•  4
    Conflict and Difference: the Pre-requisite of Collaboration
    Journal of Intelligent Systems 4 (1-2): 29-46. 1994.
  •  11
    Countering the counting problem: a reply to Holton
    Analysis 56 (4): 239-245. 1996.
  •  5
    Discussions: Hornsby on the Identity Theory of Truth
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 99 (1): 225-232. 1999.
    Julian Dodd; Discussions: Hornsby on the Identity Theory of Truth, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 99, Issue 1, 1 June 1999, Pages 225–232, http.
  •  25
    Rails Invisibly Laid to Infinity
    Philosophical Quarterly 73 (1): 84-104. 2022.
    This paper addresses what I call ‘the constitutive question’ concerning the rules we follow: namely, what determines the standard for a rule's correct application. John McDowell has offered a putative ‘middle position’ between two extreme, unacceptable answers: empirical idealism, which takes the requirements of a rule in any given situation to be constituted by our reaction to the case; and hard platonism, which takes these requirements to be delivered by unvarnished reality as absolutely the s…Read more
  •  21
    Style Appropriation, Intimacy, and Expressiveness
    British Journal of Aesthetics 61 (3): 373-386. 2021.
    This paper is about style appropriation: the use by someone of stylistic cultural innovations distinctive of a cultural group that is not her own. While I agree with the key insight of C. Thi Nguyen and Matthew Strohl : 981-1002) – namely, that style appropriation is sometimes found objectionable because group intimacy is believed to have been breached – I disagree with their core claim that the settled beliefs of the group cannot be wrong about whether its group intimacy has, in fact, been comp…Read more
  •  16
    In his last work, "Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology", Edmund Husserl formulated a radical new approach to phenomenological philosophy. Unlike his previous works, in the "Crisis" Husserl embedded this formulation in an ambitious reflection on the essence and value of the idea of rational thought and culture, a reflection that he considered to be an urgent necessity in light of the political, social, and intellectual crisis of the interwar period. In this book, Jame…Read more
  •  10
    Blurred Lines: Ravasio on “Historically Informed Performance”
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 78 (1): 85-90. 2020.
  •  17
    Being True to Works of Music
    Oxford University Press. 2020.
    Julian Dodd offers an original approach to the controversial concept of authenticity in musical performance. He argues that the fundamental norm is not historical authenticity but interpretive authenticity: being faithful to the work by evincing a profound, far-reaching, or sophisticated understanding of it.
  •  26
    Blurred Lines: Ravasio on “Historically Informed Performance”
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 78 (1): 85-90. 2020.
    The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 78, Issue 1, Page 85-90, Winter 2020.
  •  68
    A minimalist explanation of truth’s asymmetry
    American Philosophical Quarterly 55 (4): 389-404. 2018.
    Suppose that Eleanor is drowsy. Truth's asymmetry is illustrated by the following fact: while we accept that <Eleanor is drowsy> is true because Eleanor is drowsy, we do not accept that Eleanor is drowsy because <Eleanor is drowsy> is true. This asymmetry requires an explanation, but it has been alleged, notably by David Liggins, that the minimalist about truth cannot provide one. This paper counteracts this pessimism by arguing that the minimalist can successfully explain the asymmetry conceptu…Read more
  •  182
    What 4′33″ Is
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (4): 629-641. 2018.
    ABSTRACTWhat is John Cage's 4′33″? This paper disambiguates this question into three sub-questions concerning, respectively, the work's ontological nature, the art form to which it belongs, and the genre it is in. We shall see that the work's performances consist of silence, that it is a work of performance art, and that it belongs to the genre of conceptual art. Seeing the work in these ways helps us to understand it better, and promises to assuage somewhat the puzzlement and irritation of thos…Read more
  •  467
    In Advance of the Broken Theory: Philosophy and Contemporary Art
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75 (4): 375-386. 2017.
    We discuss how analysis of contemporary artworks has shaped philosophical theories about the concept of art, the ontology of art, and artistic media. The rapid expansion, during the contemporary period, of the kinds of things that can count as artworks has prompted a shift toward procedural definitions, which focus on how artworks are selected, and away from definitions that focus exclusively on artworks’ features or effects. Some contemporary artworks challenge the traditional art–ontological d…Read more
  •  66
    Types, Tokens, and Talk about Musical Works
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75 (3): 249-263. 2017.
