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.

It seems ever since Wittgenstein there has not been much of a stir in the philosophical world (not to undermine the work of any contemporary philosophers). Some say that his work marked the "end of philosophy." In what sense did he put an end to the discourse? Do you expect there to be a future philosopher who will have an impact quite like that of Wittgenstein, or say, Nietzsche, Kant, or even Aristotle? Moreover, are there any contemporary philosophers who are on this path? In which field(s) do you think a paradigm shift of this sort will occur?

It's certainly true that people have said this kind of thing about Wittgenstein. But if his work did mark the "end of philosophy", not very many people seem to have paid that fact much attention. I suppose someone might say that, if only we understood Wittgenstein's work properly and appreciated it sufficiently well, then we would be inclined not to continue doing this stuff. But I don't myself see any plausibility in that claim. Perhaps that is because my conception of what philosophy is is so distant from Wittgenstein's. Wittgenstein repeatedly expresses the view that there is a sharp divide between "scientific" questions, on the one hand, and "philosophical" questions, on the other hand. But I see no reason to believe there is any such principled division. The idea that there is such a division appears to be a very recent one, born (it would seem) some time in the 19th century. And much of the best philosophy done since the end of World War II has hewn very close to scientific questions. Perhaps one...

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