Personal Information
Professor
School of Philosophy
University of Southern California
3709 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, California 90089-0451
Office: 223 Stonier Hall
Phone/Voicemail: (213) 740-0798
Fax: (213) 740-0715
Email: soames@usc.edu
Professional Information
I was an undergraduate in philosophy at Stanford University, and a graduate student studying Linguistics and Philosophy at M. I. T., where I received my Ph.D. in philosophy in 1976. I taught philosophy at Yale University from 1976 - 1980, when I moved to Princeton University, where I taught from 1980 - 2004. I joined the faculty of USC in the Fall of 2004. My specialties are the philosophy of language and the history of analytic philosophy. My research interests include truth, vagueness, reference, meaning, propositions and propositional attitudes, the relationship between semantics and pragmatics, and the nature of linguistic theories of natural language. More recently I have developed interests in law and language, philosophical issues in everyday life, and the future of analytic philosophy. My books include: Reference and Description (Princeton University Press, 2005), Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, Volumes 1 and 2 (Princeton University Press, 2003), Beyond Rigidity (Oxford University Press, 2002), and Understanding Truth (Oxford University Press, 1999).
Last updated: 16/01/2008