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122The Vagueness of IdentityPhilosophical Topics 26 (1-2): 139-158. 1999.The Evans-Salmon position on vague identity has deservedly elicited a large response in the literature. I think it is in fact among the most provocative metaphysical ideas to appear in recent years. I will try to show in this paper, however, that the position is vulnerable to a fundamental criticism that seems to have been virtually ignored in the many discussions of it. I take the Evans-Salmon position to consist of the following two theses: Thesis I. There cannot be objects x and y such that i…Read more
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30Hume's Distinction between Genuine and Fictitious IdentityMidwest Studies in Philosophy 8 (1): 321-338. 1983.
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52Reply to CommentatorsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1): 223-234. 1996.I would expect many readers of my book to want to agree with either Mark Heller or Alan Sidelle. The very idea of “rational constraints on lexicons” will immediately suggest to many people that either the constraints are of a purely pragmatic nature or there really are no such constraints. I can take some cold comfort in the fact that many philosophers will join me in rejecting, and many others will join me in rejecting, but since I have nothing to offer in place of these positions—except mystif…Read more
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3Kripke's argument against materialismIn Robert C. Koons & George Bealer (eds.), The Waning of Materialism: New Essays, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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15Ontology and alternative languagesIn David Chalmers, David Manley & Ryan Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, Oxford University Press. pp. 231--58. 2009.
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148Comments on Theodore Sider’s Four Dimensionalism (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (3). 2004.Theodore Sider has given us a terrific book, bursting at the seams with new arguments and new takes on old arguments. Whether or not one is convinced by his conclusions, the thoroughness, lucidity, fair-mindedness—and the sheer exuberance—of his discussions make Four Dimensionalism a major contribution to contemporary metaphysics.
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240Metaphysical Necessity and Conceptual TruthMidwest Studies in Philosophy 11 (1): 243-256. 1986.
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875. Rashi's View of the Open Future: Indeterminateness and Bivalence1Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 2 111. 2006.
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878Physical-object ontology, verbal disputes, and common sensePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1). 2005.Two main claims are defended in this paper: first, that typical disputes in the literature about the ontology of physical objects are merely verbal; second, that the proper way to resolve these disputes is by appealing to common sense or ordinary language. A verbal dispute is characterized not in terms of private idiolects, but in terms of different linguistic communities representing different positions. If we imagine a community that makes Chisholm's mereological essentialist assertions, and a…Read more
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15Diabolical Mysticism, Death, and SkepticismPhilosophic Exchange 39 (1). 2009.According to one view, death is bad for the one who dies. The challenge for this view is to explain exactly why and when death is bad for the one who dies. According to an alternative view, death is not actually bad for the one who dies. There is a third alternative, according to which the thought of one’s own death elicits an experience that reveals the horror of one’s own death in a way that is ineffable. This paper explores this third alternative.
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263Ant and UnclesPhilosophy Phridays. 2017.It is difficult to understand questions about the evolution of ants. It seems often to be assumed that there are specific features that ants possess because of the "survival value" of such features. This makes very little sense, because it is very hard to believe that there are any features at all that can be viewed as having survival value for ants.
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63Object and Property (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (1): 238-240. 2001.This book presents an impressively rich and historically informed treatment of a wide range of metaphysical issues of current interest. Denkel’s central project is to defend a version of the idea that an object is nothing more than a bundle of compresent qualities. The qualities, for Denkel, are particulars rather than universals. This formulation has the immediate virtue of allowing there to be qualitatively indiscernible objects.
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31Identity and Discrimination (review)Review of Metaphysics 45 (2): 435-436. 1991.This is a strikingly original, rich, and trenchant study. Its point of departure is the notion of discrimination, which is shown to illuminate a range of topics in metaphysics and epistemology, including subjectivity, observationality, sorites paradoxes, and identity criteria. A central problem involves the phenomenal character of experience. We are intuitively tempted to say that character is subjective in the sense that distinct characters must be discriminable. This seems to imply that matchi…Read more
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67Sosa's Existential RelativismIn John Greco (ed.), Ernest Sosa and His Critics, Blackwell. 2004.This chapter contains section titled: Existential Relativism and Explosionism Existential Relativism and Quantifier Relativism.
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