Sean Crawford

Sean Crawford was educated in Canada and Britain, receiving his BA from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, his MA from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and his D.Phil from the University of Oxford in England, where he worked with Martin Davies. Before joining the University of Manchester, he held research and/or teaching posts at Lancaster University, the Open University, the University of Birmingham, the University of Oxford, and Simon Fraser University.

Specific research interests:

My chief research interests lie in philosophy of language, mind and action and the history of analtyic philosophy. I focus on contemporary problems about the nature of intentionality, mental content, singular reference, de re belief, puzzles about belief, propositional attitudes, how de re and de dicto attitude ascriptions explain action, and the existence and nature of propositions. In the history of analytic philosophy I am interested in Russell, Schlick, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Hempel, Feigl, Wrinch, and Quine, as well as nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy of mind and psychology in general, especially the Logical Positivists.

Current research projects:

I am currently developing Russellian (or Millian) solutions to various puzzles and paradoxes about belief, a theory of perceptual demonstrative de re belief, a Russellian multiple-relation style account of thought grounded in mental acts of predication. I am also engaged in historical work on Russell's, Wittgenstin's, and Dorothy Wrinch's theories of judgement and the philosophy of mind, psychology and science found in the Logical Pisitivists Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap, and Herbert Feigl. 

I am currently available to supervise graduate students in philosophy of language and mind, broadly conceived, and am particularly keen to supervise work on intentionality and propositional attitudes. I am aslo avaiable to supervise work in the history of analytic philosophy. If you are interested in pursuing doctoral work under my supervision, please send me by email a copy of your CV and a brief research proposal (2000 words) that reviews the literature relevant to your proposed topic of investigation. For funding opportunities available to students wishing to do a PhD in the aforementioned areas, please see: www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/philosophy/postgraduate-research/phd-funding/.

‘A Cloudy Landscape’, Times Literary Supplement, 12 April, 2002.