Section I: Thoughts on Philosophical Methodology
My research interests vary widely, ranging from the topic of personal identity to the nature of free will, from issues in moral psychology to related issues in feminist scholarship. Amidst this diversity, however, runs a common philosophical approach. My varied interests are one and all informed by my standards for good philosophical theorizing set mainly by Kripke's work in Naming and Necessity in which he says:
"Of course, some philosophers think that something's having intuitive content is very inconclusive evidence in favor of it. I think it is very heavy evidence in favor of anything, myself. I really don't know, in a way, what more conclusive evidence one can have about anything, ultimately speaking".
Based on Kripke's meta-philosophical scruples, most of my own philosophical work subscribes to a certain position on an underlying the controversy around whifh theories are accet the relationship between intuitions and philosophical theories; I privilege taking certain intuitions as basic over values such as theoretical simplicity, something to strive for only once one has a certain amount of explanatory power. Because of Kripke's work in Naming and Necessity, one of the few pieces of philosophical work that I believe contains nuggets of indisputable data, I spend a good deal of time in my own philosophical work developing and explaining these bits of data, as well as attempting to discover some new nuggets myself.
Yet another influence on my general philosophical outlook is due to Lewis. Specifically, I aim in my work to respect Lewis's claim in On the Plurality of Worlds that the way we judge a philosophical theory should be the same as the way we judge the value of any scientific theory. That is, how does it look in relation to other theories with respect to its theoretical virtues? For this reason, I invest much of my time in developing new theories that are at once intuitive and yet instantiate more theoretical virtues than other theories, rather than attempting to refute any particular theory. Even so, my conviction that Goodman's Fact, Fiction and Forecast, is a tour de force, largely a refutation of a collection of philosophical theories, does lead me, on occasion, to write some purely critical work.
Section II: Publications
Brock, Heidi. 2024. What Matters in Survival: Self-determination and The Continuity of Life Trajectories. Acta Analytica 39(1).
Savage, Heidi. 2020. The Truth and Nothing But the Truth: Non-literalism and The Habits of Sherlock Holmes. Southwest Philosophy Review 36(2).
Savage, Heidi. 2020. How I Stopped Worrying and Started Loving 'Sherlock Holmes': A Reply to Garcia-Carpintero. Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy XXXIX:1.
Savage, Heidi with Melissa Ebbers and Robert M Martin. 2020. The Meaning of Language, 2nd Edition. MIT Press.
Savage, Heidi. 2017 . "Not Just Another Philosophy of Language Book." Review of Sourcebook in the History of Philosophy of Language. Eds. Margaret Cameron, Benjamin Hill, and Robert J. Stainton. Springer, 2017. Metascience.
Savage, Heidi. 2016. "Review of Brian Hedden's Reasons without Persons: Rationality, Identity, and Time." Oxford, 2015. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Tiedke, Heidi. 2011. "Proper Names and Their Fictional Uses." Australasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (4): 707-726.
Section III: Main Areas of Research
Below is a summary of work I have done in the past, that is currently in progress, and that I will be doing in the future on my main area of research: proper names. It is the future research that is likely be of most interest. Abstracts or versions of the papers in progress mentioned below can be found on my philpeople page.
Philosophy of Language
Current Research
One of the assumptions I made previously, but could not offer a proper defense of, was the idea that a sentence like (1) is literally true. However, I now have an article in which I offer a detailed defense of this claim in “The Truth and Nothing But the Truth: Non-literalism and The Habits of Sherlock Holmes” (2020). In that work, I adopt a well motivated methodological constraint that theories of natural language should stick as close as possible to its actual use by speakers. In light of this, my defense of the claim that a sentence like (1) is literally true, involves first pointing out that natural language speakers do, and without much thought, assign the value true to sentences like (1). Second, the standard explanation of this fact fails in a multitude of ways. Third, truth conditionalism itself, to remain scientific respectability, must modify the traditional rule for evaluating the truth of predicative sentences containing proper names -- that they are true just in case the referent of the name has the property delineated by the predicate. Fourth, and finally, scenarios that test for literal truth indicate that sentence (1) is in fact literally true.
A second issue concerning my view of names was why it should count as an anti-realist view about fictional entities, since my view is that the meaning of a fictional name is a set of properties, and a set is an object. Therefore, why does this fail to assign a referent to the name ‘Sherlock Holmes’. In fact, Garcia-Carpintero raises this issue in his “Semantics of Fictional Terms” (2019). My response is that because on my account of the meaning of fictional names, and the rule used for evaluating sentences containing such names, fictional names play the role of a function, in determining the truth of sentences containing them. They do not provide an argument, and therefore, there are no realist implications that follow from the view.
