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265Monism and statespace structureRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 62 129-150. 2008.Exotic ontologies are all the rage. Distant from common sense and often science as well, views like mereological essentialism, nihilism, and fourdimensionalism appeal to our desire to avoid arbitrariness, anthropocentrism, and metaphysical conundrums.1 Such views are defensible only if they are materially adequate, only if they can “reconstruct” the world of common sense and science. (No disrespect to the heroic metaphysicians of antiquity, but this world is not just an illusion.) In the world o…Read more
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438Travelling in A- and B- TimeThe Monist 88 (3): 329-335. 2005.Some say that presentism precludes time travel into the past since it implies that the past does not exist, but this is a bad argument. Presentism says that only currently existing entities exist, and that the only properties and relations those entities instantiate are those that they currently instantiate. This does in a sense imply that the past does not exist. But if that precluded time travel into the past, it would also preclude the one-second-per-second “time travel” into the future that …Read more
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592Four DimensionalismPhilosophical Review 106 (2): 197-231. 1997.Persistence through time is like extension through space. A road has spatial parts in the subregions of the region of space it occupies; likewise, an object that exists in time has temporal parts in the various subregions of the total region of time it occupies. This view — known variously as four dimensionalism, the doctrine of temporal parts, and the theory that objects “perdure” — is opposed to “three dimensionalism”, the doctrine that things “endure”, or are “wholly present”.1 I will attempt…Read more
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261Summary of Writing the Book of the WorldAnalysis 73 (4): 713-715. 2013.Summary of my book, Writing the Book of the World, for a symposium. The book defends realism about structure, the view that there is a privileged way to describe the world.
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241Against vague existencePhilosophical Studies 114 (1-2). 2003.In my book Four-dimensionalism (chapter 4, section 9), I argued that fourdimensionalism – the doctrine of temporal parts – follows from several other premises, chief among which is the premise that existence is never vague. Kathrin Koslicki (preceding article) claims that the argument fails since its crucial premise is unsupported, and is dialectically inappropriate to assume in the context of arguing for four-dimensionalism. Since the relationship between four-dimensionalism and the non-vaguene…Read more
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221Review of Trenton Merricks, Objects and Persons (review)Mind 113 (449). 2001.Many otherwise reasonable philosophers are impatient with ontology. These philosophers will probably have little time for Objects and Persons, which claims that while there do exist “atoms arranged statuewise”, there do not exist statues; while there do exist atoms arranged tablewise and atoms arranged chairwise, there exist no tables and chairs. Though I join these philosophers, at the end of the day, in rejecting Merricks’s claims, that day is long, whereas they want a quick verdict. But why? …Read more
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342The Stage View and Temporary IntrinsicsAnalysis 60 (1). 2000.According to four dimensionalism, the material world is divided into momentary stages. In a four-dimensional world, which objects are the ordinary things, the things we normally name and quantify over? Aggregates of stages, according to most four-dimensionalists, but according to stage theorists (or exdurantists), ordinary objects are instead to be identified with the stages themselves. (A temporal counterpart theoretic account of de re temporal predication is then given.) This paper argue…Read more
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419Presentism and ontological commitmentJournal of Philosophy 96 (7): 325-347. 1999.Presentism is the doctrine that only the present is real. Since ordinary talk and thought are full of quantification over non-present objects, presentists are in a familiar predicament: in their unreflective moments they apparently commit themselves to far more than their ontological scruples allow. A familiar response is to begin a project of paraphrase. Truths appearing to quantify over problematic entities are shown, on analysis, to not involve quantification over those entities after all. Bu…Read more
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194Naturalness, intrinsicality, and duplicationDissertation, University of Massachusetts. 1993.This dissertation explores the concepts of naturalness, intrinsicality, and duplication. An intrinsic property is had by an object purely in virtue of the way that object is considered in itself. Duplicate objects are exactly similar, considered as they are in themselves. The perfectly natural properties are the most fundamental properties of the world, upon which the nature of the world depends. In this dissertation I develop a theory of intrinsicality, naturalness, and duplication and explore …Read more
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418Time travel, coincidences, and counterfactualsPhilosophical Studies 110 (2). 2002.In no possible world does a time traveler succeed in killing herearlier self before she ever enters a time machine. So if many,many time travelers went back in time trying to kill theirunprotected former selves, the time travelers would fail inmany strange, coincidental ways, slipping on bananapeels, killing the wrong victim, and so on. Such cases producedoubts about time travel. How could ``coincidences'' beguaranteed to happen? And wouldn't the certainty of coincidentalfailure imply that time …Read more
