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1087The Paradox of the QuestionPhilosophical Studies 154 (1): 149-159. 2011.What is the best question to ask an omniscient being? The question is intriguing; is it also paradoxical? We discuss several versions of what Ned Markosian calls the paradox of the question and suggest solutions to each of those puzzles. We then offer some practical advice about what do if you ever have the opportunity to query an omniscient being.
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356Recombination, Causal Constraints, and Humean Supervenience: An Argument for Temporal Parts?In Dean W. Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Oxford University Press. 2008.
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591The problem of changePhilosophy Compass 1 (1). 2006.Our world is a world of change. Children are born and grow into adults. Material possessions rust and decay with age and ultimately perish. Yet scepticism about change is as old as philosophy itself. Heraclitus, for example, argued that nothing could survive the replacement of parts, so that it is impossible to step into the same river twice. Zeno argued that motion is paradoxical, so that nothing can alter its location. Parmenides and his followers went even further, arguing that the very conce…Read more
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131Review of E.j. Lowe, The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for Natural Science (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (4). 2006.
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523On linking dispositions and conditionalsMind 117 (465): 59-84. 2008.Analyses of dispositional ascriptions in terms of conditional statements famously confront the problems of finks and masks. We argue that conditional analyses of dispositions, even those tailored to avoid finks and masks, face five further problems. These are the problems of: (i) Achilles' heels, (ii) accidental closeness, (iii) comparatives, (iv) explaining context sensitivity, and (v) absent stimulus conditions. We conclude by offering a proposal that avoids all seven of these problems.
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311Intentional action and the unintentional fallacyPacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 (4): 524-534. 2011.Much of the recent work in action theory can be organized around a set of objections facing the Simple View and other intention-based accounts of intentional action. In this paper, I review three of the most popular objections to the Simple View and argue that all three objections commit a common fallacy. I then draw some more general conclusions about the relationship between intentional action and moral responsibility
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318A gradable approach to dispositionsPhilosophical Quarterly 57 (226). 2007.Previous theories of the relationship between dispositions and conditionals are unable to account for the fact that dispositions come in degrees. We propose a fix for this problem that has the added benefit of avoiding the classic problems of finks and masks.
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367The argument from temporary intrinsicsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (3). 2003.The problem of temporary intrinsics is the problem of how persisting objects can have different intrinsic properties at different times. The relativizer responds to this problem by replacing ordinary intrinsic properties with relations to times. In this note, I identify and respond to three different objections to the relativizer's proposal, each of which can be traced to the work of David Lewis.
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250Humean supervenience and personal identityPhilosophical Quarterly 55 (221): 582-593. 2005.Humeans hold that the nomological features of our world, including causal facts, are determined by the global distribution of fundamental properties. Since persistence presupposes causation, it follows that facts about personal identity are also globally determined. I argue that this is unacceptable for a number of reasons, and that the doctrine of Humean supervenience should therefore be rejected
Bellingham, Washington, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
| Metaphysics |
Areas of Interest
| Epistemology |
| Philosophy of Action |
| Philosophy of Language |
| Meta-Ethics |