Dorit Bar-On (; born 1955) is a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

Philosophy Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

at the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...

and Director of the Expression, Communication, and the Origins of Meaning (ECOM) Research Group. Her research focuses on

philosophy of language Philosophy of language refers to the philosophical study of the nature of language. It investigates the relationship between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of Meaning (philosophy), me ...

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the Body (biology), body and the Reality, external world. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a ...

epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle ...

, and

metaethics In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or values. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normativ ...

. She previously held positions at the

University of Rochester The University of Rochester is a private university, private research university in Rochester, New York, United States. It was founded in 1850 and moved into its current campus, next to the Genesee River in 1930. With approximately 30,000 full ...

and

UNC-Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, UNC–Chapel Hill, or simply Carolina) is a public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolling students in 1795 ...

, where she was the Zachary Smith Distinguished Term Professor of Research and Undergraduate Education from 2014 to 2015.

Education and career

Bar-On earned a BA at

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

in Philosophy and

Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

before earning her MA and PhD in Philosophy at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

. Her dissertation, ''Indeterminacy of Translation: Theory and Practice'', was written under the supervision of

Tyler Burge Tyler Burge (; born 1946) is an American philosopher who is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. Burge has made contributions to many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, philosophy of logic, epistemology, philoso ...

, Rogers Albritton,

Keith Donnellan Keith Sedgwick Donnellan (; June 25, 1931 – February 20, 2015) was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy (later professor emeritus) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Donnellan contributed to the philosophy of languag ...

, David Kaplan, and

David Pears __NOTOC__ David Francis Pears, FBA (8 August 1921 – 1 July 2009) was a British philosopher renowned for his work on Ludwig Wittgenstein. An Old Boy of Westminster School,David Pears: philosopher'' (obituary) ''The Times,'' 3 July 2009, Archiv ...

. Bar-On has also written Hebrew translations of poetry, fiction, and philosophy, including three anthologies in modern philosophy, writings by

Iris Murdoch Dame Jean Iris Murdoch ( ; 15 July 1919 – 8 February 1999) was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her fi ...

Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut ( ; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American author known for his Satire, satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfict ...

, Dos Passos,

Dorothy Richardson Dorothy Miller Richardson (17 May 1873 – 17 June 1957) was a British author and journalist. Author of ''Pilgrimage'', a sequence of 13 semi-autobiographical novels published between 1915 and 1967—though Richardson saw them as chapters of o ...

E. E. Cummings Edward Estlin Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962), commonly known as e e cummings or E. E. Cummings, was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. During World War I, he worked as an ambulance driver and was ...

Robert Louis Stevenson Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as ''Treasure Island'', ''Strange Case of Dr Jekyll ...

Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European literature, European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'' (18 ...

, and, in collaboration with

Marcia Falk Marcia Falk is a poet, liturgist, painter, and translator who has written several books of poetry and prayer. Early years She was born in New York City and grew up in a Conservative Jewish home in New Hyde Park, Long Island. Her mother Frieda G ...

, a collection of poems by Zelda Schneerson Mishkovsky and ''The Book of Blessings''. Her other professional experience includes being a radio producer, editor and broadcaster for the Israel IDF radio station, a television writer and host in Israel, and a Hebrew television newscaster and interviewer for Channel 18 in Los Angeles. Bar-On also formerly served as the President of MYCO@UNC, a youth chamber organization, from 2009 to 2012.

Research

In ''Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge'', published by Oxford University Press, Bar-On investigates the problem of self-knowledge in relation to questions of expression and expressive behavior. She draws on historical figures including

Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Witt ...

and Darwin to develop a neo-expressivist view of first-personal expressive utterances which explains how these utterances differ epistemically from non-expressive utterances while sharing the same

semantic Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

structure. ''Speaking My Mind'' was described by Joseph Owens of the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

as "a rich book; rich in topics, in argumentation, and in philosophical imagination and insight." In subsequent work, Bar-On has applied this neo-expressivist framework to additional problems in the philosophy of language, metaethics, and epistemology. More recently, Bar-On has sought to illuminate the nature of human communication by situating it in relation to animal expressive communication more broadly, and thereby to show how human linguistic meaning can be understood consistently with a naturalistic theory of the world.

Selected publications

*''Speaking My Mind: Expression and Self-Knowledge'' (Oxford University Press, 2004) *''Expression and Self-Knowledge'' (co-authored with

Crispin Wright Crispin James Garth Wright (; born 21 December 1942) is a British philosopher, who has written on neo-Fregean (neo-logicist) philosophy of mathematics, Wittgenstein's later philosophy, and on issues related to truth, realism, cognitivism, ske ...

) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023) *“First-Person Authority: Dualism, Constitutivism, and Neo-Expressivism” ''Erkenntnis'' 2009 *“The Use of Force Against Deflationism: Assertion and Truth”, (with Keith Simmons) in ''Truth and Speech Acts: Studies in the Philosophy of Language'', Greimann and Siegwart, eds., Routledge, 2007, 61–89. *“Deflationism”, (with Keith Simmons) in ''Oxford Handbook in Philosophy of Language'', Ernie LePore, ed., Oxford University Press, 2006, 607–630. .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bar-On, Dorit Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American philosophers University of California, Los Angeles alumni University of Connecticut faculty Tel Aviv University alumni American women linguists American translators American epistemologists American philosophers of mind American philosophers of language Philosophers from Connecticut