King's College London
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1996
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
  • Recent Work on Causation
    Philosophical Books 42 (1): 33-45. 2001.
  •  455
    Causation and necessary connection
    In Alan Bailey & Dan O'Brien (eds.), The Continuum Companion to Hume, Continuum. pp. 131. 2012.
  •  2
    Review of Douglas Ehring: Causation and persistence: a theory of causation (review)
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1): 181-184. 1998.
  •  164
    Hume’s impact on causation
    The Philosophers' Magazine 54 (54): 75-79. 2011.
    Many philosophers came to regard “causation” as an illegitimate pseudo-concept. This was a dominant view in analytic philosophy until quite late in the twentieth century. Russell famously quipped that “the law of causality” was “a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm”.
  •  520
    Contingent laws rule: reply to Bird
    Analysis 62 (3): 252-255. 2002.
    In a recent paper (Bird 2001), Alexander Bird argues that the law that common salt dissolves in water is metaphysically necessary - and he does so without presupposing dispositionalism about properties. If his argument were sound, it would thus show that at least one law of nature is meta- physically necessary, and it would do so without illicitly presupposing a position (dispositionalism) that is already committed to a necessitarian view of laws. I shall argue that Bird's argument is unsu…Read more
  •  56
    Taking hindrance seriously
    Philosophical Studies 88 (1): 59-79. 1997.
  •  1317
    Are psychiatric kinds real?
    European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6 (1): 11-27. 2010.
    The paper considers whether psychiatric kinds can be natural kinds and concludes that they can. This depends, however, on a particular conception of ‘natural kind’. We briefly describe and reject two standard accounts – what we call the ‘stipulative account’ (according to which apparently a priori criteria, such as the possession of intrinsic essences, are laid down for natural kindhood) and the ‘Kripkean account’ (according to which the natural kinds are just those kinds that obey Kripkean sema…Read more
  •  60
    How to Carve Nature Across the Joints Without Abandoning Kripke-Putnam Semantics
    In Stephen Mumford & Matthew Tugby (eds.), Metaphysics and Science, Oxford University Press. pp. 141-163. 2013.
    ‘Natural kind essentialism’—here defined as the view that (i) the existence of natural kinds is a mind- and theory-independent matter, (ii) their essences are intrinsic, and (iii) they have a hierarchical structure—is commonly thought to be justified by appeal to Kripke–Putnam semantics, according to which propositions like ‘water is H20’ are necessary a posteriori. This chapter argues that the Kripke–Putnam semantics is in fact compatible with the denial of each of the three tenets of natural k…Read more
  •  2
    Introduction
    In Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, Clarendon Press. 2005.
  •  938
    Humean compatibilism
    with Alfred Mele
    Mind 111 (442): 201-223. 2002.
    Humean compatibilism is the combination of a Humean position on laws of nature and the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. This article's aim is to situate Humean compatibilism in the current debate among libertarians, traditional compatibilists, and semicompatibilists about free will. We argue that a Humean about laws can hold that there is a sense in which the laws of nature are 'up to us' and hence that the leading style of argument for incompatibilism?the consequence argume…Read more
  •  590
    The Two Definitions and the Doctrine of Necessity
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (1pt3): 413-431. 2007.
  •  377
    Smilansky's alleged refutation of compatibilism
    Analysis 68 (3): 258-260. 2008.
    No Abstract
  •  562
    Causation and Observation
    In Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Peter Menzies (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press. 2009.
  •  65
    Review. Causation & Persistence: A Theory of Causation. D Ehring (review)
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1): 181-184. 1998.
  •  173
    Metametaphysics
    The Philosophers' Magazine 50 24-25. 2010.