•  187
    Prospects for a Quietist Moral Realism
    In Paul Bloomfield & David Copp (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Moral Realism, Oxford University Press. pp. 526-53. 2023.
    Quietist Moral Realists accept that there are moral facts and properties, while aiming to avoid many of the explanatory burdens thought to fall on traditional moral realists. This chapter examines the forms that Quietist Moral Realism has taken and the challenges it has faced, in order to better assess its prospects. The best hope, this chapter argues, lies in a pragmatist approach that distinguishes the different functions of diverse areas of discourse. This paves the way for a form of Quietism…Read more
  •  1
    The Reference ofFictional Names
    Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 1 (6): 3-12. 1993.
  •  27
    The Reference ofFictional Names
    Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 6 (1): 3-12. 1993.
  •  2
    Modal Knowledge and Modal Methodology
    In Duško Prelević & Anand Vaidya (eds.), Epistemology of Modality and Philosophical Methodology, Routledge. 2023.
    The problem of how we could come to know modal facts has been notorious for centuries. In this paper, Theodore Locke and Amie Thomasson defend a ‘modal normativist’ approach to understanding claims about metaphysical necessity and possibility—a view that claims to be able to demystify metaphysical modal knowledge, by showing how modal knowledge may be acquired through conceptual mastery, reasoning abilities, and empirical knowledge. Antonella Mallozzi (this volume) argues that normativists canno…Read more
  • Speaking of fictional characters
    In Darragh Byrne & Max Kölbel (eds.), Arguing about language, Routledge. 2010.
  • Fictional discourse and fictionalisms
    In Stuart Brock & Anthony Everett (eds.), Fictional Objects, Oxford University Press. 2015.
  • Changing Metaphysics: What Difference does it Make?
    In Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press. 2018.
  • Norms and modality
    In Otávio Bueno & Scott A. Shalkowski (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Modality, Routledge. 2018.
  •  236
    Ontology Made Easy
    Oup Usa. 2014.
    Existence questions have been topics for heated debates in metaphysics, but this book argues that they can often be answered easily, by trivial inferences from uncontroversial premises. This 'easy' approach to ontology leads to realism about disputed entities, and to the view that metaphysical disputes about existence questions are misguided.
  •  47
    Norms and Necessity
    Oup Usa. 2020.
    Philosophical theories often hinge on claims about what is necessary or possible. But what are possibilities and necessities, and how could we come to know about them? This book aims to help demystify the methodology of philosophy, by treating such claims not as attempted descriptions of strange facts or distant 'possible worlds', but rather as ways of expressing rules or norms.
  •  59
    Real Natures and Familiar Objects (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (2): 518-523. 2007.
    Crawford Elder’s Real Natures and Familiar Objects promises to give naturalistically inclined metaphysicians reason to accept an ontology that includes many common sense objects, including persons, organisms, and at least many artifacts, behaviors, customs, and so on. This is a brave book, running against the current of trends towards austerity in ontology, tackling centuries old problems about how modal facts may be empirically discovered, and defending a commonsense ontology from a strictly na…Read more
  •  54
  •  1
    Artifacts in Metaphysics
    In Anthonie Meijers (ed.), Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences, Elsevier/north Holland. pp. 191-212. 2009.
  •  78
    Précis_ of _Ontology Made Easy
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (1): 223-228. 2019.
  •  106
    Replies to Comments on Ontology Made Easy
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (1): 251-264. 2019.
    I'd like to begin by thanking Katherine Hawley, Daniel Korman and Stephen Schiffer for their extremely interesting and insightful comments, which very much enrich the discussion. I am both honored and grateful that such fine philosophers would spend their time and careful attention on my work. Since there doesn't seem to be significant overlap across their concerns, I will simply respond to each in turn.
  •  62
    What Can we Take Away from Easy Arguments?
    Australasian Philosophical Review 1 (2): 153-162. 2017.
    ABSTRACTA ‘sceptical’ approach to easy arguments involves reducing our confidence in the supposedly uncontroversial premise with which the arguments begin. Here I address the question: if we accept Yablo's new version of a sceptical proposal, what difference might that make for the relevant meta-ontological debates? I argue that serious difficulties remain for even this ‘best’ version of a sceptical approach. Noting these difficulties might motivate us to look again at the alternative strategy—o…Read more
  •  106
    Changing Metaphysics: What Difference does it Make?
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 82 139-163. 2018.
    I have argued elsewhere for a deflationary conception of metaphysics, which takes well-formed metaphysical questions to be answerable using nothing more mysterious than empirical information and descriptive and normative conceptual work. Here I examine the ways in which our practices of metaphysics should change, if we adopt the deflationary reconception of metaphysics. Adopting this approach does not mean abandoning metaphysics, but it does lead to important differences regarding which debates …Read more
  •  230
    How can we come to know metaphysical modal truths?
    Synthese 198 (Suppl 8): 2077-2106. 2018.
