•  661
    II—Resemblance Nominalism, Conjunctions and Truthmakers
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 113 (1pt1): 21-38. 2013.
    The resemblance nominalist says that the truthmaker of 〈Socrates is white〉 ultimately involves only concrete particulars that resemble each other. Furthermore he also says that Socrates and Plato are the truthmakers of 〈Socrates resembles Plato〉, and Socrates and Aristotle those of 〈Socrates resembles Aristotle〉. But this, combined with a principle about the truthmakers of conjunctions, leads to the apparently implausible conclusion that 〈Socrates resembles Plato and Socrates resembles Aristotle…Read more
  •  13
    Critical Notice: Absence & Nothing. The Philosophy of What There Is Not
    Philosophical Quarterly 74 (1): 364-369. 2023.
    Stephen Mumford's new book is a comprehensive study and discussion of a perennial philosophical topic: nothing, or what does not exist, or non-being. The variet.
  •  2
    Real Metaphysics brings together new articles by leading metaphysicians to honour Hugh Mellor's outstanding contribution to metaphysics. Some of the most outstanding minds of current times shed new light on all the main topics in metaphysics: truth, causation, dispositions and properties, explanation, and time. At the end of the book, Hugh Mellor responds to the issues raised by each of the thirteen contributors and gives us new insight into his own highly influential work on metaphysics.
  •  32
    Jamin Asay’s A Theory of Truthmaking is one of the most important books on truthmaking, full of important ideas from beginning to end. One of the most interesting parts of the book is Asay's attack on the explanation-first truthmaking. Explanation-first truthmaking is the explanatory project of explaining why truths are true. This is in contrast with ontology-first truthmaking, the project defended by Asay, and which is the project of answering the fundamental ontological question “What is there…Read more
  • Why Truthmakers?
    In Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, Oxford University Press. 2005.
  •  19
    Indiscernible Universals
    Revista de Humanidades de Valparaíso 16 89-110. 2020.
    Universals have traditionally thought to obey the identity of indiscernibles, that is, it has traditionally been thought that there can be no perfectly similar universals. But at least in the conception of universals as immanent, there is nothing that rules out there being indiscernible universals. In this paper, I shall argue that there is useful work indiscernible universals can do, and so there might be reason to postulate indiscernible universals. In particular, I shall argue that postulatin…Read more
  •  26
    Indiscernible Universals
    Humanities Journal of Valparaiso 16 89-110. 2020.
    Universals have traditionally thought to obey the identity of indiscernibles, that is, it has traditionally been thought that there can be no perfectly similar universals. But at least in the conception of universals as immanent, there is nothing that rules out there being indiscernible universals. In this paper, I shall argue that there is useful work indiscernible universals can do, and so there might be reason to postulate indiscernible universals. In particular, I shall argue that postulatin…Read more
  •  12
    Kant on the Existence and Uniqueness of the Best Possible World
    History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 21 (1): 195-215. 2018.
    In the 1750s Optimism, the Leibnizian doctrine that the actual world is the best possible world, popularized by Pope in 1733 in his Essay on Man, was a hot topic. In 1759 Kant wrote and published a brief essay defending Optimism, Attempt at some Reflections on Optimism. Kant’s aim in this essay is to establish that there is one and only one best possible world. In particular, he argues against the claim that, for every possible world, there is a possible world better than it and against the clai…Read more
  •  11
    Leibniz: Discourse on Metaphysics
    Oxford University Press. 2020.
    Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereya provides a new English translation of G. W. Leibniz's Discourse on Metaphysics, complete with a critical introduction and a comprehensive philosophical commentary. In this fundamental work, Leibniz sets out a metaphysics for Christianity and provides answers to the central metaphysical questions.
  •  131
    Facing Facts
    Mind 112 (448): 780-786. 2003.
  •  45
    _Real Metaphysics_ brings together new articles by leading metaphysicians to honour Hugh Mellor's outstanding contribution to metaphysics. Some of the most outstanding minds of current times shed new light on all the main topics in metaphysics: truth, causation, dispositions and properties, explanation, and time. At the end of the book, Hugh Mellor responds to the issues raised by each of the thirteen contributors and gives us new insight into his own highly influential work on metaphysics.
  •  80
    Are the categorical laws of ontology metaphysically contingent?
    Philosophical Studies 177 (12): 3775-3781. 2020.
    Are the categorical laws of ontology metaphysically contingent? I do not intend to give a full answer to this question in this paper. But I shall give a partial answer to it. In particular, Gideon Rosen, in his article “The Limits of Contingency”, has distinguished a certain conception of metaphysical necessity, which he calls the Non-Standard conception, which, together with the assumption that all natures or essences are Kantian, is supposed to entail that many laws of ontology are metaphysica…Read more
  •  9
    El nominalisme en metafísica
    Quaderns de Filosofia 1 (1). 2014.
  •  348
    The Razor and the Laser
    Analytic Philosophy 59 (3): 341-358. 2018.
