JESSICA KEISER

Department of Philosophy, Yale University, P.O. Box 208306, New Haven, CT

06520-8306
jessica.keiser@yale.edu
http://campuspress.yale.edu/jessicakeiser/
203-887-8687

RESEARCH AREAS
SPECIALIZATION
COMPETENCE

Philosophy of Language
Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Art

EDUCATION
YALE UNIVERSITY
FLORENCE ACADEMY
of ART
TAYLOR UNIVERSITY

PhD in philosophy (expected)

Certificate in painting

2017

BA in philosophy

2004

2007

DISSERTATION
TITLE

The Locutionary Act as the

Basic Building Block of Language Use

COMMITTEE

Zoltn Szab (Chair),

Elisabeth Camp, Larry Horn, Jason Stanley

SUMMARY

Several decades ago, philosophers such as

Paul Grice and David Lewis aimed to provide
general accounts of communication which
would reduce semantic concepts to mental
intentional concepts. As problems with these
accounts began to surface and patches proved
unsuccessful, this sort of metasemantic project
gradually went by the wayside. My
dissertation is a revival and continuation of the
work began by Grice and Lewis. It is divided
into three parts: The first section is a diagnosis
and repair of some of the seemingly

intractable problems plaguing the theories of

Grice, Lewis, and those working in that
tradition. I propose several simple but
significant amendments to the traditional
picture: to take linguistic meaning to be
grounded in locutionary action rather than
illocutionary action, and to take meaning
rather than semantic contentto be the input
to semantic reasoning. I argue that the theory
that emerges is in keeping with the spirit of
the traditional Grice/Lewis metasemantic
picture, without inheriting its failings. In the
second section I flesh out the details of this
theory, showing how it can be put to use in
defining such phenomena as implicature,
assertion, non-literal speech, performative
utterances, direct reference, etc. In the third
section I provide refinements to the theory,
addressing complications that were set aside
in previous sections such as context sensitivity,
ambiguity, and language change. The resulting
4-dimensionalist picture of language use is
able to account for a broad range of the
complex and messy facts that connect
language to human activity.

COURSES TAUGHT
AS PRIMARY INSTRUCTOR
Philosophy of Art
Drawing
Drawing

Florence Academy of Art 2015

University of Missouri 2007-2009
Florence Academy of Art

2007
AS TEACHING ASSISTANT
Math Logic
Introduction to Early
Rocca
Modern Philosophy

Yale University 2015, Sun-Joo Shin

Yale University 2014, Michael Della

Math Logic

Yale University 2013 (spring), Sun-Joo

Math Logic
History of Aesthetics

Yale University 2013 (fall), Sun-Joo Shin

Yale University 2012, Karsten Harries

Shin
PUBLICATIONS
Bald-Faced Lies: How to make a move in a language game without
making a move in a conversation, forthcoming in Philosophical
Studies.
Coordinating with Language, forthcoming in the Croatian Journal of
Philosophy .
Building Linguistic Convention, forthcoming in Preyer, Gerhard
(ed). Semantics, Pragmatics and Interpretation. Oxford University
Press.
PRESENTATIONS
PAPERS
Coordination with Language
Philosophy of Language and Linguistics
Interuniversity Center, Dubrovnik, 2015
Bald-Faced Lies: How to make a move in a language game without
making a move in a conversation
Mentoring Workshop for Graduate Women in Philosophy
Princeton University, 2014
COMMENTS
On Don Fallis Are Bald-faced Lies Deceptive After All?
APA Central Division Meeting 2014
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
ORGANIZATION of CONFERENCES and WORKSHOPS
Yale Symposium on Skills and Practices
Yale, co-organized with Jason Stanley, 2014
Yale Symposium on Generics
Yale, co-organized with Zoltn Szab, 2013

Lectures in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus

CUNY, co-organized with Rachel McKinney, 2013
EDITORIAL WORK
Editorial Assistant, Philosophers Imprint, 2011-2015
COURSES TAKEN
Early Modern Philosophy of Language (audit) Zoltn Szab and Ken
Winkler
Metaphysics Through Language (audit) Zoltn Szab
Modal Logic and Metaphysics
Jason Stanley
Philosophy of Philosophy (audit)
George Bealer
Pragmatics
Larry Horn and Tamina Stephenson
Freges Philosophy of Logic and Language
Susane Bobzien
Propositional Attitudes
Bruno Whittle
The Philosophy of Spinoza
Michael Della Rocca
Convention
Zoltn Szab
Topics in Epistemology
Keith DeRose
Philosophical Logic
George Bealer and Raul Saucedo
Sidgwicks Methods of Ethics
Shelly Kagan
Humes Aesthetics
Ken Winkler
Math Logic
Sun-Joo Shin
Context
Zoltn Szab
First Year Seminar
George Bealer and Jill North
Aristotle and Contemprary Virtue Ethics Iakovos Vasiliou
Interpretation and Meaning
Stephen Neale and Noel Carrol
Ethics
Stephen Ross
Modal Logic
Richard Mendelsohn and Melvin
Fitting
Kripke Beyond Naming/Necessity
Nathan Salmon
Proseminar
Jesse Prinz and Iakovos Vasiliou
Metaphysics
Matthew McGrath
Epistemology
Peter Markie
Proseminar
Jesse Prinz and Iakovos Vasiliou