Department of Philosophy: People: Core Faculty: Erin Eaker

Erin Eaker (Ph.D. UCLA) is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy. The majority of her research to date has centered on the philosophically rich topic of belief and the way the various fields within philosophy—mind, language, science, epistemology, and metaphysics—intersect in the topic of belief. Philosophers of language and mind have long been interested in those sentences that are used to describe the beliefs, desires, doubts, and musings of other people. Much of Eaker’s work has centered on untangling and answering such questions as: What are beliefs, desires, doubts and musings? What facts should determine the semantics of psychological description sentences? What importance should be assigned to the role of the speaker and her communicative intentions when thinking about linguistic meaning? Is there a coherent psychological “theory” implicit in our everyday psychological description practices? If so, how does this theory relate to the theories of the philosophical and scientific communities? In her research Eaker tries to engage both with current literature in the philosophy of mind, psychology and linguistics, as well as with classic discussions of the relation between meaning and metaphysics. Her research is grounded in early 20th century philosophy of language and philosophy of science, and influences include the work of Russell, Carnap, Quine, Putnam, Kaplan and Kripke. She is currently engaged in a project that brings together 20th century thought on the topic of essentialism, with contemporary discussions of biological species in philosophy of biology and evolutionary theory.

E-mail: eeaker@umd.edu

Representative Publications

“A new starting place for the semantics of belief sentences,” The Philosophy of David Kaplan, eds. Joseph Almog and Paolo Leonardi, Oxford University Press, (Forthcoming).

Reflecting the Mind: Indexicality and Quasi-indexicality, by Eros Corazza, 2004; reviewed for Mind, Winter 2005.

“Reflections and Replies: Essays on the Philosophy of Tyler Burge,” eds. Martin Hahn and Bjørn Ramberg, 2003; reviewed for The University of Toronto Quarterly, “Letters in Canada 2003,” Winter 2004/05.

“David Kaplan on De Re Belief,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XXVIII, 2004.