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3Tropes: 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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3Tropes: Properties, Objects, and Mental Causation (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3): 604-607. 2013.
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4Tropes: Properties, Objects, and Mental Causation, by Douglas Ehring: New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, viii + 250, £37.50 (hardback) (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3): 604-607. 2013.
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11The legacy of linguisticismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (2). 2006.In recent work on truth and truthmaking, D. M. Armstrong has defended a version of 'truthmaker necessitarianism', the doctrine that truths necessitate truthmakers. Truthmaker necessitarianism, he contends, requires the postulation of 'totality facts', which serve as ingredients of truthmakers for general truths and negative truths, and propositions, which function as the fundamental truth bearers. I argue that neither totality facts nor propositions need figure in an account of truthmaking, and …Read more
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200Truthmaking and fundamentalitySynthese 198 (Suppl 3): 849-860. 2016.Consider the idea that some entities are more fundamental than others, some entities ‘ground’ other, less fundamental, entities. What is it for something to be more fundamental than another, or for something to ‘ground’ something else? This paper urges the rejection of conceptions of grounding and fundamentality according to which reality has a hierarchical structure in which higher-level entities are taken to be distinct from but metaphysically dependent on more fundamental lower-level entities…Read more
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6Review of powers: A study in metaphysics} by George M olnar (review)Journal of Philosophy 101 (8): 438-43. 2004.
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3Review. 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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5Rationality and psychological explanationInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 28 (1-4). 1985.Certain philosophical arguments apparently show that the having of beliefs is tied conceptually to rationality. Such a view, however, seems at odds both with the possibility of irrational belief and with recent empirical discoveries in the psychology of reasoning. The aim of this paper is to move toward a reconciliation of these apparently conflicting perspectives by distinguishing between internalist and externalist conceptions of rationality. It is argued that elements of each are required for…Read more
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4Reliability and epistemic meritAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 62 (4). 1984.This Article does not have an abstract
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24Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction (Second Edition). (edited book)Routledge. 2004.This comprehensive textbook, written by a leading author in the field, provides a survey of mainstream conceptions of the nature of mind accessible to readers with little or no background in philosophy. Included are the dualist, behaviourist, and functionalist accounts of the nature of mind, along with a critical assessment of recent trends in the subject. The problem of consciousness, widely thought to be the chief roadblock to our understanding of the mind, is addressed throughout the book and…Read more
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7On the cutting edge: Philosophical perspectives on mental causationPhilosophical Papers 20 (2): 113-137. 1991.No abstract
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46Mental 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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7Kinds and essencesRatio 18 (4). 2005.Brian Ellis advances a robust species of realism he calls Physical Realism. Physical Realism includes an ontology comprising three kinds of universal and three kinds of particular: a six‐category ontology. After comparing Physical Realism to a modest two‐category ontology inspired by Locke, I mention two apparent difficulties a proponent of a six‐category ontology might address.1.
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113III—Aristotelian SupervenienceProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 115 (1pt1): 41-56. 2015.Three matchsticks could be arranged on a table so as to form a triangle. Were you to place a lump of sugar into a cup of hot tea it would dissolve. You might never have been born. Such assertions express modal judgements and, as we suppose, truths about the universe. But if modal judgements can be true, what features of the universe make them true? Thanks largely to the efforts of David Lewis, philosophers nowadays find it natural to appeal to alternative worlds to explicate modality. Something …Read more
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5Foundationalism 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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12From an ontological point of viewOxford University Press. 2003.From an Ontological Point of View is a highly original and accessible exploration of fundamental questions about what there is. John Heil discusses such issues as whether the world includes levels of reality; the nature of objects and properties; the demands of realism; what makes things true; qualities, powers, and the relation these bear to one another. He advances an account of the fundamental constituents of the world around us, and applies this account to problems that have plagued recent w…Read more
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29DispositionsSynthese 144 (3): 343-356. 2005.Appeals to dispositionality in explanations of phenomena in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, require that we first agree on what we are talking about. I sketch an account of what dispositionality might be. That account will place me at odds with most current conceptions of dispositionality. My aim is not to establish a weighty ontological thesis, however, but to move the discussion ahead in two respects. First, I want to call attention to the extent to which assumptions philosophers have …Read more
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77A 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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96Are We Brains in a Vat? Top Philosopher Says NoCanadian Journal of Philosophy 17 (2): 427-436. 1987.In Reason, Truth, and History, Hilary Putnam addresses the notion that we might all be brains in a vat in a way that has been widely discussed.1 What follows is an attempt to get dear on Putnam's argument, more particularly, to determine how exactly that argument goes and what precisely it is supposed to establish. Putnam's presentation is not unambiguous on either count, nor is it always as dear as one might have wished.
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36Accidents UnmooredAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 55 (2): 113-120. 2018.The essence of an accident consists in its relationship to a substance. For we should not imagine that an accident is a thing in its own right to which gets attached a relationship or a link to a substance in which that accident exists. For if so, an accident would be something in its own right, dependent on substance only as extrinsic, and on this view, an accident could be cognized apart from the substance. These outcomes are impossible, however. Hence, what an accident is to something of the …Read more
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24Appearance in RealityOxford University Press. 2021.How does the way things appear to us relate to the way things really are? Science tells us that the world is very different from the way we experience it. John Heil offers an explanation of why the scientific image of the world that we get from physics is our best guide to the nature of reality--to what the appearances are appearances of.