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98The problem of 'Jonah': How not to argue for the causal theory of referencePhilosophical Studies 43 (2). 1983.
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113Rationality and epistemic paradoxSynthese 94 (3). 1993.This paper provides a new solution to the epistemic paradox of belief-instability, a problem of rational choice which has recently received considerable attention (versions of the problem have been discussed by — among others — Tyler Burge, Earl Conee, and Roy Sorensen). The problem involves an ideally rational agent who has good reason to believe the truth of something of the form:[Ap] p if and only if it is not the case that I accept or believe p.
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143Belief about Nothing in ParticularIn Mark Eli Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 178. 2005.
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78On Pretending that Things Do Not Exist: Evans, Existence, and ExistentialsDialogue 42 (2): 235-. 2003.Attempts to analyze negative existential statements face the following familiar problem. If a negative existential statement—say, “Hamlet does not exist” or “the golden mountain does not exist”—is true, its subject term must lack an object of reference. But, absent such an object, it seems that nothing true or false can be said about “it.” In particular, if there is no Hamlet to talk about, we surely cannot truthfully say that “he” does not exist. Hence, the truth of true negative existentials—a…Read more
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29Kant and Kripke on the Identifiability of Modal and Epistemic NotionsSouthern Journal of Philosophy 19 (1): 49-60. 1981.It is sometimes claimed that kripke's work in "naming and necessity" has demonstrated that kant was "right" in his acceptance of the synthetic "a priori", Even though perhaps "wrong" in his choice of examples. This article disputes such a claim by showing that, In accepting the identification of the empirically necessary and the "a priori", Kant's position is incompatible with an acceptance of the kripkean synthetic "a priori" (as well as the kripkean necessary "a posteriori")
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17Fear and IntegrityCanadian Journal of Philosophy 38 (1): 31-49. 2008.I'll begin this paper with an autobiographical example — an instance of a common enough kind of case involving agents who are faced with making a choice they strongly care about, but who have tendencies that incline them towards choosing an option they prefer not to choose. Later in the paper, I apply some of the general lessons learned from this case to a philosophically more familiar example of a hard-to-make choice, and to the well-known problem the example generates for the idea of rational …Read more
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199Theory-dependence, warranted reference, and the epistemic dimensions of realismEuropean Journal for Philosophy of Science 1 (2): 173-191. 2011.The question of the role of theory in the determination of reference of theoretical terms continues to be a controversial one. In the present paper I assess a number of responses to this question (including variations on David Lewis’s appeal to Ramsification), before describing an alternative, epistemically oriented account of the reference-determination of such terms. The paper concludes by discussing some implications of the account for our understanding of both realism and such competitors of…Read more
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412Causal descriptivismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 65 (1). 1987.This Article does not have an abstract
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The Fiction of CreationismIn Franck Lihoreau (ed.), Truth in Fiction, Ontos Verlag. pp. 38--203. 2010.
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52Plantinga on God, freedom, and evilInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 12 (2). 1981.
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138Millian descriptivismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (4). 2004.Mill is a detractor of the view that proper names have meanings, defending in its place the view that names are nothing more than (meaningless) marks. Because of this, Mill is often regarded as someone who anticipated the theory of direct reference for names: the view that the only contribution a name makes to propositions expressed through its use is the name's referent. In this paper I argue that the association is unfair. With some gentle interpretation, Mill can be portrayed as someone who i…Read more
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Intending and ImaginingIn Henrik Lagerlund, Sten Lindström & Rysiek Sliwinski (eds.), Modality Matters: Twenty-Five Essays in Honour of Krister Segerberg, Uppsala Philosophical Studies 53. pp. 53--247. 2006.
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36The Philosophy of Information – By Luciano FloridiJournal of Applied Philosophy 29 (1): 86-88. 2012.
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33Beyond Belief? A Critical Study of Graham Priest's Beyond the Limits of Thought'Theoria 67 (2): 140-53. 2001.
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10Review: William S. Hatcher, The Logical Foundations of Mathematics; William S. Hatcher, Foundations of Mathematics; William Hatcher's, Logical Foundations of Mathematics (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 51 (2): 467-470. 1986.
