Hi! I'm
Philip Bold

I'm a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.​

​

My research draws on Wittgenstein's later philosophy to investigate why concepts such as number, knowledge, and mind appear to require deeper, more general definitions than those found in ordinary life.
I argue that this appearance arises from misleading analogies, metaphorical pictures, and the assumption that meanings lie hidden beneath the use of words. Rather than proposing new theories, my work seeks to dissolve philosophical problems by exposing the conceptual confusions from which they arise. This research lies at the intersection of the history of analytic philosophy, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language.

​

More recently, I have extended this approach to the philosophy of artificial intelligence. I argue that debates over AI consciousness, personhood, agency, and mentality often inherit conceptual confusions that predate AI itself. Once these are clarified, questions about AI are best understood not as attempts to discover hidden, pre-existing facts, but as questions about how—and whether—we extend our concepts to unprecedented cases.

​

I completed my PhD at UNC, Chapel Hill under the supervision of Alan Nelson, Ram Neta, and Markus Kohl. I earned my B.A. in Philosophy (magna cum laude) at Brown University in 2015.

​

In 2019, I won the Tanner Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at UNC, Chapel Hill.

​

Outside philosophy, I spend most of my time rock climbing, writing poetry, and will someday return to punk/metal/hard rock drumming...

​

Download my CV here.

 

Email me at philipjbold [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

​

Follow me on PhilPapers here.​