Jonathan Tallant

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 course of doing so, I briefly sketch some models of trust. This will help us to get a handle on how some of the mainstream models of trust preclude or ignore the trusting of inanimate objects. In Section 3 I introduce cases designed to show that we have reason to think that we do trust inanimate objects. In Section 4 I consider an objection, and in Section 5 I discuss some consequences of this finding, before concluding in Section 6.

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 current laws of physics are not integrated in the manner that Schaffer requires to get the nomic argument for monism off the ground.

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 theory that denies the reality of time—Baron & Miller’s ‘What is temporal error theory?’. Despite the fact that their paper makes significant strides in spelling out what would be required of a temporal error theory, my claim in this paper is that their position must be rejected and replaced. As well as looking to reject Baron and Miller’s position, I also look to provide that replacement.

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 response. In their, Baron and Miller also argue that an argument in favour of the possibility of causation at timeless worlds, that I put forward, is an argument that fails. In section three, my response to Baron and Miller is that their argument against me succeeds, but that there is a nearby argument that we can appeal to in order to demonstrate the possibility of causation at timeless worlds.

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 version of presentism. I show that both this way of thinking about presentism and the argument supposedly motivating it all fail. I then move to an argument due to Correia and Rosenkrantz. Correia and Rosenkrantz purport to show that presentism can be salvaged without making recourse to the term ‘is present’. I demonstrate that their arguments fail. I then move on to a view, proposed and defended by Merricks, Tallant, and Zimmerman, and show that it has the wherewithal to meet the challenges raised by Williamson who, as noted above, raises genuine concerns about our capacity to define presentism.

Can we help philosophy students become employable without offending those who say that such a task is not the job of an academic? Can we do this by using the insights from the literature that suggest the most effective way to teach employability is a close link to employers? We are happy to report that the answer is ‘yes.’ In this paper we share what we achieved and why we believe it was effective. We briefly discuss the background and genesis of ‘Communicating Philosophy,’ our employability course. We provide a detailed description of the objectives and content of the lectures and seminars and reflect on how the course was received by students. We then, using the notion of ‘transfer’ and ‘boundary-crossing,’ reflect on why our approach has been successful. We end by discussing some limitations of our course and about how the course might be developed in the future.

According to B-theorists, B-relations (‘earlier than’ and ‘later than’, see, e.g. Oaklander 2004: 24–25) constitute the reality of time. The B-relations are what distinguish our world from a timeless one. Yet our only awareness of the reality of time comes via our phenomenology of temporal passage. Why is this noteworthy? Our temporal phenomenology is mind-dependent and reflects no feature of reality. Epistemic access to the reality of time is, in fact, simply epistemic access to our own inner phenomenology. It doesn’t reflect the way reality is. Hence, we have no understanding of what ‘B-time’ is.

It is, I think, possible to generate a variation of McTaggart’s (Mind 17:457–474, 1908 ) paradox that infects all extant versions of presentism. This is not to say that presentism is doomed to failure. There may be ways to modify presentism and I can’t anticipate all such modifications, here. For the purposes of the paper I’ll understand ‘presentism’ to be the view that for all x , x is present (cf. Crisp ( 2004 : 18)). It seems only right that, at a conference devoted to McTaggart’s work on time, we continue to pursue new ways in which his now infamous arguments remain relevant to us today.

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 different focuses. These focal points are: being a concrete object; aggregation and dependence; analyses of ontological dependence; Schaffer’s no-overlap principle. These are all technical notions, but each figures at the heart of a cluster of arguments that Lowe puts forward. To respond, I work through each tranche of argument in turn. Before that, in the first section, I offer a cursory statement of Monism, as Schaffer presents it in his 2010 paper, Monism: The Priority of the Whole. I then respond to each of Lowe’s criticisms in turn, deploying material from Schaffer’s 2009 paper Spacetime: the One Substance, as well as various pieces of conceptual machinery from Lowe’s own works to deflect Lowe’s attacks. In the process of defending Monism from Lowe, I end up offering some subtle refinements to Schaffer’s view and explain how the resulting ‘hybrid’ view fares in the wider dialectic

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 following core areas of philosophy: Metaphysics Epistemology Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of Language Philosophy of Religion Philosophy of Science Political Philosophy Normative Ethics Applied Ethics Metaethics Aesthetics Group discussions and debates are a key part of undergraduate study and one of the best ways for students to learn and understand often complex philosophical theories and concepts. This book is an essential toolkit for instructors looking to get the most out of their philosophy students.

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 criticisms that I very tentatively suggest are not as developed as they should be were they to be taken to represent serious and insurmountable problems. All that I do here is to provide a very general overview of the philosophical terrain and point to some features that may turn out to be problematic if we attempt to navigate the terrain in any particular way

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 argue that this too fails. I use Bigelow's (1996) Lucretian properties as a vehicle for the discussions of dubiousness that follow. As a consequence, the paper ends up offering a partial defense of Lucretianism.

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 discourse to make claims that are either true or false. In this paper I make use of recent findings from cognitive neuroscience and developmental science to suggest that pretense theories of mathematics fail. 1 Introduction 2 The Autism Objection 2.1 Autism and pretense 2.2 Autistic engagement with mathematics 2.2.1 Cortical folding 2.2.2 The language of mathematics 3 The Onset of the Number Sense and the Recognition of Pretense 3.1 A difference in neurology 3.2 Young and no numbers 3.2.1 When and where is the difference? 3.2.2 Damaged HIPS without impairment to engagement with fiction 4 Concluding Remarks

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 eternalism. If, on the other hand, the criticism of Tooley-style Growing-Block views holds, then we are left with just presentism and eternalism. In this paper I show that Button’s defence fails.