Maura Tumulty

• BA, Williams College
• MSc, University of Edinburgh
• PhD, University of Pittsburgh

Assistant professor, Johns Hopkins University, 2002-2007

Philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, feminism in philosophy

My recent work in philosophy of mind has focused on how to distinguish delusions from false beliefs, and argued that it is sometimes genuinely indeterminate what beliefs or desires a person has. In my current project, I’m examining different ways tacit bias can affect perceptual experience. I’m also exploring whether we could count someone as responsible for experiences whose contents she rejects, as we sometimes hold someone responsible for a desire even when she acknowledges that she doesn’t approve of it herself.

That current project overlaps with moral psychology. Earlier work (on expression and silencing) dug into the territory shared by philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. I continue to be curious about how much of our mental activity — including our perceptual experiences — we manage to express in language, and how much one's physical and social location can affect not only what one can know, but what one can think. I'm also curious about whether we can do justice to the richness of our interactions with young children (and adults who never learn to speak) while still thinking of linguistic content as a good model for mental content.

Download CV

• "Managing Mismatch Between Belief and Behavior," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 95 (September 2014)
• "Illocution and Expectations of Being Heard," Out from the Shadows: Analytical Feminist Contributions to Traditional Philosophy, ed. by Sharon L. Crasnow and Anita M. Superson (Oxford University Press, 2012)
• "Delusions and Dispositionalism about Belief," Mind and Language 26 (November 2011)
• "Delusions and Not-Quite-Beliefs," Neuroethics (2011, doi: 10.1007/s12152-011-9126-4)
• "Modeling Expressing on Demonstrating," Journal of Philosophical Research (February 2011)
• "Showing by Avowing," Acta Analytica 25 (March 2010)
• "Pains, Imperatives, and Intentionalism," Journal of Philosophy 106 (March 2009)
• "Diminished Rationality and the Space of Reasons," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 38 (December 2008)
• "Davidson's Fear of the Subjective," Southern Journal of Philosophy 44 (September 2006)

• Mellon Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, University of Pittsburgh
• British Marshall Scholarship