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88Real TablesThe Monist 88 (4): 493-509. 2005.Tables exist. You can buy tables in the local furniture mart or on the Internet; you can give your sister a table as a present; you can use a table as a weapon to fend off a prowler. The philosophical question, if there is one, is not whether tables exist but what makes it the case that tables exist.
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85Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2003.Edited by a renowned scholar in the field, this anthology provides a comprehensive and self-contained introduction to the philosophy of mind. Featuring an extensive and varied collection of fifty classical and contemporary readings, it also offers substantial section introductions--which set the extracts in context and guide readers through them--discussion questions, and guides to further reading. Ideal for undergraduate courses, the book is organized into twelve sections, providing instructors…Read more
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78The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity, and TimePhilosophical Review 110 (1): 91. 2001.In case you hadn’t noticed, metaphysics is mounting a comeback. After decades of attempts to keep the subject at arm’s length, philosophers are discovering that progress on fundamental issues in, say, philosophy of mind, requires delving into metaphysics. Questions about the nature of minds and their contents, like those concerning free action, personal identity, or the existence of God, belong to applied metaphysics. They bear a relation to metaphysics proper analogous to the relation questions…Read more
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75Peter Unger, all the power in the world* (oxford: Oxford university press, 2006. XXIX +640pp.) (review)Noûs 42 (2). 2008.No Abstract
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73A World of States of AffairsPhilosophical Review 108 (1): 115. 1999.Despite heroic efforts, philosophers have found it increasingly difficult to evade discussion of metaphysical topics. Take the philosophy of mind. Take, in particular, the mind-body problem in its latest guise: the problem of causal relevance. If mental properties are not reducible to physical properties, how can we reconcile the role such properties seem to have in producing bodily motions that constitute actions with the apparent fact that the very same motions are entirely explicable on the b…Read more
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71
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71Powerful qualitiesIn Anna Marmodoro (ed.), The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and Their Manifestations, Routledge. 2010.
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70Review. Mind in a physical world: An assay on the mind-body problem and mental causation. J KimBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (4): 769-773. 1999.
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66Sensations, experiences, and brain processesPhilosophy 45 (July): 221-6. 1970.In his defence of the identity theory, Professor Smart has attempted to show that reports of mental states are strictly topic-neutral. If this were the case then it would follow that there is nothing logically wrong with the claim that the mind is the brain or that mental states are really nothing but brain states. Some phillosophers have argued that a fundamental objection to any form of materialism is that the latter makes an obvious logical blunder in identifying the mental with the physical.…Read more
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64RelationsIn Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, Routledge. 2009.
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64The Nature of True MindsCambridge University Press. 1992.This book aims at reconciling the emerging conceptions of mind and their contents that have, in recent years, come to seem irreconcilable. Post-Cartesian philosophers face the challenge of comprehending minds as natural objects possessing apparently non-natural powers of thought. The difficulty is to understand how our mental capacities, no less than our biological or chemical characteristics, might ultimately be products of our fundamental physical constituents, and to do so in a way that prese…Read more
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63Modes and MindIn Francesco Orilia & Simone Gozzano (eds.), Tropes, Universals and the Philosophy of Mind, De Gruyter. pp. 13-30. 2013.
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63The epistemic route to anti-realismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 66 (2). 1988.Hilary putnam, In "reason, Truth, And history", Defends a strong version of antirealism--Roughly, The doctrine that the world is in some way mind-Dependent. Putnam's argument to this conclusion is discussed and found to depend on the unwarranted assumption that causal relations required to fix the content of states of mind must themselves be mind-Dependent. The assumption may be abandoned, But doing so amounts to the abandonment of the strong version of antirealism
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62SubstancesHumana Mente 26 (5): 645-658. 2018.ABSTRACTThe paper takes up a conception of substances according to which substances are simple property bearers, properties being modes, particular qualitative ways individual substances are. What a substance does or would do is determined by its qualities. Efficient causation is to be understood as the manifesting of powers possessed by substances owing to their qualitative natures. Although complexes, entities with substantial parts, are not substances, they would be no less real, no less part…Read more
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62Foundationalism and epistemic rationalityPhilosophical Studies 42 (2). 1982.Some foundationalists have argued that epistemic warrant may be in some measure determined by features of a doxastic agent's circumstances that are not necessarily accessible to the agent. 'externalist' views of this sort have been attacked recently by laurence bonjour on the grounds that they are at odds with the ordinary notion of "epistemic rationality". I suggest that this need not be so and argue that bonjour fails to provide convincing reasons for the rejection of externalist forms of foun…Read more
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54Reliability and epistemic meritAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (4). 1984.This Article does not have an abstract
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48The Last Word on EmergenceRes Philosophica 100 (2): 151-169. 2023.The metaphysical doctrine of emergence continues to exert a powerful pull on philosophers and metaphysically inclined scientists. This paper focuses on a recent account of emergence advanced by Jessica Wilson in Metaphysical Emergence, but the discussion has the broader aim of making explicit some of the underlying themes that inspire thoughts of emergence generally. These prove to be, not merely optional, but largely lacking in merit.
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46Intentionality and the explanation of behaviorBehavioral and Brain Sciences 9 (1): 146-147. 1986.
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46Tropes: Properties, Objects, and Mental Causation, by Douglas Ehring: New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, viii + 250, £37.50Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3). 2013.No abstract
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44Mental Causation and EpiphenomenalismIn Timothy O'Connor & Constantine Sandis (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action, Wiley‐blackwell. 2010.This chapter contains sections titled: References.
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41Cognition and representationAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 58 (2): 158-168. 1980.This Article does not have an abstract
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41Fact and Meaning: Quine and Wittgenstein on Philosophy of LanguagePhilosophical Books 31 (4): 229-231. 1992.