•  62
    Locative grounding harmony
    Philosophical Studies. forthcoming.
    In this paper, we explore locative grounding harmony, according to which the location of the grounds mirrors the location of the grounded. We proceed in three stages. First, we clarify the notion of locative harmony and describe different locative harmony principles. Second, we offer two arguments for the claim that grounding between physically located entities obeys principles of locative harmony. Third, we consider and respond to a range of cases that seem to show that grounding relations betw…Read more
  •  16
    Teaching and knowledge: uneasy bedfellows
    Journal of Philosophy of Education 58 (1): 24-40. 2024.
    In this paper we explore the connection between the act of teaching and the imparting of knowledge. Our overarching aim is to demonstrate that the connection between them is less tight than one might suppose. Our stepping off point is a recent paper by David Bakhurst who (on one reading, at least) takes a strong view, opposed to our own. On our reading, Bakhurst argues that there is a tight conceptual connection between teaching and the imparting of knowledge. We argue that this is not the case;…Read more
  •  83
    Hazardous Conditions Persist
    Erkenntnis 87 (4): 1635-1658. 2020.
    Some theories in the philosophy of time combine a commitment to the existence of non-present regions of spacetime with the view that there is a perspective-independent present time. We call such theories 4D A-theories. There is a well-known objection to 4D A-theories, as follows: 4D A-theories entail that the vast majority of subjects across time believe falsely that they are present. But if the vast majority of subjects across time believe falsely that they are present, we do not know that we a…Read more
  •  15
    Empirical and Philosophical Reflections on Trust
    Journal of the American Philosophical Association 9 (3): 450-470. 2023.
    A dominant claim in the philosophical literature on trust is that we should stop thinking in terms of group trustworthiness or appropriate trust in groups. In this paper, we push back against this claim by arguing that philosophical work on trust would benefit from being brought into closer contact with empirical work on the nature of trust. We consider data on reactive attitudes and moral responsibility to adjudicate on different positions in the philosophical literature on trust. An implicatio…Read more
  •  47
    Presentism: Past and Future
    In Remy Lestienne & Paul A. Harris (eds.), Time and Science, Volume 1: The Metaphysics of Time and Its Evolution, World Scientific Publishing. pp. 191-209. 2023.
    We aim to introduce presentism and to consider the question that presentism is supposed to answer. That is, if “only present objects exist” (or some appropriate precisification of the slogan) is the answer to a philosophical question, then (i) what is the question? And (ii) is it the right question to ask? We suggest that the question presentists are answering is not a good one to ask. We aim to articulate a question that presentists, or the heirs of presentism, should try to answer. In pursuing…Read more
  •  11
    Trusting What Ought to Happen
    Erkenntnis 1-16. forthcoming.
    This paper introduces a new account of trust and distrust. The core aim of the paper is to introduce an account of trust that places treats trust and what ‘ought’ to happen as close conceptual companions. Over the course of the paper, I develop the account and compare it with certain rival accounts.
  •  36
    Trust: from the Philosophical to the Commercial
    Philosophy of Management 19 (1): 3-19. 2020.
    This is a paper about trust, with a specific focus on the ways in which trust is investigated in the business literature and the commercial sector. The lens through which the topic is approached is distinctively philosophical. We use philosophical tools to demonstrate the paucity of some of the accounts of trust that are given in the business and management literature, as well as the empirically informed literature that has flowed from them. We close with a discussion of some work on trust drawn…Read more
  •  119
    Presentism, persistence and trans-temporal dependence
    Philosophical Studies 175 (9): 1-12. 2018.
    My central thesis is that presentism is incompatible with all of the main theories of persistence: endurance, exdurance and perdurance.
  •  306
    The Triviality Argument against presentism maintains that we should reject presentism because there is no way to define the view that is not either trivially true or obviously false. We suggest that this style of argument over-emphasises purely linguistic means of representing a philosophical thesis. We argue that there is no reason to suppose that all philosophical theses must be linguistically representable, and thus that the failure to linguistically represent presentism is no big deal. It ce…Read more
  •  246
    The harmony of grounding
    with Sam Baron and Kristie Miller
    Philosophical Studies 179 (11): 3421-3446. 2022.
