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437Hale and Wright on the Metaontology of Neo-FregeanismIn Philip A. Ebert & Marcus Rossberg (eds.), Abstractionism: Essays in Philosophy of Mathematics, Oxford University Press Uk. 2016.
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494Variance Theses in Ontology and MetaethicsIn Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen & David Plunkett (eds.), Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, Oxford University Press. 2019.
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473Thickness and EvaluationJournal of Moral Philosophy 14 (1): 89-104. 2017.This is a review essay devoted to Pekka Väyrynen’s The Lewd, the Rude and the Nasty. Väyrynen’s book, concerned with thick terms and thick concepts, argues for a pragmatic view on the evaluativeness associated with these terms and concepts. The essay raises a number of critical questions regarding what Väyrynen’s arguments for his view actually show. It deals with, for example, thick properties, the fact-value distinction, what it is for terms and concepts to be (semantically) evaluative, and wh…Read more
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570Incoherentism and the Sorites ParadoxIn Sergi Oms & Elia Zardini (eds.), The Sorites Paradox, Cambridge University Press. 2019.
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764Intuitions, Conceptual Engineering, and Conceptual Fixed PointsIn Christopher Daly (ed.), Palgrave Handbook on Philosophical Methods, Palgrave Macmillan. 2015.
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450Carnap's Legacy for the Contemporary Metaontological DebateIn Stephan Blatti & Sandra Lapointe (eds.), Ontology After Carnap. 2016.
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512Being Metaphysically Unsettled: Barnes and Williams on Metaphysical Indeterminacy and VaguenessOxford Studies in Metaphysics 6 6. 2011.This chapter discusses the defence of metaphysical indeterminacy by Elizabeth Barnes and Robert Williams and discusses a classical and bivalent theory of such indeterminacy. Even if metaphysical indeterminacy arguably is intelligible, Barnes and Williams argue in favour of it being so and this faces important problems. As for classical logic and bivalence, the chapter problematizes what exactly is at issue in this debate. Can reality not be adequately described using different languages, some cl…Read more
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372Modesty, Esotericism and Ineffability: Remarks on HofweberAnalysis 78 (2): 291-303. 2018.In his Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics, Thomas Hofweber among other things presents a radical perspective on ontology and metaphysics. In this note, I critically discuss some of the points Hofweber makes.
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330Reply to criticsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (5): 535-561. 2020.Reply to Stephanie Leary’s, Kris McDaniel’s, Tristram McPherson’s and David Plunkett’s articles on Choosing Normative Concepts (OUP, 2017) in book symposium in Inquiry.
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223Reply to Bykvist and OlsonUtilitas 31 (3): 347-349. 2019.Reply to Krister Bykvist and Jonas Olson's review of Choosing Normative Concepts (OUP, 2017) in Utilitas.
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227The existence of personitesPhilosophical Studies 177 (7): 2051-2071. 2020.Mark Johnston and Eric Olson have both pressed what Johnston has dubbed the personite problem. Personites, if they exist, are person-like entities whose lives extend over a continuous proper part of a person’s life. They are so person-like that they seem to have moral status if persons do. But this threatens to wreak havoc with ordinary moral thinking. For example, simple decisions to suffer some short-term hardship for long-term benefits become problematic. And ordinary punishment is always als…Read more
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649Inconsistency and replacementInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 62 (4): 387-402. 2019.The article is an extended critical discussion of Kevin Scharp’s Replacing Truth. Scharp’s case for the claim that the concept of truth is inconsistent is criticized, and so is his case for the claim that the concept of truth must be replaced because of its inconsistency.
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341Rayo’s MetametaphysicsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (4): 483-497. 2014.In his important book The Construction of Logical Space, Agustín Rayo lays out a distinctive metametaphysical view and applies it fruitfully to disputes concerning ontology and concerning modality. In this article, I present a number of criticisms of the view developed, mostly focusing on the underlying metametaphysics and Rayo’s claims on its behalf.
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238What is deflationism about truth?Synthese 198 (2): 631-645. 2017.What is deflationism about truth? There are many questions that can be raised about this, given the numerous different characterizations of deflationism in the literature. Here I attend to questions about the characterization of deflationism that arise when we carefully distinguish between issues pertaining to concepts and issues pertaining to properties.
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804Making sense of logical pluralismInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (3-4): 433-454. 2020.The article is centered on the question of how best to understand the logical pluralism/logical monism debate. A number of suggestions are brought up and rejected on the ground that they re...
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43Supervaluationism, Vagueifiers, and Semantic OverdeterminationDialectica 55 (4): 363-378. 2001.Supervaluationism, traditionally conceived, is the conjunction of three theses: Vagueness in a language gives rise to there being a multitude of acceptable assignments of semantic values to some expressions of the language, These assignments correspond to possible completions of the meanings of vague expressions, Truth is truth under all acceptable assignments, and falsity is falsity under all acceptable assignments. Supervaluationism has three chief virtues. It preserves classical logic. It pro…Read more
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129Choosing Normative ConceptsOxford University Press. 2017.The concepts we use to value and prescribe are historically contingent, and we could have found ourselves with others. But what does it mean to say that some concepts are better than others for purposes of action-guiding and deliberation? What is it to choose between different normative conceptual frameworks?
