I'm currently pursuing several research strands, outlined below. Related manuscipts or published papers can be provided upon request. My published work is listed in the dedicated section. Many of my research activities have also been shared through the talks listed here.
Since Quine's and Tarski's seminal discussions, it has been widely assumed that quotation marks are not a genuine function-symbol. My doctoral thesis and part of my subsequent work investigate quotation under this assumption. I defend a novel version of the Davidsonian theory of quotation that covers cases falling outside the traditional use/mention distinction. I use this view to argue that some of the puzzling properties of quotational contexts are best explained by some non-truth-conditional aspects of the meaning of metalinguistic predicates. Additionally, I'm interested in investigating the relationship between these non-truth-conditional aspects of meaning and the assignment of theta-roles by predicates (as discussed in linguistics).
Separately, I explore a non-standard semantic framework in which the semantic value of an expression comprises both its reference and the expression itself; this framework makes it possible to treat quotation marks as a genuine function-symbol. In a co-authored paper with Marco Santambrogio, we motivate and outline a two-component semantics of this kind for a first-order language, and we show that it can solve several puzzles related to identity, anaphora, and quantification. I intend to extend the framework defended in the paper to give a new account of attitude reports.
In semantics, many arguments rely on intuitions about translation. This method is widely used, yet it has not been systematically conceptualised. I'm interested in assessing whether such appeals to translation constitute a legitimate and fruitful methodology.
In my doctoral thesis, I explored this question in the context of Church's argument against sententialism about belief reports. Later, I extended this investigation to the debate on the semantics of proper names, arguing that certain intuitions about translation don't discredit Millian theories of names. More recently, I've returned to this theme with the aim of developing these reflections into a more systematic analysis.
In addition, I hold some substantive views about translation itself. In a recent paper, I propose a novel solution to Kripke's puzzles about belief, arguing that these puzzles overlook a crucial adequacy condition for sentence translation.
I'm interested in foundational questions about reference, including questions about how the reference of a proper name can be transmitted. Recently, in a paper co-authored with Steffen Koch (Bielefeld), I've tackled a related issue: how can reference change unintentionally? We offer a theory based on the notion that reference is determined by second-order dispositions that resolve conflicts between competing name-using intentions.
In a co-authored paper with Marco Santambrogio, we argue that sorytelling is a stipulative speech act. Based on this view, we give an account of the creation of fictional characters qua abstract entities. We also solve a long-standing puzzle that realists about fictional characters must address: how can an abstract entitiy like Sherlock Holmes be a detective, given that being a detective appears to be a property of flesh-and-blood humans?
We're currently interested in expanding our view to some collective entities, with the aim of addressing some traditional problems in social ontology.
Are veridical perceptual experiences brute relations to mundane objects and properties or are they representational in nature? In a recent paper, co-authored with Giorgio Mazzullo (L'Aquila), we respond to recent challenges to the former view, usually called "Naïve Realism", and outline a more compelling version of it. We intend to extend this work to the domain of perceptual demonstrative thought.