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13Predicate ReferenceIn Ernie Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 422-474. 2005.Whether a predicate is a referential expression depends upon what reference is conceived to be. Even if it is granted that reference is a relation between words and worldly items, the referents of expressions being the items to which they are so related, this still leaves considerable scope for disagreement about whether predicates refer. One of Frege's great contributions to the philosophy of language was to introduce an especially liberal conception of reference relative to which it is unprobl…Read more
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Yours Fraternally: Bertrand Russell and G. E. MooreIn Fraser MacBride, Graham Stevens & Samuel Lebens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Bertrand Russell, Oxford. forthcoming.
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Subject and PredicateIn Ernie Lepore & Barry C. Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. 2005.
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Relation s: existence and natureIn A. R. J. Fisher & Anna-Sofia Maurin (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Properties, Routledge. 2024.
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58Relations. Basic Elements in Metaphysics (review)International Journal of Philosophical Studies 31 (5): 734-738. 2024.Heil wants us to be ‘ontologically serious’. Because if we’re ontologically serious we won’t take relations seriously. Here’s one of the lines of thought that runs through Heil’s Relations. It’s go...
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25De Re Modality, Essentialism, and Lewis's HumeanismIn Barry Loewer & Jonathan Schaffer (eds.), A companion to David Lewis, Wiley-blackwell. 2015.Modality is standardly thought to come in two varieties: de dicto and de re. De re modality concerns the attribution of modal features to things or individuals, and enshrines a commitment to Aristotelian essentialism. This chapter considers how David Lewis's conception of de re modality fits into his overall metaphysics. The hypothesis is that the driving force behind his metaphysics in general, and his adherence to counterpart theory in particular, is the distinctly Humean thought that necessar…Read more
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5The Cambridge Revolt Against Idealism: Was There Ever an Eden?In Armen T. Marsoobian, Eric Cavallero & Alexis Papazoglou (eds.), The Pursuit of Philosophy, Wiley. 2012-08-29.This chapter contains sections titled: Genesis Logical Constants Converse Relations Acknowledgments References.
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50The Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy Edited by Michael Beaney (review)Philosophy 90 (1): 152-156. 2015.
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13Charles Chihara. A structural account of mathematics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004, xiv + 380 pp (review)Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 11 (1): 79-83. 2005.
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17Particulars, Modes and Universals: An examination of E.J. Lowe's Four‐Fold OntologyDialectica 58 (3): 317-333. 2004.Is there a particular‐universal distinction? Ramsey famously advocated scepticism about this distinction. In “Some Formal Ontological Relations” E.J. Lowe argues against Ramsey that a particular‐universal distinction can be made out after all if only we allow ourselves the resources to distinguish between the elements of a four‐fold ontology. But in defence of Ramsey I argue that the case remains to be made in favour of either the four‐fold ontology Lowe recommends or the articulation of a parti…Read more
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421Rudolf Carnap and David Lewis on MetaphysicsJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 9 (1). 2021.In an unpublished speech from 1991, David Lewis told his audience that he counted ‘the metaphysician Carnap ’ amongst his historical ancestors. Here I provide a novel interpretation of the Aufbau that allows us to make sense of Lewis’s claim. Drawing upon Lewis’s correspondence, I argue it was the Carnap of the Aufbau whom Lewis read as a metaphysician, because Carnap’s appeal to the notion of founded relations in the Aufbau echoes Lewis’s own appeal to the metaphysics of natural properties. I f…Read more
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41Necessity Lost: Modality and Logic in Early Analytic Philosophy, by Sanford ShiehMind 132 (526): 539-548. 2022.What is this discipline called history of philosophy? What standards are relevant to its assessment? There aren’t single, straightforward answers to these quest.
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9Review of Soames (2018) (review)Dialectica 74 (1): 157-162. 2020.Review of: Soames, Scott. 2018. The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Volume 2: A New Vision, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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420Why Lewis Would Have Rejected GroundingIn Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis, Oxford University Press. pp. 66-91. 2022.We argue that Lewis would have rejected recent appeals to the notions of ‘metaphysical dependency’, ‘grounding’ and ‘ontological priority’, because he would have held that they’re not needed and they’re not intelligible. We argue our case by drawing upon Lewis’s views on supervenience, the metaphysics of singletons and the dubiousness of Kripke’s essentialism
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Analytic philosophy and its synoptic commission: towards the epistemic end of daysIn Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Philosophical Traditions, Cambridge University Press. 2014.
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49Articulating reasons: An introduction to inferentialismAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 80 (2). 2002.Book Information Articulating Reasons: An Introduction To Inferentialism. By Brandom Robert. Harvard University Press. Cambridge. 2000. Pp. 230. Hardback, £23.95.
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87"On The Origins of Order: Non-Symmetric or Only Symmetric Relations?"In Gabriele Galluzzo & Michael J. Loux (eds.), The Problem of Universals in Contemporary Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 173-94. 2015.In this paper I contribute a further element to the case for admitting non-symmetric relations by dismantling the case against them. Armstrong and Dorr have both argued (1) that asymmetric relations give rise to ‘brute necessities’, whilst Dorr further argues (2) that admitting non-symmetric relations generates spurious possibilities and (3) that exploiting work of Goodman and Hazen, we can do without non-symmetric relations anyway. Against (1) I argue that neither Armstrong nor Dorr succeed in …Read more
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1847David Lewis's Place in the History of Late Analytic Philosophy: His Conservative and Liberal MethodologyPhilosophical Inquiries 5 (1): 1-22. 2018.In 1901 Russell had envisaged the new analytic philosophy as uniquely systematic, borrowing the methods of science and mathematics. A century later, have Russell’s hopes become reality? David Lewis is often celebrated as a great systematic metaphysician, his influence proof that we live in a heyday of systematic philosophy. But, we argue, this common belief is misguided: Lewis was not a systematic philosopher, and he didn’t want to be. Although some aspects of his philosophy are systematic, main…Read more
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17Review. J Bacon, K Campbell and L Reinhardt (eds). Ontology, causality and mind: essays in honour of D M ArmstrongBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (3): 463-466. 1996.
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252RelationsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2016.In this paper I provide a state of the art survey and assessment of the contemporary debate about relations. After (1) distinguishing different varieties of relations, symmetric from non-symmetric, internal from external relations etc. and relations from their set-theoretic models or sequences, I proceed (2) to consider Bradley’s regress and whether relations can be eliminated altogether. Next I turn (3) to the question whether relations can be reduced, bringing to bear considerations from the …Read more
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545On the Genealogy of Universals: The Metaphysical Origins of Analytic PhilosophyOxford University Press. 2018.The concepts of particular and universal have grown so familiar that their significance has become difficult to discern, like coins that have been passed back and forth too many times, worn smooth so their values can no longer be read. On the Genealogy of Universals seeks to overcome our sense of over-familiarity with these concepts by providing a case study of their evolution during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, a study that shows how the history of these concepts is …Read more
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191Survey article. Listening to fictions: A study of fieldian nominalismBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50 (3): 431-455. 1999.One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulae have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers
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