Future Research
In a book called Naming and Referring, I explain how the approach I take to proper names, while jettisoning reference as essential for being a name, is still Kripkean in nature. In fact, I take it simply as a generalization of Kripke’s view that fully exploits its advantages more so than its more Millian counterparts.
This generalization of Kripke’s view, solves the problem of fictional names without the ontological mess that pure referentialist views, like Millianism, seem to generate (2011). In fact, in “Kypris, Venus, And Aphrodite: More Puzzles About Belief” I argue that realism about fictional entities is entailed by Millianism, assuming they wish to solve puzzles about belief that involve synonymous fictional names. In fact, in a current work in progress "Fictional Names: The Achilles Heel of Kripke's Theory of Names" I show that fictional names are the strongest challenge the Millian faces, strongly even than the problem of negative existentials. And in "Against False Pretences," I explain why the Evans-Walton pretence approach cannot mitigate this issue.
In addition to solving the problem of fictional names, the generalized Kripkean approach also solves problems posed by other types of names. For instance, Kripke argues that all empty names are necessarily empty. Our intuitions, however, do not always comport with this claim. Some names we might think are merely contingently empty. In “Four Problems for Empty Names,” I show how generalizing Kripke’s view can accommodate these intuitions. In addition, it can also be used to explain the apparently mixed nature of descriptive names as I do in “Descriptive Names and Shifty Characters: A Case for Tensed Rigidity.”
In the book, I will also pay special attention to the fact that not only does Kripke say that names are rigid, but that he also says that they are de jure expressions. In fact, I claim that it is this feature of proper names as de jure expressions that makes them their own unique kind of expression. For the previous reason, I also argue against views that attempt to assimilate or reduce names to another expression kind. For instance, I argue against predicative views of names (at least those that make them first-order predicates), the most plausible of which, as I explain in “Being Called Names: The Predicative Attributive Account,” simply fails. In fact, in “Names Are Not Predicates,” I show that no predicative views are justified since all predicative constructions containing names have plausible non-predicative analyses.
Furthermore, attending to the de jure nature of proper names also allows for an understanding of the relation between name types and name tokens, which I claim, once properly understood, does not generate dichotomous views of the identity conditions on proper names. Another consequence of attending to the de jure nature of fictional names is that there must be a significant role for mentioning names as well as using them in a full account of the role of names in the language. This calls for revisiting Kripke’s dismissal of the role of meta-linguistic theories in accounts of proper names. I argue that meta-linguistic actions and analyses have two fundamental roles in a complete theory of names. Certain kinds of meta-linguistic actions have the status of being performative, and this explains how acts of naming actually work. The second role that mentioning a name plays is in explaining how speaker’s can be competent with a proper name. These issues I explore in “You Never Even Called Me by my Name: A Meta-linguistic Analysis of Competence with Proper Names.”
Lastly, while the progress, and simplification of semantic analysis that Frege’s notion of composition as function application cannot be underestimated, it has been applied in ways that erase the nuance of the notion of predication. Once reference is de-emphasized, new possibilities for compositional rules for evaluating predications arise that allow it to involve more than property exemplification, a traditional issue of concern for many philosophers. Furthermore, if predication does not simply involve property exemplification, the issue of ontological commitment re-arises, as it may no longer be possible to capture our ontological commitments simply with first-order existential generalization.
Past Research
In 2011, I addressed the following issue: fictional names present unique challenges for semantic theories of proper names, challenges strong enough to warrant an account of names different from the standard treatment. The theory developed in this paper is motivated by a puzzle that depends on four assumptions: our intuitive assessment of the truth values of certain sentences, the most straightforward treatment of their syntactic structure, semantic compositionality, and metaphysical scruples strong enough to rule out fictional entities, at least. It is shown that these four assumptions, taken together, are inconsistent with referentialism, the common view that names are uniformly associated with ordinary individuals as their semantic value. Instead, the view presented here interprets names as context-sensitive expressions, associated in a context of utterance with a particular act of introduction, or dubbing, which is then used to determine their semantic value. Some dubbings are referential, which associate names with ordinary individuals as their semantic values; others are fictional, which associate names, instead, with sets of properties. Since the semantic values of names can be of different sorts, the semantic rule interpreting predication must be complex as well. In the body of the paper, I show how this new treatment of names allows us to solve our original puzzle. I defend the complexity of the semantic predication rule, and address additional worries about ontological commitment.
