•  524
    Fictionalist Attitudes about Fictional Matters
    In Mark Eli Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics, Clarendon Press. pp. 204-233. 2005.
    A pressing problem for many non-realist1 theories concerning various specific subject matters is the challenge of making sense of our ordinary propositional attitude claims related to the subject in question. Famously in the case of ethics, to take one example, we have in ordinary language prima facie ascriptions of beliefs and desires involving moral properties and relationships. In the case, for instance, of “Jason believes that Kylie is virtuous”, we appear to have a belief which takes Kylie …Read more
  •  519
    Chance and Necessity
    Philosophical Perspectives 30 (1): 294-308. 2016.
    A principle endorsed by many theories of objective chance, and practically forced on us by the standard interpretation of the Kolmogorov semantics for chance, is the principle that when a proposition P has a chance, any proposition Q that is necessarily equivalent to P will have the same chance as P. Call this principle SUB (for the substitution of necessary equivalents into chance ascriptions). I will present some problems for a theory of chance, and will argue that the best way to resolve th…Read more
  •  495
    Classes, Worlds and Hypergunk
    The Monist 87 (3): 303-321. 2004.
    The question of what truths are necessary in the broadest possible sense is a difficult one to answer, as is the question of what the limits are to what is possible. (Most people would see these two questions as different sides of the same coin, of course, since many think the question of what is possible is just the question of what is not necessarily ruled out). We have three general sorts of strategies for determining whether something is necessary (or possible). We can identify it in a class…Read more
  •  486
    Truthmakers and Predication
    Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 4 171-192. 2008.
    To what extent do true predications correspond to truthmakers in virtue of which those predications are true? One sort of predicate which is often thought to not be susceptible to an ontological treatment is a predicate for instantiation, or some corresponding predication (trope-similarity or set-membership, for example). This paper discusses this question, and argues that an "ontological" approach is possible here too: where this ontological approach goes beyond merely finding a truthmaker for …Read more
  •  461
    Consequentialism and Side Constraints
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (1): 5-22. 2009.
    Many people are inclined to think that consequences of actions, or perhaps reasonably expected consequences of those actions, have moral weight. Firing off shotguns in crowded areas is typically wrong, at least in part, because of the people who get maimed and killed. Committed consequentialists think that consequences (either actual consequences, or expected consequences, or intended consequences, or reasonably expected consequences, or maybe some other different shade) are all that matters, mo…Read more
  •  456
    Grounding, Explanation, and the Tasks of Metaphysics
    In Aaron Segal & Nick Stang (eds.), Systematic Metaphysics: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Thinking about metaphysical problems in terms of grounding has its uses, but those uses are limited. This paper argues against attempts to see issues of grounding as having a central and organising role in metaphysical inquiry. After arguing that grounding does some useful work, this paper will argue that grounding is neither the central tool for understanding explanation in metaphysics, nor defines the subject matter of metaphysics. Instead, grounding tracks only some of the metaphysical explan…Read more
  •  452
    A consistent reading of Sylvan's box
    Philosophical Quarterly 57 (229): 667-673. 2007.
    I argue that Graham Priest's story 'Sylvan's Box' has an attractive consistent reading. Priest's hope that this story can be used as an example of a non-trivial 'essentially inconsistent' story is thus threatened. I then make some observations about the role 'Sylvan's Box' might play in a theory of unreliable narrators.
  •  450
    Fearing Spouses in Aristotle's Ta Oikonomika
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 18 (1): 1-8. 2010.
    The work which the Loeb Classical Library classifies as book 3 of the Oikonomika attributed to Aristotle is a curious piece. It has come down to us only via medieval translations into Latin. (I will be quoting the Loeb text and translation except where noted.) It is not certain that it is by Aristotle: and it is not certain whether it is even a part of the work attributed to Aristotle in ancient times. For want of a better name, let me refer to its author, whoever that was, as “Aristotle”, and l…Read more
  •  442
    Space, time and parsimony
    Noûs 57 (4): 763-783. 2022.
