Charles Travis


Charles Travis is a contemporary American-Portuguese philosopher. His main interests in philosophy center around philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology.
Travis received his Bachelor of Arts from University of California, Berkeley and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of California, Los Angeles, respectively in 1963 and 1967. Over the years, Travis has taught at multiple universities, such as the University of Michigan and Harvard University, before he settled as emeritus professor at King's College London and Professor Afiliado at the University of Porto.
He has been influenced by numerous philosophers, mainly in the sphere of ordinary language philosophy, such as Hilary Putnam, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Noam Chomsky and John McDowell.
Travis is commonly considered one of the main proponents of radical contextualism. He is also accredited with coining the influential notion of occasion-sensitivity. On top of that, the philosophical concept of Travis's examples carries his name.

Notable works