The Metaphysics of Personal Identity
Current Research
Currently, I am working on the question of personhood. What makes a person the same over time is a question dealt with by many philosophers. I too offered a purely metaphysical answer in a different work, however, as with many other theorists, I offered an answer outside of considering the political consequences of the theory I offered. Upon reflection, I now see that this was a mistake in need of correction. This is because I believe that conceptually a theory about how a person remains one and the same over time presupposes an understanding of the nature of personhood as an ontological kind. That is, to remain the same person over time logically requires remaining a person. While being a counting as a person is a purely metaphysical matter, the fact is having the status of being a person is highly significant both morally and politically, as any social movement fighting for being granted this status to groups of individuals who have been denied it. To ignore the moral and political consequences of a metaphysical theory of persons is therefore ethically irresponsible. I argue that many of the assumptions concerning personhood are ethically and politically biased in favor of a conception of persons that disadvantages certain individuals, and that examining and correcting these biases is essential to be ethically responsible theorists of personhood.
Future Research
At some point I hope to write a book on the topic of personal identity incorporating what I have learned from my recent publicaiton "What Matters in Survival: Self-determination and The Continuity of Life Trajectories" I finally came to understand my skepticism about the kind persons -- that it was based in skepticism about persons as the kinds of things that one could give a metaphysical theory of without considering its normative consequences. This led to examining some of the underlying assumptions about the metaphysics of the kind persons in the literature on personal identity. I came to focus on the fact that our concept of the kind person at least has serious normative consequences, and might even be constitutively normative. I therefore adopted a the methodological principle that in giving metaphysical theories of personal identity, our background assumptions about the kind persons and its normative consequences must be considered, and if found to have serious negative normative consequences, the metaphysical theory itself should be doubted, if not outright rejected.
Past Research
As a graduate student, I took a course on the topic of personal identity. I was skeptical of the very idea of giving a theory of the necessary and sufficient conditions on a person's persistence due to skepticism about the kind person in general. This made me sympathetic to Parfitian non-identity theories almost immediately, and yet my reaction to fission as a form of survival was to reject it. I spent years attempting to reconcile these intuitions, which finally led me to develop an externalist theory of what matters in survival, and to adopt a corresponding externalist theory of the kind persons. I argue that standard psychological continuity theory does not account for an important feature of what is important in survival – having the property of personhood. I offer a theory that can account for this, and I explain how it avoids the implausible consequences of standard psycholoMigical continuity theory, as well as having certain other advantages over that theory.
Section IV: Other Research Interests and WOrks In Progress
Philosophical Logic
On Diachronic, Synchronic, and Logical Necessity
According to EJ Lowe, diachronic necessity and synchronic necessity are logically independent. Diachronic possibility concerns what could happen to an object over time and therefore concerns future possibilities for that object given its past history. Synchronic possibility concerns what is possible for an object in the present or at a past present moment. These are logically independent, given certain assumptions. While it may true that because I am 38, it is impossible diachronically for me to be 30 (at least once we restrict the degree of relevant possibility), it is possible, given that at some point in the past, I may have been conceived slightly earlier than I was, that I am now 37. Likewise, it is possible diachronically for me to be somewhere other than where I am, but given that one object cannot be in different places at the same time, it is impossible for me now to be somewhere other than where I am, and this is true at each past point in my history too. There are, then, two axis upon which to distinguish what is and is not possible: tensed possibilities and possibilities of degree, which include nomic, metaphysical, and logical necessities, among others. I examine the interactions between these possibilities and I come to the conclusion that logical necessity is not in fact logical necessity simpliciter. Whether something is logically necessary depends upon tensed possibilities. I argue that while synchronic logical necessity entails diachronic logical necessity, the reverse entailment does not hold. I explore the consequences of this for certain philosophical debates in semantics including the concept of rigid designation, and descriptive names.
