•  10
    The metaphysics of personhood in Confucian role ethics
    Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2): 1-17. 2023.
    Inspired by early Confucian texts such as theAnalects,Mencius, andXunzi, defenders of Confucian role ethics argue that persons are constituted by their social roles and relationships. However, this has the puzzling implication that persons cannot survive changes in social roles and relationships. This paper proposes ways to understand this claim by appealing to the notions of essence, material constitution, and four-dimensionalism. In particular, it will be suggested that role ethicists should d…Read more
  •  303
    Modal Normativism and De Re Modality
    Argumenta 7 (2): 293-307. 2022.
    In the middle of the last century, it was common to explain the notion of necessity in linguistic terms. A necessary truth, it was said, is a sentence whose truth is guaranteed by linguistic rules. Quine famously argued that, on this view, de re modal claims do not make sense. “Porcupettes are porcupines” is necessarily true, but it would be a mistake to say of a particular porcupette that it is necessarily a porcupine, or that it is possibly purple. Linguistic theories of necessity fell out of …Read more
  •  173
    The Essences of Fundamental Properties
    Metaphysics 2 (1): 40-54. 2019.
    There is a puzzle concerning the essences of fundamental entities that arises from considerations about essence, on one hand, and fundamentality, on the other. The Essence-Dependence Link (EDL) says that if x figures in the essence of y, then y is dependent upon x. EDL is prima facie plausible in many cases, especially those involving derivative entities. But consider the property negative charge. A negatively charged object exhibits certain behaviors that a positively charged object does not: i…Read more
  •  54
    Building and modal recombination
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (7): 745-757. 2020.
    ABSTRACT In Making Things Up, Bennett defends an impressive array of theses surrounding the notion of building. My focus is on Bennett’s use of modal recombination principles in her arguments, including in particular the principle that contingent fundamental entities are freely recombinable. I have argued that such principles are motivated by mere intuition, and that we have reasons to reject them. I discuss how worries about modal recombination principles affect three of her key arguments, whic…Read more
  •  110
    The epistemological objection to modal primitivism
    Synthese 198 (Suppl 8): 1887-1898. 2018.
    Modal primitivists hold that some modal truths are primitively true. They thus seem to face a special epistemological problem: how can primitive modal truths be known? The epistemological objection has not been adequately developed in the literature. I undertake to develop the objection, and then to argue that the best formulation of the epistemological objection targets all realists about modality, rather than the primitivist alone. Furthermore, the moves available to reductionists in response …Read more
  •  65
  •  260
    From Combinatorialism to Primitivism
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (3): 535-554. 2013.
    Many are reluctant to accept primitive modality into their fundamental picture of the world. The worry often traces to this thought: we shouldn't adopt any more primitive - that is, unexplained - notions than we need in order to explain all the features of the world, and primitive modal notions are not needed. I examine one prominent rival to modal primitivism, combinatorialism, and show that in order to account for all the modal features of the world the combinatorialist must adopt two addition…Read more
  •  909
    The Modal Limits of Dispositionalism
    Noûs 49 (3): 454-469. 2015.
    Dispositionality is a modal notion of a certain sort. When an object is said to have a disposition, we typically understand this to mean that under certain circumstances, the object would behave in a certain way. For instance, a fragile object is disposed to break when dropped onto a concrete surface. It need not actually break - its being fragile has implications that, so to speak, point beyond the actual world. According to dispositionalism, all modal features of the world may be accounted for…Read more
  •  166
    Modal primitivism
    Dissertation, Rutgers University. 2013.
    Modal primitivism is the view that there are modal features of the world which cannot be reduced to the non-modal. Theories which embrace primitive modality are often rejected for reasons of ideological simplicity: the fewer primitive notions a theory invokes, the better. Furthermore, modal primitivism is often associated with the view that all modal features of the world are irreducibly modal, which appears unsystematic and unexplanatory. As a result, many prefer modal reductionism. This work i…Read more
  •  115
    The Nature of Properties: Causal Essentialism and Quidditism
    Philosophy Compass 11 (3): 168-176. 2016.
    Properties seem to play an important role in causal relations. But philosophers disagree over whether or not properties play their causal or nomic roles essentially. Causal essentialists say that they do, while quidditists deny it. This article surveys these two views, as well as views that try to find a middle ground
  •  288
    Actualist Counterpart Theory
    Journal of Philosophy 112 (8): 417-441. 2015.
    Actualist counterpart theory replaces David Lewis’s concrete possible worlds and individuals with ersatz worlds and individuals, but retains counterpart theory about de re modality. While intuitively attractive, this view has been rejected for two main reasons: the problem of indiscernibles and the Humphrey objection. I argue that in insisting that ersatz individuals play the same role as Lewisian individuals, actualists commit the particularist fallacy. The actualist should not require stand-in…Read more
  •  111
    Representation and Explanation
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (2): 462-468. 2016.
  •  1038
    Fundamentality And Modal Freedom
    Philosophical Perspectives 30 (1): 397-418. 2016.
    A fundamental entity is an entity that is ‘ontologically independent’; it does not depend on anything else for its existence or essence. It seems to follow that a fundamental entity is ‘modally free’ in some sense. This assumption, that fundamentality entails modal freedom (or ‘FEMF’ as I shall label the thesis), is used in the service of other arguments in metaphysics. But as I will argue, the road from fundamentality to modal freedom is not so straightforward. The defender of FEMF should provi…Read more