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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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716II—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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19Critical 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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36A 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, Oxford University 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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50Real 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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83Are 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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418The 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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339Kant 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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716Why 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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1491Resemblance 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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2987The Bundle Theory is compatible with distinct but indiscernible particularsAnalysis 64 (1): 72-81. 2004.1. The Bundle Theory I shall discuss is a theory about the nature of substances or concrete particulars, like apples, chairs, atoms, stars and people. The point of the Bundle Theory is to avoid undesirable entities like substrata that allegedly constitute particulars. The version of the Bundle Theory I shall discuss takes particulars to be entirely constituted by the universals they instantiate.' Thus particulars are said to be just bundles of universals. Together with the claim that it is neces…Read more
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618Postscript to Why TruthmakersIn E. Jonathan Lowe & Adolf Rami (eds.), Truth and Truth-Making, Mcgill-queen's University Press. 2008.In this chapter I shall reply to a pair of articles in which the main contention of my “Why truthmakers” – namely, that an important class of synthetic true propositions have entities as truth-makers – is rejected. In §§1–5 I reply to Jennifer Hornsby’s “Truth without Truthmaking Entities” (2005) and in §§6–7 I reply to Julian Dodd’s “Negative Truths and Truthmaker Principles” (2007).
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648Mellor's facts and chances of causationAnalysis 58 (3). 1998.Mellor´s theory of causation has two components, one according to which causes raise their effects´ chances, and one according to which causation links facts. I argue that these two components are not independent from each other and, in particular, that Mellor´s thesis that causation links facts requires his thesis that causes raise their effects´ chances, since without the latter thesis Mellor cannot stop the slingshot argument, an argument that is a threat to any theory postulating facts as th…Read more
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1004Why Truthmakers?In Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: the contemporary debate, Oxford University Press. pp. 17-31. 2005.Consider a certain red rose. The proposition that the rose is red is true because the rose is red. One might say as well that the proposition that the rose is red is made true by the rose’s being red. This, it has been thought, does not commit one to a truthmaker of the proposition that the rose is red. For there is no entity that makes the proposition true. What makes it true is how the rose is, and how the rose is is not an entity over and above the rose. It is against this view that I shall …Read more
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154Lowe's argument against nihilismAnalysis 60 (4): 335-340. 2000.By nihilism I shall understand the thesis that it is metaphysically possible that there are no concrete objects. I think there is a version of an argu- ment, the subtraction argument, which proves nihilism nicely (see Baldwin 1996 and Rodriguez-Pereyra 1997). But E. J. Lowe, who is no nihilist, has a very interesting argument purporting to show that concrete objects exist necessarily (Lowe 1996, 1998). In this paper I shall defend nihilism from Lowe’s argument.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |