•  66
    You Can Trust the Ladder, But You Shouldn't
    Theoria 85 (2): 102-118. 2019.
    My claim in this article is that, contra what I take to be the orthodoxy in the wider literature, we do trust inanimate objects – per the example in the title, there are cases where people really do trust a ladder (to hold their weight, for instance), and, perhaps most importantly, that this poses a challenge to that orthodoxy. My argument consists of four parts. In Section 2 I introduce an alleged distinction between trust as mere reliance and trust as a rich, morally loaded notion. In the cour…Read more
  •  63
    In this paper we offer a response to one argument in favour of Priority Monism, what Jonathan Schaffer calls the nomic argument for monism. We proceed in three stages. We begin by introducing Jonathan Schaffer’s Priority Monism and the nomic argument for that view. We then consider a response to the nomic argument that we presented in an earlier paper. We show that this argument suffers from a flaw. We then go on to offer a different response to the nomic argument. The core idea is that the curr…Read more
  •  51
    Commitment in Cases of Trust and Distrust
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 6 (4): 261-267. 2017.
    There is a well-developed literature on trust. Distrust, on the other hand, has gathered far less attention in the philosophical literature. A recent exception to that trend in the philosophical literature is Hawley who develops a unified account of both trust and distrust. My aim in this paper is to present arguments against her account of trust and distrust, though then to also suggest a patch.
  •  70
    An error in temporal error theory
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (1): 14-32. 2018.
    Within the philosophy of time there has been a growing interest in positions that deny the reality of time. Those positions, whether motivated by arguments from physics or metaphysics, have a shared conclusion: time is not real. What has not been made wholly clear, however, is exactly what it entails to deny the reality of time. Time is unreal, sure. But what does that mean? There has been only one sustained attempt to spell out exactly what it would mean to endorse a temporal error theory; a th…Read more
  •  17
    Truth and Dependence
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 4. 2017.
  •  96
    Causation in a timeless world?
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (3): 309-325. 2019.
    This paper is an attempt to answer the question, ‘could there be causation in a timeless world?’ My conclusion: tentatively, yes. The paper and argument have three parts. Part one introduces salient issues and spells out the importance of this line of investigation. Section two of the paper reviews recent arguments due to Baron and Miller, who argue in favour of the possibility of causation in a timeless world, and looks to reject their arguments developed there. Section three is a response to a…Read more
  •  121
    Presentism Remains
    Erkenntnis 84 (2): 409-435. 2019.
    Here I examine some recent attempts to provide a new way of thinking about the philosophy of time that question the central role of ‘presentness’ within the definition of presentism. The central concern raised by these critics turns on the intelligibility and theoretical usefulness of the term ‘is present’. My overarching aim is to at least challenge such concerns. I begin with arguments due to Deasy. Deasy develops a view that he calls ‘transientism’ and that he takes to be a well-motivated ver…Read more
  •  106
    Commitment in cases of trust and distrust
    Thought: Fordham University Quarterly (4): 261-267. 2017.
    There is a well-developed literature on trust. Distrust, on the other hand, has gathered far less attention in the philosophical literature. A recent exception to that trend in the philosophical literature is Hawley who develops a unified account of both trust and distrust. My aim in this paper is to present arguments against her account of trust and distrust, though then to also suggest a patch.
  •  48
    Dynamic theories of time typically commit to the claim that “time passes”. In this paper I develop a version of the ‘no alternate possibilities’ argument in order to show that time does not pass, but that this is no threat to dynamic theories of time.
  •  173
    Do Not Revise Ockham's Razor Without Necessity
    with Sam Baron
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (3): 596-619. 2018.
    Ockham's razor asks that we not multiply entities beyond necessity. The razor is a powerful methodological tool, enabling us to articulate reasons for preferring one theory to another. There are those, however, who would modify the razor. Schaffer, for one, tells us that, ‘I think the proper rendering of Ockham's razor should be ‘Do not multiply fundamental entities without necessity’’. Our aim, here, is to challenge such re-workings of Ockham's razor.
  •  69
    Truth and Truthbearers
    Analysis 77 (4): 839-848. 2017.
  •  244
    Ontological dependence in a spacetime-world
    Philosophical Studies 172 (11): 3101-3118. 2015.
    Priority Monism, as defined by Jonathan Schaffer, has a number of components. It is the view that: the cosmos exists; the cosmos is a maximal actual concrete object, of which all actual concrete objects are parts; the cosmos is basic—there is no object upon which the cosmos depends, ontologically; ontological dependence is a primitive and unanalysable relation. In a recent attack, Lowe has offered a series of arguments to show that Monism fails. He offers up four tranches of argument, with diffe…Read more
  •  73
    Immodest and Proud
    Erkenntnis 80 (4): 853-868. 2015.
    In his ‘Ambitious, Yet Modest, Metaphysics’, Hofweber puts forward arguments against positions in metaphysics that he describes as ‘immodest’; a position he identifies as defended by Jonathan Lowe. In this paper I reply to Hofweber’s arguments, offering a defence of immodest metaphysics of the type practiced by Lowe inter alia
  •  50
    Engaging undergraduate students and instigating debate within philosophy seminars is one of the greatest challenges faced by instructors on a daily basis. _How to Get Philosophy Students Talking: An Instructor’s Toolkit _is an innovative and original resource designed for use by academics looking to help students of all abilities get the most out of their time spent in group discussions. Each chapter features thought experiments, discussion questions and further readings on topics within the fol…Read more
  •  157
    What is it to “B” a relation?
    Synthese 162 (1): 117-132. 2008.
