Academic Staff

Dr Barry C. Smith

Barry Smith’s central interests are in language and mind.

His particular focus is on knowledge of language and its relation to other aspects of the mind.

He has been developing a position which can do justice to both the interpretationist (Davidsonian) view of the normative nature of belief, desire and meaning and the theoretical (Chomskyan) account of our knowledge of grammar even while it accommodates first-personal knowledge of meaning and mind.

The overall project of uniting first-, third- and sub-personal elements of understanding was explored in ‘Understanding language’; and his own contribution to Knowing Our Own Minds (see below) explains the role that linguistic understanding plays in knowing our own and others’ minds.

He is also interested in epistemic accounts of truth and meaning in the realism/antirealism debate.

Selected Bibliography

‘Understanding language’, Proc. Aristotelian Society, 1992.

Knowing Our Own Minds, edited with Crispin Wright and Cynthia Macdonald, (Oxford) 1998.

Realism and Anti-Realism: An Enquiry into meaning, truth and objectivity, (Polity) forthcoming, 2006.

Further information

http://www.philosophy.sas.ac.uk/bcsmith.php

Department of Philosophy, School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX. Departmental Office tel: +44 (0)20 7631 6383, fax: +44 (0)20 7631 6564, email: office@philosophy.bbk.ac.uk