Tom Stoneham

There are many questions we can ask about time, but perhaps the most fundamental is whether there are metaphysically interesting differences between past, present and future events. An eternalist believes in a block universe: past, present and future events are all on an equal footing. A gradualist believes in a growing block: he agress with the eternalist about the past and the present but not about the future. A presentist believes that what is present has a special status. My first claim is that the familiar ways of articulating these views result in there being no substantive disagreement at all between the three parties. I then show that if we accept the controversial truthmaking principle, we can articulate a substantive disagreenment. Finally, I apply this way of formulating the debate to related questions such as the open future and determinism, showing that these do not always line up in quite the way one would expect

If you understand me, then you know what I am saying, that is, you know what my words (and sentences) mean. Understanding is an epistemic notion roughly equivalent to knowledge of meaning. The philosophy of language is particularly interested in this kind of knowledge, concentrating much energy on the question: what is it for someone to know what a sentence means? In this paper I am going to concentrate upon one particular aspect of that project, namely the question of whether knowledge of meaning is epistemologically distinguished.

It is argued that a second-order belief to the effect that I now have some particular propositional attitude is always true (Incorrigibility). This is not because we possess an infallible cognitive faculty of introspection, but because that x believes that he himself now has attitude A to proposition P entails that x has A to P. Incorrigibility applies only to second-order beliefs and not to mere linguistic avowals of attitudes. This view combines a necessary asymmetry between 1st and 3rd person ascriptions with Objectivism about the propositional attitudes. The epistemic justification of second-order beliefs is shown to be a further question

Jessica Wilson has recently offered a more sophisticated version of the self-defeat objection to Cartesian scepicism. She argues that the assertion of Cartesian scepticism results in an unstable vicious regress. The way out of the regress is to not engage with the Cartesian sceptic at all, to stop the regress before it starts, at the warranted assertion that the external world exists. We offer three reasons why this objection fails: first, the sceptic need not accept Wilson’s characterization of the sceptical thesis and thus need not start her regress; second, even if she did commit to the regress, it would not undermine scepticism in the way Wilson envisages; and third, the appeal to mental state scepticism which is necessary to generate the second and subsequent steps in the regress is not justified.

This paper engages with the debate of how Berkeley reconciles restricting the objects of sense perception to what is immediately perceived with allowing that ordinary physical objects are amongst the objects of perception. Pitcher’s (1986) argument that Berkeley did not take the claim that we perceive ordinary physical objects to be ‘strictly true’ is rejected before we move to the debate between Pappas (2000) and Dicker (2006) about whether Berkeley equivocates about the definition of ‘immediate perception’ in a way which undermines his position. They agree that Hylas must accept indirect realism, but disagree about how this affects the cogency of his argument. However, Stoneham (2002) gave a different account of the dialectic in the First Dialogue that shows both Pappas and Dicker to be mistaken. This allows us to resolve Berkeley’s problem by appeal to the ordinary idea that we can perceive an object by perceiving part of it.

A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge: wherein the Chief Causes of Error and Difficulty in the Sciences, with the grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and Irreligion, are inquired. George Berkeley shows himself just as concerned with skepticism as he is with atheism. Berkeley's most explicit discussion of skepticism, it is crucial that sensible objects are immediately perceived. While Margaret Atherton may think that such fallibility does not inevitably lead to skepticism, it is clear that Berkeley would not accept it as a refutation of skepticism. Unfortunately, Berkeley never fully spells out how his theory delivers the 'reality and perfection of human knowledge' and thus refutes skepticism. Atherton thinks that since cherries and coaches are collections of ideas and thus do not exist "without the mind," though they are "independent of any particular mind", this skepticism is avoided.

This volume brings together a collection of new essays by leading scholars on the subject of causation in the early modern period, from Descartes to Lady Mary Shepherd. Aimed at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates, the volume advances the understanding of early modern discussions of causation, and situates these discussions in the wider context of early modern philosophy and science. Specifically, the volume contains essays on key early modern thinkers, such as Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Kant. It also contains essays that examine the important contributions to the causation debate of less widely discussed figures, including Louis la Forge, Thomas Brown and Lady Mary Shepherd.

Embodiment is a fact of human existence which philosophers should not ignore. They may differ to a great extent in what they have to say about our bodies, but they have to take into account that for each of us our body has a special status, it is not merely one amongst the physical objects, but a physical object to which we have a unique relation. While Descartes approached the issue of embodiment through consideration of sensation and imagination, it is more directly reached by consideration of action and agency: whenever we act upon the world, we act by moving our bodies. So if we can understand what an immaterialist such as Berkeley thinks about agency, we will have gone a fair way to understanding what he thinks about embodiment. §1 discusses a recent flurry of articles on the subject of Berkeley’s account of action. I choose to present Berkeley as a causal-volitional theorist (realist) not because I think it is the uniquely correct interpretation of the texts, but because I find it more philosophically interesting as a version of immaterialism. In particular, it raises the possibility of a substantive account of human embodiment which is completely unavailable to the occasionalist. §2 articulates an apparent philosophical problem for Berkeley qua causal-volitional theorist and show that Locke was aware of a related problem and had a solution of which Berkeley would have known. §3 distinguishes two interpretations of Berkeley’s famous denial of blind agency – as the assertion of a weak representational condition or a strong epistemic one – and provide evidence that there was a well-established debate about blind powers in the seventeenth century which took the metaphor of blindness as indicating an epistemic rather than merely representational failing. What remains to do in §4 is to consider whether Berkeley, with his own peculiar commitments, could in fact accept this account of agency.

