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23Objects and criteria of identityIn Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley-blackwell. 1997.'Object' and 'criterion of identity' are philosophical terms of art whose application lies at a considerable theoretical remove from the surface phenomena of everyday linguistic usage. This partly explains their highly controversial status, for their point of application lies precisely where the concerns of linguists and philosophers of language merge with those of metaphysicians. This chapter explains the possession of determinate identity‐conditions. It argues that the distinction between 'abs…Read more
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1Experience and its objectsIn Paul F. Snowdon (ed.), The Contents of Experience, Cambridge University Press. 1992.
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65Real metaphysics, edited by Hallvard Lillehammer and Gonzalo Rodriguez-pereyraEuropean Journal of Philosophy 16 (1). 2008.
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Identity, vagueness, and modalityIn José Luis Bermúdez (ed.), Thought, reference, and experience: themes from the philosophy of Gareth Evans, Clarendon Press. 2005.
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2Non-Cartesian DualismIn John Heil (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: A Guide and Anthology, Oxford University Press. 2003.
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57Complex Reality: Unity, Simplicity, and Complexity in a Substance OntologyIn Christer Svennerlind, Almäng Jan & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Johanssonian Investigations: Essays in Honour of Ingvar Johansson on His Seventieth Birthday, Ontos Verlag. pp. 5--338. 2013.
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117There are no easy problems of consciousnessJournal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3): 266-71. 1995.This paper challenges David Chalmers' proposed division of the problems of consciousness into the `easy' ones and the `hard' one, the former allegedly being susceptible to explanation in terms of computational or neural mechanisms and the latter supposedly turning on the fact that experiential `qualia' resist any sort of functional definition. Such a division, it is argued, rests upon a misrepresention of the nature of human cognition and experience and their intimate interrelationship, thereby …Read more
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15Review. Notes on philosophy, probability and mathematics. FP Ramsey (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (2): 300-301. 1997.
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16Is Conceptualist Realism a Stable Position?Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (2): 456-461. 2007.
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2Agent CausationIn Donald M. Borchert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Macmillan Reference. 2005.
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36Review of Maria Elisabeth Reicher (ed.), States of Affairs (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (10). 2009.
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1710Causal closure principles and emergentismPhilosophy 75 (294): 571-586. 2000.Causal closure arguments against interactionist dualism are currently popular amongst physicalists. Such an argument appeals to some principles of the causal closure of the physical, together with certain other premises, to conclude that at least some mental events are identical with physical events. However, it is crucial to the success of any such argument that the physical causal closure principle to which it appeals is neither too strong nor too weak by certain standards. In this paper, it i…Read more
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43Self, Reference and Self-ReferencePhilosophy 68 (263): 15-33. 1993.I favour an analysis of selfhood which ties it to the possession of certain kinds of first-person knowledge, in particular de re knowledge of the identity of one's own conscious thoughts and experiences. My defence of this analysis will lead me to explore the nature of demonstrative reference to one's own conscious thoughts and experiences. Such reference is typically ‘direct’, in contrast to demonstrative reference to all physical objects, apart from those that are parts of one's own body in wh…Read more
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3A. J. Ayer: Memorial Essays Edited by A. Phillips Griffiths Cambridge University Press, 1991, v + 239 pp., £12.95 (review)Philosophy 68 (263): 107-108. 1993.
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252Locke on Real Essence and Water as a Natural Kind: A Qualified DefenceAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1): 1-19. 2011.‘Water is H2O’ is one of the most frequently cited sentences in analytic philosophy, thanks to the seminal work of Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam in the 1970s on the semantics of natural kind terms. Both of these philosophers owe an intellectual debt to the empiricist metaphysics of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, while disagreeing profoundly with Locke about the reality of natural kinds. Locke employs an intriguing example involving water to support his view that kinds (or ‘sp…Read more
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282The definition of enduranceAnalysis 69 (2): 277-280. 2009.David Lewis, following in the tradition of Broad, Quine and Goodman, says that change in an object X consists in X's being temporally extended and having qualitatively different temporal parts. Analogously, change in a spatially extended object such as a road consists in its having different spatial parts . The alternative to this view is that ordinary objects undergo temporal change in virtue of having different intrinsic non-relational properties at different times. They endure, remaining the …Read more
Areas of Specialization
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Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Action |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Physical Science |