Juhani Yli-Vakkuri is Senior Research Fellow at the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy at Australian Catholic University. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and has previously been Professor of Philosophy of Language at the University of Tartu, Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at Bielefeld University, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, a Norwegian Centre of Excellence at the the University of Oslo. He has held visiting positions at the University of Barcelona, the Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Salzburg, the University of Oslo, and the University of Oxford (as Associate Faculty Member). Yli-Vakkuri's research is in the areas of metaphysics and epistemology, broadly construed. His most recent work concerns, inter alia, internalism vs. externalism about mental content, the logic of metaphysical necessity, and the nature of vagueness. He is co-editor (with Mark McCullagh) of Williamson on Modality (Routledge, 2017), co-author (with John Hawthorne) of Narrow Content (Oxford University Press, 2018), and co-author (with John Hawthorne and Cian Dorr) of Living on the Edge: Puzzles of Modal Variation (in progress).
Recent Books
Narrow Content by Juhani Yli-Vakkuri and John Hawthorne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018
“This is a book for students and scholars of philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology... Recommended.”
Choice
“This important book ... is presented as a third act in what might be called the Twin Earth Wars ... In [it], the next-generation externalists Juhani Yli-Vakkuri and John Hawthorne aim to strike down internalists on behalf of the empire for once and for all, deploying the awesome weapon Mirror Man to give an argument that narrow content is impossible.”
“Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne lay out a definition of narrow content with more formal precision than anyone else has done.”
“Philosophers on both sides of the issue can be grateful to Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne for invigorating a debate that had been threatening to go stale, and for setting an agenda for further work.”
David Chalmers, New York University
“Narrow Content is a tremendously good book.”
Alex Byrne, MIT
“[Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne] have heightened my sympathy for the idea that many intentional states fail to have narrow contents in any interesting sense.”
“[A] very helpful and thought-provoking book.”
Paul Pietroski, Rutgers University
“This is one of the most convincing philosophy books I have read in a long time. It takes a widely held constellation of views, lays them out with admirable clarity, and patiently reduces them to rubble.”
Jeff Speaks, University of Notre Dame
“Narrow Content provides an in-depth examination of one of the key debates of the last half-century. It is bold in its ambition, broad in its scope ... I have no doubt that the book will be widely read and will be of interest to anyone working in the field.”
Sarah Sawyer, University of Sussex
“Narrow Content makes an important contribution to the longstanding debate between internalists and externalists about mental content ... The book ... brings a welcome and admirable precision to the debate"
Anandi Hattiangadi, Stockholm University
Buy this book in: US | UK | Canada | Germany | France | Italy | Spain
“This is a book for students and scholars of philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology... Recommended.”
Choice
“This important book ... is presented as a third act in what might be called the Twin Earth Wars ... In [it], the next-generation externalists Juhani Yli-Vakkuri and John Hawthorne aim to strike down internalists on behalf of the empire for once and for all, deploying the awesome weapon Mirror Man to give an argument that narrow content is impossible.”
“Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne lay out a definition of narrow content with more formal precision than anyone else has done.”
“Philosophers on both sides of the issue can be grateful to Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne for invigorating a debate that had been threatening to go stale, and for setting an agenda for further work.”
David Chalmers, New York University
“Narrow Content is a tremendously good book.”
Alex Byrne, MIT
“[Yli-Vakkuri and Hawthorne] have heightened my sympathy for the idea that many intentional states fail to have narrow contents in any interesting sense.”
“[A] very helpful and thought-provoking book.”
Paul Pietroski, Rutgers University
“This is one of the most convincing philosophy books I have read in a long time. It takes a widely held constellation of views, lays them out with admirable clarity, and patiently reduces them to rubble.”
Jeff Speaks, University of Notre Dame
“Narrow Content provides an in-depth examination of one of the key debates of the last half-century. It is bold in its ambition, broad in its scope ... I have no doubt that the book will be widely read and will be of interest to anyone working in the field.”
Sarah Sawyer, University of Sussex
“Narrow Content makes an important contribution to the longstanding debate between internalists and externalists about mental content ... The book ... brings a welcome and admirable precision to the debate"
Anandi Hattiangadi, Stockholm University
- Review by David Chalmers in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
- Review by Sarah Sawyer in Mind
- Review by Anandi Hattiangadi in Analysis
- A contribution to a symposium on Narrow Content by Sarah Sawyer, forthcoming in Inquiry
Buy this book in: US | UK | Canada | Germany | France | Italy | Spain
Williamson on Modality, ed. by Juhani Yli-Vakkuri and Mark McCullagh. London: Routledge, 2017
According to the publisher: “Timothy Williamson is one of the most influential living philosophers working in the areas of logic and metaphysics. His work in these areas has been particularly influential in shaping debates about metaphysical modality, which is the topic of his recent provocative and closely-argued book Modal Logic as Metaphysics (2013). The present book comprises ten essays by metaphysicians and logicians responding to Williamson’s work on metaphysical modality. The authors include some of the most distinguished philosophers of modality in the world, as well as several rising stars. Each essay is followed by a reply by Williamson. In addition, the book contains a major new essay by Williamson, ‘Modal science,’ concerning the role of modal claims in natural science.”
Contributors: Andrew Bacon | Kit Fine | Peter Fritz | Jeremy Goodman | John Hawthorne |Øystein Linnebo | Meghan Sullivan | Theodore Sider | Robert Stalnaker | Gabriel Uzquiano | Barbara Vetter | Timothy Williamson | Juhani Yli-Vakkuri
According to the publisher: “Timothy Williamson is one of the most influential living philosophers working in the areas of logic and metaphysics. His work in these areas has been particularly influential in shaping debates about metaphysical modality, which is the topic of his recent provocative and closely-argued book Modal Logic as Metaphysics (2013). The present book comprises ten essays by metaphysicians and logicians responding to Williamson’s work on metaphysical modality. The authors include some of the most distinguished philosophers of modality in the world, as well as several rising stars. Each essay is followed by a reply by Williamson. In addition, the book contains a major new essay by Williamson, ‘Modal science,’ concerning the role of modal claims in natural science.”
Contributors: Andrew Bacon | Kit Fine | Peter Fritz | Jeremy Goodman | John Hawthorne |Øystein Linnebo | Meghan Sullivan | Theodore Sider | Robert Stalnaker | Gabriel Uzquiano | Barbara Vetter | Timothy Williamson | Juhani Yli-Vakkuri
- Review by Lev Lamberov, Философия науки (Philosophy of Science), 77 (2018), pp. 158-171 (in Russian)