Locke and Leibniz on Substance gathers together papers by an international group of academic experts, examining the metaphysical concept of substance in the writings of these two towering philosophers of the early modern period. Each of these newly-commissioned essays considers important interpretative issues concerning the role that the notion of substance plays in the work of Locke and Leibniz, and its intersection with other key issues, such as personal identity. Contributors also consider the relationship between the two philosophers and contemporaries such as Descartes and Hume

We argue that Armstrong's Combinatorialism allows for the possibility of nothing by giving a Combinatorial account of the empty world and show that such an account is consistent with the ontological and conceptual aims of the theory. We then suggest that the Combinatorialist should allow for this possibility given some methodological considerations. Consequently, rather than being 'spoils for the victor', as Armstrong maintains, deciding whether there might have been nothing helps to determine which metaphysics of modality is to be preferred.

Almost all who write on Collier note a striking similarity between a short passage in his Clavis Universalis and the famous claim that esse is percipi in Berkeley's Principles. This essay explores that similarity in more detail than has been done before. The comparison forces us to address an issue about the nature of passivity in Berkeley's theory of mind. Two interpretations consistent with the text are offered and one is favoured on the grounds that it makes some of Berkeley's arguments more plausible. The idealisms of Berkeley and Collier are shown to have a common source.

“Why is there something rather than nothing?” is a perennial question of metaphysics. This paper gives a valid form of the subtraction argument, originally presented in Baldwin (1996) to the possibility of an empty world (‘metaphysical nihilism’) supported by modal intuitions, which this paper argues we should accept, making it clear that modal intuitions concern the modal properties of concrete objects and not possible worlds. This form of the subtraction argument is not question begging. The paper concludes that the subtraction argument is persuasive, which means that the question of whether there might have been nothing is not settled by a pre-existing modal theory but by the subtraction argument.

In well-documented cases, it is plausibly unethical to ask trauma sufferers for details relating to their trauma. We propose that the reasons are twofold: First, the details requested are not required by those asking for them; second, the request comes with potential for significant harm for the victim arising from the exchange. Requests meeting these conditions are widespread, including in predominant forms of psychotherapy, so accepting these conditions has surprising and challenging consequences for a wide range of interactions with the victims of trauma, including well-meaning ones. Given these surprising and challenging consequences, we explore what, if anything, could offset the two conditions, focusing primarily on therapeutic interactions, which are sometimes thought to have a distinctive or sui generis character. We conclude that none of the options we consider wholly off-set the two conditions, and that they are only partly off-set by insufficient research into alternatives. We outline implications for the status of treatments which require the recollection of trauma as the default kind of intervention, and for interactions with victims of trauma more broadly.

We argue that genuine modal realism can be extended, rather than modified, so as to allow for the possibility of nothing concrete, a possibility we term ‘metaphysical nihilism’. The issue should be important to the genuine modal realist because, not only is metaphysical nihilism itself intuitively plausible, but also it is supported by an argument with pre-theoretically credible premises, namely, the subtraction argument. Given the soundness of the subtraction argument, we show that there are two ways that the genuine modal realist can accommodate metaphysical nihilism: (i) by allowing for worlds containing only spatiotemporal points and (ii) by allowing for a world containing nothing but the null individual. On methodological grounds, we argue that the genuine modal realist should reject the former way but embrace the latter way.

Suppose nothing exists. Then it is true that nothing exists. What makes that true? Nothing! So it seems that if nothing existed, then the principle that every truth is made true by something (the truthmaker principle) would be false. So if it is possible that nothing exists, a claim often called 'metaphysical nihilism', then the truthmaker principle is not necessary. This paper explores various ways to resolve this conflict without restricting metaphysical nihilism in such a way that it would become trivial and uninteresting.

Paul Boghossian has argued that Externalism is incompatible with privileged self-knowledge because (i) the Externalist can cite no property to be the reference of an empty natural kind concept such as the ether; (ii) without reference there is no content; hence (iii) either we do know on the basis of introspection alone whether an apparent natural kind thought has content or not, in which case we can infer from self-knowledge and a priori knowledge of Externalism alone to the existence in our environment of water, gold etc.; (iv) or we do not know, without empirical investigation, whether an apparent natural kind thought has content. An Externalist not wanting to accept either (iii) or (iv) can deny (i). All empty natural kind concepts refer to the necessarily uninstantiated property of being identical to nothing. Since they have different senses and self-knowledge is only held to extend to the existence and identity of sense, this is compatible with privileged self-knowledge, and Externalism is still true of the concepts