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27A Conversation on GroundingThe Monist 106 (3): 317-325. 2023.Concerning a conversation about grounding between Philo, a quizzical maverick, and Cleanthes, a studious devotee of the very latest trends in metaphysics. Whereas Cleanthes enthuses about grounding, Philo counsels methodological caution and greater immersion in actual scientific practice.
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76Explanation Good, Grounding BadThe Monist 106 (3): 270-286. 2023.Grounding is not required for explanation in metaphysics, and, more generally, in philosophy. An account independent of grounding is available. Grounding claims do not provide the explanations that they are alleged to. The case for displacing supervenience in favour of grounding is mistaken. Grounding is a zombie idea: it staggers on in philosophical culture despite being thoroughly discredited.
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114Wandering Significance: An Essay on Conceptual BehaviourPhilosophical Quarterly 57 (228): 498-501. 2007.
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19Review of MacBride (2018)Dialectica 74 (3). 2020.Fraser MacBride, On the Genealogy of Universals: The Metaphysical Origins of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
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40Review of *The Metaphysics within Physics* by Tim Maudlin (review)Analysis 69 (2): 374-375. 2009.
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119T‐PhilosophyMetaphilosophy 53 (2-3): 185-198. 2022.Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 2-3, Page 185-198, April 2022.
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42Why Reduction is UnderratedHistory of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 22 (1): 121-136. 2019.The key idea behind reduction is a simple and familiar one: it’s that there’s more to things than meets the eye. Surprisingly, this simple idea provides the resources to block a number of notable anti-reductionist arguments: Mackie’s argument from queerness against objective moral values, Kripke’s Humphrey objection and its recent variants, and Jubien’s objection from irrelevance against Lewisian modal realism. What is wrong with each of these arguments is that they suppose that what is to be re…Read more
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59What Kind of Creatures Are We?, by Noam Chomsky: New York: Columbia University Press, 2016, pp. xxiv + 167, £13.95Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (2): 413-414. 2017.
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31Agnosticism and the Balance of EvidenceIn Mirosław Szatkowski (ed.), Ontology of Theistic Beliefs: Meta-Ontological Perspectives, De Gruyter. pp. 1-18. 2018.
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32Why Only Us? Language and EvolutionAnalysis 78 (2): 381-383. 2018.Why Only Us? Language and Evolution By BerwickRobert C. and ChomskyNoamMassachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. 224 pp. £17.95 paper.
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47Why Only Us? Language and Evolution By Robert C. Berwick and Noam ChomskyAnalysis. forthcoming.© The Author 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected] article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model...This is a clear and extremely stimulating book in which the authors present a series of innovative, even unorthodox, views on the relation between language and biology. It treats the study of language, a…Read more
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44TropesProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 94 (1): 253-262. 1994.Chris Daly; Tropes, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 1994, Pages 253–262, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/94.1.253.
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27Truth and being: E.J. Lowe and A. Rami : Truth and truth-making. Acumen Publishing Limited, Stocksfield, 2009, x + 262 pp, £18.00 PBMetascience 19 (3): 417-420. 2010.
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16D.M. Armstrong, A World of States of Affairs (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (4): 640. 1998.
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74Modality and acquaintance with propertiesThe Monist 81 (1): 44--68. 1998.What is required for you to know what a certain property is? And what is required for you to have the concept of that property? Hume held that a person who has never tasted a pineapple cannot know what the property tasting like a pineapple is. He also thought that this person cannot have the corresponding concept. A subsequent tradition in empiricism generalises these claims at least to all the so-called "secondary qualities." I will argue that this tradition is mistaken. I will argue that there…Read more
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259Fictionalism and the attitudesPhilosophical Studies 139 (3). 2008.This paper distinguishes revolutionary fictionalism from other forms of fictionalism and also from other philosophical views. The paper takes fictionalism about mathematical objects and fictionalism about scientific unobservables as illustrations. The paper evaluates arguments that purport to show that this form of fictionalism is incoherent on the grounds that there is no tenable distinction between believing a sentence and taking the fictionalist's distinctive attitude to that sentence. The ar…Read more
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185What are physical properties?Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 79 (3): 196-217. 1998.This paper concerns an issue in the metaphysics of properties. The issue is: what are physical properties? What distinguishes physical properties from all other properties? My conclusions will be ‘downbeat’. I will argue that some major recent approaches to this issue prove unsatisfactory, and that the issue is much more intractable than has widely been supposed. The moral I draw is that there is no principled and well‐defined distinction between physical properties and all other properties, and…Read more
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26Modality and Acquaintance with PropertiesThe Monist 81 (1): 44-68. 1998.What is required for you to know what a certain property is? And what is required for you to have the concept of that property? Hume held that a person who has never tasted a pineapple cannot know what the property tasting like a pineapple is. He also thought that this person cannot have the corresponding concept. A subsequent tradition in empiricism generalises these claims at least to all the so-called "secondary qualities." I will argue that this tradition is mistaken. I will argue that there…Read more
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77An Introduction to Philosophical MethodsBroadview Press. 2010.An Introduction to Philosophical Methods is the first book to survey the various methods that philosophers use to support their views. Rigorous yet accessible, the book introduces and illustrates the methodological considerations that are involved in current philosophical debates. Where there is controversy, the book presents the case for each side, but highlights where the key difficulties with them lie. While eminently student-friendly, the book makes an important contribution to the debate re…Read more
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165The metaphysics within physics • by Tim MaudlinAnalysis 69 (2): 374-375. 2009.The basic idea of Maudlin's superb book is methodological: ‘metaphysics, insofar as it is concerned with the natural world, can do no better than to reflect on physics. Physical theories provide us with the best handle we have on what there is, and the philosopher's proper task is the interpretation and elucidation of those theories. In particular, when choosing the fundamental posits of one's ontology, one must look to scientific practice rather than to philosophical prejudice’ .The apparently …Read more
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78Defending promiscuous realism about natural kindsPhilosophical Quarterly 46 (185): 496-500. 1996.
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131Two Anti-Platonist StrategiesMind 119 (476): 1107-1116. 2010.This paper considers two strategies for undermining indispensability arguments for mathematical Platonism. We defend one strategy (the Trivial Strategy) against a criticism by Joseph Melia. In particular, we argue that the key example Melia uses against the Trivial Strategy fails. We then criticize Melia’s chosen strategy (the Weaseling Strategy.) The Weaseling Strategy attempts to show that it is not always inconsistent or irrational knowingly to assert p and deny an implication of p . We argue…Read more
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mathematics |