• On Being Alienated (edited book)
    Clarendon Press, Oxford. 2006.
  • Introduction
    In Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Perceptual experience, Oxford University Press. 2006.
  • Introduction
    In Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Conceivability and Possibility, Oxford University Press. 2002.
  • Manipulating Colour: Pounding an Almond (edited book)
    Clarendon Press, Oxford. 2006.
  • 6
    In Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds.), Epistemic Modals in Context, Oxford University Press. pp. 131--168. 2005.
  •  1449
    Epistemic Modals in Context
    In Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds.), Contextualism in philosophy: knowledge, meaning, and truth, Oxford University Press. pp. 131-170. 2005.
    A very simple contextualist treatment of a sentence containing an epistemic modal, e.g. a might be F, is that it is true iff for all the contextually salient community knows, a is F. It is widely agreed that the simple theory will not work in some cases, but the counterexamples produced so far seem amenable to a more complicated contextualist theory. We argue, however, that no contextualist theory can capture the evaluations speakers naturally make of sentences containing epistemic modals. If we…Read more
  •  29
    Reply to Lasersohn, MacFarlane, and Richard
    Philosophical Studies 156 (3): 449-466. 2011.
  •  3
    Leibniz on Superessentialism and World-Bound Individuals
    Studia Leibnitiana 22 (2): 175-183. 1990.
    Unsere Diskussion soil eine Alternative zu der allgemein anerkannten Interpretation der Leibnizschen Auffassung von De-re-Modalitat verteidigen. Insbesondere versuchen wir zu zeigen, dafi Leibniz nicht die Lehre von der Weltgebundenheit der Einzelsubstanzen akzeptierte, obwohl er annahm, dafi die inneren Bestimmungen den Dingen wesentlich zukommen. Wir versuchen weiterhin zu erweisen, dafl Leibniz eine duplikat-theoretische Behandlung des ublichen modalen Diskurses vornahm und dafi dies in keine…Read more
  •  427
    Scepticism
    In Frederick D. Aquino & William J. Abraham (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology, Oxford University Press. pp. 290-308. 2017.
    To what extent are the answers to theological questions knowable? And if the relevant answers are knowable, which sorts of inquirers are in a position to know them? In this chapter we shall not answer these questions directly but instead supply a range of tools that may help us make progress here. The tools consist of plausible structural constraints on knowledge. After articulating them, we shall go on to indicate some ways in which they interact with theological scepticism. In some cases the s…Read more
  •  19
    Leibnizian Modality Again: Reply to Murray
    The Leibniz Review 10 87-101. 2000.
    Purdue University and Syracuse University.
  •  18
    Leibnizian Modality Again: Reply to Murray
    The Leibniz Review 10 87-101. 2000.
    Purdue University and Syracuse University.
  •  200
    Reply to Lasersohn, MacFarlane, and Richard (review)
    Philosophical Studies 156 (3): 417-419. 2011.
    Reply to Lasersohn, MacFarlane, and Richard.
  •  47
    Locations and binding
    Analysis 67 (2): 95-105. 2007.
    It is natural to think that the relationship between ‘rain’ and the location of rain is different from the relationship between ‘dance’ and the location of dancing. Utterances of (1) are typically interpreted as, in some sense, being about a location in which it rains. (2) is, typically, not interpreted as being about a location in which the dancing takes place
  •  25
    Summary (review)
    Analysis 71 (1). 2011.
  •  123
    Reply to Glanzberg, Soames and Weatherson
    Analysis 71 (1): 143-156. 2011.
    One of Weatherson's main goals is to drive home a methodological point: We shouldn't be looking for deductive arguments for or against relativism – we should instead be evaluating inductive arguments designed to show that either relativism or some alternative offers the best explanation of some data. Our focus in Chapter Two on diagnostics for shared content allegedly encourages the search for deductive arguments and so does more harm than good. We have no methodological slogan of our own to off…Read more
  •  451
    The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology (edited book)
    with Herman Cappelen and Tamar Gendler
    Oxford University Press. 2016.
    This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted …Read more
  •  120
    Relativism and Monadic Truth
    Analysis 71 (1): 109-111. 2011.
