Noah Daniel Betz-Richman

4th Year Graduate Student | Ph.D. program in Philosophy

2023-2024 Lead Teaching Fellow, Center for Teaching and Learning

I specialize in the philosophy of language and mind. My current research focuses on speech-act theory, with particular interest in commitment-based theories of speech acts. One area of my research focuses on lying and explores its relation to assertion. Another area examines the nature of lexical meaning and semantic change, focusing on deliberate efforts to change or engineer word-meanings for social and political purposes. I am also interested in foundational questions underlying these projects, including the metasemantic foundations of lexical meaning, the nature of our concepts, and the prospects of conceptual analysis.
Prior to beginning my PhD at Columbia, I received a B.A. with Honors from Williams College and an MPhil with Distinction from the University of Cambridge.