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237Categorial predicationRatio 25 (4): 369-386. 2012.When, for example, we say of something that it ‘is an object’, or ‘is an event’, or ‘is a property’, we are engaging in categorial predication: we are assigning something to a certain ontological category. Ontological categorization is clearly a type of classification, but it differs radically from the types of classification that are involved in the taxonomic practices of empirical sciences, as when a physicist says of a certain particle that it ‘is an electron’, or when a zoologist says of a c…Read more
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76Powerful Particulars: Review Essay on John Heil’s From an Ontological Point of View (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 72 (2): 466--479. 2006.John Heil’s new book is remarkable in many ways. In a concise, lucid and accessible manner, it develops a complete system of ontology with many strikingly original features and then applies that ontology to fundamental issues in the philosophy of mind, with illuminating results. Although Heil acknowledges his intellectual debts to C. B. Martin, he is unduly modest about his own contribution to the development and application of this novel metaphysical system. A full examination of the position t…Read more
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204Self, agency, and mental causationJournal of Consciousness Studies 6 (8-9): 225-239. 1999.A self or person does not appear to be identifiable with his or her organic body, nor with any part of it, such as the brain; and yet selves seem to be agents, capable of bringing about physical events as causal consequences of certain of their conscious mental states. How is this possible in a universe in which, it appears, every physical event has a sufficient cause which is wholly physical? The answer is that this is possible if a certain kind of naturalistic dualism is true, according to whi…Read more
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131Personal agency: the metaphysics of mind and actionOxford University Press. 2008.This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will--a "two-way" power which ...
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49'If 2 = 3, then 2 + 1 = 3 + 1': Reply to heylen and HorstenPhilosophical Quarterly 58 (232): 528-531. 2008.Jan Heylen and Leon Horsten object to my proposed analysis of ordinary-language conditionals by appealing to certain putative counter-examples. In this reply, I explain how, by ignoring my reading of the indicative/subjunctive distinction, their objection misses its target. I also criticize their underlying methodology.
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54Locke, Martin and substance (contributions to metaphysics)Philosophical Quarterly 50 (201): 498--514. 2000.
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T. C. POTTS "Structures and Categories for the Representation of Meaning" (review)History and Philosophy of Logic 16 (1): 140. 1995.
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243Ontological Vagueness, Existence Monism and Metaphysical RealismMetaphysica 14 (2): 265-274. 2013.Recently, Terry Horgan and Matjaž Potrč have defended the thesis of ‘existence monism’, according to which the whole cosmos is the only concrete object. Their arguments appeal largely to considerations concerning vagueness. Crucially, they claim that ontological vagueness is impossible, and one key assumption in their defence of this claim is that vagueness always involves ‘sorites-susceptibility’. I aim to challenge both the claim and this assumption. As a consequence, I seek to undermine their…Read more
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136Form without matterRatio 11 (3). 1998.Three different concepts of matter are identified: matter as what a thing is immediately made of, matter as stuff of a certain kind, and matter in the (dubious) sense of material ‘substratum’. The doctrine of hylomorphism, which regards every individual concrete thing as being ‘combination’ of matter and form, is challenged. Instead it is urged that we do well to identify an individual concrete thing with its own particular ‘substantial form’. The notions of form and matter, far from being corre…Read more
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195Abstraction, Properties, and Immanent RealismThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 2 195-205. 1999.Objects which philosophers have traditionally categorized as abstract are standardly referred to by complex noun phrases of certain canonical forms, such as ‘the set of Fs’, ‘the number of Fs’, ‘the proposition that P’, and ‘the property of being F’. It is no accident that such noun phrases are well-suited to appear in ‘Fregean’ identity-criteria, or ‘abstraction’ principles, for which Frege’s criterion of identity for cardinal numbers provides the paradigm. Notoriously, such principlesare apt t…Read more
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1. some varieties of psycho-physical dualismIn Alessandro Antonietti, Antonella Corradini & E. Jonathan Lowe (eds.), Psycho-Physical Dualism Today: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Lexington Books. pp. 167. 2008.
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138Entity, identity and unityErkenntnis 48 (2-3): 191-208. 1998.I propose a fourfold categorisation of entities according to whether or not they possess determinate identity-conditions and whether or not they are determinately countable. Some entities – which I call ‘individual objects’ – have both determinate identity and determinate countability: for example, persons and animals. In the case of entities of a kind K belonging to this category, we are in principle always entitled to expect there to be determinate answers to such questions as ‘Is x the same K…Read more
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76Review of John Hawthorne, Metaphysical Essays (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (1). 2007.
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72In defense of moderate-sized specimens of dry goods (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (3). 2003.
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103Another dubious counter-example to conditional transitivityAnalysis 70 (2): 286-289. 2010.(No abstract is available for this citation)
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41Subjective, intersubjective, objective by Donald Davidson oxford university press, 2001, pp. XVIII + 237. ISBN 0-19-823752- (review)Philosophy 78 (4): 553-564. 2003.
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Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Physical Science |