University of Notre Dame
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2004
Richmond, Virginia, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology
  •  6
    How to Endure an Alleged Paradox
    Journal of Philosophical Research 33 285-292. 2008.
    Stephen Barker and Phil Dowe have argued, through what they call the mereological paradox, that endurantism is contradictory. In this paper, I take issue with Barker and Dowe’s argument. In addition to disarming an interesting philosophical argument against endurantism, my diagnosis of Barker and Dowe’s mereological paradox underscores what is central to the endurantism/perdurantism debate and reveals the inadequacy of a familiar way of describing enduring objects.
  •  678
    Knowledge and lotteries
    Philosophical Books 46 (2): 123-131. 2005.
    John Hawthorne’s recent monograph Knowledge and Lotteries1 is centred on the following puzzle: Suppose you claim to know that you will not be able to afford to summer in the Hamptons next year. Aware of your modest means, we believe you. But suppose you also claim to know that a ticket you recently purchased in a multi-million dollar lottery is a loser. Most of us have the intuition that you do not know that your ticket is a loser. However, your alleged knowledge of not being able to afford to s…Read more
  •  336
    Mereology without weak supplementation
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (3). 2009.
    According to the Weak Supplementation Principle (WSP)—a widely received principle of mereology—an object with a proper part, p , has another distinct proper part that doesn't overlap p . In a recent article in this journal, Nikk Effingham and Jon Robson employ WSP in an objection to endurantism. I defend endurantism in a way that bears on mereology in general. First, I argue that denying WSP can be motivated apart from the truth of endurantism. I then go on to offer an explanation of WSP's initi…Read more
  •  236
    Chisholm's Phenomenal Argument Revisited: A Dilemma for Perdurantism
    American Philosophical Quarterly 47 (1): 31. 2010.
    According to perdurantism, objects persist by being spread out over time, just as composite three-dimensional objects are spread out over space. Just as a composite three-dimensional object is spread out over space by having spatial parts, objects persist, according to perdurantism, by having temporal parts. Perdurantism can be stated more precisely by saying what exactly a temporal part is. In the sequel, Theodore Sider's definition of "instantaneous temporal part" shall be assumed: x is an ins…Read more
  •  1139
    The vagueness argument for mereological universalism
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (3). 2006.
    In this paper, I critically discuss one of the more influential arguments for mereological universalism, what I will call ‘the Vagueness Argument’. I argue that a premise of the Vagueness Argument is not well supported and that there are at least two good reasons for thinking that the premise in question is false.
  •  258
    How to Endure an Alleged Paradox
    Journal of Philosophical Research 33 285-292. 2008.
    Stephen Barker and Phil Dowe have argued, through what they call the mereological paradox, that endurantism is contradictory. In this paper, I take issue with Barker and Dowe’s argument. In addition to disarming an interesting philosophical argument against endurantism, my diagnosis of Barker and Dowe’s mereological paradox underscores what is central to the endurantism/perdurantism debate and reveals the inadequacy of a familiar way of describing enduring objects.
  •  323
    Vague Singulars, Semantic Indecision, and the Metaphysics of Persons
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (3): 569-585. 2007.
    Composite materialism, as I will understand it, is the view that human persons are composite material objects. This paper develops and investigates an argument, The Vague Singulars Argument, for the falsity of composite materialism. We shall see that cogent or not, the Vague Singulars Argument has philosophically significant ramifications.
  •  996
    Immanuel Kant’s well known and thoroughly discussed criticism of the cosmological argument, hereafter ‘CA’, is that it presupposes or depends upon the cogency of the ontological argument, hereafter ‘OA’. Call this criticism ‘the Dependency Thesis’. It is fair to say that the received view on the matter is that Kant failed to establish the Dependency Thesis.1 In what follows, I argue that the received view is mistaken. I begin by rehearsing the standard objection to what is typically taken to be …Read more
  •  315
    ‘Wholly Present’ Defined
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (2). 2005.
    Three-dimensionalists , sometimes referred to as endurantists, think that objects persist through time by being “wholly present” at every time they exist. But what is it for something to be wholly present at a time? It is surprisingly difficult to say. The threedimensionalist is free, of course, to take ‘is wholly present at’ as one of her theory’s primitives, but this is problematic for at least one reason: some philosophers claim not to understand her primitive. Clearly the three-dimensionalis…Read more
  •  1737
    The Fall of the Mind Argument and Some Lessons about Freedom
    In Joseph Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Action, Ethics and Responsibility, Mit Press. pp. 127-148. 2010.
    This chapter offers a new criticism of the Mind argument that is both decisive and instructive. It introduces a plausible principle (γ) that places a requirement on one’s having a choice about an event whose causal history includes only other events. Depending on γ’s truth-value, the Mind argument fails in such a way that one or the other of the two main species of libertarianism is the best approach to the metaphysics of freedom. Libertarians argue the compatibility of freedom and indeterminism…Read more