•  20
    A Temporal Comparison Argument for Presentism
    Philosophical Perspectives 36 (1): 182-215. 2022.
    Philosophical Perspectives, EarlyView.
  •  200
    Humean laws and explanation
    Philosophical Studies 172 (12): 3145-3165. 2015.
    A common objection to Humeanism about natural laws is that, given Humeanism, laws cannot help explain their instances, since, given the best Humean account of laws, facts about laws are explained by facts about their instances rather than vice versa. After rejecting a recent influential reply to this objection that appeals to the distinction between scientific and metaphysical explanation, I will argue that the objection fails by failing to distinguish between two types of facts, only one of whi…Read more
  •  227
    Intrinsicality and Grounding
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (1): 1-19. 2015.
    A number of philosophers have recently claimed that intrinsicality can be analysed in terms of the metaphysical notion of grounding. Since grounding is a hyperintensional notion, accounts of intrinsicality in terms of grounding, unlike most other accounts, promise to be able to discriminate between necessarily coextensive properties that differ in whether they are intrinsic. They therefore promise to be compatible with popular metaphysical theories that posit necessary entities and necessary con…Read more
  •  17
    Causation and fact granularity
    Synthese 199 (3-4): 8029-8045. 2021.
    According to the modal theory of facts and states of affairs, two facts or states of affairs are identical iff they are necessarily equivalent. One important argument against the modal theory is the causal argument of John Perry, which can also be applied with equal strength to a number of more moderate-grain theories of facts and states of affairs. I argue that, at least in its original form, the causal argument is unsound. I also argue that, while the argument can be modified so that it avoids…Read more
  •  47
    Intrinsicality and the classification of uninstantiable properties
    Philosophical Studies 178 (3): 731-753. 2020.
    It is often held that identity properties like the property of being identical to Paris are intrinsic. It is also often held that, while some logically uninstantiable properties are intrinsic, some logically uninstantiable properties are non-intrinsic. The combination of these views, however, raises a problem, since virtually every existing account of intrinsicality fails to analyse a notion of intrinsicality on which both these views are true. In this paper, I argue that, given the orthodox the…Read more
  •  15
    Intrinsicality and Grounding†
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (1): 1-19. 2013.
    A number of philosophers have recently claimed that intrinsicality can be analysed in terms of the metaphysical notion of grounding. Since grounding is a hyperintensional notion, accounts of intrinsicality in terms of grounding, unlike most other accounts, promise to be able to discriminate between necessarily coextensive properties that differ in whether they are intrinsic. They therefore promise to be compatible with popular metaphysical theories that posit necessary entities and necessary con…Read more
  •  157
    Marshall and Parsons on ‘Intrinsic’
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2): 353-355. 2001.
    Dan Marshall and Josh Parsons note, correctly. that the property of being either a cube or accompanied by a cube is incorrectly classified as intrinsic under the definition we have given unless it turns out to be disjunctive. Whether it is disjunctive, under the definition we gave, turns on certain judgements of the relative naturalness of properties. They doubt the judgements of relative naturalness that would classify their property as disjunctive. We disagree. They also suggest that the whole…Read more
  •  200
    Can 'intrinsic' be defined using only broadly logical notions?
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 78 (3): 646-672. 2009.
    An intrinsic property is roughly a property things have in virtue of how they are, as opposed to how they are related to things outside of them. This paper argues that it is not possible to give a definition of 'intrinsic' that involves only logical, modal and mereological notions, and does not depend on any special assumptions about either properties or possible worlds.
  •  202
    An Analysis of Intrinsicality
    Noûs 50 (4): 704-739. 2016.
    The leading account of intrinsicality over the last thirty years has arguably been David Lewis's account in terms of perfect naturalness. Lewis's account, however, has three serious problems: i) it cannot allow necessarily coextensive properties to differ in whether they are intrinsic; ii) it falsely classifies non-qualitative properties like being Obama as non-intrinsic; and iii) it is incompatible with a number of metaphysical theories that posit irreducibly non-categorical properties. I argue…Read more
  •  240
    Intrinsic vs. extrinsic properties
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2013.
    We have some of our properties purely in virtue of the way we are. (Our mass is an example.) We have other properties in virtue of the way we interact with the world. (Our weight is an example.) The former are the intrinsic properties, the latter are the extrinsic properties. This seems to be an intuitive enough distinction to grasp, and hence the intuitive distinction has made its way into many discussions in philosophy, including discussions in ethics, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemo…Read more
  •  1049
    Analyses of Intrinsicality in Terms of Naturalness
    Philosophy Compass 7 (8): 531-542. 2012.
    Over the last thirty years there have been a number of attempts to analyse the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties in terms of the facts about naturalness. This article discusses the three most influential of these attempts, each of which involve David Lewis. These are Lewis's 1983 analysis, his 1986 analysis, and his joint 1998 analysis with Rae Langton.
  •  124
    Analyses of Intrinsicality without Naturalness
    Philosophy Compass 8 (2): 186-197. 2013.
    Over the last thirty years there have been a number of attempts to analyse the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic properties. This article discusses three leading attempts to analyse this distinction that don’t appeal to the notion of nat-uralness: the duplication analysis endorsed by G. E. Moore and David Lewis, Peter Vallentyne’s analysis in terms of contractions of possible worlds, and the analysis of Gene Witmer, William Butchard and Kelly Trogdon in terms of grounding.
  •  121
    The Varieties of Intrinsicality
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 92 (2): 237-263. 2014.
    Intrinsicality is a central notion in metaphysics that can do important work in many areas of philosophy. It is not widely appreciated, however, that there are in fact a number of different notions of intrinsicality, and that these different notions differ in what work they can do. This paper discusses what these notions are, describes how they are related to each other, and argues that each of them can be analysed in terms of a single notion of intrinsic aboutness that relates states of affairs…Read more
  •  75
    Modal realists face a puzzle. For modal realism to be justified, modal realists need to be able to give a successful reduction of modality. A simple argument, however, appears to show that the reduction they propose fails. In order to defend the claim that modal realism is justified, modal realists therefore need to either show that this argument fails, or show that modal realists can give another reduction of modality that is successful. I argue that modal realists cannot do either of these thi…Read more
  •  121
    A Puzzle for Modal Realism
    Philosophers' Imprint 16. 2016.
    Modal realists face a puzzle. For modal realism to be justified, modal realists need to be able to give a successful reduction of modality. A simple argument, however, appears to show that the reduction they propose fails. In order to defend the claim that modal realism is justified, modal realists therefore need to either show that this argument fails, or show that modal realists can give another reduction of modality that is successful. I argue that modal realists cannot do either of these thi…Read more
  •  72
    Yablo’s Account of Intrinsicality
    In Robert M. Francescotti (ed.), Companion to Intrinsic Properties, De Gruyter. pp. 199-220. 2014.
    An intrinsic property is roughly a property something has in virtue of how it is, as opposed to how it is related to other things. More carefully, the property of being F is intrinsic iff, necessarily, for any x that is F , x is F in virtue of how it is, as opposed to how it is related to wholly distinct things, or how wholly distinct things are. An extrinsic property, on the other hand, is any property that is not intrinsic. An example of an extrinsic property is the property of being an uncle.…Read more