I've been away from academia since I dropped out of philosophy grad school in 1997, so I'm out of touch with recent developments in philosophy.
What are the most significant philosophical books or papers of the past eight or so years?
(My main areas of interest in grad school were metaphysics and philosophy of language, but I'd be interested in your answer whatever your specialty.)
Philosophy tends not to move terribly quickly, and it's always difficult to tell, from "up close", what will prove to have been important. That said, however, there have been some important developments in philosophy of language (one area you mentioned over the last decade). It's less a matter of individual pieces of work and more a matter of orientation and general progress. As a result of several forces, the question how the meaning of an utterance depends upon the circumstances in which that utterance is made has become very hot, and it seems that enough has been learned in surrounding areas to make this exceedingly difficult question discussable at this point. Ernie Lepore and Herman Cappelen recently published a book, Insensitive Semantics , that discusses this issue. I don't find their view convincing, but they do a very nice job of laying out the options, so it would make a good introduction to the state of the art.
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