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25Class nominalism and resemblance nominalismIn A. R. J. Fisher & Anna-Sofia Maurin (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Properties, Routledge. 2024.This chapter is a discussion of Class and Resemblance Nominalism. According to the traditional versions of these theories, properties are classes of particulars. Thus, the property of being red is the class of red particulars, and the property of being square is the class of square particulars. Several objections have been advanced against these theories, and one of the most powerful of such objections is the so-called Coextension Difficulty, according to which Class and Resemblance Nominalism h…Read more
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576II—Resemblance Nominalism, Conjunctions and TruthmakersProceedings 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
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22Critical Notice: Absence & Nothing. The Philosophy of What There Is NotPhilosophical 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.
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6Real Metaphysics: Essays in Honour of D. H. Mellor, With His Replies. (edited book)Routledge. 2002.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.
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37A Defense Of Explanation-First Truthmaking: Some Thoughts On Jamin Asay’s A Theory Of TruthmakingAsian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1): 1-6. 2022.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
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Why Truthmakers?In Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, Clarendon Press. 2005.
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24Indiscernible UniversalsRevista 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
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33Indiscernible UniversalsHumanities 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
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19Kant on the Existence and Uniqueness of the Best Possible WorldHistory 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
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14Leibniz: Discourse on MetaphysicsOxford 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.
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20Real Metaphysics: Essays in Honour of D. H. Mellor (edited book)Routledge. 2002._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.
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67Are 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
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457The Razor and the LaserAnalytic 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
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344Kant on the existence and uniqueness of the best possible worldLogical 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
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722Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing? A Probabilistic Answer ExaminedPhilosophy 93 (4): 505-521. 2018.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.
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19Correction to: The argument from almost indiscerniblesPhilosophical 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…”
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La anotación 202 de las Investigaciones Filosóficas de WittgensteinLogos. Anales Del Seminario de Metafísica [Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España] 27 (n/a): 25. 1993.
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62Descartes's Substance Dualism and His Independence Conception of SubstanceJournal 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
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1448Resemblance nominalism: a solution to the problem of universalsClarendon Press. 2002.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
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31Real Metaphysics: Essays in Honour of D.H. Mellor (edited book)Routledge. 2002.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
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150Leibniz's Argument for the Identity of Indiscernibles in his Correspondence with ClarkeAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (4). 1999.In Section 21 of his fifth letter to Clarke Leibniz attempts to derive the Identity of Indiscernibles from an application of the Principle of Sufficient Reason to God´s act of creation, namely that God has a reason to create the world he creates. In this paper I argue that this argument fails, not just because the Identity of Indiscernibles is false, but because there is a counterexample to one of the premises that Leibniz cannot satisfactorily rule out.
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1035Truthmaker maximalism defendedAnalysis 66 (3). 2006.Peter Milne has tried to refure Truthmaker Maximalism. the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker, by producing a simple and direct counterexample to it, the sentence M: This sentence has no truthmaker. I argue that, contrary to what Milne argues, on Truthmaker Maximalism M is equivalent to the Liar, which gives the truthmaker maximalist a way to defend his position from Milne's counterexample: to argue that M expresses no proposition.
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69Truthmaking and the SlingshotIn Uwe Meixner & Peter Simons (eds.), Metaphysics in the Post-Metaphysical Age: Papers of the 22nd International Wittgenstein Symposium, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. 1999.In this paper I shall show how the Correspondence Theory of Truth can block Davidson’s Slingshot (Davidson 1984), which threatens to make the Correspondence Theory collapse. In particular I shall show that the Slingshot is unsound − and in so doing I shall show that the Correspondence Theory has some metaphysical commitments about the nature of facts.
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3074Descartes's substance dualism and his independence conception of substanceJournal 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
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615Resemblance nominalism and counterparts: Reply to BirdAnalysis 63 (3). 2003.In my book *Resemblance Nominalism* I argued that the truthmakers of ´a and b resemble each other´ are just a and b. In his "Resemblance Nominalism and counterparts" Alexander Bird objects to my claim that the truthmakers of ´a and b resemble each other´ are just a and b. In this paper I respond to Bird´s objections.
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399Sobre una version del Nominalismo de SemejanzasRevista de Filosofía (Misc.) 11 (1/2). 1996.The concern of this paper is a version of Resemblance Nominalism according to which resemblance classes, i.e. classes of resembling things, are determined by paradigms. I show that the theory is false, since paradigms do not generally determine resemblance classes. Although I concentrate upon the version of the theory which was delineated by H. H. Price, my results apply to any other theory constructing resemblance classes out of paradigms.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |