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75The Metaphysics of Modality by Graeme Forbes (review)Journal of Philosophy 85 (6): 329-337. 1988.
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194Seven habits of highly effective thinkersIn Bernard Elevitch (ed.), The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Volume 9: Philosophy of Mind, Charlottesville: Philosophy Doc Ctr. pp. 35-45. 2000.By effective thinkers I mean not people who think effectively, but people who understand “how it’s done,” i.e., people not paralyzed by the philosophical problem of epiphenomenalism. I argue that mental causes are not preempted by either neural or narrow content states, and that extrinsically individuated mental states are not out of proportion with their putative effects. I give three examples/models of how an extrinsic cause might be more proportional to an effect than the competition
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418A problem about permission and possibilityIn Andy Egan & Brian Weatherson (eds.), Epistemic Modality, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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80Red, Bitter, Best (review)Philosophical Books 41 (1). 2002.Book reviewed in this article: Jackson, F., From Metaphysics to Ethics
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265AboutnessPrinceton University Press. 2014.Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness-features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. But it has played no real role in philosophical semantics. This is surprising; sentences have aboutness-properties if anythi…Read more
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868Must existence-questions have answers?In Ryan Wasserman, David Manley & David Chalmers (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, Oxford University Press. pp. 507-525. 2009.
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25The Real Distinction Between Mind and BodyCanadian Journal of Philosophy 20 (sup1): 149-201. 1990.….it [is] wholly irrational to regard as doubtful matters that are perceived clearly and distinctly by the understanding in its purity, on account of mere prejudices of the senses and hypotheses in which there is an element of the unknown.Descartes, Geometrical Exposition of the MeditationsSubstance dualism, once a main preoccupation of Western metaphysics, has fallen strangely out of view; today’s mental/physical dualisms are dualisms of fact, property, or event. So if someone claims to find a …Read more
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183. Inclusion in Metaphysics and SemanticsIn Aboutness, Princeton University Press. pp. 45-53. 2014.
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424. A Semantic Conception of TruthmakingIn Aboutness, Princeton University Press. pp. 54-76. 2014.
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375Superproportionality and mind-body relationsTheoria 16 (40): 65-75. 2001.Mental causes are threatened from two directions: from below, since they would appear to be screened off by lower-order, e.g., neural states; and from within, since they would also appear to be screened off by intrinsic, e.g., syntactical states. A principle needed to parry the first threat -causes should be proportional to their effects- appears to leave us open to the second; for why should unneeded extrinsic detail be any less offensive to proportionality than excess microstructure? I say tha…Read more
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113Almog on Descartes’s Mind and Body (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (3). 2005.Descartes thought his mind and body could exist apart, and that this attested to a real distinction between them. The challenge as Almog initially describes it is to find a reading of “can exist apart” that is strong enough to establish a real distinction, yet weak enough to be justified by what Descartes offers as evidence: that DM and DB can be conceived apart.
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208Explanation, Extrapolation, and ExistenceMind 121 (484): 1007-1029. 2012.Mark Colyvan (2010) raises two problems for ‘easy road’ nominalism about mathematical objects. The first is that a theory’s mathematical commitments may run too deep to permit the extraction of nominalistic content. Taking the math out is, or could be, like taking the hobbits out of Lord of the Rings. I agree with the ‘could be’, but not (or not yet) the ‘is’. A notion of logical subtraction is developed that supports the possibility, questioned by Colyvan, of bracketing a theory’s mathematical …Read more
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16Prime Causation1Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2): 459-467. 2007.No one doubts that mental states can be wide. Why should this seem to prevent them from causing behavior? Tim points to an "internalist line of thought"
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1202Knights, Knaves, Truth, Truthfulness, Grounding, Tethering, Aboutness, and ParadoxIn Melvin Fitting (ed.), Essays for Raymond Smullyan, . 2017.
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2558Non-catastrophic presupposition failureIn Judith Jarvis Thomson & Alex Byrne (eds.), Content and modality: themes from the philosophy of Robert Stalnaker, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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111Circularity and ParadoxIn Thomas Bolander (ed.), Self-reference, Center For the Study of Language and Inf. pp. 139--157. 2008.
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127Thoughts: papers on mind, meaning, and modalityOxford University Press. 2008.The real distinction between mind and body -- Is conceivability a guide to possibility? -- Textbook kripkeanism and the open texture of concepts -- Coulda, woulda, shoulda -- No fool's cold : notes on illusions of possibility -- Beyond rigidification : the importance of being really actual -- How in the world? -- Mental causation -- Singling out properties -- Wide causation -- Causal relevance : mental, moral, and epistemic.
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1670Is conceivability a guide to possibility?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (1): 1-42. 1993.
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567Saul Kripke: Philosophical Troubles: Collected Papers, Volume 1 (review)Journal of Philosophy 110 (4): 221-229. 2013.
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