An Integrated Interpretation of Montague Grammar
This is what I hope is an illuminating, and to a certain degree, novel exposition of Montague Grammar. It is against many standard interpretations, and perhaps even against things Montague himself says at times. However, it makes more sense of how his various commitments fit together in a systematic way. Why, for instance, is it called "Montague Grammar" rather than "Montague Semantics," and what role does his commitment to Fregeanism plays in his conception of language? It is clear that he is committed to the idea that function application is the fundamental mode of semantic composition, and that he is committed to an intensional framework. However, intensions have, since Carnap, been understood as nearly conceptually equivalent to functions from possible worlds to sets of individuals. But, in truth, possible worlds semantics is just dressed up extensional semantics. There are just more objects to go around to serve as inputs for functions, whatever we think of their ontological status. That is, possible worlds semantics is really a semantic reduction of intensional semantics achieved by expanding our ontological commitments. It would be difficult to make sense of Montague's strong commitment to Fregean semantics, if his notion of intension was that of Carnap's. According to my interpretation, Montague's notion of intension must be distinct from the version adopted by possible world semantics. Montague took seriously the idea that intensional semantics was something quite different from extensionalist semantics. The first was not reducible to the second semantically speaking. Just as Frege believed that meaning consisted of both sense and reference, so too did Montague. However, just as Frege also believed, Montague thought that sense and reference were systematically related. As I illustrate, interpreting Montague as adopting a different notion of intension can also resolve the apparent problem of distinguishing the difference in meaning between intensional equivalents. It might also enable us to draw a distinction in epistemic logic between an agent having contradictory beliefs and believing contradictions.
Metaphysics
The Contingencies of Ontological Commitment
Some time ago, Quine asserted that to be is to be value of a variable. This entails that if one wishes to accept any theory as true, we must be committed to the existence of those objects over which we existentially quantify. I suggest instead that we are committed only to the existence of things for which certain intrinsic properties are contingent (those that an object can have independent of the properties that make it a member of a certain kind). Any discourse that involves existential quantification over entities for which those properties can change should be given an objectual interpretation, and these objects are therefore real. In contrast, all discourse that involves existential quantification over objects who have at least some intrinsic properties essentially, which are properties that are not what make them members of a kind, will be given a substitutional interpretation, which does not entail a realist interpretation. This conception of ontological commitment has potential direct consequences in several areas -- the status of fictional characters, the debate about the existence of god, realism about mathematical entities, and so on.
Free Will and Foreseeability
For many of us, at least, some of the most important events in our lives were not foreseeable. Indeed, for many of us, the trajectory of our lives in retrospect is often completely unexpected. We can, it seems, predict very few of the results of our efforts at controlling our lives. Particularly troubling is that this phenomenon seems to affect us exponentially in the long term, and some of our most important goals in life are long-term goals. What's more, is that attending more closely to the micro-effects of our actions on the world does little to alleviate this problem, since our efforts alone are not sufficient to determine the outcomes of our actions, as Nagel's discussion of moral luck taught us. Of course, there are those whose life trajectory seems entirely predictable in retrospect, leading to the belief that we are in control of our lives after all. However, it is not clear that such reasoning is much more justified than the reasoning that leads people to conclude that Nostradamus must have been predicting the future given that things turned out as he said. Because the unpredictability of our lives is so prevalent and the status of cases in which they do seem predictable are unclear, I conclude that the existence of the kind of free will that seems matters to us, the kind that determines our life paths, is largely a myth. But, on the positive side, taking my cue from Wolf's work on moral saints, I also conclude that since having this kind of free will would likely make our lives much less interesting, perhaps we shouldn't care about having it after all.
It's Easy Being Free: Notes on Frankfurt-Style Real Self Conceptions of Free Will
On Frankfurt's view of free will, in its simplest form, an agent is free just in case her second-order volitions -- those second-order desires she wishes to be effective -- are in accord with her first-order volitions -- those first-order desires that one actually acts upon. That is, an agent has free will just in case she has the desires she wants to have and they are the desires she acts upon. But now consider an agent who lacks free will because her first-order volitions and second-order volitions conflict. Suppose also that, with enough therapy, she could alter her first-order volitions to be in accord with her second-order volitions. So it is true that she can alter her first-order volitions. Still, there is the question of what she should she do. A natural response that a real self theorist might make is that the agent should change her first-order volitions in order to reflect her second-order volitions. But this is not, in principle, the only option available to our agent. Instead of changing her first-order volitions to reflect her second-order volitions, she might also consider simply revising her second-order volitions to fit with her first-order volitions. In fact, since second-order volitions are arguably more reasons responsive, it could turn out for our agent that changing her second-order volitions is actually the most rational option to take. This applies to even the most recent developments of real self, hierarchical, reasons responsive, and even intention embedded accounts of free will. Indeed, there is empirical evidence that people change their conceptions of themselves quite readily in the face of cognitive dissonance of the kind faced by desire conflicts. But this way of attaining free will does not seem to comport with our conception of a free agent. Free will seems too easy to obtain if all that is required is that our second-order volitions are in accord with our first-order volitions, and I see no particularly principled way of arguing that we shouldn't consider changing our second-order volitions instead of changing our first-order volitions. Secondly, this conception of free will is also subject to other counter examples. A person, for instance, may not be able to respect hierarchies due to some personality trait or other, but she might also be the kind of person for whom even were this trait lacking, still would not want to respect hierarchies. Here we have case in which a person's first order volitions and second order volitions coincide, but we do not want to call her free either. Additional evidence that this cannot be the right conception of free will comes from ideas put forth in the literature on practical rationality: I can be in situations in which the only rational action for me to take is to change my desires (MacIntosh), but if we cannot make irrational decisions, and these are understood as decisions to act in ways that go against our current desires, then being in a situation in which I choose to change my current desires should not be possible, thereby challenging any conception of free will that requires the changing of desires, whether first-order or second-order. I conclude, then, that any compatibilist conception of free will of the kind mentioned will be ultimately unsatisfying.