    Those who aim to give an account of modal knowledge face two challenges: the integration challenge of reconciling an account of what is involved in knowing modal truths with a plausible story about how we can come to know them, and the reliability challenge of giving a plausible account of how we could have evolved a reliable capacity to acquire modal knowledge. I argue that recent counterfactual and dispositional accounts of modal knowledge cannot solve these problems regarding specifically met…Read more
  •  99
    Husserl on Essences
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 94 (3): 436-459. 2017.
    The common thought that Husserl was committed to a Platonist ontology of essences, and to a mysterious epistemology that holds that we can ‘intuit’ these essences, has contributed substantially to his work being dismissed and marginalized in analytic philosophy. This paper aims to show that it is misguided to dismiss Husserl on these grounds. First, the author aims to explicate Husserl’s views about essences and how we can know them, in ways that make clear that he is not committed to a traditio…Read more
  •  48
    It's a Jumble Out There: How Talk of Levels Leads Us Astray
    American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (4): 285-296. 2014.
    One often hears talk about some entities being "higher-level" than others: social and cultural objects, for example, are often said to be "higher-level" entities than organisms; mental properties are often said to be "higherlevel" than physical or neurological properties; and so on. Sometimes this is expressed as the idea that reality comes in ontological levels, strata of being. I will argue, however, that metaphysics is better off without making use of the idea of "levels." The levels metaphor…Read more
  •  193
    Metaphysics and Conceptual Negotiation
    Philosophical Issues 27 (1): 364-382. 2017.
  •  221
    Metaphysical Disputes and Metalinguistic Negotiation
    Analytic Philosophy 58 (1): 1-28. 2016.
  •  37
    Speaking of Fictional Characters
    Dialectica 57 (2): 205-223. 2003.
    The challenge of handling fictional discourse is to find the best way to resolve the apparent inconsistencies in our ways of speaking about fiction. A promising approach is to take at least some such discourse to involve pretense, but does all fictional discourse involve pretense? I will argue that a better, less revisionary, solution is to take internal and fictionalizing discourse to involve pretense, while allowing that in external critical discourse, fictional names are used seriously to ref…Read more
  • The Ontology of Fiction: A Study of Dependent Objects
    Dissertation, University of California, Irvine. 1995.
    In the dissertation I defend the view that there are fictional characters and develop the Artifactual Theory of fiction, according to which fictional characters are non-concrete entities dependent on authors, texts and readers. I argue that our best theory of intentionality asserts that all intentional acts have objects, even if these objects are fictional, for otherwise one cannot adequately analyze our apparent experiences of fictional characters. ;Since I treat fictional characters as depende…Read more
  •  23
    A Nonreductivist Solution to Mental Causation
    Philosophical Studies 89 (2-3): 181-195. 1998.
    Nonreductive physicalism provides an appealing solution to the nature of mental properties. But its success as a theory of mental properties has been called into doubt by claims that it cannot adequately handle the problems of mental causation, as it leads either to epiphenomenalism or to thoroughgoing overdetermination. I argue that these apparent problems for the nonreductivist are based in fundamental confusion about causation and explanation. I distinguish two different types of explanation …Read more
  •  207
    Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind (edited book)
    Oxford: Clarendon Press. 2005.
    Philosophical work on the mind flowed in two streams through the 20th century: phenomenology and analytic philosophy. This volume aims to bring them together again, by demonstrating how work in phenomenology may lead to significant progress on problems central to current analytic research, and how analytical philosophy of mind may shed light on phenomenological concerns. Leading figures from both traditions contribute specially written essays on such central topics as consciousness, intentionali…Read more
  •  69
    Ordinary Objects * By AMIE L.THOMASSON
    Analysis 69 (1): 173-174. 2009.
    In recent analytic metaphysics, the view that ‘ordinary inanimate objects such as sticks and stones, tables and chairs, simply do not exist’ has been defended by some noteworthy writers. Thomasson opposes such revisionary ontology in favour of an ontology that is conservative with respect to common sense. The book is written in a straightforward, methodical and down-to-earth style. It is also relatively non-specialized, enabling the author and her readers to approach problems that are often deal…Read more
  • Die Identität Fiktionaler Gegenstände
    Conceptus: Zeitschrift Fur Philosophie 27 (70): 77-95. 1994.
  •  10
    Introduction
    In David Woodruff Smith & Amie L. Thomasson (eds.), Phenomenology and Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press. 2003.
    Phenomenology and philosophy of mind can be defined either as disciplines or as historical traditions—they are both. As disciplines: phenomenology is the study of conscious experience as lived, as experienced from the first-person point of view, while philosophy of mind is the study of mind—states of belief, perception, action, etc.—focusing especially on the mind–body problem, how mental activities are related to brain activities. As traditions or literatures: phenomenology features the writings …Read more
  •  208
    Norms and Necessity
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 51 (2): 143-160. 2013.
    Modality presents notorious philosophical problems, including the epistemic problem of how we could come to know modal facts and metaphysical problems about how to place modal facts in the natural world. These problems arise from thinking of modal claims as attempts to describe modal features of this world that explain what makes them true. Here I propose a different view of modal discourse in which talk about what is “metaphysically necessary” does not aim to describe modal features of the worl…Read more