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271Intrinsic propertiesPhilosophical Studies 83 (1). 1996.An intrinsic property, as David Lewis puts it, is a property "which things have in virtue of the way they themselves are", as opposed to an extrinsic property, which things have "in virtue of their relations or lack of relations to other things".1 Having long hair is an intrinsic property; having a long-haired brother is not. Intuitive as this notion is (and valuable in doing philosophy, I might add), it seems to resist analysis. Analysis, that is, to “quasi-logical” notions such as necessity, s…Read more
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113Simply possiblePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (3): 585-590. 2000.In the process of arguing against all theories of extended material objects made up of simples, Dean Zimmerman has recently argued against the compossibility of continuous closed and continuous open material objects. But it is surely undeniable that point-like material objects are possible; plausible principles of recombination and the principle of unrestricted composition then lead to the possibility Zimmerman rejects. Fortunately, Zimmerman’s arguments can be resisted: what appear to be implau…Read more
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221Consequences of collapseIn Donald Baxter & Aaron Cotnoir (eds.), Composition as Identity, Oxford University Press. pp. 211-221. 2014."Composition as identity" is the radical claim that the whole is identical to the parts - radical because it implies that a single object can be identical to many objects. Composition as identity, together with auxiliary assumptions, implies the principle of "collapse": an object is one of some things if and only it is part of the fusion of those things. Collapse has important implications: the comprehension principle of plural logic must be restricted, plural definite descriptions such as "…Read more
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566Reductive theories of modalityIn Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of metaphysics, Oxford University Press. pp. 180-208. 2003.Logic begins but does not end with the study of truth and falsity. Within truth there are the modes of truth, ways of being true: necessary truth and contingent truth. When a proposition is true, we may ask whether it could have been false. If so, then it is contingently true. If not, then it is necessarily true; it must be true; it could not have been false. Falsity has modes as well: a false proposition that could not have been true is impossible or necessarily false; one that could have been …Read more
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192A new grandfather paradox?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57 (1): 139-144. 1997.In an article in Scientific American (March 1994, pp. 68–74) entitled “The Quantum Physics of Time Travel”, Oxford physicist David Deutsch and Oxford philosopher Michael Lockwood give a defense of the physical possibility of time travel based on the “Many Worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics. This positive view of theirs is not my concern, however—I want to quarrel with their argument that time travel cannot be accommodated in any other way.1 The best way to spell out the traditional “gra…Read more
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151The worlds of possibility (review)Philosophical Review 110 (1): 88-91. 2001.Possible worlds present a formidable challenge for the lover of desert landscapes. One cannot ignore their usefulness; they provide, as David Lewis puts it, “a philosophers’ paradise”.1 But to enter paradise possibilia must be fit into a believable ontology. Some follow Lewis and accept worlds at face value, but most prefer some other choice from the current menu. Part of Chihara’s book is a critical discussion of some of these menu options: Lewis’s modal realism, Alvin Plantinga’s abstract moda…Read more
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180On the Paradox of the QuestionAnalysis 57 (2). 1997.This paper argues that there is a genuine paradox in the vicinity of the story in Ned Markosian's paper "The Paradox of the Question".
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174Yet another paper on the supervenience argument against coincident entitiesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 77 (3): 613-624. 2008.Statues and lumps of clay are said by some to coincide - to be numerically distinct despite being made up of the same parts. They are said to be numerically distinct because they differ modally. Coincident objects would be non-modally indiscernible, and thus appear to violate the supervenience of modal properties on nonmodal properties. But coincidence and supervenience are in fact consistent if the most fundamental modal features are not properties, but are rather relations that are symmetric a…Read more
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502Hell and VaguenessFaith and Philosophy 19 (1): 58--68. 2002.A certain conception of Hell is inconsistent with God's traditional attributes. My argument is novel in focusing on considerations involving vagueness. God is in charge of the selection procedure, so the selection procedure must be just; any just procedure will have borderline cases; but according to the traditional conception, the afterlife is binary and has no borderline cases.