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44Parts and PretensePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (3): 543-560. 2001.This paper begins with a puzzle about certain temporal expressions: phrases like ‘Jones as he was ten years ago’ and ‘the Jones of ten years ago’. There are reasons to take these as substantival, to be interpreted as terms for temporal parts. But it seems that the same reifying strategy would also force us to countenance a host of less attractive posits, among them fictional counterparts of real things (to correspond to such phrases as ‘Garrison as he was in the movie JFK') and much more. I argu…Read more
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106Much ado about nothing: Priest and the reinvention of noneism (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (1). 2008.
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250Fictionalism in MetaphysicsPhilosophy Compass 6 (11): 786-803. 2011.This is a survey of contemporary work on ‘fictionalism in metaphysics’, a term that is taken to signify both the place of fictionalism as a distinctive anti‐realist metaphysics in which usefulness rather than truth is the norm of acceptance, and the fact that philosophers have given fictionalist treatments of a range of specifically metaphysical notions
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277Was meinong only pretending?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (3): 499-527. 1992.In this paper I argue against the usual interpretation of\nMeinong's argument for nonexistent objects, an\ninterpretation according to which Meinong imported\nnonexistent objects like "the golden mountain" to account\ndirectly for the truth of statements like the golden\nmountain is golden'. I claim instead (using evidence from\nMeinong's "On Assumptions") that his argument really\ninvolves an ineliminable appeal to the notion of pretense.\nThis appeal nearly convinced Meinong at one stage that …Read more
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58Characterizing Non-existentsGrazer Philosophische Studien 51 (1): 163-193. 1996.Consider predicates like 'is a fictional character' and 'is a mythical object'. Since their ascription entails a corresponding Negative Existential claim, call these 'NE-characterizing predicates'. Objectualists such as Parsons, Sylvan, van Inwagen, and Zalta think that NE-characterizing properties are genuine properties of genuinely non-existent objects. But how, then, to make room for statements like 'Vulcan is a failed posit' and 'that little green man is a trick of the light'? The predicates…Read more
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30Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob FregePhilosophical Studies (Dublin) 29 290-291. 1982.
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79Quantified negative existentialsDialectica 57 (2). 2003.This paper suggests that quantified negative existentials about fiction—statements of the form “There are some / many / etc. Fs in work W who don't exist”—offer a serious challenge to the theorist of fiction: more serious, in a number of ways, that singular negative existentials. I argue that the temptation to think that only a realist semantics of such statements is plausible should be resisted. There are numerous quantified negative existentials found in other areas that seem equally “true” bu…Read more
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2A Realistic Theory of Categories (review)Dialogue 38 (2): 417-419. 1999.Roderick Chisholm’s Essay looks beguilingly simple. It is a short work, written in a simple, unaffected style. There is, of course, the usual crop of technical definitions, but these should not daunt the reader. Chisholm makes it easy enough, for the most part, to see what motivates his formulations, and he makes it easy for his readers to see how his concerns and solutions compare with those of some other important philosophers.
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35Mind, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank JacksonAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (2). 2011.Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 89, Issue 2, Page 367-370, June 2011
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87Imaginative motivationUtilitas 21 (2): 181-196. 2009.This article argues for a certain picture of the rational formation of conditional intentions, in particular deterrent intentions, that stands in sharp contrast to accounts on which rational agents are often not able to form such intentions because of what these enjoin should their conditions be realized. By considering the case of worthwhile but hard-to-form deterrent intentions (the threat to leave a cheating partner, say), the article argues that rational agents may be able to form such inten…Read more
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153Descriptivism, Pretense, and the Frege-Russell ProblemsPhilosophical Review 113 (1): 1-30. 2004.Contrary to frequent declarations that descriptivism as a theory of how names refer is dead and gone, such a descriptivism is, to all appearances, alive and well. Or rather, a descendent of that doctrine is alive and well. This new version—neo-descriptivism, for short—is supposedly immune from the usual arguments against descriptivism, in large part because it avoids classical descriptivism’s emphasis on salient, first-come-to-mind properties and holds instead that a name’s reference-fixing cont…Read more
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University of AucklandDepartment of Philosophy
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
General Philosophy of Science |