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220What Vagueness Consists InPhilosophical Studies 125 (1): 27-60. 2005.The main question of the paper is that ofwhat vagueness consists in. This question must be distinguished from other questions about vagueness discussed in the literature. It is argued that familiar accounts of vagueness for general reasons failto answer the question ofwhat vagueness consists in. A positive view is defended, according to which, roughly, the vagueness of an expression consists in it being part ofsemantic competence to accept a tolerance principle for the expression. Since toleranc…Read more
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63Realism and Antirealism Edited by William P. Alston Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002, viii + 303 pp (review)Dialogue 44 (4): 786-788. 2005.
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122The liar paradox, expressibility, possible languagesIn J. C. Beall (ed.), Revenge of the Liar: New Essays on the Paradox, Oxford University Press. 2007.Here is the liar paradox. We have a sentence, (L), which somehow says of itself that it is false. Suppose (L) is true. Then things are as (L) says they are. (For it would appear to be a mere platitude that if a sentence is true, then things are as the sentence says they are.) (L) says that (L) is false. So, (L) is false. Since the supposition that (L) is true leads to contradiction, we can assert that (L) is false. But since this is just what (L) says, (L) is then true. (For it would appear to b…Read more
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3Finzione, indifferenza e ontologiaRivista di Estetica 32 (32): 71-92. 2006.1 Introduzione Quando i filosofi fanno affermazioni del tipo “gli A sono finzioni”, il più delle volte ciò che dicono è ambiguo in un modo cruciale. Secondo una certa lettura, ciò che viene detto ha chiare implicazioni ontologiche: non ci sono, in realtà, cose come gli F. Ma c’è anche un modo diverso, non ontologico, di leggere tali affermazioni: come se dicessero semplicemente che le A-asserzioni sono avanzate, di norma, in uno spirito finzionale. Chiaramente, si può sostenere che normalment...
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73Schiffer on vaguenessPacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (1). 2006.I go through, and criticize, Stephen Schiffer's account of vagueness and the sorites paradox. I discuss his notion of a happy-face solution to a paradox, his appeal to vagueness-related partial belief, his claim that indeterminacy is a psychological notion, and his view that the sorites premise and the inference rule of modus ponens are indeterminate.
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22Book Review. The Philosophy of Philosophy. Timothy Williamson. (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (4): 752-4. 2010.
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44Review of Fraser MacBride (ed.), Identity and Modality (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (3). 2007.
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107Vagueness and Second-Level IndeterminacyIn Richard Dietz & Sebastiano Moruzzi (eds.), Cuts and Clouds: Vaguenesss, its Nature and its Logic, Oxford University Press. 2010.My theme here will be vagueness. But first recall Quine’s arguments for the indeterminacy of translation and the inscrutability of reference. (I will presume these arguments to be familiar.) If Quine is right, then there are radically different acceptable assignments of semantic values to the expressions of any language: different assignments of semantic values that for all that is determined by whatever it is that determines semantic value are all acceptable, and all equally good. Quine even ar…Read more
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476Multitude, tolerance and language-transcendenceSynthese 187 (3): 833-847. 2012.Rudolf Carnap's 1930s philosophy of logic, including his adherence to the principle of tolerance, is discussed. What theses did Carnap commit himself to, exactly? I argue that while Carnap did commit himself to a certain multitude thesis—there are different logics of different languages, and the choice between these languages is merely a matter of expediency—there is no evidence that he rejected a language-transcendent notion of fact, contrary to what Warren Goldfarb and Thomas Ricketts have pro…Read more
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105The Aims of Logical Empiricism As a Philosophy of ScienceActa Analytica 15 (25): 137-59. 2000.According to the received view on logical empiricism, the logical empiricists were involved in the same project as Popper, Lakatos and Kuhn: a project of describing actual scientific method and (with the exception of Kuhn) prescribing methodological rules for scientists. Even authors who seek to show that the logical empiricists were not as simpleminded as widely believed agree with this assumption. I argue that the received view has it wrong.
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623Deconstructing Ontological VaguenessCanadian Journal of Philosophy 38 (1): 117-140. 2008.I will here present a number of problems concerning the idea that there is ontological vagueness, and the related claim that appeal to this idea can help solve some vagueness-related problems. A theme underlying the discussion will be the distinction between vagueness specifically and indeterminacy more generally (and, relatedly, the distinction between ontological vagueness and ontological indeterminacy). Even if the world is somehow ontologically indeterminate it by no means follows that it is…Read more
Uppsala, Uppsala County, Sweden