Joe Salerno (Ph.D., Ohio State, 1999) is a visiting fellow at the RSSS philosophy program at Australian National University and assistant professor of philosophy at Saint Louis University.  He is the editor of New Essays on the Knowability Paradox and a special issue of Synthese titled Knowability and Beyond.  Current research includes papers on modal epistemic paradoxes and a co-authored monograph on impossible thoughts (or entertainable impossibilities).  The monograph offers a unified account of conditionals that treats various problems for indicative, counterfactual, and counterpossible conditionals.   His blog is devoted to matters modal epistemic.

Publications  

Non-Final Drafts:  please do not quote without permission

  •  "Counterfactuals and Context" with B. Brogaard, Analysis, forthcoming 2008.  We discuss what we take to be a contextual fallacy in the standard logic of counterfactuals.
  • "Remarks on Counterpossibles" with B. Brogaard, in Johan van Benthem, Vincent F. Hendricks, John Symons, and Stig Andur Pedersen, (eds.), Between Logic and Intuition: David Lewis and the Future of Formal Methods in Philosophy, Synthese Library, forthcoming, 2008.   The paper defends a non-vacuous reading of counterpossible conditionals.
  • "The Knowability Paradox" in S. Bernecker, and D. Pritchard (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, Routledge, Forthcoming. 
  • "Knowability Noir: 1945-1963' to appear in Salerno J. (ed.) New Essays on the Knowability Paradox, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.  The paper is an account of the early history of Fitch's knowability paradox. It evaluates an unpublished debate between Fitch and his anonymous referee (Alonzo Church) for a JSL submission in 1945. Their debate foreshadows some recent discussion and helps to explain what the knowability result is doing in Fitch's 1963 paper.
  • "Referee Reports on Fitch's 'A Definition of Value' " J. Salerno and  J. Murzi (eds.), to appear in Salerno J. (ed.) NEKP, OUP, forthcoming.  An edition of a pair of anonymous referee reports authored by Alonzo Church in 1945.  They mark the earliest known discussion of the modal epistemic result known as Fitch's knowability paradox.  They will be printed in their entirety with the kind permission of Alonzo Church, Jr.  Here is a link to the archival documentation page.  The editors' appendix to the reports is here.
  • "Why Counterpossibles are Non-Trivial" with B. Brogaard, The Reasoner 1:1,  2007.  Here we provide several reasons for favoring a non-vacuous reading of counterpossibles: besides preserving some familiar pre-theoretic intuitions, such a treatment explains the non-triviality of counterfactual philosophy and facilitates a modal analysis of essence.
  • "Anti-realism, Theism and the Conditional Fallacy" with B. Brogaard, Noûs, 39:1, 2005. Here we disagree with Plantinga and Rea that the best way to be an anti-realist is to be a theist. We argue, however, that without a massive revision of classical logic, the anti-realist will have to embrace an unwelcome form of idealism. 
  • On Frege, Wadsworth Publishing Co., 2001. The book (98 pp.) was written to introduce Frege's philosophy of language and logic to intro students. 


Talks

  • "Must and Can" presented at Epistemology at the Beach, Kioloa, Australia, February 15, 2008. [pics]
  • "Counterpossibles, Impossible Worlds and Essence" with B. Brogaard,  discussed at the Arizona Ontology Conference, January 2008.  Organizer: L. A. Paul.  [pics]
  • "Counterpossible Conditionals" Philosophy Seminar at the RSSS, Australian National University, November 8. 
  • "Counterpossible Conditionals", University of Sydney, October 17. 
  • "Counterpossible Conditionals", presented to the IPHST at Université Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, October 8, 2007. 
  • "Remarks on Counterpossibles", with B. Brogaard, 1st Synthese Annual Conference, Copenhagen, October 3, 2007.  Program Committee: Johan van Benthem, Vincent F. Hendricks, John Symons, and Stig Andur Pedersen. 
  • "Remarks on Counterpossibles," with B. Brogaard, Epistemology Workshop, University of Edinburgh, May 15, 2007.   Other speakers: Ram Neta, Duncan Pritchard, and Jonathan Schaffer.
  • "Who Discovered Fitch's Paradox and Why Won't it Go Away?", Pacific Division of the APA. March 24, 2006.
    Commentator: Ali Kazmi.
  • "Tracking and Safety: Some Counterexamples". Pacific Division of the APA, March 2004.
    Commentator: Steven Luper. 

 

Works in Progress

  • "What Must and Can Musn't and Can't Mean"
  • The Most General Factive Mental State Operator
  • "Review of Jon Kvanvig's The Paradox of Knowability, (OUP, 2006),"  to appear in Australasian Journal of Philosophy.   

  • "Review of Stephen Hetherington's (ed.) , Epistemology Futures, (OUP, 2006)," to appear in Mind.

  •  "Evidence, Purism and Practical Interests"  
  • "The Logical Necessity of Some Ignorance"       

 

Other Activities

  • Commentary on Salvatore Florio and Julien Murzi's "Paradox of Idealization" at the Eastern APA, Baltimore 2007.  
  • Commentary on Pascal Engel's "Pragmatic Encroachment and Epistemic Value" to be given at the Epistemic Value Conference at the University of Stirling, August 20, 2006.  [Pics]
  • Commentary on Jon Cogburn's "Moore Problems with Anti-realism". Central Division of the APA. Chicago, April, 2006. 
  • Commentary on Mylan Engel's "Contextualism and the Problem of Semantic Ignorance". Illinois Philosophical Association. November 5, 2005. 
  • Panel discussant for the Kline Conference on Knowledge, Closure and Lotteries at University of Missouri-Columbia, October 31-November 1, 2003. [Pics]