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20Synchronic Bayesian updating and the generalized Sleeping Beauty problemAnalysis 67 (1): 50-59. 2007.
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177Metaphysical Naturalism, Semantic Normativity, and Meta-Semantic IrrealismPhilosophical Issues 4. 1993.
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9Transvaluationism: The Benign Logical Incoherence of VaguenessThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 14 (1): 20-35. 2006.
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115Causal Compatibilism and the Exclusion ProblemTheoria: Revista de Teoría, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 16 (1): 95-115. 2001.Causal compatibilism claims that even though physics is causally closed, and even though mental properties are multiply realizable and are not identical to physical causal properties, mental properties are causal properties nonetheless. This position asserts that there is genuine causation at multiple descriptive/ontological levels; physics-level causal claims are not really incompatible with mentalistic causal claims. I articulate and defend a version of causal compatibilism that incorporates t…Read more
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200Transvaluationism about vagueness: A progress reportSouthern Journal of Philosophy 48 (1): 67-94. 2010.The philosophical account of vagueness I call "transvaluationism" makes three fundamental claims. First, vagueness is logically incoherent in a certain way: it essentially involves mutually unsatisfiable requirements that govern vague language, vague thought-content, and putative vague objects and properties. Second, vagueness in language and thought (i.e., semantic vagueness) is a genuine phenomenon despite possessing this form of incoherence—and is viable, legitimate, and indeed indispensable.…Read more
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Kim on mental causation and causal exclusion: Mental causation, reduction and superveniencePhilosophical Perspectives 11 165-184. 1997.
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30Replies to papersGrazer Philosophische Studien 63 (1): 302-340. 2002.Jaegwon Kim argues that one should distinguish naturalism from materialism, and that both should be construed as ontological rather than epistemological. I agree, on both counts. Although I have sometimes tended to slur together materialism and naturalism in of my writings (as is done in much recent philosophy), I do think that it is important to distinguish them. It is a serious philosophical task to get clearer about how each position is best articulated, and about ways that one could embrace …Read more
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159Facing Up to the Sorites ParadoxThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 6 99-111. 2000.The ancient sorites paradox has important implications for metaphysics, for logic, and for semantics. Metaphysically, the paradox can be harnessed to produce a powerful argument for the claim that there cannot be vague objects or vague properties. With respect to logic, the paradox forces a choice between the highly counterintuitive ‘epistemic’ account of vagueness and the rejection of classical two-valued logic. Regarding semantics, nonclassical approaches to the logic of vagueness lead natural…Read more
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30Phenomenal Intentionality and Content DeterminacyIn Richard Schantz (ed.), Prospects for Meaning, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 321-344. 2012.
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31Multiple reference, multiple realization, and the reduction of mindIn Gerhard Preyer & Frank Siebelt (eds.), Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David Lewis, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 205--221. 2001.
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78Materialism: Matters Of Definition, Defense, and DeconstructionPhilosophical Studies 131 (1): 157-183. 2006.How should the metaphysical hypothesis of materialism be formulated? What strategies look promising for defending this hypothesis? How good are the prospects for its successful defense, especially in light of the infamous "hard problem" of phenomenal consciousness? I will say something about each of these questions
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4The phenomenology of intentionality and the intentionality of phenomenologyIn David J. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford University Press. pp. 520--533. 2002.
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119Abundant truth in an austere worldIn Patrick Greenough & Michael P. Lynch (eds.), Truth and realism, Oxford University Press. pp. 137--167. 2006.What is real? Less than you might think. We advocate austere metaphysical realism---a form of metaphysical realism claiming that a correct ontological theory will repudiate numerous putative entities and properties that are posited in everyday thought and discourse, and also will even repudiate numerous putative objects and properties that are posited by well confirmed scientific theories. We have lately defended a specific version of austere metaphysical realism which asserts that there is real…Read more
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158Synchronic Bayesian updating and the Sleeping Beauty problem: reply to PustSynthese 160 (2): 155-159. 2008.I maintain, in defending “thirdism,” that Sleeping Beauty should do Bayesian updating after assigning the “preliminary probability” 1/4 to the statement S: “Today is Tuesday and the coin flip is heads.” (This preliminary probability obtains relative to a specific proper subset I of her available information.) Pust objects that her preliminary probability for S is really zero, because she could not be in an epistemic situation in which S is true. I reply that the impossibility of being in such an…Read more
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190Transglobal evidentialism-reliabilismActa Analytica 22 (4): 281-300. 2007.We propose an approach to epistemic justification that incorporates elements of both reliabilism and evidentialism, while also transforming these elements in significant ways. After briefly describing and motivating the non-standard version of reliabilism that Henderson and Horgan call “transglobal” reliabilism, we harness some of Henderson and Horgan’s conceptual machinery to provide a non-reliabilist account of propositional justification (i.e., evidential support). We then invoke this account…Read more
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79Introspection about phenomenal consciousness: Running the gamut from infallibility to impotenceIn Declan Smithies & Daniel Stoljar (eds.), Introspection and Consciousness, Oxford University Press. 2012.
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46Recognitional Concepts and the Compositionality of Concept PossessionPhilosophical Issues 9. 1998.
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32Abductive Inference, Explicable and Anomalous Disagreement, and Epistemic ResourcesRes Philosophica 93 (3): 567-584. 2016.Disagreement affords humans as members of epistemic communities important opportunities for refining or improving their epistemic situations with respect to many of their beliefs. To get such epistemic gains, one needs to explore and gauge one’s own epistemic situation and the epistemic situations of others. Accordingly, a fitting response to disagreement regarding some matter, p, typically will turn on the resolution of two strongly interrelated questions: (1) whether p, and (2) why one’s inter…Read more
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104Troubles for Michael Smith's metaethical rationalismPhilosophical Papers 25 (3): 203-231. 1996.
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3Mandelbaum on moral phenomenology and moral realismIn Ian Verstegen (ed.), Maurice Mandelbaum and American Critical Realism, Routledge. pp. 105. 2010.
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115You are given a choice between two envelopes. You are told, reliably, that each envelope has some money in it—some whole number of dollars, say—and that one envelope contains twice as much money as the other. You don’t know which has the higher amount and which has the lower. You choose one, but are given the opportunity to switch to the other. Here is an argument that it is rationally preferable to switch: Let x be the quantity of money in your chosen envelope. Then the quantity in the other is…Read more
Tucson, Arizona, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
Meta-Ethics |