•  1182
    Two Conceptions of Similarity
    Philosophical Quarterly 68 (270): 21-37. 2018.
    There are at least two traditional conceptions of numerical degree of similarity. According to the first, the degree of dissimilarity between two particulars is their distance apart in a metric space. According to the second, the degree of similarity between two particulars is a function of the number of (sparse) properties they have in common and not in common. This paper argues that these two conceptions are logically independent, but philosophically inconsonant.
  •  1019
    A Note on the Definition of Physicalism
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 4 (1): 10-18. 2015.
    Physicalism is incompatible with what is known as the possibility of zombies, that is, the possibility of a world physically like ours, but in which there are no conscious experiences. But it is compatible with what is known as the possibility of ghosts, that is, the possibility of a world which is physically like ours, but in which there are additional nonphysical entities. In this paper we argue that a revision to the traditional definition of physicalism designed to accommodate the possibilit…Read more
  •  989
    This is an introduction to the Isabelle proof assistant aimed at philosophers and their students.
  •  862
    Depiction and convention
    Dialectica 62 (3): 335-348. 2008.
    By defining both depictive and linguistic representation as kinds of symbol system, Nelson Goodman attempts to undermine the platitude that, whereas linguistic representation is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance. I argue that Goodman is right to draw a strong analogy between the two kinds of representation, but wrong to draw the counterintuitive conclusion that depiction is not mediated by resemblance.
  •  841
    Fact, Fiction, and Fantasy
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 39 (1): 46-57. 2015.
    This paper argues: (1) All knowledge from fiction is from imagination (2) All knowledge from imagination is modal knowledge (3) So, all knowledge from fiction is modal knowledge Moreover, some knowledge is from fiction, so (1)-(3) are non-vacuously true.
  •  734
    Distance and Dissimilarity
    Philosophical Papers 48 (2): 211-239. 2018.
    This paper considers whether an analogy between distance and dissimilarlity supports the thesis that degree of dissimilarity is distance in a metric space. A straightforward way to justify the thesis would be to define degree of dissimilarity as a function of number of properties in common and not in common. But, infamously, this approach has problems with infinity. An alternative approach would be to prove representation and uniqueness theorems, according to which if comparative dissimilarity m…Read more
  •  723
    Mental Maps1
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 85 (2): 413-434. 2011.
    It's often hypothesized that the structure of mental representation is map-like rather than language-like. The possibility arises as a counterexample to the argument from the best explanation of productivity and systematicity to the language of thought hypothesis—the hypothesis that mental structure is compositional and recursive. In this paper, I argue that the analogy with maps does not undermine the argument, because maps and language have the same kind of compositional and recursive structur…Read more
  •  709
    Relevance and Verification
    Philosophical Quarterly 71 (3): 457-480. 2021.
    A. J. Ayer’s empiricist criterion of meaning was supposed to have sorted all statements into nonsense on the one hand, and tautologies or genuinely factual statements on the other. Unfortunately for Ayer, it follows from classical logic that his criterion is trivial—it classifies all statements as either tautologies or genuinely factual, but none as nonsense. However, in this paper, I argue that Ayer’s criterion of meaning can be defended from classical proofs of its triviality by the adoption o…Read more
  •  685
    Story Size
    Philosophical Papers 44 (2): 121-137. 2015.
    The shortest stories are zero words long. There is no maximum length.
  •  629
    Defining depiction
    British Journal of Aesthetics 49 (2): 143-157. 2009.
    It is a platitude that whereas language is mediated by convention, depiction is mediated by resemblance. But this platitude may be attacked on the grounds that resemblance is either insufficient for or incidental to depictive representation. I defend common sense from this attack by using Grice's analysis of meaning to specify the non-incidental role of resemblance in depictive representation.
  •  568
    Pictures, perspective and possibility
    Philosophical Studies 149 (2). 2010.
