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37Why is doping wrong anyway?Lse Philosophy Blog. 2016.Most sports ban certain performance-enhancing drugs and penalise those who use them. But is the use of these drugs morally wrong? Heather Dyke looks at the ethics of doping.
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34A Refutation of Memory CircularityErkenntnis 87 (5): 2067-2080. 2020.It is widely, if not universally, assumed by philosophers that it is impossible to justify the reliability of memory without recourse to the use of memory. This so-called “epistemic circularity” is supposed to infect all attempts to justify memory as a source of knowledge in a noncircular way. In this paper, we argue that advances in cognitive science radically upheave the traditional, folk-psychological conception of memory which epistemologists have hitherto been subjecting to analysis. With a…Read more
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33Weak neo‐Whorfianism and the philosophy of timeMind and Language 37 (4): 605-618. 2022.According to a thesis I call the linguistic assumption, the structure of language is a guide to the fundamental nature of reality. It is deployed in the metaphysical debate over the nature of time. In that debate, it is more radical than the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, and should be rejected. A weak interpretation of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis makes the empirical claim that speakers of different languages experience, perceive, or think about aspects of the world differently. I survey recent experime…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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22Meaning Diminished: Toward Metaphysically Modest Semantics (review)Philosophical Review 130 (3): 459-463. 2021.
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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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12Tensed 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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9Time and TenseIn Heather Dyke & Adrian Bardon (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Time, Wiley. 2013.“Tense” is an ambiguous term. It refers to a grammatical feature of natural languages, and also to a disputed metaphysical feature of temporal reality. The chapter examines both the linguistic and the metaphysical issue, and considers the relation between them. Then, it presents and evaluates some linguistic, metaphysical and evolutionary arguments that the inference from language to metaphysics is not justified. The metaphysical debate is concerned with whether or not tense exists in reality. T…Read more
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9Taking Tense Seriously Cannot Help the Growing BlockDisputatio 13 (63): 373-384. 2021.Correia and Rosenkranz (C&R) defend their Growing Block theory of time by appealing to the importance of the notion of taking tense seriously. I argue that this phrase is ambiguous, having both a linguistic and a metaphysical interpretation, but neither interpretation will give C&R what they need. On its linguistic interpretation it fails to have the metaphysical significance required to establish the truth of their theory. On its metaphysical interpretation it consists of nothing more than an a…Read more
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7A Parametric Model for Syntactic Studies of a Textual Corpus, Demonstrated on the Hebrew of Deuteronomy 1-30Journal of the American Oriental Society 111 (2): 365. 1991.
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7Neutral Realism: A New Metaphysical Approach to RepresentationPhilosophies 8 (2): 19. 2023.Metaphysics seeks an account of fundamental reality as it is independent of any observer or point of view. As such, one problem it faces is that any such account is necessarily created by some observer from some point of view. Does this mean that metaphysics is thereby inherently impossible? Or inherently incomplete? I argue that it is possible and it can aim at completeness, but it must acknowledge the contributions made by the human perspective on reality, human cognition, and features of the …Read more
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7Taking Taniwha seriously: a neutral realist interpretation of Kingsbury’s approachAsian Journal of Philosophy 2 (1): 1-9. 2022.In “Taking Taniwha seriously,” Justine Kingsbury proposes a way for taniwha pūrākau—traditional narratives about taniwha—to be taken seriously by non-Māori, which is one step towards respecting te ao Māori—the Māori world view. Taniwha are powerful water creatures who act deliberately to protect and sometimes punish humans. So characterised, there is an obvious obstacle to those who wish to respect te ao Māori but who are sceptical about the existence of supernatural entities. Kingsbury proposes…Read more
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5IntroductionIn 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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2Introduction: Heraclitus and ParmenidesIn Heather Dyke & Adrian Bardon (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Time, Wiley. 2013.This is the introduction chapter of A Companion to the Philosophy of Time, which tackles the historical development of the philosophy of time. This volume brings together experts in the various branches of the philosophy of time from around the world. Part I of this volume features essays on the philosophy of time from the pre‐Socratic period through the twentieth century. Parts II and III reflect, respectively, on the physics and metaphysics of time, and on the study of the experience of time. …Read more
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IntroductionIn From Truth to Reality: New Essays in Logic and Metaphysics, Routledge. 2009.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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Real Times and Possible WorldsIn Robin Le Poidevin (ed.), Questions of Time and Tense, Clarendon Press. 2002.
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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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TimeCambridge University Press. 2021.Philosophical thinking about time is characterised by tensions between competing conceptions. Different sources of evidence yield different conclusions about it. Common sense suggests there is an objective present, and that time is dynamic. Science recognises neither feature. This Element examines McTaggart's argument for the unreality of time, which epitomises this tension, showing how it gave rise to the A-theory/B-theory debate. Each theory is in tension with either ordinary or scientific thi…Read more
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Metaphysics and the representational fallacyIn Metaphysics and the Representational Fallacy, Routledge. 2008.