This year I was fortunate to be
awarded a scholarship from the Anglo-Danish Society. The following is a short
report on the benefits of studying at the University of St Andrews and on my
activities throughout the academic year 2009-2010.
Studying philosophy at the
University of St Andrews is an experience I highly recommend. Not only is the
philosophy faculty at the University of St Andrews among the most talented and
dedicated in the world (not to mention the second highest ranked philosophy
dept. in the UK), it’s undoubtedly among the most active and engaging
philosophy departments too. Throughout the spring, we had no less than five
workshops and conferences on various topics relating to the interests of the
members of the research centre, and this academic year, Arché has seen more
than forty professors, post.docs, and postgraduate students visit the centre.
Each gave talks, lectures or attended our weekly research seminars. As you can
imagine, this is a huge benefit for any postgraduate student as it provides an
excellent opportunity to meet, and discuss your work, with renowned experts.
As a member of the Arché Research
Centre, I got a real sense of what it is like to be a professional scholar.
Members of Arché are committed to attending weekly research seminars which push
the boundaries for current research. Postgraduates, post.docs, and professors
truly work in tandem when attempting to solve longstanding philosophical
problems. I know of no other institution where such close working relationships
between faculty and students exist. Now, this format also puts an immense
pressure on incoming postgraduate students to perform at very early stages in
their careers, but this intense training in writing and in presenting is almost
invaluable. It’s no coincidence that among the postgraduate students at Arché,
the vast majority have had their research articles accepted for presentation at
the most prestigious conferences around the world and that several postgraduate
students have had their work published in the highest ranking philosophy
journals.
This academic year has been the
third and final year of my postgraduate studies. I have completed two of the
three main chapters of my dissertation, one of which has now been published in
the esteemed scholarly journal Linguistics & Philosophy. My research has
centred on the semantics and pragmatics of definite noun phrase descriptions. While
this might seem a somewhat esoteric topic for a dissertation, analysing how the
meaning of seemingly unambiguous phrases
is affected by their context is a longstanding problem in philosophy of
language and linguistics. It traces back to a famous analysis proposed by
Bertrand Russell in his seminal article ‘On Denoting’ (1905). My research is
largely an attempt to show that Russell’s analysis, which today is widely
accepted among philosophers of language, is problematic in various respects and
that it must be abandoned. Towards this end, I have had an excellent set of
supervisors guide my research. I spent a few months in the fall visiting the
University of Texas, Austin. There I worked closely with Professor Josh Dever
and several other faculty members. My main supervisor at St Andrews, Prof. Herman
Cappelen, has been a constant help in improving my work and I’ve also had
frequent meetings with my secondary supervisor, Prof. Jonathan Schaffer,
throughout the entire year. I plan to
finish my dissertation before the end of the summer and I then hope to continue
working as a researcher in philosophy.
The scholarship from the
Anglo-Danish Society has helped further my research significantly. Because of
your financial support, I’ve had less teaching requirements and thereby more
time to focus on my dissertation work. I thank you immensely for your help.
