About

Toby Napoletano, PhD

I am a lecturer in the Philosophy department at the University of California-Merced. I received my PhD in Philosophy from the University of Connecticut in 2017.

My academic research currently focuses on the concepts of desert and meritocracy, their connections to justice, education, and related areas in political philosophy, though I also have specializations in philosophy of language/linguistics.

(Pictured left: Wally, the mountain ranger cat.)

(Pictured Below: Mariposa Lily, a native wildflower in the Sierra Nevada which blooms on our property each May)

Research and Writing

Home: CV

"Desert or Dignity? Rethinking Injustice in Wages. (forthcoming) Economics & Philosophy.

"Meritocracy, meritocratic education, and equality of opportunity." (2024) Theory and Research in Education, 22(1), 3-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/14778785241226662

"Can Retributivism and Risk Assessment Be Reconciled?" (co-authored w/ Hanna Gunn) (2024) Criminal Justice Ethics 43 (1):37-56.

"Desert Is a Dyadic Relation" (2022), Analysis.

"Can Essentiality of Origin Save Meritocracy From The Luck Objection?" (2022), Philosophia 51 (2):883-895.

"Measurement and desert: Why grades cannot be deserved" (2021), Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 10 (4): 282-292.

"How Important Are Truth-Conditions In Truth-Conditional Semantics?" (2019), Linguistics and Philosophy 42 (6): 541-575.

"Why Truth-Conditional Semantics in Generative Linguistics is Still the Better Bet" (2017), Erkenntnis 82 (3): 673-692.

"Compositionality As Weak Supervenience" (2015), Synthese 192 (1): 201-220.