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427Hale 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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488Variance 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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467Thickness 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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560Incoherentism and the Sorites ParadoxIn Sergi Oms & Elia Zardini (eds.), The Sorites Paradox, Cambridge University Press. 2019.
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746Intuitions, 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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506Being 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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364Modesty, 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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320Reply 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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216Reply 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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218The 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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638Inconsistency 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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328Rayo’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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795Making 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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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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472Multitude, 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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607Deconstructing 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
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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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523Bad company and neo-Fregean philosophySynthese 170 (3): 393-414. 2009.A central element in neo-Fregean philosophy of mathematics is the focus on abstraction principles, and the use of abstraction principles to ground various areas of mathematics. But as is well known, not all abstraction principles are in good standing. Various proposals for singling out the acceptable abstraction principles have been presented. Here I investigate what philosophical underpinnings can be provided for these proposals; specifically, underpinnings that fit the neo-Fregean's general ou…Read more
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87Reply to Beall and PriestAustralasian Journal of Logic 6 94-106. 2008.In my “Deep Inconsistency”, I compared my meaning-inconsistency view on the liar with Graham Priest’s dialetheist view, using my view to help cast doubt on Priest’s arguments for his view. Jc Beall and Priest have recently published a reply to my article. I here respond to their criticisms. In addition, I compare the meaning–inconsistency view with Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap’s revision theory of truth, and discuss how best to deal with the strengthened liar.
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209Peter Van Inwagen on material beingsRatio 15 (3). 2002.Peter van Inwagen's book Material Beings is centered on the special composition question: the question of when some simples constitute a complex object. Van Inwagen's answer to this question is that simples only constitute a complex object when they constitute an organism. I argue that van Inwagen's reasoning in favor of this conclusion is unconvincing, and also that the significance of the special composition question itself is doubtful
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268Sider on existenceNoûs 41 (3). 2007.In (2001), (2003), and elsewhere, Ted Sider presents two arguments concerning the existential quantifier which are justly central to the recent discussion of metaontology. What we will call Sider's indeterminacy argument is an attempted reductio of the suggestion that the existential quantifier might be semantically indeterminate. What we will call Sider's naturalness argument is an argument for the claim that the semantic value of the existential quantifier is the most eligible existence-like m…Read more
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83On How Logic Became First-OrderNordic Journal of Philosophical Logic 1 (2): 147-67. 1996.Added by a category editor--not an official abstract. Discusses the history (and reasons for the history) implicit in the title, as well as the author's view on same.
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15The Liar Paradox and MetaphysicsIn Jurgis Skilters & Matti Eklund (eds.), The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, University of Latvia Press. 2006.
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1251Carnap and ontological pluralismIn David Chalmers, David Manley & Ryan Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, Oxford University Press. pp. 130--56. 2009.My focus here will be Rudolf Carnap’s views on ontology, as these are presented in the seminal “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology” (1950). I will first describe how I think Carnap’s distinction between external and internal questions is best understood. Then I will turn to broader issues regarding Carnap’s views on ontology. With certain reservations, I will ascribe to Carnap an ontological pluralist position roughly similar to the positions of Eli Hirsch and the later Hilary Putnam. Then I tur…Read more
Uppsala, Uppsala County, Sweden