    Mereological harmony is the idea that the mereological structure of objects mirrors the mereological structure of locations. Grounding harmony is the idea that there is a similar mirroring between the grounding structure of objects and locations. Our goal in this paper is exploratory: we introduce and then explore two notions of grounding harmony: locative and structural. We outline potential locative and structural harmony principles for grounding, and show which of these principles may entail,…Read more
  •  816
    Out of Time: A Philosophical Study of Timelessness
    with Samuel Baron and Kristie Miller
    Oxford University Press. 2022.
    The idea that time does not exist is, for many, unthinkable: time must exist. Almost every experience we have tells us so. There has been plenty of debate around what time is like, but not whether it exists. The goal of this book is to make the absence of time thinkable. Time might not exist. Beginning with an empirically flavoured examination of the 'folk' concept of time, the book explores the implications this has for our understanding of agency, and the extent to which our best physics and b…Read more
  •  268
    Time for Distribution?
    Analysis 72 (2): 264-270. 2012.
    Presentists face a familiar problem. If only present objects exist, then what 'makes true' our true claims about the past? According to Ross Cameron, the 'truth-makers' for past and future tensed propositions are presently instantiated Temporal Distributional Properties. We present an argument against Cameron's view. There are two ways that we might understand the term 'distribute' as it appears. On one reading, the resulting properties are not up to the task of playing the truth-maker role; on …Read more
  •  690
    Presentism and Distributional Properties
    In Karen Bennett & Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Vol. 7, Oxford University Press. pp. 305-314. 2012.
    Ross Cameron proposes to reconcile presentism and truth-maker theory by invoking temporal distributional properties, instantiated by present entities, as the truth-makers for truths about the past. This chapter argues that Cameron's proposal fails because objects can change which temporal distributional properties they instantiate and this entails that the truth-values of truths about the past can change in an objectionable way.
  •  124
    Truth and Dependence
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 4 955-980. 2017.
    Truths depend upon what there is. So say many. A significant subset of that group say more; they say that the best way—perhaps the only way—to make sense of the claim that truth depends upon what there is, is to adopt a form of truth-maker theory. Truth-maker theorists claim that truths require ground; what’s true must depend upon what there is. Typically, truth-maker theory isn’t seen as a theory about the nature of truth. Rather, it’s seen as a theory about what truths must do. Truths must dep…Read more
  •  12
    Presentism, Truthmaking and Necessary Connections
    Theoria 81 (3): 211-221. 2015.
    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.
  •  237
    The Rotten Core of Presentism
    Synthese 199 (1-2): 3969-3991. 2021.
    Recently, some have attempted to reformulate debates in first-order metaphysics, particularly in the metaphysics of time and modality, for reasons due to Williamson. In this paper, we focus on the ways in which the likes of Cameron, Correia and Rosenkranz, Deasy, Ingram, Tallant, Viebahn, inter alia, have initiated and responded to attempts to capture the core of presentism using a formal, logical machinery. We argue that such attempts are doomed to fail because there is no theoretical core to p…Read more
  •  279
    Nefarious Presentism
    Philosophical Quarterly 65 (260): 355-371. 2015.
    Presentists, who believe that only present objects exist, face a problem concerning truths about the past. Presentists should (but cannot) locate truth-makers for truths about the past. What can presentists say in response? We identify two rival factions ‘upstanding’ and ‘nefarious’ presentists. Upstanding presentists aim to meet the challenge, positing presently existing truth-makers for truths about the past; nefarious presentists aim to shirk their responsibilities, using the language of trut…Read more
  •  542
    Purely Theoretical Explanations
    Philosophia 49 (1): 133-154. 2020.
    This paper introduces a new kind of explanation that we describe as ‘purely theoretical’. We first present an example, E, of what we take to be a case of purely theoretical explanation. We then show that the explanation we have in mind does not fit neatly into any of the existing categories of explanation. We take this to give us prima facie motivation for thinking that purely theoretical explanation is a distinctive kind of explanation. We then argue that it can earn its keep via application to…Read more
  •  33
    If the sentence 'my cat is on the mat' is true how does it get to be true? Sentences are made true by what exists. But what about claims such as 'There were dinosaurs?' and '2+2=4'. How do they get to be true? Metaphysics: An Introduction uses the idea of truth and the quest for truth-makers to unravel philosophical problems in contemporary metaphysics. From the nature of properties and time to causation and objects, truth becomes a guiding theme to understanding metaphysical concepts and debat…Read more
  •  14
    Metaphysics: An Introduction
    Continuum. 2011.
