•  76
    An accessible introduction to critical thinking and argument mapping with over 30 exercises per chapter, authentic examples, and examples drawn from diverse philosophical sources. Integration with the Argumentation argument mapping app allows readers to fully engage with argument maps with screen readers and key commands. Argumentation's inference boxes make possible novel explanations of inference objections, arguments for and against analogical arguments, inference rules, and the distinction b…Read more
  •  413
    The Bradleyan Regress, Non-Relational Realism, and the Quinean Semantic Strategy
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 93 (1): 63-79. 2016.
    Non-Relational Realism is a popular solution to the Bradleyan regress of facts or truths. It denies that there is a relational universal of exemplification; for an object a to exemplify a universal F-ness, on this view, is not for a relation to subsist between a and F-ness. An influential objection to Non-Relational Realism is that it is unacceptably obscure. The author argues that Non-Relational Realism can be understood as a selective application of satisfaction semantics to predicates like ‘e…Read more
  •  51
    Stance empiricism and epistemic reason
    Synthese 196 (2): 709-733. 2019.
    Some versions of empiricism have been accused of being neither empirically confirmable nor analytically true and therefore meaningless or unknowable by their own lights. Carnap, and more recently van Fraassen, have responded to this objection by construing empiricism as a stance containing non-cognitive attitudes. The resulting stance empiricism is not subject to the norms of knowledge, and so does not self-defeat as per the objection. In response to this proposal, several philosophers have argu…Read more
  •  36
    Empirical significance, predictive power, and explication
    Synthese 196 (6): 2519-2539. 2019.
    Criteria of empirical significance are supposed to state conditions under which reference to an unobservable object or property is “empirically meaningful”. The intended kind of empirical meaningfulness should be necessary for admissibility into the selective contexts of scientific inquiry. I defend Justus’s recent argument that the reasons generally given for rejecting the project of defining a significance criterion are unpersuasive. However, as I show, this project remains wedded to an overly…Read more
  •  69
    Language, Ontology, and the Carnap-Quine Debate
    Philosophia 45 (2): 811-833. 2017.
    On a widespread reading, the Carnap-Quine debate about ontology concerns the objectivity and non-triviality of ontological claims. I argue that this view mischaracterizes Carnap’s aims in “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” : Carnap’s fundamental goal is to free up decisions about scientific language from constraints deriving from ontological doctrine. The contention, based on his internal/external distinction, that ontological claims are either meaningless or trivial was Carnap’s means to ach…Read more
  •  62
    But for the Grace of God: Abortion and Cognitive Disability, Luck and Moral Status
    Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (2): 257-277. 2017.
    Many theories of moral status that are intended to ground pro-choice views on abortion tie full moral status to advanced cognitive capabilities. Extant accounts of this kind are inconsistent with the intuition that the profoundly cognitively disabled have full moral status. This paper improves upon these extant accounts by combining an anti-luck condition with Steinbock’s stratification of moral status into two levels. On the resulting view, a being has full moral status if and only if she has m…Read more
  •  53
    The classic “self-undermining objection” to the verificationist criterion of meaning states that the criterion does not meet its own standard: since verificationism is not empirically confirmable, analytic, or contradictory, verificationism implies its own meaninglessness. This essay reconstructs and motivates Carnap’s response to this objection. The interpretation presented is contrasted with those of Putnam and Ricketts. I argue that Carnap’s basic move in response to the self-undermining obje…Read more
  •  26
    Embryonic viability, parental care and the pro-life thesis: a defence of Bovens
    Journal of Medical Ethics 40 (4): 260-263. 2014.
    On the basis of three empirical assumptions about the rhythm method and the viability of embryos, Bovens concludes that the pro-life position regarding empbryos implies that it is prima facie wrong to use the rhythm method. Pruss objects to Bovens's philosophical presuppositions and Kennedy to his empirical premises. This essay defends two revised versions of Bovens's argument. These arguments revise Bovens's empirical assumptions in response to Kennedy and, in response to Pruss, supplement Bove…Read more