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3388The real distinction between mind and bodyCanadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (sup1): 149--201. 1990.Descartes's "conceivability argument" for substance-dualism is defended against Arnauld's criticism that, for all he knows, Descartes can conceive himself without a body only because he underestimates his true essence; one could suggest with equal plausibility that it is only for ignorance of his essential hairiness that Descartes can conceive himself as bald. Conceivability intuitions are defeasible but special reasons are required; a model for such defeat is offered, and various potential defe…Read more
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178Truth and reflectionJournal of Philosophical Logic 14 (3). 1985.Many topics have not been covered, in most cases because I don't know quite what to say about them. Would it be possible to add a decidability predicate to the language? What about stronger connectives, like exclusion negation or Lukasiewicz implication? Would an expanded language do better at expressing its own semantics? Would it contain new and more terrible paradoxes? Can the account be supplemented with a workable notion of inherent truth (see note 36)? In what sense does stage semantics li…Read more
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424. A Semantic Conception of TruthmakingIn Aboutness, Princeton University Press. pp. 54-76. 2014.
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59Replies to commentatorsPhilosophical Studies 174 (3): 809-820. 2017.I reply to three commentators—Friederike Moltmann, Daniel Rothschild, and Zoltán Szabó—on six topics—sense and reference, the unity of subject matter, questions, presupposition, partial truth, and content mereology.
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121Almog 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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143Prime causation (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2). 2005.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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1165Knights, Knaves, Truth, Truthfulness, Grounding, Tethering, Aboutness, and ParadoxIn Melvin Fitting (ed.), Essays for Raymond Smullyan, . 2017.
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204Explanation, 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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187New Grounds for Naive Truth TheoryIn J. C. Beall (ed.), Liars and Heaps: New Essays on Paradox, Clarendon Press. pp. 312-330. 2004.
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72The Metaphysics of Modality by Graeme Forbes (review)Journal of Philosophy 85 (6): 329-337. 1988.
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109Circularity and ParadoxIn Thomas Bolander, Vincent F. Hendricks & Stig Andur Pedersen (eds.), Self-Reference, Csli Publications. pp. 139--157. 2006.
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191Seven habits of highly effective thinkersIn Bernard Elevitch (ed.), The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Philosophy Documentation Center. 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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65A paradox of existenceIn T. Hofweber & A. Everett (eds.), Empty Names, Fiction, and the Puzzles of Non-Existence, Csli Publications. pp. 275--312. 2000.ontology metaontology wright platonism fregean existence epistemology
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1640Is conceivability a guide to possibility?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (1): 1-42. 1993.
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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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1047How in the world?In Christopher Hill (ed.), Philosophical Topics, University of Arkansas Press. pp. 255--86. 1996.
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657Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake?Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 72 229-283. 1998.[Stephen Yablo] The usual charge against Carnap's internal/external distinction is one of 'guilt by association with analytic/synthetic'. But it can be freed of this association, to become the distinction between statements made within make-believe games and those made outside them-or, rather, a special case of it with some claim to be called the metaphorical/literal distinction. Not even Quine considers figurative speech committal, so this turns the tables somewhat. To determine our ontological…Read more
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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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38Corrections to "Hop, Skip, and jump: The agonistic conception of truth:Philosophical Perspectives 9 503-506. 1995.
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