    The Razor says: do not multiply entities without necessity! The Laser says: do not multiply fundamental entities without necessity! Behind the Laser lies a deep insight. This is a distinction between the costs and the commitments of a theory. According to the Razor, every commitment is a cost. Not so according to the Laser. According to the Laser, derivative entities are an ontological free lunch: that is, they are a commitment without a cost. Jonathan Schaffer (2015) has argued that the Laser s…Read more
  •  303
    Kant on the existence and uniqueness of the best possible world
    Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    In the 1750s Optimism, the Leibnizian doctrine that the actual world is the best possible world, popularised by Pope in 1733 in his Essay on Man, was a hot topic. In 1759 Kant wrote and published a brief essay defending Optimism, Attempt at some Reflections on Optimism. Kant’s aim in this essay is to establish that there is one and only one best possible world. In particular, he argues against the claim that, for every possible world, there is a possible world better than it and against the clai…Read more
  •  653
    Peter van Inwagen has given an answer to the question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’. His answer is: Because there being nothing is as improbable as anything can be: it has probability 0. Here I shall examine his argument for this answer and I shall argue that it does not work because no good reasons have been given for two of the argument’s premises and that the conclusion of the argument does not constitute an answer to the question van Inwagen wanted to answer.
  •  19
    Correction to: The argument from almost indiscernibles
    Philosophical Studies 175 (7): 1825-1825. 2018.
    In pages 3005, 3006 and 3019, there is a sentence that begins: “If the premise lacks support, the argument does not establish the possibility of almost indiscernibles…”
  • Kripke y las descripciones rígidas
    Revista Latinoamericana de Filosofia 19 (1): 109. 1993.
  • La anotación 202 de las Investigaciones Filosóficas de Wittgenstein
    Logos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 27 (n/a): 25. 1993.
  •  56
    Descartes's Substance Dualism and His Independence Conception of Substance
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 46 (1): 69-89. 2008.
    Descartes maintained substance dualism, the thesis that no substance has both mental and material properties. His main argument for this thesis, the so-called separability argument from the Sixth Meditation (AT VII: 78) has long puzzled readers. In this paper I argue that Descartes' independence conception of substance (which Descartes presents in article 51 of the Principles) is crucial for the success of the separability argument and that Descartes used this conception of substance to defend h…Read more
  •  1329
    Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra offers a fresh philosophical account of properties. How is it that two different things (such as two red roses) can share the same property (redness)? According to resemblance nominalism, things have their properties in virtue of resembling other things. This unfashionable view is championed with clarity and rigor
  •  458
    Paradigms and Russell's Resemblance Regress
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (4). 2004.
    Resemblance Nominalism is the view that denies universals and tropes and claims that what makes F-things F is their resemblances. A famous argument against Resemblance Nominalism is Russell's regress of resemblances, according to which the resemblance nominalist falls into a vicious infinite regress. Aristocratic Resemblance Nominalism, as opposed to Egalitarian Resemblance Nominalism, is the version of Resemblance Nominalism that claims that what makes F-things F is that they resemble the F-par…Read more
  •  113
    Leibniz's Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles
    Oxford University Press UK. 2014.
    Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra presents an original study of the place and role of the Identity of Indiscernibles in Leibniz's philosophy. The Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles rules out numerically distinct but perfectly similar things; Leibniz derived it from more basic principles and used it to establish important philosophical theses. Rodriguez-Pereyra aims to establish what Leibniz meant by the Principle of Identity of Indiscernibles, what his arguments for and from it were, and to ass…Read more
  •  1
    What is wrong with the relational theory of change?
    In Hallvard Lillehammer & Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (eds.), Real Metaphysics, Routledge. pp. 184--195. 2003.
  •  112
    Indiscernible universals
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 60 (6): 604-624. 2017.
    Universals have traditionally thought to obey the identity of indiscernibles, that is, it has traditionally been thought that there can be no perfectly similar universals. But at least in the conception of universals as immanent, there is nothing that rules out there being indiscernible universals. In this paper, I shall argue that there is useful work indiscernible universals can do, and so there might be reason to postulate indiscernible universals. In particular, I shall argue that postulatin…Read more
  •  230
    La anotación 202 de las Investigaciones Filosóficas de Wittgenstein
    Logos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 27 (2): 25-3. 1993.
    The paper clarifies the sense of remark 202 of Wittgenstein's *Philosophical Investigations* with respect to its relation to the private language argument. It argues, against what some have maintained, that remark 202 is not meant to reject the possibility of a private language as this is defined in remark 243.
  •  92
    The argument from almost indiscernibles
    Philosophical Studies 174 (12): 3005-3020. 2017.
    What I call the argument from almost indiscernibles is an argument, put forward by Robert Adams in 1979, for the possibility of indiscernibles based on the possibility of almost indiscernibles. The argument is that if almost indiscernibles are possible, indiscernibles are possible, but since almost indiscernible are possible, indiscernibles are possible. The argument seems to be an improvement over the mere appeal to intuitions, like that suggested by Max Black, that situations in which there ar…Read more
  •  302
    Review of "Facing Facts", by S. Neale (review)
    Mind 112 (448): 780-786. 2003.
  •  834
    Resemblance Nominalism and Russell's regress
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (3). 2001.
    Bertrand Russell argued that any attempt to get rid of universals in favor of resemblances fails. He argued that no resemblance theory could avoid postulating a universal of resemblance without falling prey to a vicious infinite regress. He added that admitting such a universal of resemblance made it pointless to avoid other universals. In this paper I defend resemblance nominalism from both of Russell's points by arguing that (a) resemblance nominalism can avoid the postulation of a universal o…Read more