Mitchell Green

Mitchell Green is a professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut,^[1] where he sits on the steering committee of the Cognitive Science program^[2] and the executive committee of the Graduate School. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Philosophia.

Research work

His research focuses on philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, and pragmatics.^[3] He made influential contributions to speech act theory, the evolutionary biology of communication, to the study of empathy, self-knowledge,^[4] self-expression and attitude ascription, and to the epistemology of fiction. His account of communication as self-expression,^[5] develops the idea that communication is best understood as a tool for signalling and showing our internal mental states.^[6] Green's influential research has been celebrated by a special issue of the international journal Grazer Philosophische Studien, titled Sources of Meaning. Themes from Mitchell S. Green,^[7][8] edited by J. Michel, and by a special issue of the journal Organon Filozofia (vol. 28, 2021), titled The Origins of Meaning and the Nature of Speech Acts, edited by M. Witek.

Green previously held a professor position at the University of Virginia (from 1993 to 2013),^[9] and currently runs an MOOC at Coursera.^[10][11] He has held fellowships from the National Science Foundation,^[12] the National Humanities Center,^[13] the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society,^[14] and the American Council of Learned Societies.^[15] He has held visiting research positions at Singapore Management University (2008), the University of Muenster (2015), and was a Mercator Fellow at the Ruhr University Bochum, in the Emmy Noether Research Group (2020–21).

Publications

Books

• William Lycan on Mind, Meaning, and Method, co-edited with J. Michel. Palgrave, 2025. ISBN 978-3031557705
• The Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press, 2021. ISBN 978-0190853044
• Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge Routledge, 2017. ISBN 9781138675995
• Self-Expression, Oxford University Press, 2007 ISBN 978-0-19-928378-1^[16][17]
• Engaging Philosophy: A Brief Introduction, Hackett Publishing Company, 2006. ISBN 087220796X.
• Moore’s Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality and the First Person, co-edited with John Williams, including eleven previously unpublished essays. Oxford University Press, 2007 ); ISBN 0-19-928279-X^[18]

Encyclopedia articles

• 'Speech Acts,’ in E. Zalta (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (Orig. 2007; revisions 2014.)

Highly cited articles

• Green, Mitchell (1 June 2010). "II—Mitchell Green: Perceiving Emotions". Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume. 84 (1): 45–61. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8349.2010.00185.x.
• Green, Mitchell S. (April 2009). "Speech Acts, the Handicap Principle and the Expression of Psychological States". Mind & Language. 24 (2): 139–163. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0017.2008.01357.x.
• Green, Mitchell S. (September 2007). "Direct Reference, Empty Names and Implicature". Canadian Journal of Philosophy. 37 (3): 419–447. doi:10.1353/cjp.2007.0021.
• Green, Mitchell S. (2000). "Illocutionary Force And Semantic Content". Linguistics and Philosophy. 23 (5): 435–473. doi:10.1023/A:1005642421177.
• Green, Mitchell S. (1998). "Direct Reference and Implicature". Philosophical Studies. 91 (1): 61–90. doi:10.1023/A:1004212614842.
• Green, Mitchell S. (February 1995). "Quantity, volubility, and some varieties of discourse". Linguistics and Philosophy. 18 (1): 83–112. doi:10.1007/BF00984962.
• Belnap, Nuel; Green, Mitchell (1994). "Indeterminism and the Thin Red Line". Philosophical Perspectives. 8: 365–388. doi:10.2307/2214178. JSTOR 2214178.
• Green, Mitchell (January 2017). "Imagery, expression, and metaphor". Philosophical Studies. 174 (1): 33–46. doi:10.1007/s11098-015-0607-x.
• Marsili, Neri; Green, Mitchell (August 2021). "Assertion: A (partly) social speech act". Journal of Pragmatics. 181: 17–28. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2021.03.016.