    The purpose of this paper is two fold: first, I look to show Oaklander’s theory of time to be false. Second, I show that the only way to salvage the B-theory is via the adopting of the causal theory of time, and allying this to Oaklander’s claim that tense is to be eliminated. I then raise some concerns with the causal theory of time. My conclusion is that, if one adopts eternalism, the unreality of time looks a better option than the B-theory.
  •  159
    Presentism, Truthmaking and Necessary Connections
    Theoria 80 (4): 211-221. 2014.
    Ross Cameron puts forward a novel solution to the truthmaker problem facing presentism. I claim that, by Cameron's own lights, the view is not in fact a presentist view at all, but rather requires us to endorse a form of Priority Presentism, whereby past objects are derivative and depend for their existence upon present objects. I argue that this view should be rejected
  •  1
    McTaggart’s original arguments have been interpreted and reinterpreted in a series of highly complex and, oft times, original ways. In this introductory paper I will offer a brief exposition of the original argument that McTaggart first gave and note a number of different ways in which philosophers have seen fit to respond. In doing so I hope to offer little more than an introduction to the topic that will pave the way for the papers that follow. It should also be noted that many of the criticis…Read more
  •  202
    Dubious by nature
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43 (1): 97-116. 2013.
    There is a charge sometimes made in metaphysics that particular commitments are ‘hypothetical’, ‘dubious’ or ‘suspicious’. There have been two analyses given of what this consists in—due to Crisp (2007) and Cameron (2011). The aim of this paper is to reject both analyses and thereby show that there is no obvious way to press the objection against said commitments that they are ‘dubious’ and objectionable. Later in the paper I consider another account of what it might be to be ‘dubious’, and argu…Read more
  •  129
    There’s No Future in No-Futurism
    Erkenntnis 74 (1): 37-52. 2011.
    In two recent papers Button (Analysis 66:130–135, 2006, Analysis 67:325–332, 2007) has developed a particular view of time that he calls no-futurism. He defends his no-futurism against a sceptical problem that has been raised (by e.g. Bourne in Aust J Phil 80:359–371, 2002) for a similar growing block view—that of Tooley (Time, tense, and causation, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997). If Button is right, then we have an important third option available to us: a half-way house between presentism and …Read more
  •  115
    Pretense, Mathematics, and Cognitive Neuroscience
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (4). 2013.
    A pretense theory of a given discourse is a theory that claims that we do not believe or assert the propositions expressed by the sentences we token (speak, write, and so on) when taking part in that discourse. Instead, according to pretense theory, we are speaking from within a pretense. According to pretense theories of mathematics, we engage with mathematics as we do a pretense. We do not use mathematical language to make claims that express propositions and, thus, we do not use mathematical …Read more
  •  86
    Time
    Analysis 73 (2): 369-379. 2013.
  •  146
    Optimus prime: paraphrasing prime number talk
    Synthese 190 (12): 2065-2083. 2013.
    Baker (Mind 114:223–238, 2005; Brit J Philos Sci 60:611–633, 2009) has recently defended what he calls the “enhanced” version of the indispensability argument for mathematical Platonism. In this paper I demonstrate that the nominalist can respond to Baker’s argument. First, I outline Baker’s argument in more detail before providing a nominalistically acceptable paraphrase of prime-number talk. Second, I argue that, for the nominalist, mathematical language is used to express physical facts about…Read more
  •  125
    Intuitions in physics
    Synthese 190 (15): 2959-2980. 2013.
    This paper is an exploration of the role of intuition in physics. The ways in which intuition is appealed to in physics are not well understood. To the best of my knowledge, there is no analysis of the different contexts in which we might appeal to intuition in physics, nor is there any analysis of the different potential uses to which intuition might be put. In this paper I look to provide data that goes some way to giving a sense of the different contexts in which intuition is appealed to in p…Read more
  •  682
    Against mereological nihilism
    Synthese 191 (7): 1511-1527. 2014.
    I argue that mereological nihilism fails because it cannot answer the special arrangement question: when is it true that the xs are arranged F-wise? I suggest that the answers given in the literature fail and that the obvious responses that could be made look to undermine the motivations for adopting nihilism in the first place
  •  115
    Quantitative Parsimony and the Metaphysics of Time: Motivating Presentism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (3): 688-705. 2012.
    In this paper I argue that presentism —the view that only present objects exist—can be motivated, at least to some degree, by virtue of the fact that it is more quantitatively parsimonious than rival views
  •  67
    Not a Total failure
    Philosophia 38 (4): 795-810. 2010.
    In this paper I offer a partial defence of Armstrong’s totality relation as a solution to the problem of so-called “negative existentials”.
  •  170
    Defining Existence Presentism
    Erkenntnis 79 (S3): 479-501. 2014.
    In this paper I argue in favour of a new definition of presentism that I call ‘existence presentism’ (EP). Typically, presentism is defined as the thesis that ‘only present objects exist’, or ‘nothing exists that is non-present’.1 I assume these statements to be equivalent. I call these statements of presentism ‘conventional presentism’ (CP). First, in §2, I rehearse arguments due to Ulrich Meyer that purport to show that presentism is not adequately defined as CP. In §§2.1–2.4 I show that consider…Read more
  •  281
    Monism: The Islands of Plurality
    with Sam Baron
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (3): 583-606. 2016.
    Priority monism (hereafter, ‘monism’) is the view that there exists one fundamental entity—the world—and that all other objects that exist (a set of objects typically taken to include tables, chairs, and the whole menagerie of everyday items) are merely derivative. Jonathan Schaffer has defended monism in its current guise, across a range of papers. Each paper looks to add something to the monistic picture of the world. In this paper we argue that monism—as Schaffer describes it—is false. To do …Read more