David Miguel Gray

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ORCID: 0000-0002-7853-7452

About Professor Gray

David Miguel Gray is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and an affiliate faculty member of the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the University of Memphis. His research brings philosophy into direct contact with cognitive science, linguistics, and artificial intelligence. His current project asks a basic but difficult question: when a large language model produces grammatical language, what evidence would show that it is using syntactic or semantic structure rather than a collection of surface-level statistical heuristics? He approaches this question through philosophical analysis and controlled experiments on language models, with broader implications for interpretability, knowledge, and nonhuman language production.

A second strand of his work concerns language, race, and social reality. He has written on racial slurs, offense, hate speech, linguistic resistance, and the metaphysics and social ontology of race. Across both strands, his work examines how representational systems—human or artificial—produce meaning, guide action, and shape social life.

Gray received his PhD and MA in Philosophy from Harvard University and his BA in Philosophy, with a minor in Linguistics, from Columbia University. He teaches courses in AI ethics, philosophy of mind and cognitive science, philosophy of language, logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of science. He is interested in working with graduate students interests in philosophy of race and racism, philosophy of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, language, metaphysics, and African-American philosophy.

Research and Teaching Areas

Research: Philosophy of artificial intelligence and cognitive science; philosophy of language; metaphysics; philosophy of race and racism; AI ethics; computational linguistics.

Teaching: AI ethics; philosophy of mind and cognitive science; philosophy of language; logic; metaphysics; philosophy of science, including philosophy of biology.

Current Research Themes

• Syntax, semantics, and heuristic strategies in large language models
• Interpretability and the representation of rules and heuristics in embedding spaces
• Knowledge, understanding, and nonhuman language production
• Racial slurs, offense, hate speech, and linguistic resistance
• The metaphysics and social ontology of race

Selected Publications

Gray, David Miguel. 2024. “How Quotation and Referential Intentions Modulate the Derogatory Force of Slur Utterances.” Frontiers in Communication 9. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1477055.

Gray, David Miguel. 2024. “Doxastic and Epistemic Sources of Offense for Slurring Terms.” Acta Analytica. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-024-00609-z.

Gray, David Miguel. 2024. “In Defense of Introspective Affordances.” Review of Philosophy and Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-024-00734-z.

Gray, David Miguel. 2023. “Aspiration and Self-Realization: The Ameliorative Projects of Steve Biko.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 53: 142–162. https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931221150488.

Gray, David Miguel. 2022. “Social Ontologies of Race and Their Development.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 60: 4–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjp.12481.

Gray, David Miguel, and Benjamin Lennertz. 2020. “Linguistic Disobedience.” Philosopher’s Imprint 20: 1–16. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0020.021.

Gray, David Miguel. 2014. “Counting-ish Creatures and Conceptual Content.” Mind 123: 1141–1146. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzu152.

For a complete publication list, see the CV or Google Scholar.

Research Appointments and Support

Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Philosophy and AI Research (PAIR), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Summer 2025.

Principal Investigator, NSF ACCESS Discover allocation CIS251295, “Discovering Syntactic Structure in Large Language Models via Center-Embedding Benchmarks,” 2025–present. The allocation supports large-scale experiments using NCSA Delta CPU and DeltaAI H100 computing resources.

Selected Recent Presentations

• “What Would Count as Evidence of Syntax in LLMs? Center-Embedding Diagnostics and Attractor Interference.” International Association for Computing and Philosophy, University of Kansas, July 15, 2026.
• “If We Gain Knowledge from Generative AI, How Do the Outputs Have to Be Produced?” Centre for Philosophy and AI Research, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, July 25, 2025.
• “Doxastic and Epistemic Sources of Offense for Slurring Terms.” Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, San Francisco, April 16, 2025.
• “Conceptual Amelioration, Linguistic Disobedience, and the Emancipatory Goals of Normative Theories of Race.” 13th Annual Auburn Philosophy Conference: Language & Value, March 16–17, 2023.

Public-Facing Philosophy

“Critical Race Theory: What It Is and What It Isn’t.” The Conversation

“Racial Ontology: A Guide for the Perplexed.” Four-part video series. Wireless Philosophy

“Failing to Ascribe Thought and Motion.” Two-part essay. Imperfect Cognitions