•  114
    Metaphysics, History, Phenomenology
    Res Philosophica 91 (3): 339-365. 2014.
    There are three interconnected goals of this paper. The first is to articulate and motivate a view of the methodology for doing metaphysics that is broadly phenomenological in the sense of Husserl circa the Logical Investigations. The second is to articulate an argument for the importance of studying the history of philosophy when doing metaphysics that is in accordance with this methodology. The third is to confront this methodology with a series of objections and determine how well it fares in…Read more
  •  92
    Trenton Merricks' Truth and Ontology (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (1): 203-211. 2011.
    This is my contribution to an author-meets-critics session on Truth and Ontology.
  •  90
    Teleological Suspensions In Fear and Trembling
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2): 425-451. 2018.
    I focus here on the teleological suspension of the ethical as it appears in Fear and Trembling. A common reading of Fear and Trembling is that it explores whether there are religious reasons for action that settle that one must do an action even when all the moral reasons for action tell against doing it. This interpretation has been contested. But I defend it by showing how the explicit teleological suspension of the ethical mirrors implicit teleological suspensions of the epistemological and p…Read more
  •  86
    Replies to critics
    Philosophical Studies 179 (10): 3123-3132. 2022.
  •  74
    Existence: Essays in Ontology
    Analysis 78 (1): 150-159. 2018.
    © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] wonderful collection of most of van Inwagen’s recent essays on topics in fundamental ontology is certainly to be welcomed.1 Many of the essays are focused on articulating and arguing for van Inwagen’s preferred meta-ontology, which he calls neo-Quineanism. In addition to these essays, Existence also contains essays on the el…Read more
  •  69
    Brutal Simples
    Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 3 233. 2007.
    I argue that there are is no informative statement of necessary and sufficient conditions for being a mereological simple.
  •  55
    Abhidharma Metaphysics and the Two Truths
    Philosophy East and West 69 (2): 439-463. 2019.
    The distinction between "the two truths" was initially developed to resolve seeming contradictions in the Buddha's teachings.1 The Buddha teaches that persons should act compassionately, that persons will be reincarnated, and that persons do not exist. The first two lessons seem inconsistent with the third. Consistency could be restored by distinguishing kinds of truth: the first and second lessons are conventionally true, but it is conventionally but not ultimately true that persons exist.2In a…Read more
  •  53
    Karen Bennett: Making Things Up (review)
    Journal of Philosophy 116 (9): 515-519. 2019.
  •  53
    The Fragmentation of Being
    Oxford University Press. 2017.
    Kris McDaniel argues that there are different ways in which things exist. For instance, past things don't exist in the same way as present things. Numbers don't exist in the same way as physical objects; nor do holes, which are real, but less real than what they are in. McDaniel's theory of being illuminates a wide range of metaphysical topics.
  •  51
    From the perspective of a contemporary metaphysician, Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671 is a fantastic book. It is an impressively rich, detailed, and thorough examination of a multitude of important metaphysical puzzles and arguments, written in a clear, engaging, lively, funny, and even on one occasion vulgar manner. The number of topics covered is astonishing: substance, attribute, form, matter, the metaphysics of predication, parts and wholes, the metaphysics of extension across space, persisten…Read more
  •  39
    Nicholas Stang’s Kant’s Modal Metaphysics
    Kantian Review 23 (3): 461-472. 2018.
  •  39
    Précis of The Fragmentation of Being
    Philosophical Studies 179 (10): 3111-3112. 2022.
  •  37
    An object is a simple if and only if it has no proper parts. An object is gunk if and only if every proper part of that object itself has a proper part. In my dissertation, I address the following questions. The concepts of simples and gunk presuppose the concept of parthood. What is the status of this concept? his question itself divides into the following: does the concept of parthood have universal applicability, so that, just as every object is self-identical, every object has parts? Finally…Read more
  •  31
    Review of D.M. Armstrong, Truth and Truthmakers (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (8). 2005.
  •  26
    Freedom and idealism in Mary Whiton Calkins
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27 (3): 573-592. 2019.
    This paper explores Calkins’ absolute idealism and its ramifications for libertarian free will. Calkins’ metaphysics is a version of absolute idealism, according to which the absolute is a person who has everything else as either a part or an aspect. Three different arguments for the conclusion that Calkins’ metaphysics is incompatible with libertarian freewill are formulated and critically assessed. Finally, I assess the extent to which these arguments are independent of each other.
  •  24
    Author meets critics: Matti Eklund’s choosing normative concepts
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (5): 475-488. 2020.
  •  21
    A Reply to Andrew Brenner
    Philosophy East and West 70 (2): 557-565. 2020.
    In "Abhidharma Metaphysics and the Two Truths", I argued that a version of ontological pluralism—the view that there are different modes of being—is a philosophically satisfactory account of the doctrine of two truths as found in Abhidharma metaphysics, and that it is superior to accounts in the secondary literature.1 According to my account, the doctrine of two truths is best construed as a view that distinguishes between conventional and ultimate reality, the former of which is enjoyed by pers…Read more
  •  19
    Jonardon Ganeri’s recent book – henceforth, ‘Virtual Subjects’ – is an intriguing introduction to some aspects of the philosophical thought of Fernando Pessoa
  •  12
    This is metaphysics: an introduction
    Wiley-Blackwell. 2020.
    A lot of people want to know what makes a life worth living. Some people think that a person's life is worth living if and only if that person experiences a greater amount of pleasure than pain throughout the course of her life, and that a life is better or worse to the extent that the balance of pleasure over pain is higher or lower. But I think that the theory that a person's life is worth living if and only if that person experiences throughout her life a greater amount of pleasure than pain,…Read more