    This paper argues for a possible worlds theory of the content of pictures, with three complications: depictive content is centred, two-dimensional and structured. The paper argues that this theory supports a strong analogy between depictive and other kinds of representation and the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance.
  •  567
    Images, intentionality and inexistence
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (3): 522-538. 2009.
    The possibilities of depicting non-existents, depicting non-particulars and depictive misrepresentation are frequently cited as grounds for denying the platitude that depiction is mediated by resemblance. I first argue that these problems are really a manifestation of the more general problem of intentionality. I then show how there is a plausible solution to the general problem of intentionality which is consonant with the platitude.
  •  484
    Naturalness and Convex Class Nominalism
    Dialectica 73 (1-2): 65-81. 2019.
    In this paper I argue that the analysis of natural properties as convex subsets of a metric space in which the distances are degrees of dissimilarity is incompatible with both the definition of degree of dissimilarity as number of natural properties not in common and the definition of degree of dissimilarity as proportion of natural properties not in common, since in combination with either of these definitions it entails that every property is a natural property, which is absurd. I suggest it f…Read more
  •  483
    Traditionally, the structure of a language is revealed by constructing an appropriate theory of meaning for that language, which exhibits how – and whether – the meaning of sentences in the language depends upon the meaning of their parts. In this paper, I argue that whether – and how – what pictures represent depends on what their parts represent should likewise by revealed by the construction of appropriate theories of representation for the symbol system of those pictures. This generalisation…Read more
  •  459
    Anselm's God in Isabelle/HOL
    Archive of Formal Proofs 9. 2017.
    Paul Oppenheimer and Edward Zalta's formalisation of Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God is automated by embedding a free logic for definite descriptions within Isabelle/HOL.
  •  419
    Depictive Structure?
    Philosophical Papers 40 (1): 1-25. 2011.
    This paper argues against definitions of depiction in terms of the syntactic and semantic properties of symbol systems. In particular, it is argued that John Kulvicki's definition of depictive symbol systems in terms of relative repleteness, semantic richness, syntactic sensitivity and transparency is susceptible to similar counterexamples as Nelson Goodman's in terms of syntactic density, semantic density and relative repleteness. The general moral drawn is that defining depiction requires atte…Read more
  •  415
    Philosophical Perspectives on Depiction (review)
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 90 (1). 2012.
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Volume 90, Issue 1, Page 187-189, March 2012
  •  387
    Maps and Meaning
    Journal of Philosophical Research 35 123-128. 2010.
    It's possible to understand an infinite number of novel maps. I argue that Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi's compositional semantics of maps cannot explain this possibility, because it requires an infinite number of semantic primitives. So the semantics of maps is puzzlingly different from the semantics of language.
  •  386
    Just as it’s possible to understand novel sentences without having heard them before, it’s possible to understand novel pictures without having seen them before. But these possibilities are often supposed to have totally different explanations: whereas the ability to understand novel sentences is supposed to be explained by tacit knowledge of a compositional theory of meaning for their language, the ability to understand novel pictures is supposed to be explained differently. In this paper I arg…Read more
  •  376
    A Never-Ending Story
    Croatian Journal of Philosophy 14 (1): 111-120. 2014.
    Take a strip of paper with 'once upon a time there'‚ written on one side and 'was a story that began'‚ on the other. Twisting the paper and joining the ends produces John Barth’s story Frame-Tale, which prefixes 'once upon a time there was a story that began'‚ to itself. I argue that the ability to understand this sentence cannot be explained by tacit knowledge of a recursive theory of truth in English.
  •  372
    It’s a platitude that a picture is realistic to the degree to which it resembles what it represents (in relevant respects). But if properties are abundant and degrees of resemblance are proportions of properties in common, then the degree of resemblance between different particulars is constant (or undefined), which is inconsonant with the platitude. This paper argues this problem should be resolved by revising the analysis of degrees of resemblance in terms of proportion of properties in common…Read more
  •  352
    Extension and Self-Connection
    with Manikaran Singh
    Logic and Logical Philosophy 30 (3): 435-59. 2021.
