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141The pervasive paradox of tenseGrazer Philosophische Studien 62 (1): 103-124. 2001.The debate about the reality of tense descends from an argument of McTaggart's,whichwas designed to prove the unreality of time.The argument has two constituent theses: firstly that time is intrinsically tensed, and secondly, that the notion of tense is inherently self-contradictory. If both of these theses are true, it follows that time does not exist. The debate that has emerged from this argument centres around the truth or falsity of each of these theses. A-theorists accept the first and rej…Read more
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64Review of Katherine Hawley, How Things Persist (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (1). 2003.
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91Evolutionary Explanations of Temporal ExperienceIn Adrian Bardon & Heather Dyke (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Time, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 521-535. 2013.A common approach in the Philosophy of Time, particularly in enquiry into the metaphysical nature of time, has been to examine various aspects of the nature of human temporal experience, and ask what, if anything, can be discerned from this about the nature of time itself. Many human traits have explanations that reside in facts about our evolutionary history. We ask whether features of human temporal experience might admit of such evolutionary explanations. We then consider the implications of …Read more
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116What moral realism can learn from the philosophy of timeIn Time and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 11--25. 2003.It sometimes happens that advances in one area of philosophy can be applied to a quite different area of philosophy, and that the result is an unexpected significant advance. I think that this is true of the philosophy of time and meta-ethics. Developments in the philosophy of time have led to a new understanding of the relation between semantics and metaphysics. Applying these insights to the field of meta-ethics, I will argue, can suggest a new position with respect to moral discourse and mora…Read more
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24Review of Real Metaphysics: Essays in Honour of D. H. Mellor (review)Philosophical Books 45 359-361. 2004.
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316Temporal language and temporal realityPhilosophical Quarterly 53 (212). 2003.In response to a recent challenge that the New B-theory of Time argues invalidly from the claim that tensed sentences have tenseless truth conditions to the conclusion that temporal reality is tenseless, I argue that while early B-theorists may have relied on some such inference, New B-theorists do not. Giving tenseless truth conditions for tensed sentences is not intended to prove that temporal reality is tenseless. Rather, it is intended to undermine the A-theorist’s move from claims about the…Read more
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59Mc Taggart and the Truth about TimeRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 50 137-152. 2002.McTaggart famously argued that time is unreal. Today, almost no one agrees with his conclusion.1 But his argument remains thelocus classicusfor both the A–theory and the B-theory of time. I want to show how McTaggart's argument provided the impetus for both of these opposing views of the nature of time. I will also present and defend what I take to be the correct view of the nature of time.
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130A future for presentism – Craig Bourne (review)Philosophical Quarterly 58 (233): 747-751. 2008.No Abstract
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53Real times and possible worldsIn Robin Le Poidevin (ed.), Questions of time and tense, Oxford University Press. pp. 93--117. 1998.There are ways in which the new tenseless theory of time is analogous to David Lewis’s modal realism. The new tenseless theory gives an indexical analysis of temporal terms such as ‘now’, while Lewis gives and indexical analysis of ‘actual’. For the new tenseless theory, all times are equally real; for Lewis, all worlds are equally real. In this paper I investigate this apparent analogy between these two theories, and ask whether a proponent of one is committed, by parity of reasoning, to the ot…Read more
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59Tokens, Dates And Tenseless Truth ConditionsSynthese 131 (3): 329-351. 2002.There are two extant versions of the new tenseless theory of time: the date versionand the token-reflexive version. I ask whether they are equivalent, and if not, whichof them is to be preferred. I argue that they are not equivalent, that the date version isunsatisfactory, and that the token-reflexive version is correct. I defend the token-reflexive version against a string of objections from Quentin Smith. My defence involves a discussion of the ontological and semantic significance of truth co…Read more
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IntroductionIn From Truth to Reality: New Essays in Logic and Metaphysics, Routledge. 2008.Questions about the nature of truth are as old as philosophy itself. What is truth? On the one hand, it seems obvious that it is something that applies to the things we think and say. Many of our beliefs about the world, and sentences describing it are true. On the other hand, it seems intimately connected with the world we think and speak about, for it is in virtue of the way the world is that our sentences and beliefs about it are true. This book explores the notions of truth, reality, and the…Read more
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484Words, Pictures and Ontology: A Commentary on John Heil's From an Ontological Point of ViewSWIF Philosophy of Mind Review 6 31-41. 2007.The title of John Heil’s book From an Ontological Point of View is, of course, an adaptation of the title of Quine’s influential collection of essays From a Logical Point of View, published fifty years earlier in 1953. Quine’s book marked the beginning of a sea change in philosophy, away from ordinary language, armchair philosophising involving introspective examination of concepts, towards a more rigorous, analytical and scientific approach to answering philosophical questions. Heil’s book will…Read more
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15Review of the Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics ed. R. M. Gale (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (4): 620-621. 2003.
