About

Michael Glanzberg is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1997 and has taught at MIT, the University of Toronto, the University of California Davis, and Northwestern University. His work primarily focuses on philosophy of language and logic, with strong connections to metaphysics and philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. In philosophy of language, he has concentrated on topics such as the nature of linguistic meaning, the connection between meanings, concepts, and cognition, the interaction between meaning and context of utterance, and the interface between semantics, pragmatics, and syntax. He has also explored the role of mathematical techniques in the empirical study of language. In philosophical and mathematical logic, his work has addressed issues related to truth, paradox, and the status of unrestricted quantification. He is a co-author of 'Formal Theories of Truth' and the editor of the 'Oxford Handbook of Truth'.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Natural Language Processing
• Artificial Intelligence
• Medicine
• Neuroscience
• Dermatology
• Social psychology
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• History

Selected publications

• Information Structure for Philosophers

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2025-01-23

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This chapter is an overview of concepts and theories of information structure, with an emphasis on their importance to philosophy. It introduces some of the basic ideas of information structure and gives an explanation of how information structure in represented in English via intonation. The chapter reviews traditional approaches to theories of information structure that are still important to current research. It also outlines current work on two of the central components of information structure: focus and topic. These two components illustrate some contemporary theories. The chapter concludes by presenting a discussion of the philosophical implications of information structure.

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• Eric Snyder.  <i>Semantics and the Ontology of Number.</i>

  Philosophia Mathematica · 2024-04-19

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Journal Article Eric Snyder.Semantics and the Ontology of Number Get access Eric Snyder.*Semantics and the Ontology of Number. Elements in the Philosophy of Mathematics. Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 86. ISBN 978-1-108456258 (pbk); 978-1-108680554 (ebk); 978-1-108602259 (online). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108602259. Michael Glanzberg Michael Glanzberg Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. 08901, U.S.A E-mail: michael.glanzberg@philosophy.rutgers.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0260-0320 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Philosophia Mathematica, nkae009, https://doi.org/10.1093/philmat/nkae009 Published: 19 April 2024

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• Pronouns and Gender

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2024-05-22 · 1 citations

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract This chapter introduces readers to the empirical questions at issue in debates over gendered pronouns and assesses the plausibility of various possible answers to these questions. It has two parts. The first is a general introduction to the linguistics and psychology of grammatical gender. The second focuses on the meanings of gendered pronouns in English. It begins with a discussion of some of the methodological limitations of empirical approaches to the topic and the normative implications of those limitations. It then argues against three simple theories of the semantics of gendered pronouns in English and proposes an alternative that fares better: the Gender-First View. Finally, it discusses the singular use of ‘they’ and its connection to nonbinary gender identities.

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• Towards a Framework for Functional Representation of Spatial Relations

  Baltic Journal of Modern Computing · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Although human perception is geometrically constrained, not all geometric relations are equally prominent and not all geometric relations are used in everyday settings in human perception.Further, some geometric relations are systematically transformed.In this study we describe a robust geometric framework expressing spatial relations but including some strong and systematic non-geometric extensions that operate in human perception.We generally adopt the view that spatial cognition centers on qualitative spatial relations, including geometrical and topological but also functional ones (Coventry and Garrod, 2004, Grdenfors, 2014, Mani and Pustejovsky, 2012).The topological and geometrical principles of qualitative spatial reasoning have been formalized using the framework of the Region Connection Calculus (RCC; Cohn et al., 1997), complemented with convexity and distance and orientation primitives.In work in progress, we extend this framework to include functional relations (Coventry and Garrod, 2004, Vandeloise, 1991).The central functional relations are identified as locational control and support, as they enable us to characterize a wide range of further relations, including interlocking, containment, functional enclosure and telicity.

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• What is a Tense, Anyway?

  Croatian Journal of Philosophy · 2023-12-28

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We study three different conceptions of tense emerging from semantics, syntax and morphology, respectively. We investigate how they bear on the question of the relationship between tense and modality as they emerge in Cariani’s The Modal Future (2021).

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• Judges, experiencers, and taste

  Inquiry · 2022 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Medicine
  • Dermatology
  • Psychology

  This paper reviews the claim that certain predicates, including what are called predicates of personal taste, have a sometimes-hidden element for a judge or experiencer. This claim was advanced in my own earlier work, as well as a number of other papers. My main goal here is to review some of the arguments in favor of this claim, and along the way, to present some of my earlier unpublished work on the matter. In much of the earlier literature, this claim was part of a debate between relativists, contextualists, and others about the semantics of ‘subjective’ or ‘perspectival’ predicates. I shall argue here that these issues are independent. Whether we opt for experiencer or judge parameters is independent of whether we prefer relativist semantics to any other kind.

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• Chomsky on Semantics¹

  2021-04-27 · 2 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Semanticists will often casually remark that Noam Chomsky rejects semantics. Chomsky has frequently noted how poorly understood some aspects of semantics are, and has shown little inclination to grant the status of reasonably well-developed science to many parts of semantics. One specific reason Chomsky has often voiced skepticism about semantics is that he saw the wrong kinds of appeals to semantics in the wrong places. The arguments for the autonomy of syntax in Chomsky's early writing have been described as part of an extended argument for the “existence of syntax”. Semantics for Chomsky must be part of I-language: the part that provides useful information from the Language Faculty to the Conceptual-Intentional system. There are many traditions in semantics, and many current research programs in sematics are embedded in firmly anti-Chomskyan views of language in general. Chomsky's skepticism about truth-conditional semantics has been, and remains strong.

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• Unrestricted quantification and extraordinary context dependence?

  Philosophical Studies · 2021-11-23

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• Indirectness and Intentions in Metasemantics

  Studies in linguistics and philosophy · 2020 · 6 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Social psychology
  • Psychology
  PublisherDOI

• Binding, compositionality, and semantic values

  2020 · 13 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Natural Language Processing

  In this paper, we defend a traditional approach to semantics, that holds that the outputs of compositional semantics are propositional, i.e. truth conditions (or anything else appropriate to be the objects of assertions or the contents of attitudes). Though traditional, this view has been challenged on a number of fronts over the years. Since classic work of Lewis, arguments have been offered which purport to show that semantic composition requires values that are relativized, e.g. to times, or other parameters that render them no longer propositional. Focusing in recent variants of these arguments involving quantification and binding, we argue that a correct understanding of how composition works gives no reason to relativize semantic values, and that propositional semantic values are in fact the preferred option. We take our argument to be mainly empirical, but along the way, we defend some more general theses. Simple propositional semantic values are viable in composition, we maintain, because composition is itself a complex phenomenon, involving multiple modes of composition. Furthermore, some composition principles make adjustments to the meanings of constituents in the course of composition. These adjustments are by triggered syntactic environments. We argue such small contributions of meaning from syntactic structure are acceptable.

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Frequent coauthors

• Jurģis Šķilters

  University of Latvia

  7 shared

• Jc Beall

  University of Notre Dame

  3 shared

• Barbara H. Partee

  2 shared

• Līga Zariņa

  University of Latvia

  2 shared

• Fabrizio Cariani

  University of Maryland, College Park

  1 shared

• Susanna Siegel

  Harvard University Press

  1 shared

• Anil K. Gupta

  University of Pittsburgh

  1 shared

• Peter Svenonius

  UiT The Arctic University of Norway

  1 shared