    If two self-connected individuals are connected, it follows in classical extensional mereotopology that the sum of those individuals is self-connected too. Since mainland Europe and mainland Asia, for example, are both self-connected and connected to each other, mainland Eurasia is also self-connected. In contrast, in non-extensional mereotopologies, two individuals may have more than one sum, in which case it does not follow from their being self-connected and connected that the sum of those in…Read more
  •  342
    Not every metaphor can be literally paraphrased by a corresponding simile – the metaphorical meaning of ‘Juliet is the sun’, for example, is not the literal meaning of ‘Juliet is like the sun’. But every metaphor can be literally paraphrased, since if ‘metaphorically’ is prefixed to a metaphor, the result says literally what the metaphor says figuratively – the metaphorical meaning of ‘Juliet is the sun’, for example, is the literal meaning of ‘metaphorically, Juliet is the sun’.
  •  301
    Does everything resemble everything else to the same degree?
    Asian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1): 1-21. 2022.
    According to Satosi Watanabe's "theorem of the ugly duckling", the number of predicates satisfied by any two different particulars is a constant, which does not depend on the choice of the two particulars. If the number of predicates satisfied by two particulars is their number of properties in common, and the degree of resemblance between two particulars is a function of their number of properties in common, then it follows that the degree of resemblance between any two different particulars is…Read more
  •  261
    Whitehead’s principle
    with Manikaran Singh
    Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 9 (2): 115-27. 2020.
    According to Whitehead’s rectified principle, two individuals are connected just in case there is something self-connected which overlaps both of them, and every part of which overlaps one of them. Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi have offered a counterexample to the principle, consisting of an individual which has no self-connected parts. But since atoms are self-connected, Casati and Varzi’s counterexample presupposes the possibility of gunk or, in other words, things which have no atoms as pa…Read more
  •  236
    A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction (review)
    British Journal of Aesthetics 56 (4): 427-429. 2016.
    Review of A Syncretistic Theory of Depiction by Alberto Voltolini
  •  213
    Mereology
    Archive of Formal Proofs. 2021.
    The interactive theorem prover Isabelle/HOL is used to verify elementary theorems of classical extensional mereology.
  •  174
    Dialetheism and distributed sorites
    Synthese 202 (4): 1-18. 2023.
    Noniterative approaches to the sorites paradox accept single steps of soritical reasoning, but deny that these can be combined into valid chains of soritical reasoning. The distributed sorites is a puzzle designed to undermine noniterative approaches to the sorites paradox, by deriving an inconsistent conclusion using only single steps, but not chains, of soritical reasoning. This paper shows how a dialetheist version of the noniterative approach, the strict-tolerant approach, also solves the di…Read more
  •  170
    Dialetheism and the Problem of Evil
    In Soraj Hongladarom, Jeremiah Joven Joaquin & Frank Hoffman (eds.), Philosophies of Appropriated Religions: Perspectives from Southeast Asia, Springer Nature Singapore. pp. 69-79. 2023.
    According to dialetheism, some contradictions are true. In a recent paper, Aaron Cotnoir has suggested that theists who are also dialetheists can resolve the paradox of the stone by accepting a contradiction, and arguing that God both can and can't make the stone. However, Zach Weber has replied that dialetheism is no help for avoiding one of the most serious problems for theism, namely the problem of evil. In this paper, I argue the situation is even worse than this for dialetheist theists, sin…Read more
  •  148
    Dialetheism and Modus Tollens
    The Reasoner 15 (4): 30. 2021.
    Suppose that some contradictions are true – for example, that as I walk through the door, I’m inside and I’m not inside. Then we argue 'if I'm walking through the door, I'm inside; I'm not inside; therefore, I'm not walking through the door' is an invalid instance of modus tollens.