Scott Soames

About

Scott Soames is a distinguished philosopher with a focus on the philosophy of language, the history of analytic philosophy, and the philosophy of law. He completed his undergraduate studies in philosophy at Stanford University and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from M.I.T. in 1976, where he also studied linguistics. His academic career includes teaching positions at Yale University from 1976 to 1980, followed by a long tenure at Princeton University from 1980 to 2004. Since 2004, he has been a faculty member at the University of Southern California (USC), where he served as the Director of the School of Philosophy from 2007 to 2022. Soames has authored numerous influential books, including 'The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy' (Volumes 1 and 2), 'Rethinking Language, Mind, and Meaning,' 'What is Meaning?', and 'The World Philosophy Made.' His work significantly contributes to understanding the foundations of language, meaning, and their relation to philosophy and law.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Computer Security
• Cognitive science
• Neuroscience
• Library science
• Environmental ethics
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Cognitive Propositions: Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Empirical Adequacy

  Routledge eBooks · 2022 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Propositions have been central elements of theories of mind and language for nearly 150 years. They have been suspect because it has been unclear that any one thing can play all these roles, and uncertain which things play each of them. Resolving these worries requires taking the metaphysics of meaning seriously. For Frege and Russell, propositions were real, mind-independent entities to which agents bear real cognitive relations of entertaining, believing, and knowing, etc. The cognitive operat…

  PublisherDOI

• What We Know about Numbers and Propositions and How We Know It

  Organon F · 2020 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The paper sketches and defends two instances of the strategy Let N's be whatever they have to be to explain our knowledge of them-one in which N's are natural numbers and one in which N's are propositions. The former, which makes heavy use of Hume's principle and plural quantification, grounds our initial knowledge of number in (a) our identification of objects as falling under various types, (b) our ability to count (i.e. to pair memorized numerals with individuated objects of one's attention),…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The World Philosophy Made: From Plato to the Digital Age

  2019-11-12 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  How philosophy transformed human knowledge and the world we live inPhilosophical investigation is the root of all human knowledge. Developing new concepts, reinterpreting old truths, and reconceptualizing fundamental questions, philosophy has progressed-and driven human progress-for more than two millennia. In short, we live in a world philosophy made. In this concise history of philosophy's world-shaping impact, Scott Soames demonstrates that the modern world-including its science, technology,…

  PublisherDOI

• The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Volume 3

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2025-05-06

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Issue Information

  Philosophical Perspectives · 2023-12-01

  paratextOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David M. Perlmutter

  58 shared

• David M. Perlmutter

  9 shared

• Howard Burton

  University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust

  8 shared

• David M. Perlmutter

  4 shared

• Nathan Salmón

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  3 shared

• Alan Berger

  Brandeis University

  3 shared

• John Burgess

  University of Alabama

  2 shared

• Deirdre Wilson

  Rethink Mental Illness

  1 shared

Similar researchers at University of Southern California

• Lu Chenh-72
• Mark Schroederh-59
• Merrick Andersonh-43