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14Practical Realism? 1Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64 (1): 169-178. 2002.In ‘Normative and Recognitional Concepts’, Allan Gibbard attempts to combine a sort of naturalistic moral realism with some of the main threads of quasi-realism. While his piece is certainly rich and suggestive, I found it unpersuasive at almost every key step. Below, I detail six areas of puzzlement.
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23Deeply Contingent A Priori KnowledgePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2): 247-269. 2002.The argument is not, however, problem-free. First: while the meaning of s might not guarantee a verifying state of affairs, mightn’t the fact of one’s believing that s is true guarantee a verifying state of affairs? And mightn’t this fact be exploited to secure knowledge of truths that are deeply contingent? Second: the argument seems to rely on the principle that if I can conceive that not P is actually the case, then I do not know that P. But it is generally agreed that a knowledge-conferring …Read more
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349The Bundle Theory of Substance and the Identity of IndiscerniblesAnalysis 55 (3). 1995.The strongest version of the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles states that of necessity, there are no distinct things with all their universals in common (where such putative haecceities as being Aristotle do not count as universals: I use 'universal' rather than 'property' here and in what follows for the simple reason that 'universal' is the term of art that most safely excludes haecceities from its instances). It is commonly supposed that Max Black's famous paper 'The identity of in…Read more
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260Numbers, minds, and bodies: A fresh look at mind-body dualismPhilosophical Perspectives 12 349-371. 1998.In this essay, we explore a fresh avenue into mind-body dualism by considering a seemingly distant question posed by Frege: "Why is it absurd to suppose that Julius Caesar is a number?". The essay falls into three main parts. In the first, through an exploration of Frege’s Julius Caesar problem, we attempt to expose two maxims applicable to the mind-body problem. In the second part, we draw on those maxims in arguing that “full blown dualism” is preferable to more modest, property-theoretic, ver…Read more
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1207Minimalism and truthNoûs 31 (2): 170-196. 1997.This paper canvasses the various dimensions along which theories of truth may disagree about the extent to which truth is minimal.
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78Framing the thisness issueAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (1). 1997.This Article does not have an abstract
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142Compatibilist semantics in metaphysics: A case studyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (1). 1996.(1996). Compatibilist semantics in metaphysics: A case study. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 117-134. doi: 10.1080/00048409612347101.
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40Are beliefs about God theoretical beliefs? Reflections on Aquinas and Kant: J. O'Leary-Hawthorne and D. Howard-SnyderReligious Studies 32 (2): 233-258. 1996.The need to address our question arises from two sources, one in Kant and the other in a certain type of response to so-called Reformed epistemology. The first source consists in a tendency to distinguish theoretical beliefs from practical beliefs , and to treat theistic belief as mere practical belief. We trace this tendency in Kant's corpus, and compare and contrast it with Aquinas's view and a more conservative Kantian view. We reject the theistic-belief-as-mere-practical-belief view: it is b…Read more
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20Deeply Contingent A Priori KnowledgePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (2): 247-269. 2002.The argument is not, however, problem-free. First: while the meaning of s might not guarantee a verifying state of affairs, mightn’t the fact of one’s believing that s is true guarantee a verifying state of affairs? And mightn’t this fact be exploited to secure knowledge of truths that are deeply contingent? Second: the argument seems to rely on the principle that if I can conceive that not P is actually the case, then I do not know that P. But it is generally agreed that a knowledge-conferring …Read more
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66DisjunctivismAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 80 (1): 145-216. 2006.[John Hawthorne] We examine some well-known disjunctivist projects in the philosophy of perception, mainly in a critical vein. Our discussion is divided into four parts. Following some introductory remarks, we examine in part two the link between object-dependent contents and disjunctivism. In part three, we explore the disjunctivist's use of discriminability facts as a basis for understanding experience. In part four, we examine an interesting argument for disjunctivism that has been offered by…Read more
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115Are Beliefs about God Theoretical Beliefs? Reflections on Aquinas and KantReligious Studies 32 (2). 1996.The need to address our question arises from two sources, one in Kant and the other in a certain type of response to so-called Reformed epistemology. The first source consists in a tendency to distinguish theoretical beliefs from practical beliefs (commitments to the world's being a certain way versus commitments to certain pictures to live by), and to treat theistic belief as mere practical belief. We trace this tendency in Kant's corpus, and compare and contrast it with Aquinas's view and a mo…Read more
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499Against Conservatism in MetaphysicsRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 82 45-75. 2018.In his recent book, Daniel Korman contrasts ontological conservatives with permissivists and eliminativists about ontology. Roughly speaking, conservatives admit the existence of ‘ordinary objects' like trees, dogs, and snowballs, but deny the existence of ‘extraordinary objects', like composites of trees and dogs. Eliminativists, on the other hand, deny many or all ordinary objects, while permissivists accept both ordinary and extraordinary objects. Our aim in this paper is to outline some of o…Read more
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44Scotus on UniversalsOxford Studies in Medieval Philosophy 4 (1). 2016.Scotus contended that the humanity of Socrates has less than a numerical unity. But what does that claim come to? And how does Scotus’s position relate to familiar debates concerning the existence of universals and/or tropes? This paper provides a detailed sketch of Scotus’s view, arguing that it is not intrinsic to Socrates’s nature that it has numerical unity. The paper goes on to explain why Ockham’s attack on the coherence of Scotus’s argument does not succeed. What initially looks like a su…Read more
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75Statistical evidence and incentives in the lawPhilosophical Issues 31 (1): 128-145. 2021.Philosophical Issues, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 128-145, October 2021.
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6Seeing and DemonstrationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (1): 199-206. 2000.We see things. We also perceptually demonstrate things. There seems to be some sort of link between these two phenomena. Indeed. in the standard case, the former is accompanied by a capacity for the latter. One sees a dog and can, on the basis of one’s perceptual capacities, think thoughts of the form ‘That is F’. But how strong is that link? Does seeing a thing (in the success sense of seeing) inevitably bring with it the capacity for perceptually demonstrating it? In what follows, we argue for…Read more
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111Moral Vagueness and EpistemicismJournal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 23 (2). 2022.Epistemicism is one of the main approaches to the phenomenon of vagueness. But how does it fare in its treatment of_ moral_ vagueness? This paper has two goals. First, I shall explain why various recent arguments against an epistemicist approach to moral vagueness are unsuccessful. Second, I shall explain how, in my view, reflection on the Sorites can inform normative ethics in powerful and interesting ways. In this connection, I shall be putting the epistemicist treatment to work, engaging with…Read more
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