Educational BackgroundPh.D. University of PennsylvaniaProfessor of Philosophy Research Areas: Philosophical Foundations of Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Language, Theories of Knowledge, Philosophical Psychology, Wittgenstein Email: rita.nolan@stonybrook.edu Phone: 631.632.7570 Research InterestsRita Nolan's research in the philosophies of language and mind focuses on the cognitive functions of human language. A leading question is what the results are of taking the pragmatics of human language, classically understood as the relation of language to its users, as theoretically primary, in contrast with traditional approaches that have taken abstract syntax or semantics as primary. Her approach incorporates the results of research in semantics and syntax without supposing that those results provide inviolable presuppositions for a naturalistic theory of human language. Current projects include: 1. What cognitively salient relations are there between perceptual categories that may be supposed species-universal as a result of natural selection and the discursive categories sometimes called 'concepts' that humans acquire in the course of development or inquiry? 2. Is interpretation better understood as a single phenomenon or as a cluster of different cognitive practices? 3. What is the best way to explain how the physiology that subtends our conscious lives is related to the discourses and discursive categories we use in talking about our conscious lives? 4. Are there interesting philosophical implications of the fact that some works of visual art appeal to differences between the two types of categories mentioned in #1, above, coercing the viewer to attend to a sort of non-conceptual content?Selected Publications and PresentationsBooksCognitive Practices, Blackwell, Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1994.
Articles and Reviews'The New Enlightenment Hypothesis: all learners are rational,' Commentary on Mitchell, C. J., De Hower, J. & Lovibond, P. F. (2009) The propositional nature of human associative learning. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32:219-20."An Ideational Account of Early Word Learning: A Plausibility Assessment," commentary on How Children Learn the Meanings of Words, by Paul Bloom, in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 24, No. 6 (December, 2001), 1114-1115. Review of Consciousness in Action, S. L. Hurley, Cambridge, MA and London, 1998: Harvard University Press, in Philosophical Books, Vol. 41, No. 2 (April, 2000), pp. 129-132. "Distinguishing Perceptual from Conceptual Categories," in Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences, eds. R. Casati, B. Smith, G. White, Wein: Verlag, Holder-Pichler-Temsky, 1994, pp. 221-231. Review of Philosophy of Mind, An Introduction, George Graham, Oxford and Cambridge MA, 1992: Blackwells, in Philosophical Books, 1994. "The Unnaturalness of Grue," in Language, Art, and Mind, ed. Dale Jamieson, Kluwer, 1994, pp. 69-81. "On the Discourse Operator 'Scientific Report'," in Philosophy of Law, Politics and Society, ed. O. Weinberger, P. Koller, A. Schramm, Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1988, pp. 250-252. "Beliefs as Socially Contingent Phenomena," in The Tasks of Contemporary Philosophy, ed. W. Leinfellner and F. Wuketits, Wien: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1986, pp. 139-141. Review of Semiotics and Linguistic Structure: A Primer of Philosophical Logic, R. M. Martin, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 46, No. 1 (March, 1981), pp. 167-170. Review of Hans Reichenbach's Philosophy of Grammar, William E. McMahan, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 43, No. 1 (March, 1978), pp. 156-157. Review of Logic Matters, P. T. Geach, Philosophy of Science, Vol. 14, No. 4 (December, 1974), pp. 422-424. "The Character of Writings by Artists about Their Art," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Fall, 1974), pp. 67-73; reprinted in Leonardo, Vol. 9 (1976), pp. 231-234. Review of "A Survey of Formal Semantics," Robert Rogers, Synthese, Vol. 43, No. 1, in The Journal pf Symbolic Logic (March, 1973), pp. 146-147. "The Parsing of 'Possible'," The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 69, No. 6 (March, 1972), pp. 157-168. "Truth and Sentences," Mind, Vol. 78, No. 312 (October, 1969), pp. 501-511; trans. and reprinted as ÒWahrheit und Satz,Ó in Sprachhandlung, Existenz, Wahrheit, ed. M. Schirn, Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1974, pp. 207-252. Scholarly Presentations'Art and Non-epistemic Perceptual Content,' to the American Society for Aesthetics, Eastern Division, Philadelphia, April, 2006.Invited Respondent to John Greco, 'Direct Realism,' Suffolk County Community College 2003 Philosophy Conference on Perception, May 11, 2003. 'Distinguishing Analytic from Synthetic Constructivisms,' plenary presentation to The Long Island Philosophical Society, April 24, 1999. Commentator on James Pearce, 'Incommensurability-An Historical Perspective,' The Long Island Philosophical Society, May 16, 1998. 'Twentieth-Century Constructivisms,' invited, to the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, Utrecht, The Netherlands, August, 1996. 'Do Developmental Processes Matter to Philosophy?' invited lecture to the First International Brazilian Meeting on Cognitive Sciences, at UNESP, Marilia, San Paulo, Brazil; November 20-24, 1995. 'Conformity and Resignation in Pope's Pietistic Ethics,' the North East American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, Stony Brook, October 16, 1992. 'Mutant Predicates: The Unnaturalness of 'Grue',' presented to the 18th Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, June 7, 1992. Refereed submission. Invited Lecture Series, Cognitive Practices, the University of Wroclaw, Poland, May 25-29, 1992. 'Mutant Predicates: Grue Again,' the Ninth International Congress on Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, August 13, 1991, Uppsala, Sweden. Refereed submission. Teaching and Academic AffiliationsRecent Courses Taught
Biographical InformationRita Nolan has been a visiting faculty member at Barnard College of Columbia University, The University of Warwick, UK, Wolfson College of Oxford University and The Wittgenstein Archives of The University of Bergen, Norway. She has also taught at The University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, The University of North Carolina, and The University of Wisconsin.
Last revised: January 28, 2004 |