Meta-Ethics and Ethics
The Voluntarist's Argument Against Ethical and Semantic Internalism
A parallel argument to the doxastic voluntarist argument -- a general voluntarism argument -- can be constructed against both ethical and semantic internalism. In the ethical case, the parallel argument begins with the idea that if ethical internalism is true, that is, if we cannot help but be motivated to do the right thing internally, then it would appear that our being moved to do the right thing is involuntary in the same was as our beliefs are involuntary. If correct, this leaves the ethical internalist with a dilemma. Like the epistemologist faced with the doxastic voluntarism argument, she can either deny the plausible ought implies can principle in order to maintain that the idea that ethical obligations make sense, or she must rest content with the idea that ethical internalism has the status of a descriptive account of moral behavior rather than a prescriptive theory. But, the ethical internalist is engaged in giving an account of the nature of moral action, it is entirely unclear what differentiates moral behaviors from any other kind of internally motivated actions -- the normativity of morality is lost. If we believe that normativity is constitutive of morality, then ethical internalism fails even as a description of its nature. In the semantic case, if we cannot for instance simply decide that 'Glory' means the same as 'There's a nice knockdown argument for you', it is unclear how meaning could be determined internally and yet be normative at the same time. If ought implies can, and we cannot change the meaning of our expressions internally, then the normativity of meaning cannot come from the inside, it must come from without, but how could the normativity of linguistic behavior come from without given that it is an artefact? The semantic internalist therefore faces the same dilemma that both doxastic voluntarism and ethical internalism face.
The Inevitability of Death: Going from an Is to an Ought
Since Hume, many ethicists have assumed that inferring normative claims from descriptive claims is fallacious. Some classic examples that illustrate this fact are those in which everyone commits some act, but we do not therefore conclude that it is the right thing to do. Everyone may jump off a bridge, asserts your mother, but that does not entail that you should. However, not all such claims illustrate this. In fact, some of them illustrate precisely the opposite claim. For example, consider the person who repeatedly bemoans the unfairness or sadness of dying, and who is often faced with the response that this happens to everyone. What should she do? One plausible response is that she should accept the fact that this occurs and make her peace with it, an unequivocally normative directive. This example, then, is a prima facie counterexample to the infamous gap between is-claims and ought-claims.
Why Integrity Does Not Entail Consistency
Many moral concepts are extremely difficult to define. The concept of integrity, for instance, is one example. Simple integrity -- amoral integrity -- involves the some kind of unity or resiliance to pressure. One way of thinking of moral integrity, which makes the previous idea more concrete, is to define moral integrity as having consistency in one's convictions. I show how this cannot be the correct idea of moral integrity and offer a particular understanding of the idea that fits more readily with actual cases categorized as examples of moral integrity.
Why Morality and Practical Rationality Must Conflict
Kant hoped that moral reasoning could be reduced to practical reasoning, or that they were one and the same. The simplicity of this idea and its implications for a number of philosophical puzzles is significant. I argue, however, that such a reconcilation is not possible, or at least, ought not to be. I argue that having moral integrity or being altruistic, for instance, require akratic action. I survey several examples of these types of cases to illustrate this. If I am correct, then truly moral actions -- those done with the right intention -- entail a disposition to fail to be means-ends rational. Any reconciliation of moral action and practical rationality is therefore not logically possible.