I’m a Lecturer in Philosophy and a Digital Learning Fellow at MIT, where I got my PhD in September 2020. I work on philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of science, with current projects on metasemantics and the foundations of linguistics.
I also work on natural language semantics (neo-Davidsonian event semantics), and on questions in the history of analytic philosophy, the philosophy of sociology, and action theory.
In Fall 2023, I’m teaching Minds and Machines, an introduction to philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence, which I am also running as a free philosophy MOOC on MITx Online, Minds and Machines, along with Paradox and Infinity, a course on the intersection of philosophy and mathematics.
Follow me on philpeople or email me: balc@mit.edu.
Lecturer in Philosophy in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Fellow in the MITx Digital Learning Lab
PhD in Philosophy, MIT (2020)
MA in Philosophy, University of Toronto (2014)
BA (Hons) in Philosophy, University of Toronto Scarborough (2013)
"Is meaning cognized?" Mind & Language [abstract] [.pdf]
"What is it to have a language?" Pacific Phil. Quarterly [abstract] [.pdf]
"Fuctionalism and tacit knowledge of grammar" Phil. Perspectives [abstract] [.pdf]
[A paper on the metaphysics of public languages]
[A paper on what it is for a system to compute a grammar]
[A paper on the epistemology of meaning]
[A paper on the metaphysics of speech]
[A paper on adverbs of quantification]
[A paper on static versus dynamic theories of meaning]
[A paper on the 'meaning without use' problem]
Email me for drafts.
Foster on sustainment
David Lewis autocitation network (with Benj Hellie)
Assorted philosophy audiovisuals