    The beginning of the twenty-first century saw something of a comeback for relativism within analytical philosophy. Relativism and Monadic Truth has three main goals. First, we wished to clarify what we take to be the key moving parts in the intellectual machinations of self-described relativists. Secondly, we aimed to expose fundamental flaws in those argumentative strategies that drive the pro-relativist movement and precursors from which they draw inspiration. Thirdly, we hoped that our polemi…Read more
  •  4789
    Evil and Evidence
    Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 7 1-31. 2016.
    The problem of evil is the most prominent argument against the existence of God. Skeptical theists contend that it is not a good argument. Their reasons for this contention vary widely, involving such notions as CORNEA, epistemic appearances, 'gratuitous' evils, 'levering' evidence, and the representativeness of goods. We aim to dispel some confusions about these notions, in particular by clarifying their roles within a probabilistic epistemology. In addition, we develop new responses to the pro…Read more
  •  111
    In this thesis, Semantics, Meta-Semantics, and Ontology, I provide a critique of the method of truth in metaphysics. Davidson has suggested that we can determine the metaphysical nature and structure of reality through semantic investigations. By contrast, I argue that it is not semantics, but meta-semantics, which reveals the metaphysically necessary and sufficient truth conditions of our claims. As a consequence I reject the Quinean criterion of ontological commitment. In Part I, chapter 1, I …Read more
  •  429
    Bayesianism, Infinite Decisions, and Binding
    with Frank Arntzenius and Adam Elga
    Mind 113 (450). 2004.
    We pose and resolve several vexing decision theoretic puzzles. Some are variants of existing puzzles, such as 'Trumped' (Arntzenius and McCarthy 1997), 'Rouble trouble' (Arntzenius and Barrett 1999), 'The airtight Dutch book' (McGee 1999), and 'The two envelopes puzzle' (Broome 1995). Others are new. A unified resolution of the puzzles shows that Dutch book arguments have no force in infinite cases. It thereby provides evidence that reasonable utility functions may be unbounded and that reasonab…Read more
  •  1652
    Higher-order free logic and the Prior-Kaplan paradox
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 46 (4-5): 493-541. 2016.
    The principle of universal instantiation plays a pivotal role both in the derivation of intensional paradoxes such as Prior’s paradox and Kaplan’s paradox and the debate between necessitism and contingentism. We outline a distinctively free logical approach to the intensional paradoxes and note how the free logical outlook allows one to distinguish two different, though allied themes in higher-order necessitism. We examine the costs of this solution and compare it with the more familiar ramifica…Read more
  •  512
    Knowledge and Objective Chance
    In Duncan Pritchard & Patrick Greenough (eds.), Williamson on Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 92--108. 2009.
    We think we have lots of substantial knowledge about the future. But contemporary wisdom has it that indeterminism prevails in such a way that just about any proposition about the future has a non-zero objective chance of being false.2, 3 What should one do about this? One, pessimistic, reaction is scepticism about knowledge of the future. We think this should be something of a last resort, especially since this scepticism is likely to infect alleged knowledge of the present and past. One anti-s…Read more
  •  186
    Relativism and Monadic Truth
    Oxford University Press UK. 2009.
    Cappelen and Hawthorne present a powerful critique of fashionable relativist accounts of truth, and the foundational ideas in semantics on which the new relativism draws. They argue compellingly that the contents of thought and talk are propositions that instantiate the fundamental monadic properties of truth and falsity
  •  17
    The Principle of Necessary Reason
    Faith and Philosophy 10 (1): 60-67. 1993.
  •  130
    Response
    Mind and Language 29 (4): 499-510. 2014.
    We are very grateful to our critics for their kind words and thoughtful engagementwith The Reference Book (hereafter TRB), and also to the editors of Mind & Language for the opportunity to respond. We’ll start our reply by sketching the book’s positive thesis about specific noun phrases and names. In §2 we’ll relate the traditional semantic category we call ‘reference’ to semantic taxonomies given in terms of mechanisms of denotation. In §3, we’ll turn to acquaintance constraints on reference an…Read more
  •  2
    Epistemicism and Semantic Plasticity
    In Dean Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Volume 2, Oxford University Press Uk. 2006.
  •  1
    Oxford Studies in Epistemology (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2010.
  •  70
    The Principle of Necessary Reason
    Faith and Philosophy 10 (1): 60-67. 1993.