Recent work
Iconic and symbolic representation
The Iconic-Symbolic Spectrum (Philosophical Review, 132:4, 2023)
A theory of iconic and symbolic representation.
Varieties of Iconicity (with Valeria Giardino, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 6:1, 2015)
An overview of the varieties of iconic representational systems and their functional properties.
Contents of perception
The Structure of Visual Content (under review)
A structured theory of visual content, in which clusters of objects and properties populate direction-filled visual arrays.
Visual Objects (in progress)
Visual singular contents are intentional objects, not concrete referents or perceptual modes of presentation.
Semantics of pictures and maps
Map Semantics and the Geography of Meaning (Handbook of Applied Philosophy of Language, eds. Luvell Anderson and Ernie Lepore, 2022, forthcoming, OUP)
Situates maps within the broader landscape of semiotic meaning, then develops a projection-based semantics for maps, focusing on space, lines, and labels.
Review of Modeling the Meanings of Pictures (Philosophical Review, forthcoming)
Review of John Kulvicki's 2021 book on pictorial meaning.
Semantics of Pictorial Space (Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 2021)
Foundations of projection-based semantics for pictorial representation.
Tagging: Semantics at the Iconic/Symbolic Interface (Proceedings of the 22nd Amsterdam Colloquium, invited talk, 2019)
A compositional semantic analysis of tagging, in which regions of a picture are annotated with words or other symbols.
Content and Target in Pictorial Representation (Ergo 5:33, 2018)
Introduces a view of pictorial representation which distinguishes a picture's target, its singular content, and argues against descriptivist theories of singular content.
Beyond Resemblance (Philosophical Review 122:2, 2013)
An extended argument against resemblance-based theories of depiction, and in favor of a projection-based approach.
Film as discourse
Spatial Coherence in Narrative Film (for Discourse and Coherence, ed. Gerhard Preyer)
A theory of film space: its structure, what makes it coherent, and how spatial coherence interacts with viewpoint constraints.
Temporal Continuity [video] (with Sam Cumming and Rory Kelly, SCSMI 2021)
On the representation of time in film.
Showing Seeing in Film (with Sam Cumming, Elsi Kaiser, and Rory Kelly, Ergo, 2021)
An investigation of two film conventions for representing what a character sees: point-of-view (POV) and sight link; an extension of our project on viewpoint constraints in film.
Conventions of Viewpoint Coherence in Film (with Sam Cumming and Rory Kelly, Philosopher's Imprint, 17:1, 2017)
A defense of a semantic view of film, as against a purely pragmatic view, and a close analysis of two semantic conventions: the X-Constraint (a.k.a. the 180° rule) and the T-Constraint.
A video essay by Koby Leff based on this paper.
Emoji, modality, and meaning
A Semantics of Face Emoji in Discourse (with Patrick Grosz, Christian De Leon, and Elsi Kaiser, Linguistics and Philosophy, 2023)
A semantic account of the contribution of face emoji to linguistic discourse.
The Tree of Meaning [video] (with Sam Cumming; SLIME Workshop)
Meta-semantic foundations for a theory of signs.
Counterfactuals and Modality (Linguistics and Philosophy, 2021)
An argument for the strict analysis of counterfactual conditionals, and against the variable analysis, based on interactions between subjunctive modals and counterfactual conditionals.
Dissertation
The Semiotic Spectrum
On-line publications
Pictorial Grammar (with Dawn Chan, Paris Review Daily, 12/21/10)
Seven Puzzles of Pictorial Representation [original link] (Aesthetics for Birds, 9/7/14)
Editor
Special issue, "Pictorial and Diagrammatic Representation" (ed. with Valeria Giardino, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 6:1, 2015)
Contents:
- Introduction: Varieties of Iconicity
Valeria Giardino and Gabriel Greenberg
- Wayfinding: Notes on the 'Public' as Interactive
Patrick Maynard
- The Mystery of Deduction and Diagrammatic Aspects of Representation
Sun-Joo Shin
- Meaning and Demonstration
Matthew Stone and Una Stojnic
- The Cognitive Design of Tools of Thought
Barbara Tversky
- Diagrams as Tools for Scientific Reasoning
Adele Abrahamsen and William Bechtel
- Street Signs and Ikea Instruction Sheets: Pragmatics and Pictorial Communication
Marcello Frixione and Antonio Lombardi
- Pictures Have Propositional Content
Alex Grzankowski
- Analog Representation and the Parts Principle
John Kulvicki
- Trompe l'oeil and the Dorsal/Ventral Account of Pictorial Perception
Bence Nanay
