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325Ambiguity, Alienation, and AuthenticityAPA Newsletter on Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies. 2020.
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669What’s Positive and Negative about Generics: A Constrained Indexical ApproachPhilosophical Studies 179 (5): 1739-1761. 2022.Nguyen argues that only his radically pragmatic account and Sterken’s indexical account can capture what we call the positive data. We present some new data, which we call the negative data, and argue that no theory of generics on the market is compatible with both the positive data and the negative data. We develop a novel version of the indexical account and show that it captures both the positive data and the negative data. In particular, we argue that there is a semantic constraint that, in …Read more
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514Can Hume Deny Reid's Dilemma?Hume Studies 43 (2): 57-78. 2017.Reid’s dilemma concludes that, whether the idea associated with a denied proposition is lively or faint, Hume is committed to saying that it is either believed or merely conceived. In neither case would there be denial. If so, then Hume cannot give an adequate account of denial. I consider and reject Powell’s suggestion that Hume could have advanced a “Content Contrary” account of denial that avoids Reid’s dilemma. However, not only would a Humean Content Contrary account be viciously circular, …Read more
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1318The Radical Account of Bare Plural GenericsPhilosophical Studies 177 (5): 1303-1331. 2020.Bare plural generic sentences pervade ordinary talk. And yet it is extremely controversial what semantics to assign to such sentences. In this paper, I achieve two tasks. First, I develop a novel classification of the various standard uses to which bare plurals may be put. This “variety data” is important—it gives rise to much of the difficulty in systematically theorizing about bare plurals. Second, I develop a novel account of bare plurals, the radical account. On this account, all bare plural…Read more
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579A Functional NaturalismSynthese 198 (1): 295-313. 2021.I provide two arguments against value-free naturalism. Both are based on considerations concerning biological teleology. Value-free naturalism is the thesis that both (1) everything is, at least in principle, under the purview of the sciences and (2) all scientific facts are purely non-evaluative. First, I advance a counterexample to any analysis on which natural selection is necessary to biological teleology. This should concern the value-free naturalist, since most value-free analyses of biolo…Read more
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882Unable to Do the ImpossibleMind 129 (514): 585-602. 2020.Jack Spencer has recently argued for the striking thesis that, possibly, an agent is able to do the impossible—that is, perform an action that is metaphysically impossible for that person to perform. Spencer bases his argument on (Simple G), a case in which it is impossible for an agent G to perform some action but, according to Spencer, G is still intuitively able to perform that action. I reply that we would have to give up at least four action-theoretical principles if we accept that G is abl…Read more
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Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Language |
Metaphysics |