me on a mountain

About Me

My name is Rory Harder.

I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University College Dublin School of Philosophy. I completed my PhD in philosophy at the University of Toronto in 2022.

Right there is a picture of me atop a mountain in Poland!

Here is my CV.

You can e-mail me at [myfirstname][mylastname]@gmail.com.

Research

My areas of specialization are the philosophy of language and mind.

I am interested in human nature. I explore each of the traditional answers as to what is distinctive about our nature—our use of language and our sociality—constructively engaging with cutting-edge work in linguistics and psychology.

My dissertation focused on the meaning and use of demonstratives—words such as this and that—and joint attention—individuals attending together. These phenomena are related to each other, as well as to our distinctive linguistic and social behaviour, since demonstratives are often used to direct another’s attention to this or that object, sharing one’s thoughts or feelings about it.

In my current postdoc project I consider modern institutions and technology in order to shed further light on our social nature.

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Here are my papers accepted for publication.

  • Clearing up Clouds: Underspecification in Demonstrative Communication. In press at Canadian Journal of Philosophy. (Journal/PhilPapers)
  • Joint Attention and Communication. In press at Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. (Journal/PhilPapers)

Here are my papers in various stages of progress.

  • [A paper on the formal semantics of demonstratives and definite descriptions]. Revised and resubmitted.
  • [A paper on theory of mind and knowledge-first epistemology]. Under review.
  • Bishops and Uniqueness (with Lukas Lewerentz). Manuscript in preparation.
  • Speech Acts, Common Ground, and Non-Ideal Philosophy of Language. Manuscript in Preparation.

Teaching

I have taught first-year introductions to philosophy and upper-year seminars on the philosophy of mind and language at the University of Toronto. I have taught first-year introductions to formal reasoning and decision-making at Rutgers University.

Here is a statement of my teaching philosophy, which includes details of my teaching experience.