Peacocke, (PDF)” in The British Journal of Aesthetics, 50(1), January 2010, pp. 71–76.
• “The Philosophy of Music Reproduction,” in Inner World Audio, 6, January 2009, pp. 34–35.
• “Explaining Musical Experience, (PDF)” in Stock (ed.): Philosophers on Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 117–129.
  
• “On Hearing the Music in the Sound,” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 60(1), 2002, pp. 49–55.
  
• “Entendre la Musique dans le Son,” Critique (Juin–Juillet, 1999), pp. 609–621.

Analyticity

• “Postscript: Further Thoughts about Analyticity, 20 Years Later, (PDF)” in Wright, Hale and Miller (eds.): A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Second Edition (Blackwell, 2017), pp. 611–618.
• “Epistemic Analyticity: A Defense, (PDF)” Grazer Philosophische Studien, vol. 66(1), 2003, pp. 15–35.
• “Analyticity, (PDF)” in Hale and Wright (eds.): A Companion to the Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997), pp. 331–368.
• “Analyticity Reconsidered,” Noûs, vol. 30, no. 3, September 1996, pp. 360–391.
• “Analyticity” and “Knowledge, A Priori,” in Borchert (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Supplement (NY: Macmillan, 1996).
• “Analyticity and Conceptual Truth,” in Philosophical Issues, 5, 1994, pp. 117–131.
• “Inferential Role Semantics and the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction,” Philosophical Studies, 73(2–3), March 1994, pp. 109–122.
• “Cognitive Science and the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction: Comments on Horwich,” Philosophical Issues, 3, 1993, pp. 135–142.

Color

• “Physicalist Theories of Color, (PDF)” (with David Velleman), Philosophical Review, vol. 100, no. 1, January 1991, pp. 67–106
• “Colour as a Secondary Quality, (PDF)” (with David Velleman), Mind, vol. 98, no. 389, January 1989, pp. 81–103.

Content

• “The Normativity of Meaning Revisited,” forthcoming in Dunaway and Plunkett (eds.): Themes from Allan Gibbard (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• “Is (Determinate) Meaning a Naturalistic Phenomenon? (PDF)” in Gross, Tebben, & Williams (eds.), Meaning Without Representation (Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 331–358.
• “Reply to Otero’s ‘Boghossian’s Argument Against Externalism Reversed’, (PDF)” in Philosophy and Phenomenlogical Research, 89(1), 2014, pp. 182–184.
• “Our Grasp of the Concept of Truth: Reflections on Künne, (PDF)” in dialectica, 64(4), September 2010, pp. 553–563.
  
• “Is Meaning Normative? (PDF)” in Nimtz and Beckermann (eds.), Philosophy – Science – Scientific Philosophy. Main Lectures and Colloquia of GAP.5, Fifth International Congress of the Society for Analytical Philosophy, Bielefeld, 22–26 September 2003 (Paperborn: mentis, 2005).
  
• “The Normativity of Content,” Philosophical Issues, 13(1), 2003, pp. 31–45.
• “Content,” in Kim and Sosa (eds.): A Companion to Metaphysics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995), pp. 94–96.
• “Does an Inferential Role Semantics Rest Upon a Mistake?” Mind and Language, 8(1), Spring 1993, pp. 27–40.
• “Externalism and Inference,” Philosophical Issues, 2, 1992, pp. 11–28.
• “Reply to Schiffer,” Philosophical Issues, 2, 1992, pp. 39–42.
• “Naturalizing Content, (PDF)” in Barry Loewer and Georges Rey (eds.): Meaning in Mind: Fodor and his Critics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 65–86.
• “The Status of Content Revisited,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 71(4), December 1990, pp. 264–278 (PDF).
• “The Status of Content, (PDF)” The Philosophical Review, vol. 99, no. 2, April 1990, pp. 157–184.

Epistemic Justification

• “Epistemic Rules, (PDF)” in The Journal of Philosophy, 105(9), September 2008, pp. 472–500.
• “Blind Reasoning, (PDF)” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 77(1), 2003, pp. 225–248.
• “How Are Objective Epistemic Reasons Possible? (PDF)” Philosophical Studies, 106(1–2), November 2001, pp. 1–40.
  

Genocide

• “Response to my critics,” in Journal of Genocide Research, 12(1–2), November 2010, pp. 105–112.
• “The Concept of Genocide,” in Journal of Genocide Research, as the target article of a symposium, 12(1–2), November 2010, pp. 69–80.
  

Inference

• “Inference, Agency and Responsibility,” forthcoming in Jackson (ed.): Reasoning, (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
• “Rationality, Reasoning and Rules: Reflections on Broome’s Rationality Through Reasoning, (PDF)” in Philosophical Studies, 173(12), 2017, pp. 3385–3397.
• “Reasoning and Reflection: A Reply to Kornblith, (PDF)” in Analysis, 76(1), 2016 (online 2015), pp. 41–54.
• “What is Inference? (PDF)” in Philosophical Studies, (target paper in symposium, with Broome and Wright commenting; online 2012), 169(1), 2014, pp. 1–18.
• “Inference and Insight,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 63(3), November 2001, pp. 633–640.

