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121What is it Like to Have an Unconscious Mental State?Philosophical Studies 104 (2): 197-202. 2001.HOST is the theory that to be conscious of a mental state is totarget it with a higher-order state (a `HOS'), either an innerperception or a higher-order thought. Some champions of HOSTmaintain that the phenomenological character of a sensory stateis induced in it by representing it with a HOS. I argue that thisthesis is vulnerable to overwhelming objections that flow largelyfrom HOST itself. In the process I answer two questions: `What isa plausible sufficient condition for a quale's belonging …Read more
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133Evidential atheismPhilosophical Studies 114 (3). 2003.Here is a new version of the Evidential Problem of Evil.
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33The Human Animal: Personal Identity without PsychologyPhilosophical and Phenomenological Research 60 (2): 495-497. 1997.
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785Why there are still no peoplePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (1): 174-192. 2005.This paper will argue that there are no people. Let me summarize the argument. In part II of what follows, I argue that if identity isn't what matters in survival, psychological connectedness isn't what matters either. Psychological connectedness, according to Derek Parfit, is the 'holding of particular direct psychological connections,' for example, when a belief, a desire, or some other psychological feature continues to be had ; psychological connectedness consists in two other relations—rese…Read more
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44Letters to the EditorProceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 65 (5). 1992.
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136CORNEA, Scepticism and EvilAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 89 (1): 59-70. 2011.
The Principle of Credulity: 'It is basic to human knowledge of the world that we believe things are as they seem to be in the absence of positive evidence to the contrary' [Swinburne 1996: 133]. This underlies the Evidential Problem of Evil, which goes roughly like this: ‘There appears to be a lot of suffering, both animal and human, that does not result in an equal or greater utility. So there's probably some pointless suffering. As God's existence precludes pointless suffering, theism is impla…Read more -
1557A theory of religion revisedReligious Studies 37 (2): 177-189. 2001.A (revised) account of what all and only religions have in common in virtue of which they are religions.
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49Zombies, Functionalism and QualiaRes Philosophica 99 (1): 91-93. 2022.David Chalmers maintains there is a logically possible world (Z) where we all have physically and functionally identical twins without conscious experiences. Z entails that qualia are extra-physical, hence physicalism is false. I argue that his Zombie Argument (ZA) fails on functionalist grounds. Qualia sometimes affect behavior or they never do. If they do affect behavior, they sometimes individuate functional states; hence my zombie twin cannot be functionally identical to me. To save ZA, we m…Read more
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23Skepticism as a Theory of KnowledgePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (3): 527-545. 2000.Skepticism about the external world may very well be correct, so the question is in order: what theory of knowledge flows from skepticism itself? The skeptic can give a relatively simple and intuitive account of knowledge by identifying it with indubitable certainty. Our everyday ‘I know that p’ claims, which typically are part of practical projects, deploy the ideal of knowledge to make assertions closely related to, but weaker than, knowledge claims. The truth of such claims is consistent with…Read more
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2514Games and Family ResemblancesPhilosophical Investigations 17 (No. 2). 1994.An account of the feature all games share in virtue of which they are games.
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253Abortion as murder?: A responseJournal of Social Philosophy 26 (1): 129-146. 1995.I argue that people who believe fetuses have the same moral right to life as the rest of us have sufficient reasons to refuse to classify abortion as legal murder and to refuse to punish abortion as severely as legal murder.
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145Trumping the causal influence account of causationPhilosophical Studies 142 (2). 2009.Here is a simple counterexample to David Lewis’s causal influence account of causation, one that is especially illuminating due to its connection to what Lewis himself writes: it is a variant of his trumping example.
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118Moderate monism: Reply to Noonan and MackieAnalysis 69 (1): 91-95. 2009.Moderate Monism is the position that permanent, but not temporary, coincidence entails identity. Harold Noonan writes: " According to the moderate monist if God creates ex nihilo a bronze statue and later annihilates it, destroying both the statue and the bronze of which it is composed , the statue and the bronze are identical. If, however, God simply radically reshapes the bronze at t10 the statue ceases to exist and the piece of bronze survives, so despite their coincidence up to t10 the statu…Read more
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214Counterpart theory v. the multiverse: reply to WatsonAnalysis 71 (1): 96-100. 2011.Suppose that reality consists of parallel universes of every variety imaginable. No path through space and time leads from one to another, and each universe is causally isolated from the rest. Some physicists believe a ‘multiverse’ hypothesis not terribly distant from this one simplifies quantum mechanics and provides an elegant explanation of why our universe has its particular laws. Suppose as science advances we come to accept the multiverse hypothesis, so construed.
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2704Review of Eric Olson: 'The Human Animal: Personal Identity without Psychology ' (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (No. 2): 495-497. 2000.
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40Potentiality and possibilia: A reply to JokicJournal of Social Philosophy 26 (3): 139-141. 1995.
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Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Applied Ethics |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Applied Ethics |