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604Tensed Meaning: A Tenseless AccountJournal of Philosophical Research 28 65-81. 2003.If, as the new B-theory of time maintains, tensed sentences have tenseless truth conditions, it follows that it is possible for two sentence-tokens to have the sametruth conditions but different meanings. This conclusion forces a rethink of the traditional identification of truth conditions with meaning. There is an aspect of the meanings of tensed sentences that is not captured by their truth conditions, and that has so far eluded explanation. In this paper I intend to locate, examine, and expl…Read more
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74Propositions: Truth vs. ExistenceIn James Maclaurin (ed.), Rationis Defensor: Essays in Honour of Colin Cheyne, Springer. pp. 127-138. 2012.I argue that there is an inherent tension in the notion of a proposition that gives us reason to doubt that there can be any single entity that plays all the roles and possesses all the features normally attributed to propositions. The tension is that some of the roles and features of propositions require them to be essentially representational, while others require them to be non-representational. I first present what I call the standard view of propositions: a series of theses outlining the ro…Read more
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A new metaphysical strategyIn L. Nathan Oaklander (ed.), The philosophy of time, Routledge. pp. 1--426. 2008.
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80Time and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection (edited book)Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2003.Ethics seeks answers to questions about the moral status of human actions and human lives. What should I do, and what should I not do? What sort of life should I lead? Actions and lives are temporal things. Actions are performed at certain times, are informed by past events and have consequences for the future. Lives have temporal extension, and are experienced from a sequence of temporal perspectives. Thus, one would think that answers to ethical questions should take account some of their temp…Read more
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6IntroductionIn Time and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 1--7. 2003.Ethics seeks answers to questions about the moral status of human actions and human lives. What should I do, and what should I not do? What sort of life should I lead? Actions and lives are temporal things. Actions are performed at certain times, are informed by past events and have consequences for the future. Lives have temporal extension, and are experienced from a sequence of temporal perspectives. Thus, one would think that answers to ethical questions should take account some of their temp…Read more
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121The evolutionary origins of tensed language and beliefBiology and Philosophy 26 (3): 401-418. 2011.I outline the debate in metaphysics between those who believe time is tensed and those who believe it is tenseless. I describe the terms in which this debate has been carried out, and the significance to it of ordinary tensed language and widespread common sense beliefs that time is tensed. I then outline a case for thinking that our intuitive beliefs about tense constitute an Adaptive Imaginary Representation (Wilson, in Biol Philos 5:37–62, 1990; Wilson, in Biol Philos 10:77–97, 1995). I also …Read more
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67Metaphysics and the Representational FallacyRoutledge. 2007.This book is an investigation into metaphysics: its aims, scope, methodology and practice. Dyke argues that metaphysics should take itself to be concerned with investigating the fundamental nature of reality, and suggests that the ontological significance of language has been grossly exaggerated in the pursuit of that aim.
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127What Shall We Do with Analytic Metaphysics? A Response to McLeod and ParsonsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (1). 2013.(2013). What Shall We Do with Analytic Metaphysics? A Response to McLeod and Parsons. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 91, No. 1, pp. 179-182. doi: 10.1080/00048402.2012.762029
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725Review of The Tensed Theory of Time by W. L. Craig (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 42 (3): 404-406. 2002.
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16Tensed MeaningJournal of Philosophical Research 28 65-81. 2003.If, as the new B-theory of time maintains, tensed sentences have tenseless truth conditions, it follows that it is possible for two sentence-tokens to have the sametruth conditions but different meanings. This conclusion forces a rethink of the traditional identification of truth conditions with meaning. There is an aspect of the meanings of tensed sentences that is not captured by their truth conditions, and that has so far eluded explanation. In this paper I intend to locate, examine, and expl…Read more
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69Persistence Through Time, and Across Possible Worlds, by Jiri Benovsky (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (9). 2006.