    This paper argues that all of the standard theories about the divisions of space and time can benefit from, and may need to rely on, parsimony considerations. More specifically, whether spacetime is discrete, gunky or pointy, there are wildly unparsimonious rivals to standard accounts that need to be resisted by proponents of those accounts, and only parsimony considerations offer a natural way of doing that resisting. Furthermore, quantitative parsimony considerations appear to be needed in man…Read more
  •  429
    It’s a kind of magic: Lewis, magic and properties
    Synthese 197 (11): 4717-4741. 2020.
    David Lewis’s arguments against magical ersatzism are notoriously puzzling. Untangling different strands in those arguments is useful for bringing out what he thought was wrong with not just one style of theory about possible worlds, but with much of the contemporary metaphysics of abstract objects. After setting out what I take Lewis’s arguments to be and how best to resist them, I consider the application of those arguments to general theories of properties and relations. The constraints Lewis…Read more
  •  415
    Infinity and Metaphysics
    In Robin Le Poidevin, Peter Simons, Andrew McGonigal & Ross Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, Routledge. pp. 430-439. 2009.
    This introduction to the roles infinity plays in metaphysics includes discussion of the nature of infinity itself; infinite space and time, both in extent and in divisibility; infinite regresses; and a list of some other topics in metaphysics where infinity plays a significant role.
  •  415
    Temporary Marriage
    In Elizabeth Brake (ed.), After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships, Oxford University Press. pp. 180-203. 2015.
    Parties to a temporary marriage agree in advance that their marriage will only last for a fixed period of time unless renewed: that it will automatically expire after two years, for instance, or five, or twenty. This paper defends the claim that temporary marriages deserve state recognition. The main argument for this is an application of a principle of marriage equality. Some other arguments for are also canvassed, including an argument from religious freedom, and a number of arguments agains…Read more
  •  405
    Stoic Trichotomies
    Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 51 207-230. 2016.
    Chrysippus often talks as if there is a third option when we might expect that two options in response to a question are exhaustive. Things are true, false or neither; equal, unequal, or neither; the same, different, or neither.. and so on. There seems to be a general pattern here that calls for a general explanation. This paper offers a general explanation of this pattern, preserving Stoic commitments to excluded middle and bivalence, arguing that Chrysippus employs this trichotomy move when he…Read more
  •  400
    In Jenkins’s groundbreaking analysis of flirtation (Jenkins 2006), she suggests that an act is an act of flirtation if, and only if, the following two conditions are satisfied: “First, the flirter should act with the intention to raise flirter/flirtee romance and/or sex to salience, in a knowing yet playful way. Second, he or she should believe that the flirtee can respond is in some significant way”. Jenkins also draws the useful distinction between flirtation proper and “flirtatious behaviour”…Read more
  •  393
    Abstract Impossible fictions have lessons to teach us about linguistic representation, about mental content and concepts, and about uses of conceivability in epistemology. An adequate theory of impossible fictions may require theories of meaning that can distinguish between different impossibilities; a theory of conceptual truth that allows us to make useful sense of a variety of conceptual falsehoods; and a theory of our understanding of necessity and possibility that permits impossibilities t…Read more
  •  391
    Send in the Clowns
    In Karen Bennett & Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Oxford University Press. forthcoming.
    Thought experiments are common where infinitely many entities acting in concert give rise to strange results. Some of these cases, however, can be generalized to yield almost omnipotent systems from limited materials. This paper discusses one of these cases, bringing out one aspect of what seems so troubling about "New Zeno" cases. This paper is in memory of Josh Parsons.
  •  380
    This paper builds on the system of David Lewis’s “Parts of Classes” to provide a foundation for mathematics that arguably requires not only no distinctively mathematical ideological commitments (in the sense of Quine), but also no distinctively mathematical ontological commitments. Provided only that there are enough individual atoms, the devices of plural quantification and mereology can be employed to simulate quantification over classes, while at the same time allowing all of the atoms (and m…Read more
  •  376
    The A Posteriori Armchair
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (2): 211-231. 2015.
    A lot of good philosophy is done in the armchair, but is nevertheless a posteriori. This paper clarifies and then defends that claim. Among the a posteriori activities done in the armchair are assembling and evaluating commonplaces; formulating theoretical alternatives; and integrating well-known past a posteriori discoveries. The activity that receives the most discussion, however, is the application of theoretical virtues to choose philosophical theories: the paper argues that much of this is …Read more
  •  357
    Zurvanist Supersubstantivalism
    Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2): 1-19. 2023.
