Hi, I'm Will. I'm a philosopher, working primarily in metaphysics, logic, language, epistemology, and mind. I also have an interest in classical Indian philosophy. Currently, I'm an incoming postdoc at the Azrieli Foundation. I received my PhD from NYU.
Here's my CV and my PhilPeople page. You can email me at william.nava@nyu.edu.
Fregeanism is the view that distinct expressive roles (e.g. reference, ascription, assertion) correspond to distinct and exclusive metaphysical kinds. An attractive feature of Fregeanism is that it allows us to talk about the contributions predicates make to sentences without reifying them into objects. Nearly all contemporary Fregeans take it that the space of expressive roles (and corresponding metaphysical kinds) is stratified. In other words, there isn’t just one expressive role of ascription (and corresponding kind of property). Instead, there is an infinite hierarchy: first-order properties, second-order properties (which apply only to the first-order ones), and so on. The dissertation’s main aim is to develop and defend an unstratified conception, which I call horizontal Fregeanism. This view avoids hierarchy by allowing properties to simply apply to other properties, including themselves.
To develop horizontal Fregeanism, I design a formal language, in a novel syntax, designed to reflect it. In this language, sentences of the form FF (where F is a one-place predicate) are well-formed; but the grammatical distinction between n-ary predicates, formulae, and referring terms is maintained. I axiomatize an attractive logic in this language; define a sound and complete model theory for it; and show that it interprets the standard higher-order logic, H, under a natural translation scheme. The dissertation argues that the resulting view is preferable to its salient alternatives (viz. views naturally corresponding to fully untyped, first-order, and higher-order languages, respectively). These arguments are based on expressive and metaphysical considerations, natural language semantics, and the evaluation of respective responses to the issue of paradox.
Adopting an Inference Rule: A How-to Guide (Mind, 2025)
[penultimate | journal]
Abstract: This paper argues that inference rule adoption is a diachronic process during which agents are inferentially guided by a statement of the rule they are adopting, but during which they do not use that rule. Rather, the ability to use the rule is the outcome at the end of the process. This account avoids a regress objection to inferentially guided adoption recently posed by Boghossian and Wright. Adoption, on this model, involves the use of six privileged inference rules, including universal instantiation, modus ponens, and the naive truth rules. However, though these rules play a special role in adoption, they are not indispensable to the process in their full generality: so long as one has reasonably robust restrictions of them, the adoption process is unimpeded. Furthermore, there are no general forms that constitute the minimal restrictions of these rules required for adoption. It follows that these rules, in their fully generality, are themselves adoptable, so long as one begins with reasonable restrictions of them. It is argued that this is enough to overcome the ‘adoption problem’ as a challenge to anti-exceptionalism about logic and to the normative significance of proposals for alternative logics.
Dissolving the Paradoxicality Paradox (Australasian Journal of Logic, 2022)
[journal (open access)]
Abstract: Non-classical solutions to semantic paradox can be associated with conceptions of paradoxicality understood in terms of entailment facts. In a K3-based theory of truth, for example, it is prima facie natural to say that a sentence φ is paradoxical iff φ∨¬φ entails an absurdity. In a recent paper, Julien Murzi and Lorenzo Rossi exploit this idea to introduce revenge paradoxes for a number of non-classical approaches, including K3. In this paper, I show that on no understanding of ‘is paradoxical’ (for K3) should both rules needed for their paradox be expected to hold unrestrictedly. Just which rule fails, however, depends on various factors, including whether the derivability relation of a target system of reasoning is arithmetically definable.
A defense of a non-stratified theory of metaphysical structure, axiomatized in a novel syntax that allows for self-application [draft]
An argument, based on anaphoric self-application in English, against the use of higher-order languages in metaphysics [draft]
A proposal for conditions of paradox identity and solution-type identity, on which the Liar and Russell's are purely logical paradoxes
A paper on the normative link between inference rules and the sentences that express them
A defense of the view that there is just one subject of experience, viz. subjectivity itself
Logic (Fall 2024, Spring 2025)
Metaphysics (Summer 2024)
Philosophy of Religion: Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism (Summer 2023)
Philosophy of Language: Paradoxes (Summer 2022)
Early Modern European Philosophy (Spring 2023)
Main instructor: Tim Maudlin
Modal Logic (Spring 2022)
Main instructor: Matthew Mandelkern
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy (Fall 2021)
Main instructor: Tim Maudlin