    This is the definitive companion to the study of metaphysics. It provides students with an accessible, comprehensive and philosophically rigorous introduction to all the key concepts, issues and debates. Ideal for use on undergraduate courses, the structure and content of this textbook closely reflect the way metaphysics is studied. Thematically structured, the text introduces all the various philosophical problems addressed by metaphysics through the idea of truth-making, a useful lens through…Read more
  •  61
    How do we explain the truth of true propositions? Truthmaker theory is the branch of metaphysics that explores the relationships between what is true and what exists. It plays an important role in contemporary debates about the nature of metaphysics and metaphysical enquiry. In this book Jonathan Tallant argues, controversially, that we should reject truthmaker theory. In its place he argues for an 'explanationist' approach. Drawing on a deflationary theory of truth he shows that it allows us to…Read more
  •  395
    Philosophical enquiry stands to benefit from the inclusion of methods from the digital humanities to study language use. Empirical studies using the methods of the digital humanities have the potential to contribute to both conceptual analysis and intuition-based enquiry, two important approaches in contemporary philosophy. Empirical studies using the methods of the digital humanities can also provide valuable metaphilosophical insights into the nature of philosophical methods themselves. The us…Read more
  •  82
    Presentism and the Spans of Time
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 101 (1): 200-214. 2020.
    Presentists, who believe that only present entities exist, face a problem of how to analyse tensed plural quantification. The idea, in broad outline, is that presentists can't employ the usual method for analysing tensed singular quantification, using primitive ‘slice’ tense operators, to analyse plurals. One option is to introduce a new theoretical primitive: a ‘span’‐operator. But there are reasons to worry about this option. For one, we might agree with Lewis that span‐operators are ill‐behav…Read more
  •  100
    Presentism
    The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2022.
    Presentism is the view that only present things exist. So understood, presentism is primarily an ontological doctrine; it’s a view about what exists, absolutely and unrestrictedly. The view is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature on time and change, with much of it focused on the problems that presentism allegedly faces. Thus, most of the literature that frames the development of presentism has grown up either in formulating objections to the view (e.g., Sider 2001: 11–52), or i…Read more
  •  19
    Might Teaching be Judgement Dependent?
    Philosophia 48 (2): 777-787. 2020.
    Our thesis in this paper is that consideration of Wright’s account of what it is to be judgement-dependent leads us to the conclusion that teaching is judgement dependent. We begin with a consideration of Wright’s account of what it is to be judgement-dependent. We then make the case that teaching satisfies the conditions on what it is to be judgement-dependent. Our intention is not to delve into the independent plausibility of such a view. Our focus is simply on showing the connection between W…Read more
  •  29
    Trust in education
    Educational Philosophy and Theory 52 (7): 780-790. 2019.
    The philosophy of trust is a relatively small subfield. Nonetheless, it contains within it many important insights. Our contention in this paper is that careful study of this subfield can b...
  •  508
    Grounding at a distance
    Philosophical Studies 177 (11): 3373-3390. 2020.
    What distinguishes causation from grounding? One suggestion is that causation, but not grounding, occurs over time. Recently, however, counterexamples to this simple temporal criterion have been offered. In this paper, we situate the temporal criterion within a broader framework that focuses on two aspects: locational overlapping in space and time and the presence of intermediaries in space and time. We consider, and reject, the idea that the difference between grounding and causation is that gr…Read more
  •  422
    A Defence of Lucretian Presentism
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (4): 675-690. 2020.
    In this paper, we defend Lucretian Presentism. Although the view faces many objections and has proven unpopular with presentists, we rehabilitate Lucretianism and argue that none of the objections stick.
  •  330
    Quantitative Parsimony: Probably for the Better
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 68 (3). 2017.
    ABSTRACT Our aim in this article is to offer a new justification for preferring theories that are more quantitatively parsimonious than their rivals. We discuss cases where it seems clear that those involved opted for more quantitatively parsimonious theories. We extend previous work on quantitative parsimony by offering an independent probabilistic justification for preferring the more quantitatively parsimonious theories in particular episodes of theory choice. Our strategy allows us to avoid …Read more
  •  710
    Temporal Fictionalism for a Timeless World
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (2): 281-301. 2019.
    Current debate in the metaphysics of time ordinarily assumes that we should be realists about time. Recently, however, a number of physicists and philosophers of physics have proposed that time will play no role in a completed theory of quantum gravity. This paper defends fictionalism about temporal thought, on the supposition that our world is timeless. We argue that, in the face of timeless physical theories, realism about temporal thought is unsustainable: some kind of anti-realism must be ad…Read more