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428Hale 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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489Variance 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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468Thickness 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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562Incoherentism and the Sorites ParadoxIn Sergi Oms & Elia Zardini (eds.), The Sorites Paradox, Cambridge University Press. 2019.
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750Intuitions, Conceptual Engineering, and Conceptual Fixed PointsIn Christopher Daly (ed.), Palgrave Handbook on Philosophical Methods, Palgrave Macmillan. 2015.
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446Carnap's Legacy for the Contemporary Metaontological DebateIn Stephan Blatti & Sandra Lapointe (eds.), Ontology After Carnap. 2016.
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507Being 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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368Modesty, 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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321Reply 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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217Reply 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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219The 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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641Inconsistency 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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332Rayo’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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237What 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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797Making 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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42Supervaluationism, 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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230The picture of reality as an amorphous lumpIn Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, Blackwell. pp. 382--96. 2008.(1) Abstract objects. The nominalist (as the label is used today) denies that there exist abstract objects. The platonist holds that there are abstract objects. One example is numbers. The nominalist denies that there are numbers; the platonist typically affirms it.
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360Meaning‐ConstitutivityInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 50 (6): 559-574. 2007.I discuss some problems faced by the meaning‐inconsistency view on the liar and sorites paradoxes which I have elsewhere defended. Most of the discussion is devoted to the question of what a defender of the meaning‐inconsistency view should say about semantic competence
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57TruthHistory and Philosophy of Logic 33 (1). 2012.History and Philosophy of Logic, Volume 33, Issue 1, Page 106-108, February 2012
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187Characterizing vaguenessPhilosophy Compass 2 (6). 2007.Philosophy Compass 2: 896-909. (Link to Philosophy Compass.).
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71Book Review. Vagueness in Context. Stewart Shapiro. (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (5). 2006.
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A Vindication of Tarski's Claim About the Liar ParadoxIn Timothy Childers & Ondrej Majer (eds.), The Logica Yearbook, Filosofia. 2001.
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185Putnam on OntologyPoznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities 95 (1): 203-222. 2008.I here critically discuss Hilary Putnam's views on ontology, especially as recently expounded in his Ethics without Ontology. In particular, I discuss Putnam's thesis of conceptual relativity and his criticism of the thesis that objectivity requires objects. Although I think that much of what Putnam says is important, and that there are important elements of truth to it, my points will largely be negative. Along the way I will discuss Putnam's and Wittgenstein's views in the philosophy of mathem…Read more
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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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20Book Review. The Philosophy of Philosophy. Timothy Williamson. (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (4): 752-4. 2010.
Uppsala, Uppsala County, Sweden