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137Michael Jubien, ontology, modality, and the fallacy of reference (review)Noûs 33 (2). 1999.Michael Jubien’s Ontology, Modality, and the Fallacy of Reference is an interesting and lively discussion of those three topics. In ontology, Jubien defends, to a first approximation, a Quinean conception: a world of objects that may be arbitrarily sliced or summed. Slicing yields temporal parts; summing yields aggregates, or fusions. Jubien is very unQuinean in his explicit Platonism regarding properties and propositions, but concerns about abstracta are peripheral to much of the argumentation …Read more
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330Temporal PartsIn Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, Blackwell. pp. 241--262. 2007.An introduction to temporal parts theory. Most of us believe in spatial parts: hands are spatial parts of people, an electron is a spatial part of a hydrogen atom, the earth is a spatial part of the solar system. Why are these parts "spatial" parts? Because they are spatially smaller: the hand is spatially smaller than the person, the electron is spatially smaller than the atom, the earth is spatially smaller than the solar system. Temporal parts, then, are parts that are temporally smalle…Read more
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747Four Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and TimeOxford University Press. 2001.Four- Dimensionalism defends the thesis that the material world is composed of temporal as well as spatial parts. This defense includes a novel account of persistence over time, new arguments in favour of the four-dimensional ontology, and responses to the challenges four- dimensionalism faces." "Theodore Sider pays particular attention to the philosophy of time, including a strong series of arguments against presentism, the thesis that only the present is real. Arguments offered in favour of fo…Read more
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258Sparseness, immanence, and naturalnessNoûs 29 (3): 360-377. 1995.In the past fifteen years or so there has been a lot of attention paid to theories of “sparse” universals, particularly because of the work of D. M. Armstrong. These theories are of particular interest to those of us concerned with the distinction between natural and non-natural properties, since, as David Lewis has observed, it seems possible to analyze naturalness in terms of sparse universals. Moreover, Armstrong claims that we should conceive of universals as being “immanent” as opposed to “…Read more
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445"Bare particulars"Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1). 2006.One often hears a complaint about “bare particulars”. This complaint has bugged me for years. I know it bugs others too, but no one seems to have vented in print, so that is what I propose to do. (I hope also to say a few constructive things along the way.) The complaint is aimed at the substratum theory, which says that particulars are, in a certain sense, separate from their universals. If universals and particulars are separate, connected to each other only by a relation of instantiation, the…Read more
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202Four Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and TimePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (3): 642-647. 2004.Precis of my book by this title, for a symposium.
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148Asymmetry and self-sacrificePhilosophical Studies 70 (2). 1993.Recent discussions of consequentialism have drawn our attention to the so-called “self-other” asymmetry. Various cases presented by Michael Slote and Michael Stocker are alleged to demonstrate a fundamental asymmetry between our obligations to others and ourselves.1 Moreover, these cases are taken to constitute a difficulty for consequentialism, and for the various versions of utilitarianism in particular. I agree that there is a fundamental asymmetry between our obligations to ourselves and to …Read more
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137Précis of Writing the Book of the WorldPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (3): 706-708. 2013.This is a symposium on my book, Writing the Book of the World, containing a precis from me, criticisms from Dorr, Fine, and Hirsch, and replies by me.
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232Nothing over and aboveGrazer Philosophische Studien 91 (1): 191-216. 2015.The slogan “the whole is nothing over and above the parts” and related vague thoughts animate many theories of parthood and arguably are central to our ordinary conception. I examine some issues connected with this slogan.
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467Van Inwagen and the Possibility of GunkAnalysis 53 (4). 1993.We often speak of an object being composed of various other objects. We say that the deck is composed of the cards, that a road is the sum total of its sections, that a house is composed of its walls, ceilings, floors, doors, etc. Suppose we have some material objects. Here is a philosophical question: what conditions must obtain for those objects to compose something? In his recent book Material Beings, Peter van Inwagen addresses this question, which he calls the ‘special composition question’…Read more
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341Maximality and Intrinsic PropertiesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2). 2001.A property, F, is maximal iff, roughly, large parts of an F are not themselves Fs.' Maximality makes trouble for a recent analysis of intrinsicality by Rae Langton and David Lewis