Primary Research

My primary research interests are in the relationship between metaphysics, language, and logic. This most often takes the form of motivating a formalization by some analysis of language and observing the metaphysical upshot. My dissertation focused on offering an inferentialist account of the meaning of quantification and modality. The goal of the research was to explore the nature of modality on such a conception of meaning. Ultimately, it considers the results of this theory of meaning on the debate between necessitism and contingentism.

Future Research

I am currently developing an alternative to the Quinean account of ontological commitment. Quine, on this view, was wrong to put the emphasis he did on quantification. The view I am developing has roots in accounts of quantification that can be found in Wilfrid Sellars, and Arthur Prior.

Another area of research I am pursuing is in the history of philosophy. I am particularly interested in the history of analytic philosophy. I am working on papers on Wilfrid Sellars, and Rudolf Carnap. I am also interested in medieval philosophy. I am planning to offer an interpretation of Abelard’s ethical views and distinguish them from other accounts of ethics currently under consideration. In relation to my dissertation work, I am planning to research Buridan’s account of ampliation.

• Here’s a copy of the table of contents of my dissertation.
• Here’s a copy of my current CV.

Work in Progress

• Neutral Free Logic – A cut admissible calculus for neutral free logic (joint work with Norbert Gratzl, Marcus Rossberg, and Dave Ripley)
• Sellars’s Carnapian Nominalism (Joint work with Marcus Rossberg)
• What do the Barcan Formulas Say – An argument that the locus of the debate between contingentists and necessitists should not be the Barcan formulas but a structural rule of a hypersequent calculus.
• Carnap’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus – A translation of The Tractatus into Carnap’s Formal Mode of Speech.
• Promises and ‘Ought Implies Can’ – A consistent theory holding that both ‘Promises entail Obligations’ and ‘Obligations entail Ability’.
• Metasequents – A system of logic capable of accounting for the admissible rules of the sequent calculus. The main result of my paper is that this system is cut-eliminable. Expanding this paper to account for quantification or modality requires a multiplicative rules of these expressions. These rules have not yet been discovered.
• Rational Rejectability Liar – This paper presents an objection to the dialetheist view recently expressed by Beall.

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I can provide drafts of these papers upon request. Send inquires to andrew.parisi@uconn.edu.