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371The problem of free mass: Must properties cluster?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (1). 2003.Properties come in clusters. It seems impossible, for instance, that a mass could float free, unattached to any other property. David Armstrong takes this as a reductio of the bundle theory and an argument for substrata, while Peter Simons and Arda Denkel reply by supplementing the bundle theory with accounts of property interdependencies. I argue against both views. Virtually all plausible ontologies turn out to be committed to the existence of free masses.
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517Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited, edited by Huw Price and Richard Corry (review)Mind 119 (475): 844-848. 2010.This is an outstanding anthology. It contains extended reflections on Russell’s idea that our notion of causation is a relic of stone-age metaphysics, which fails to fit contemporary physics and thus deserves elimination (‘On the Notion of Cause’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 13, 1913, pp. 1–26). It will be of interest to anyone interested in causation or the physical image of the world, and to anyone interested in reconciling the manifest and scientific images.
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1120The deflationary metaontology of Thomasson's ordinary objectsPhilosophical Books 50 (3): 142-157. 2009.In Ordinary Objects, Thomasson pursues an integrated conception of ontology and metaontology. In ontology, she defends the existence of shoes, ships, and other ordinary objects. In metaontology, she defends a deflationary view of ontological inquiry, designed to suck the air out of arguments against ordinary objects. The result is an elegant and insightful defense of a common sense worldview. I am sympathetic—in spirit if not always in letter—with Thomasson’s ontology. But I am skeptical of her …Read more
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1609Contrastive causationPhilosophical Review 114 (3): 327-358. 2005.Causation is widely assumed to be a binary relation: c causes e. I will argue that causation is a quaternary, contrastive relation: c rather than C* causes e rather than E*, where C* and E* are nonempty sets of contrast events. Or at least, I will argue that treating causation as contrastive helps resolve some paradoxes.
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638Skepticism, Contextualism, and DiscriminationPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 69 (1): 138-155. 2004.The skeptic says that “knowledge” is an absolute term, whereas the contextualist says that “knowledge” is a relationally absolute term. Which is the better hypothesis about “knowledge”? And what implications do these hypotheses about “knowledge” have for knowledge? I argue that the skeptic has the better hypothesis about “knowledge”, but that both hypotheses about “knowledge” have deeply anti-skeptical implications for knowledge, since both presuppose our capacity for epistemically salient discr…Read more
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558Of ghostly and mechanical events (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (1). 2004.Paul Pietroski, in Causing Actions (2000), aims to articulate a dualistic framework that 'makes room for persons'. What is especially intriguing about Pietroski's framework is that it denies both of the above assumptions: (i) it is resolutely non-naturalistic, and (ii) it is a dualism of events, said to steer between substance and property dualisms. If Pietroski is right then both naturalism and the three-part taxonomy are worse than mistaken: they are in..
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828Knowing the AnswerPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (2): 383-403. 2007.How should one understand knowledge-wh ascriptions? That is, how should one understand claims such as ‘‘I know where the car is parked,’’ which feature an interrogative complement? The received view is that knowledge-wh reduces to knowledge that p, where p happens to be the answer to the question Q denoted by the wh-clause. I will argue that knowledge-wh includes the question—to know-wh is to know that p, as the answer to Q. I will then argue that knowledge-that includes a contextually implicit …Read more
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448Why the World Has Parts: Reply to Horgan and PotrcIn Philip Goff (ed.), Spinoza on Monism, Palgrave-macmillan. 2011.
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905From nihilism to monismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2). 2007.Mereological nihilism is the view that all concrete objects are simple. Existence monism is the view that the only concrete object is one big simple: the world. I will argue that nihilism culminates in monism. The nihilist demands the simplest sufficient ontology, and the monist delivers it
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864The least discerning and most promiscuous truthmakerPhilosophical Quarterly 60 (239). 2010.I argue that the one and only truthmaker is the world. This view can be seen as arisingfrom (i) the view that truthmaking is a relation of grounding holding between true propositions and fundamental entities, together with (ii) the view that the world is the one and only fundamental entity. I argue that this view provides an elegant and economical account of the truthmakers, while solving the problem of negative existentials, in a way that proves ontologically revealing
Areas of Specialization
| Metaphysics |
Areas of Interest
| Epistemology |
| Metaphysics |
| Philosophy of Language |
| Philosophy of Physical Science |
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| Metaphysics |