    Zurvanism was an ancient variant of Zoroastrianism. According to Zurvanism, the great powers of good and evil, Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, were the sons of a greater god Zurvan, associated with time. According to Eudemus of Rhodes, some Persian thinkers, presumably Zurvanists, took there to be three great principles underlying the world: light, darkness, and greatest of all time (or perhaps, according to Eudemus, space). This paper explores what metaphysics might underlie these doctrines, and …Read more
  •  343
    Infinite barbarians
    Ratio 32 (3): 173-181. 2019.
    This paper discusses an infinite regress that looms behind a certain kind of historical explanation. The movement of one barbarian group is often explained by the movement of others, but those movements in turn call for an explanation. While their explanation can again be the movement of yet another group of barbarians, if this sort of explanation does not stop somewhere we are left with an infinite regress of barbarians. While that regress would be vicious, it cannot be accommodated by several …Read more
  •  337
    Intensionality and Hyperintensionality
    Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2019.
    Routledge Encyclopedia entry on Intensionality and Hyperintensionality
  •  333
    Finite Quantities
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 108 (1pt1): 23-42. 2008.
    Quantum Mechanics, and apparently its successors, claim that there are minimum quantities by which objects can differ, at least in some situations: electrons can have various “energy levels” in an atom, but to move from one to another they must jump rather than move via continuous variation: and an electron in a hydrogen atom going from -13.6 eV of energy to -3.4 eV does not pass through states of -10eV or -5.1eV, let along -11.1111115637 eV or -4.89712384 eV
  •  330
    Is fertility virtuous in its own right?
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (2): 265-282. 1999.
    the virtues which are desirable for scientific theories to possess. In this paper I discuss the several species of theoretical virtues called 'fertility', and argue in each case that the desirability of 'fertility' can be explicated in terms of other, more fundamental theoretical virtues.
  •  326
    Stalnaker's 1975 motivates an account of the truth conditions of indicative conditionals that seems in tension with the truth-conditions he offers. This paper discusses how best to resolve this tension.
  •  324
    Bob Hale in Hale 1995b posed a dilemma for modal fictionalism (more specifically, Rosen's version of modal fictionalism). A modal fictionalist who maintains the version outlined in Rosen 1990 believes that the fiction of possible worlds (PW, to use Rosen and Hale's abbreviation) is not literally true. The question arises, however, about its modal status. Is it necessarily false, or contingently false? In either case, Hale argues, the modal fictionalist is in trouble. Should the modal fictionalis…Read more
  •  323
    Selfless Desires
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (3): 665-679. 2007.
    Unified theories of de se attitudes and de dicto attitudes, along the lines of David Lewis’s proposal, face a problem. Whether or not they are adequate for representing beliefs, they can misrepresent the content of many of our desires, which rank possible outcomes in which the agent with the desire does not exist. These desires are shown to play a role in the rational explanation of action, and recognising them is important in our understanding of ourselves. Lewis’s account of attitudes de di…Read more
  •  319
    Method in Analytic Metaphysics
    In Herman Cappelen, Tamar Gendler & John P. Hawthorne (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology, Oxford University Press. 2016.
    This article focuses on the main methods used in analytic metaphysics. It first considers five important sources of constraints on metaphysical theorizing: linguistic and conceptual analysis, consulting intuitions, employing the findings of science, respecting folk opinion, and applying theoretical virtues in metaphysical theory choice such as preferring simpler theories, or preferring more explanatory theories. It then examines the role of formal methods in metaphysics as well as the role of me…Read more
  •  317
    Mad, bad and dangerous to know
    Analysis 72 (2): 314-316. 2012.
    Tracking accounts of knowledge formulated in terms of counterfactuals suffer from well known problems. Examples are provided, and it is shown that moving to a dispositional tracking theory of knowledge avoids three of these problems
  •  314
    Are There States of Affairs? Yes
    In Elizabeth Barnes (ed.), Current Controversies in Metaphysics, Routledge Press. pp. 81-91. 2017.
    This paper makes a case that we should believe in the existence of worldly states of affairs.