Jennifer Carr ⋅ jrcarr@mit.edu

MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy

I'm a PhD student in philosophy at MIT. I work on epistemology and philosophy of language. In the fall I'll be starting a four-year postdoc at the University of Leeds.

My current research interests include modals (especially deontic modals), conditionals, epistemic utility theory, modeling beliefs and credences, and normative uncertainty.

Here's my CV.

Papers and Works in Progress

• Imprecise Evidence without Imprecise Credences
  • Defenders of imprecise credences hold that unspecific evidence requires unspecific credences. I offer a natural strategy for addressing some of the challenges this view faces. But adopting my strategy amounts to going precise in a particular way: instead of attributing to agents sets of credence functions, we attribute them uncertainty over sets of credence functions. I argue that the good reasons that have been offered for going imprecise are equally good, and sometimes better, reasons for adopting this kind of precise view.
• Rationality over Time (coming soon!)
  • It's been argued there are no diachronic norms of epistemic rationality. These arguments come partly in response to certain kinds of counterexamples to Conditionalization, but are mainly motivated by a form of internalism that appears to be in tension with any sort of diachronic coherence requirements. I argue that there are, in fact, fundamentally diachronic norms of rationality. And this is to reject at least a strong version of internalism. But I suggest a replacement for Conditionalization that salvages internalist intuitions, and carves a middle ground between (probabilist versions of) conservatism and evidentialism.
• Subjective 'Ought'
  • The subjective deontic ought generates counterexamples to classical inference rules like modus ponens. It also conflicts with the orthodox view about modals and conditionals in natural language semantics. Most accounts of the subjective ought build substantive and unattractive normative assumptions into the semantics of the modal. I sketch a general semantic account, along with a metasemantic story about the context sensitivity of information-sensitive operators.
• Deontic Modals without Decision Theory
  • A technical companion to "Subjective 'ought'"
• A Puzzle about Iffy 'Ought's (slides)
  • Possible worlds semantic accounts of modals, combined with the widely accepted restrictor analysis of conditionals, validate the following schema: If φ, ought φ. This is a terrible thing to validate! I consider two inadequate solutions to this problem and show how they can be combined to generate a more adequate solution. Then I offer a puzzle case for the new account which suggests that we might need a less conservative amendment to the standard semantics.
• Normative Uncertainty and Normative Pluralism
  • I show a way in which normative uncertainty and normative pluralism are functionally equivalent (with some caveats). I argue that the normative noncognitivist can do without normative uncertainty altogether.
• Presupposition and Probability
  • This paper explores how probabilities interact with embeddings to generate presuppositions. I offer a pragmatic answer to the so-called 'proviso problem' for presuppositions in dynamic semantics.
• Presuppositions, Conditionals, and Conditional Presuppositions
  • I provide an account of why some sentences with false presuppositions are judged true or false, while others seem unevaluable.

Publications

• Deontic Modals Without Decision Theory
  • Forthcoming in the Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 17 (2012)

Selected presentations

• Anything Mushy Can Do, Sharp Can Do Better (handout)
  • ANU Philosophical Society seminar (2012)
• Subjective ‘Ought’
  • Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference (2012)
  • NYU–Columbia Graduate Philosophy Conference (2012)
  • MITing of the Minds: MIT Philosophy Alumni Conference (2012)
• A Puzzle for Iffy ‘Ought’s
  • MIT Work in Progress Series (2012)
• Presuppositions, Conditionals, and Conditional Presuppositions
  • Rutgers–Princeton Graduate Philosophy Conference (2010)
• What to Do About Presupposition Failure
  • Harvard–MIT Eminees Workshop in Metaphysics and Epistemology (2010)

Education

2008-present	Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ph.D. in Philosophy with minor in Linguistics (expected in 2013)
2006-2008	Harvard University M.A. in English and American Literature and Language
2001-2006	Stanford University B.A. in English Literature with minor in Comparative Literature

MIT : Department of Linguistics and Philosophy : 77 Massachusetts Ave, 32-d808 : Cambridge MA 02139