•  2012
    Immanence and Causation in Spinoza
    In Andre Santos Campos (ed.), Spinoza: Basic Concepts, Imprint Academic. pp. 14-24. 2015.
    I defend an expanded reading of immanent causation that includes both inherence and causal efficacy; I argue that the latter is required if God is to remain the immanent cause of finite modes.
  •  83
    The Framework of Essences in Spinoza's Ethics
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16 (3). 2008.
    (2008). The Framework of Essences in Spinoza's Ethics. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 489-509. doi: 10.1080/09608780802200489
  •  25
    The Problem of Universals in Early Modern Philosophy ed. by Stefano Di Bella and Tad M. Schmaltz
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 56 (4): 754-755. 2018.
    Di Bella and Schmaltz write in their introduction that the early modern problem of universals originates largely in a turn away from ancient and late-medieval problems. The modern problem, they suggest, investigates universals by asking what it means to include them as contents of our thoughts. The collection of essays that follows demonstrates persuasively, however, that we should resist the impulse, no matter how heuristic, to regard each era as having its own—much less a single—problem of uni…Read more
  •  20
    Matching Well-Being to Merit: The Example of Punishment
    with Jeremy Watkins, Basil Smith, Renate Pilapil, and Hanno Sauer
    Ethical Perspectives 18 (1): 5-27. 2011.
    In this paper, I explore our common-sense thinking about the relation between moral value, moral merit, and well-being. Starting from Ross’s observation that welfarist axiologies ignore our intuitions about desert, I focus on axiologies that take moral merit and well-being to be independent determinants of value. I distinguish three ways in which these axiologies can be formulated, and I then consider their application to the issue of punishment. The objection that they recommend penalties in ci…Read more
  •  19
    Spinoza’s Metaphysics: Substance and Thought by Yitzhak Y. Melamed (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 52 (2): 377-378. 2014.
    I review Spinoza's Metaphysics: Substance and Thought by Yitzhak Melamed
  •  7
    Aristotle, Spinoza, and Burnside on Infinite Space
    Southwest Philosophy Review 39 (2): 23-26. 2023.
    Aristotle argues that the world is populated by real and distinct physical substances; Spinoza that there must and can only be one physical substance. Aristotle’s view carries considerably intuitive appeal, but Spinoza’s logic can, under the right interpretation, seem awfully convincing. Andrew Burnside (2023) helps us to explore what occurs when Aristotle’s unstoppable intuitive appeal meets Spinoza’s impeccable logic. Burnside’s project, as I understand it, has two aims: to show that Spinoza’s…Read more
  •  7
    Spinoza's Argument for Substance Monism: Why There Is Only One Thing interprets and defends Spinoza's God/Nature argument using speculative metaphysics as a method and illustrates the practice and potential of metaphysics at work. These features work together to strengthen Spinoza's argument that only one substantial being exists.
  •  4