    It has recently been suggested that the type/token theorist concerning musical works cannot come up with an adequate semantic theory of those sentences in which we purport to talk about such works. Specifically, it has been claimed that, since types are abstract entities, a type/token theorist can only account for the truth of sentences such as “The 1812 Overture is very loud” and “Bach's Two Part Invention in C has an F-sharp in its fourth measure” by adopting an untenable semantic claim: namel…Read more
  •  15
    Indirect Speech, Parataxis and the Nature of Things Said
    Journal of Philosophical Research 22 211-227. 1997.
    This paper makes the following recommendation when it comes to the IogicaI form of sentences in indirect speech. Davidson’s paratactic account shouId stand, but with one emendation: the demonstrative ‘that’ should be taken to refer to the Fregean Thought expressed by the utterance of the content-sentence, rather than to that utterance itseIf. The argument for this emendation is that it is the onIy way of repIying to the objections to Davidson’s account raised by Schiffer, McFetridge and McDowell…Read more
  •  206
    Types, continuants, and the ontology of music
    British Journal of Aesthetics 44 (4): 342-360. 2004.
    Are works of music types of performance or are they continuants? Types are unchanging entities that could not have been otherwise; continuants can undergo change through time and could have been different. Picking up on this distinction, Guy Rohrbaugh has recently argued that musical works are continuants rather than performance-types. This paper replies to his arguments and, in the course of so doing, elaborates and defends the conception of musical works as types of performance. I end the arti…Read more
  •  2
    Introduction
    In Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, Clarendon Press. 2005.
  •  114
    Is truth supervenient on being?
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 102 (1). 2002.
    This paper asks whether we should accept a weakened version of the truthmaker principle: namely, the claim that truth supervenes on being, in which 'being' is understood as whether things are. I consider a number of positive answers to this question, including the following: that the truthmaker principle is a requirement of any plausible explanation of truth; that the principle must be accepted, if we are to do justice to the Wittgensteinian insight that the world is the totality of facts, not o…Read more
  •  245
    Critical Study: Artworks and Generative Performances
    British Journal of Aesthetics 45 (1): 69-87. 2005.
  •  147
    Descriptivism in the ontology of art is the thesis that the correct ontological proposal for a kind of artwork cannot show the nascent ontological conception of such things embedded in our critical and appreciative practices to be substantially mistaken. Descriptivists believe that the kinds of revisionary art ontological proposals propounded by Nelson Goodman, Gregory Currie, Mark Sagoff, and me are methodologically misconceived. In this paper I examine the case that has been made for a local f…Read more
  •  50
    Resurrecting the Identity Theory of Truth
    Bradley Studies 2 (1): 42-50. 1996.
    1. The conclusion of Stewart Candlish’s pithy survey of identity theories of truth is that he is not yet convinced that any instance is more than an “historical curiosity”. Candlish in effect presents the would-be identity theorist with a dilemma: identity theories are either substantial, yet intrinsically implausible ); or else they are trivial.
  •  484
    Musical works: Ontology and meta-ontology
    Philosophy Compass 3 (6): 1113-1134. 2008.
    The ontological nature of works of music has been a particularly lively area of philosophical debate during the past few years. This paper serves to introduce the reader to some of the most fertile and interesting issues. Starting by distinguishing three questions – the categorial question, the individuation question, and the persistence question – the article goes on to focus on the first: the question of which ontological category musical works fall under. The paper ends by introducing, and br…Read more
  •  113
    Farewell to states of affairs
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (2). 1999.
    This Article does not have an abstract
  •  59
    Upholding Standards: A Realist Ontology of Standard Form Jazz
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72 (3): 277-290. 2014.
    In “All Play and No Work,” Andrew Kania claims that standard form jazz involves no works, only performances. This article responds to Kania by defending one of the alternative ontological proposals that he rejects, namely, that jazz works are ontologically continuous with works of classical music. I call this alternative “the standard view,” and I argue that it is the default position in the ontology of standard form jazz. Kania has three objections to the standard view. The bulk of the article …Read more
  •  394
    For the last 40 years or so the is/ought gap, the fact/value distinction and the naturalistic fallacy have figured prominently in ethical debates. This longevity, however, has had an adverse side effect. So familiar have they become that they—and their respective rationales—have tended to become blurred. It is the purpose of this paper to explain why they should be kept distinct.