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227The concept of identityOxford University Press. 1982.In this book, Eli Hirsch focuses on identity through time, first with respect to ordinary bodies, then underlying matter, and eventually persons.
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Talmudic destinyIn Samuel Lebens, Dani Rabinowitz & Aaron Segal (eds.), Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age, Oxford University Press, Usa. 2019.
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618Quantifier VarianceIn Martin Kusch (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Relativism, Routledge. pp. 349-357. 2019.Quantifier variance is a well-known view in contemporary metaontology, but it remains very widely misunderstood by critics. Here we briefly and clearly explain the metasemantics of quantifier variance and distinguish between modest and strong forms of variance (Section I), explain some key applications (Section II), clear up some misunderstandings and address objections (Section III), and point the way toward future directions of quantifier-variance-related research (Section IV).
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48A Note on Safety and Iterated KnowledgeGrazer Philosophische Studien 96 (2): 244-254. 2019.Timothy Williamson has argued that the safety condition on knowledge places certain limits on iterations of knowledge. But at the same time, Williamson claims that interpersonal iterations of knowledge aren’t so restricted as to rule out ordinary cases. The present authors show that Williamson’s discussion misconstrues the challenge to iterated interpersonal knowledge. The proper argument against interpersonal iterations is rather what the authors call a third-person argument that does not share…Read more
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Rashi's View of the Open Future: Determinateness and BivalienceIn Dean Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics Volume 2, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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87Precis of Dividing RealityDividing Reality (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1): 199. 1996.What I call the Similarity Principle says that a word ought to denote a class of things that are more similar to each other than to other things. A closely related formulation, which I’ll here take to be equivalent, is that a word ought to denote a class of things having something in common with each other that they don’t have in common with other things. The Similarity Principle is an example of an intuitively rational constraint on the lexicon of a language. If we imagine such strange words as…Read more
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35Practically StrangeDividing RealityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1): 203. 1996.In Eli Hirsch’s clever and careful Dividing Reality he asks us to consider several strange languages. For example, in the Gricular language there is no word that applies to all and only green things and none that applies to all and only circular things, but there are the three words “gricular,” which applies to anything that is either green or circular, “grincular,” which applies to anything that is either green or not circular, and “ngricular,” which applies to anything that is either circular …Read more
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462Quantifier Variance and the Demand for a SemanticsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 98 (3): 592-605. 2017.In the work of both Matti Eklund and John Hawthorne there is an influential semantic argument for a maximally expansive ontology that is thought to undermine even modest forms of quantifier variance. The crucial premise of the argument holds that it is impossible for an ontologically "smaller" language to give a Tarskian semantics for an ontologically "bigger" language. After explaining the Eklund-Hawthorne argument (in section I), we show this crucial premise to be mistaken (in section II) by d…Read more
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4The Rational PhysicianPhilosophic Exchange 30 (1). 2000.In recent years, some professors of medicine have applied the results of decision theory to the practice of medicine. This paper argues that this agenda is deeply flawed and potentially unethical.
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46The Concept of Identity.The Identity of the SelfPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 45 (3): 467-473. 1985.
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41Physical‐Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, and Common SensePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1): 67-97. 2007.Two main claims are defended in this paper: first, that typical disputes in the literature about the ontology of physical objects are merely verbal; second, that the proper way to resolve these disputes is by appealing to common sense or ordinary language. A verbal dispute is characterized not in terms of private idiolects, but in terms of different linguistic communities representing different positions. If we imagine a community that makes Chisholm's mereological essentialist assertions, and a…Read more
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13Peter van Inwagen’s Material BeingsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (3): 687-691. 1993.
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129Dividing realityOxford University Press. 1993.The central question in this book is why it seems reasonable for the words of our language to divide up the world in ordinary ways rather than other imaginable ways. Hirsch calls this the division problem. His book aims to bring this problem into sharp focus, to distinguish it from various related problems, and to consider the best prospects for solving it. In exploring various possible responses to the division problem, Hirsch examines series of "division principles" which purport to express ra…Read more
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105Objectivity Without ObjectsThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 5 189-197. 2000.We can describe languages in which no words refer to objects. Such languages may contain sentences equivalent to any sentences of English, and hence may allow for as much objectivity as English does. It is wrong to try to deal with such languages by claiming that there are more objects than those accepted by common sense ontology. The correct move is rather to acknowledge a sense in which the concept of an object might have been different. A consequence of this position is that we cannot have a …Read more
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235The Metaphysically Best LanguagePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (3): 709-716. 2013.
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201Quantifier Variance and Realism: Essays in MetaontologyOxford University Press. 2010.A sense of unity -- Basic objects : a reply to Xu -- Objectivity without objects -- The vagueness of identity -- Quantifier variance and realism -- Against revisionary ontology -- Comments on Theodore Sider's four dimensionalism -- Sosa's existential relativism -- Physical-object ontology, verbal disputes, and common sense -- Ontological arguments : interpretive charity and quantifier variance -- Language, ontology, and structure -- Ontology and alternative languages.
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13Ontological arguments : interpretive charity and quantifier varianceIn Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, Blackwell. pp. 367--81. 2008.
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125The Vagueness of IdentityPhilosophical Topics 26 (1-2): 139-158. 1999.The Evans-Salmon position on vague identity has deservedly elicited a large response in the literature. I think it is in fact among the most provocative metaphysical ideas to appear in recent years. I will try to show in this paper, however, that the position is vulnerable to a fundamental criticism that seems to have been virtually ignored in the many discussions of it. I take the Evans-Salmon position to consist of the following two theses: Thesis I. There cannot be objects x and y such that i…Read more
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