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146Review of Stephen Mumford's dispositions (review)Noûs 39 (1): 179-95. 2005.In Mumford’s Dispositions, the reader will find an extended treatment of the recent debate about dispositions from Ryle and Geach to the present. Along the way, Mumford presents his own views on several key points, though we found the book much more thorough in its assessment of opposing views than in the development of a positive account. As we’ll try to make clear, some of the ideas endorsed in Dispositions are certainly worth pursuing; others are not. Following Mackie, Shoemaker, and others,1…Read more
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8Plenitude, Convention, and OntologyIn Metaphysical Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 53--69. 2006.
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355LocationsPhilosophical Topics 30 (1): 53-76. 2002.Think of “locations” very abstractly, as positions in a space, any space. Temporal locations are positions in time; spatial locations are positions in (physical) space; particulars are locations in quality space. Should we reify locations? Are locations entities? Spatiotemporal relation- alists say there are no such things as spatiotemporal locations; the fundamental spatial and temporal facts involve no locations as objects, only the instantiation of spatial and temporal relations. The denial o…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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4669Knowledge and ActionJournal of Philosophy 105 (10): 571-590. 2008.Judging by our folk appraisals, then, knowledge and action are intimately related. The theories of rational action with which we are familiar leave this unexplained. Moreover, discussions of knowledge are frequently silent about this connection. This is a shame, since if there is such a connection it would seem to constitute one of the most fundamental roles for knowledge. Our purpose in this paper is to rectify this lacuna, by exploring ways in which knowing something is related to rationally a…Read more
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310Knowledge and evidencePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2). 2005.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 Carte- sian theaters. One of the central themes of Knowledge and its Limits is that this picture is fundamentally wr…Read more
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498Intrinsic properties and natural relationsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2): 399-403. 2001.Assuming that we find the concept of naturalness coherent, we shall no doubt wish to allow that certain relations count as highly natural. Many of us will think that various spatio-temporal and causal relations—is the cause of, is spatially separated from, is later than—are highly natural. Some of us will think that various basic semantic and mentalistic relations—refers to, attends to, believes.…--- are highly natural. Some will think that various logico-mathematical relations—being the success…Read more
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9IdentityIn Michael J. Loux & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford handbook of metaphysics, Oxford University Press. pp. 99--130. 2003.
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43Infinite Analysis and the Problem of the Lucky ProofStudia Leibnitiana 32 (2). 2000.Leibniz war gewillt, die Idee der kontingenten Wahrheiten über nur mögliche individuelle Substanzen ernst zu nehmen -unabhängig davon, ob diese Substanzen existieren oder nicht. Einer der Wege, diese Idee zu erklären, ist die berühmte Lehre von der unendlichen Analyse. Eine wichtige und verwirrende Schwierigkeit für diese Lehre ist das von Robert M. Adams erörterte Problem des Beweises mit Glück. Auch wenn der vollständige individuelle Begriff einer möglichen Substanz S sich durch Analyse in une…Read more
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577How Many Angels Can Dance on the Point of a Needle? Transcendental Theology Meets Modal MetaphysicsMind 120 (477): 53-81. 2011.We argue that certain modal questions raise serious problems for a modal metaphysics on which we are permitted to quantify unrestrictedly over all possibilia. In particular, we argue that, on reasonable assumptions, both David Lewis's modal realism and Timothy Williamson's necessitism are saddled with the remarkable conclusion that there is some cardinal number of the form ℵα such that there could not be more than ℵα-many angels in existence. In the last section, we make use of similar ideas to …Read more
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405Fine-Tuning Fine-TuningIn Matthew A. Benton, John Hawthorne & Dani Rabinowitz (eds.), Knowledge, Belief, and God: New Insights in Religious Epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 136-168. 2018.
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143Gunk and Continuous VariationThe Monist 88 (4): 441-465. 2005.Let us say that a thing is gunky just in case every part of that thing has proper parts. The idea that all physical objects are gunky seems sufficiently sweeping, interesting, and plausible that it is worth examining. However, there is a difficulty. The features of an extended object can surely vary continuously. If an object is gunky then it cannot have point-sized parts which have no further parts. But how can one conceive of a continuous variation in features other than as the obtaining of di…Read more
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252Disagreement Without Transparency: Some Bleak ThoughtsIn David Phiroze Christensen & Jennifer Lackey (eds.), The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 9--30. 2013.What ought one to do, epistemically speaking, when faced with a disagreement? Faced with this question, one naturally hopes for an answer that is principled, general, and intuitively satisfying. We want to argue that this is a vain hope. Our claim is that a satisfying answer will prove elusive because of non-transparency: that there is no condition such that we are always in a position to know whether it obtains. When we take seriously that there is nothing, including our own minds, to which we …Read more
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5Dancing qualia and direct referenceIn Torin Alter & Sven Walter (eds.), Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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2Direct reference and dancing qualiaIn Torin Andrew Alter & Sven Walter (eds.), Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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394Causal structuralismIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 361--78. 2018.
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301DisjunctivismAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 80 (1): 145-83. 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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433Chopping Up GunkThe Monist 87 (3): 339-50. 2004.We show that someone who believes in both gunk and the possibility of supertasks has to give up either a plausible principle about where gunk can be located, or plausible conservation principles
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538Deeply 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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255Cartesian DualismIn Peter van Inwagen & D. Zimmerman (eds.), Persons Human and Divine, Oxford University Press. 2007.In this short paper, I shall examine some key structural features of Descartes’s metaphysics, as it relates to mind–body dualism. The style of presentation will partly be one of rational reconstruction, designed to present the Cartesian system in a way that will be of maximal interest to contemporary metaphysicians. Section 1 focuses on five key Cartesian theses about principal attributes. Sections 2 and 3 examine how those theses play themselves out in Descartes’s discussion of mind–body dualism
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522Contemporary debates in metaphysics (edited book)Blackwell. 2008.This anthology introduces advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students to today's debates in metaphysics. The book consists of essays by contemporary metaphysicians, and all but one appear here for the first time. For each of nine topics, there are two essays, one "pro-" and one "con-".
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251Blocking Definitions of MaterialismPhilosophical Studies 110 (2): 103-113. 2002.It is often thought that materialism about themind can be clarified using the concept of supervenience. But there is a difficulty. Amaterialist should admit the possibility ofghosts and thus should allow that a world mightduplicate the physical character of our worldand enjoy, in addition, immaterial beings withmental properties. So materialists can't claimthat every world that is physicallyindistinguishable from our world is alsomentally indistinguishable; and this is wellknown. What is less un…Read more
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813Belief is weakPhilosophical Studies 173 (5): 1393-1404. 2016.It is tempting to posit an intimate relationship between belief and assertion. The speech act of assertion seems like a way of transferring the speaker’s belief to his or her audience. If this is right, then you might think that the evidential warrant required for asserting a proposition is just the same as the warrant for believing it. We call this thesis entitlement equality. We argue here that entitlement equality is false, because our everyday notion of belief is unambiguously a weak one. Be…Read more
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