Intuition

• “Intuitions and the Understanding, (PDF)” in Fernandez (ed.): Performance Epistemology: Foundations and Applications (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 137–150.
• “Seemings: Sensory and Intellectual,” in Benedek and Nyíri (eds.): Beyond Words: Pictures, Parables, Paradoxes (Visual Learning, vol. 5) (Peter Lang, 2015), pp. 203–208.
• “Philosophy Without Intuitions? A Reply to Cappelen, (PDF)” in Analytic Philosophy, 55(4), 2014, pp. 368–381.
• “Virtuous Intuitions: comments on Ernest Sosa’s A Virtue Epistemology,” in Philosophical Studies, 144(1), 2009, pp. 111–119.

Philosophy of Logic

• “Logic and Reasoning” (with Gideon Rosen), forthcoming in Steinberger and Hjortland (eds.): The Normativity of Logic.
• “Knowledge of Logic, (PDF)” in Boghossian and Peacocke (eds.): New Essays on the A Priori (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 229–254.
  

Relativism

• “Reality as it is in Itself,” forthcoming in Alloa and During (eds): Les Choses En Soi.
• “Relativism about Morality,” in Realism - Relativism - Constructivism: Proceedings of the 38th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg (Vol. 24) (De Gruyte, 2017), pp. 611–618.
• “Is Comparative Philosophy Based Upon a Mistake? A Reply to Ganeri’s ‘Re:emergent Philosophy’” in Confluence, 4, 2016, pp. 149–153.
• “Reply to Amini and Caldwell, ‘Boghossian’s Refutation of Relativism’,” in The International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 2(1), 2012, pp. 45–49.
• "The Maze of Moral Relativism". Essay from The Stone series in the New York Times, July 24, 2011. Stanley Fish's response is available under "Does Philosophy Matter?", and Paul Boghossian's rejoinder to it under "Does Philosophy Matter? - It Would Appear So. A Reply to Fish".
  
• “Three Kinds of Relativism,” in Hales (ed.): A Companion to Relativism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2011), pp. 53–69.
• “Epistemic Relativism,” in Bernecker and Pritchard (eds.): The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 75–83.
• “Précis of Fear of Knowledge,” in Philosophical Studies, 141(3), December 2008, pp. 377–8.
• “Replies to Wright, MacFarlane and Sosa,” in Philosophical Studies, 141(3), December 2008, pp. 409–432.
• “The Case Against Epistemic Relativism: Replies to Rosen and Neta,” Episteme, 4(1), 2007, pp. 49–65.
• “What is Relativism? (PDF)” in Lynch and Greenough (eds.): Truth and Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 13–37.
• “Devitt on the Horrors of Worldmaking,” in Monnoyer (ed.): La Structure du Monde: Objets, Proprietes, Etats de Choses: Renouveau de la Metaphysique dans L’Ecole Australienne (Paris: Vrin, 2004).
• “Constructivist and Relativist Conceptions of Knowledge in Contemporary (Anti-) Epistemology: A Reply to Barbara Herrnstein Smith, (PDF)” South Atlantic Quarterly, 101(1), 2002, pp. 213–227.
• “What is Social Construction? (PDF)” Times Literary Supplement, February 23, 2001, pp. 6–8.
• “What the Sokal Hoax Ought to Teach Us,” Times Literary Supplement, Dec 13, 1996, pp. 13–14.

Rule-following

• “Rules, Norms and Principles: A Conceptual Framework, (PDF)” in Problems of Normativity, Rules and Rule-Following, (Springer Verlag, 2015), pp. 3–11.
• “Blind Rule-Following, (PDF)” in Coliva (ed.): Wittgenstein, Mind, Meaning and Epistemology: Essays in Honor of Crispin Wright (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 27–48.
• “Sense, Reference and Rule-Following,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 54(1), March 1994, pp. 139–144.
• “The Rule-Following Considerations, (PDF)” Mind, 98(392), October 1989, pp. 507–549; appeared as the ‘State of the Art’ article for that year.

Self-knowledge

• “Further Thoughts on the Transparency of Mental Content,” in Goldberg (ed.) Externalism, Self-Knowledge and Skepticism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 97–112.
• “The Transparency of Mental Content Revisited,” in Philosophical Studies, 155(3), October 2010, pp. 457–465.
• “What the Externalist Can Know A Priori,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 97(2), 1997, pp. 161–175.
• “The Transparency of Mental Content, (PDF)” Philosophical Perspectives, 8, 1994, pp. 33–50.
• “Content and Self-Knowledge, (PDF)” Philosophical Topics, 17(1), Spring 1989, pp. 5–26.

Book Reviews

• Review of Gillian Russell’s Truth in Virtue of Meaning, in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 89(2), November 2010, pp. 370–374.
• Review of Mark Richard’s When Truth Gives Out, in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, May 15, 2010.
• “Powers for the divine” (review of Michael Dummett’s Thought and Reality), Times Literary Supplement, February 8, 2008, p. 128.
• “Meaning, Rules and Intention—Discussion” (review of Philip Pettit’s Rules, Reasons and Norms), Philosophical Studies, 124(2), 2005, pp. 185–197.
• “Seeking the Real,” Philosophical Studies, 108(1–2), March 2002, pp. 223–238.
• “The Gospel of Relaxation” (review of Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club), The New Republic, September 10, 2001.
• Review of Wittgenstein on Meaning by Colin McGinn, in The Philosophical Review, 98(1), January 1989, pp. 83–92.