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103Conditionals, Paradox, and Probability: Themes from the Philosophy of Dorothy Edgington. (edited book)Oxford University press. 2021.A festschrift for Dorothy Edgington, containing contributions from Cleo Condoravdi, Dorothy Edgington, Kit Fine, Alan Hájek, John Hawthorne, Sabine Iatridou, Nick Jones, Rosanna Keefe, Angelika Kratzer, David Over, Daniel Rothschild, Robert Stalnaker, Scott Sturgeon, and Timothy Williamson.
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103Absolutism and its LimitsJournal of Moral Philosophy 21 (1-2): 170-189. 2023.Many philosophers think that given the choice between saving the life of an innocent person and averting any number of minor ailments or inconveniences, it would be better to save the life. How, then, should one compare the risk of an innocent person’s life to such minor ailments and inconveniences? If lives are infinitely more important than insignificant factors then any risk cannot be outweighed, and that is untenable. An alternative approach seems more promising: let the values of such insig…Read more
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101Comments on Transient Truths: An Essay in the Metaphysics of PropositionsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (6): 619-626. 2015.This paper distinguishes two importantly different kinds of temporalism. According to one version, the truth value of propositions is parameterized to times. According to a second version, propositions have a truth value simpliciter, but some propositions that are true will be or were false. I point out that the second version is neglected in Berit Brogaard's Transient Truths, and explore whether there are good arguments against it implicit in that work. I also critically engage with various arg…Read more
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79The Grammar of Meaning: Normativity and Semantic DiscourseCambridge University Press. 1997.This study addresses a range of central topics in Anglo-American philosophy of language.
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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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74Leibnizian Essentialism, Transworld Identity, and CounterpartsHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 9 (4). 1992.
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74Statistical 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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69On the compatibility of connectionist and classical modelsPhilosophical Psychology 2 (1): 5-16. 1989.This paper presents considerations in favour of the view that traditional (classical) architectures can be seen as emergent features of connectionist networks with distributed representation. A recent paper by William Bechtel (1988) which argues for a similar conclusion is unsatisfactory in that it fails to consider whether the compositional syntax and semantics attributed to mental representations by classical models can emerge within a connectionist network. The compatibility of the two paradi…Read more
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64Leibnizian Modality Again: Reply to MurrayThe Leibniz Review 10 87-101. 2000.Purdue University and Syracuse University.
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62DisjunctivismAristotelian 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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62Knowledge and EvidencePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2): 452-458. 2007.Most of us, tacitly or explicitly, embrace a more or less Cartesian conception of our epistemic condition. According to such a conception, “what we have to go on”in learning about the world is, on the one hand, that which is a priori accessible to us, and, on the other, the inner experiences—visual imagery, tactile sensations, recollective episodes and so on—that pop into our Cartesian theaters. One of the central themes of Knowledge and its Limits is that this picture is fundamentally wrong. Wi…Read more
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62Précis of The Grammar of Meaning: Normativity and Semantic ContentPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (1): 177-185. 2002.The three reviews collectively provide a good deal of engaging and substantial criticism. We shall not undertake to defend the text on each critical point that emerges. Rather, we shall, as fairly as we can, explore the reviews from our current perspective, six or seven years after writing the book, registering ways that we remain convinced of much of the substance of the work, but also ways in which the reviews rightly bring out features of our framework that are improperly handled or else unde…Read more
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60Externalism and ScepticismPhilosophical Studies 81 (1). 1996.According to an externalist theory of content the content of an individual’s thoughts and the meaning of her words need not supervene on her intrinsic history. Two individuals may be intrinsically exactly alike yet entertain different thoughts, and attach different meanings to the words they use. ETC, which has been most notably defended by Saul Kripke, Hilary Putnam and Tyler Burge, has attained the status of current orthodoxy. Nevertheless, some maintain that combining ETC with the premisses t…Read more
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57A note on 'languages and language'In Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel (eds.), Arguing about language, Routledge. pp. 116-118. 2010.
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54Dogmatism and InquiryMind. forthcoming.Inquiry aims at knowledge. Your inquiry into a question succeeds just in case you come to know the answer. However, combined with a common picture on which misleading evidence can lead knowledge to be lost, this view threatens to recommend a novel form of dogmatism. At least in some cases, individuals who know the answer to a question appear required to avoid evidence bearing on it. In this paper, we’ll aim to do two things. First, we’ll present an argument for this novel form of dogmatism and s…Read more
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46Oxford Studies in Epistemology:Volume 2: Volume 2 (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2007.OSE is a biennial publication which offers a regular snapshot of state-of-the-art work in this important field. Under the guidance of a distinguished editorial board, it will publish exemplary papers in epistemology, broadly construed. Anyone wanting to understand the latest developments in the discipline can start here.
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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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44Oxford Studies in Epistemology 7 (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2022.Oxford Studies in Epistemology is a periodical publication which offers a regular snapshot of state-of-the-art work in this important field. Under the guidance of a distinguished editorial board composed of leading philosophers in North America, Europe, and Australasia, it publishes exemplary papers in epistemology, broadly construed. Topics within its purview include: - traditional epistemological questions concerning the nature of belief, justification, and knowledge, the status of scepticism,…Read more
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