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Brutal SimplesIn Dean Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics:Volume 3: Volume 3, Oxford University Press Uk. 2007.
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77Metaphysics: East and West (edited book)Springer Nature. 2024.The basic concepts we use to frame metaphysical discussions – our tools of metaphysics – profoundly influence how those discussions proceed. Much recent work in anglophone metaphysics has centred on a set of hyperintensional such tools: grounding, dependence, fundamentality, and essence. This topical collection will provide new perspectives on these debates by bringing them into contact with Asian metaphysical traditions.
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12This is metaphysics: an introductionWiley-Blackwell. 2020.A lot of people want to know what makes a life worth living. Some people think that a person's life is worth living if and only if that person experiences a greater amount of pleasure than pain throughout the course of her life, and that a life is better or worse to the extent that the balance of pleasure over pain is higher or lower. But I think that the theory that a person's life is worth living if and only if that person experiences throughout her life a greater amount of pleasure than pain,…Read more
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14Me and My Imaginary Friend: Critical Study of Virtual Subjects, Fugitive SelvesAnalysis 82 (3): 526-536. 2022.Jonardon Ganeri’s recent book – henceforth, ‘Virtual Subjects’ – is an intriguing introduction to some aspects of the philosophical thought of Fernando Pessoa
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15Author meets critics: Matti Eklund’s choosing normative conceptsInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 63 (5): 475-488. 2020.
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19A Reply to Andrew BrennerPhilosophy East and West 70 (2): 557-565. 2020.In "Abhidharma Metaphysics and the Two Truths", I argued that a version of ontological pluralism—the view that there are different modes of being—is a philosophically satisfactory account of the doctrine of two truths as found in Abhidharma metaphysics, and that it is superior to accounts in the secondary literature.1 According to my account, the doctrine of two truths is best construed as a view that distinguishes between conventional and ultimate reality, the former of which is enjoyed by pers…Read more
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21Abhidharma Metaphysics and the Two TruthsPhilosophy East and West 69 (2): 439-463. 2019.The distinction between "the two truths" was initially developed to resolve seeming contradictions in the Buddha's teachings.1 The Buddha teaches that persons should act compassionately, that persons will be reincarnated, and that persons do not exist. The first two lessons seem inconsistent with the third. Consistency could be restored by distinguishing kinds of truth: the first and second lessons are conventionally true, but it is conventionally but not ultimately true that persons exist.2In a…Read more
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33Modal Realism with OverlapAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (1): 137-152. 2004.In this paper, I formulate, elucidate, and defend a version of modal realism with overlap, the view that objects are literally present at more than one possible world. The version that I defend has several interesting features: (i) it is committed to an ontological distinction between regions of spacetime and material objects; (ii) it is committed to compositional pluralism, which is the doctrine that there is more than one fundamental part-whole relation; and (iii) it is the modal analogue of e…Read more
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57The principle of sufficient reason and necessitarianismAnalysis 79 (2): 230-236. 2019.Peter van Inwagen presented a powerful argument against the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which I henceforth abbreviate as ‘PSR’. For decades, the consensus was that this argument successfully refuted PSR. However, now a growing consensus holds that van Inwagen’s argument is fatally flawed, at least when ‘sufficient reason’ is understood in terms of ground, for on this understanding, an ineliminable premiss of van Inwagen’s argument is demonstrably false and cannot be repaired. I will argue th…Read more
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11Freedom and idealism in Mary Whiton CalkinsBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 27 (3): 573-592. 2019.This paper explores Calkins’ absolute idealism and its ramifications for libertarian free will. Calkins’ metaphysics is a version of absolute idealism, according to which the absolute is a person who has everything else as either a part or an aspect. Three different arguments for the conclusion that Calkins’ metaphysics is incompatible with libertarian freewill are formulated and critically assessed. Finally, I assess the extent to which these arguments are independent of each other.
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17Teleological Suspensions In Fear and TremblingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 100 (2): 425-451. 2018.I focus here on the teleological suspension of the ethical as it appears in Fear and Trembling. A common reading of Fear and Trembling is that it explores whether there are religious reasons for action that settle that one must do an action even when all the moral reasons for action tell against doing it. This interpretation has been contested. But I defend it by showing how the explicit teleological suspension of the ethical mirrors implicit teleological suspensions of the epistemological and p…Read more
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13Hare, Caspar. On Myself, and Other, Less Important Subjects. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Pp. 144. $30.95 (review)Ethics 122 (2): 403-410. 2012.
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24Normative Accounts of FundamentalityPhilosophical Issues 27 (1): 167-183. 2017.I describe a number of views in which metaphysical fundamentality is accounted for in normative terms. After describing many different ways this key idea could be developed, I turn to developing the idea in one specific way. After all, the more detailed the proposal, the easier it is to assess whether it works. The rough idea is that what it is for a property to be fundamental is for it to be prima facie obligatory to theorize in terms of that property.
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19Existence: Essays in OntologyAnalysis 78 (1): 150-159. 2018.© The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] wonderful collection of most of van Inwagen’s recent essays on topics in fundamental ontology is certainly to be welcomed.1 Many of the essays are focused on articulating and arguing for van Inwagen’s preferred meta-ontology, which he calls neo-Quineanism. In addition to these essays, Existence also contains essays on the el…Read more
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18An object is a simple if and only if it has no proper parts. An object is gunk if and only if every proper part of that object itself has a proper part. In my dissertation, I address the following questions. The concepts of simples and gunk presuppose the concept of parthood. What is the status of this concept? his question itself divides into the following: does the concept of parthood have universal applicability, so that, just as every object is self-identical, every object has parts? Finally…Read more
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19Trenton Merricks' Truth and Ontology (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83 (1): 203-211. 2011.This is my contribution to an author-meets-critics session on Truth and Ontology.
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13Review of D.M. Armstrong, Truth and Truthmakers (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (8). 2005.
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39The Fragmentation of BeingOxford University Press. 2017.Kris McDaniel argues that there are different ways in which things exist. For instance, past things don't exist in the same way as present things. Numbers don't exist in the same way as physical objects; nor do holes, which are real, but less real than what they are in. McDaniel's theory of being illuminates a wide range of metaphysical topics.
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24Gunky Objects in a Simple WorldPhilo 9 (1): 39-46. 2006.Suppose that a material object is gunky: all of its parts are located in space, and each of its parts has a proper part. Does it follow from this hypothesis that the space in which that object resides must itself be gunky? I argue that it does not. There is room for gunky objects in a space that decomposes without remainder into mereological simples.
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142Compositional Pluralism and Composition as IdentityIn Aaron J. Cotnoir & Donald L. M. Baxter (eds.), Composition as Identity, Oxford University Press Usa. 2014.Let’s start with compositional pluralism. Elsewhere I’ve defended compositional pluralism, which we can provisionally understand as the doctrine that there is more than one basic parthood relation. (You might wonder what I mean by “basic”. We’ll discuss this in a bit.) On the metaphysics I currently favor, there are regions of spacetime and material objects, each of which enjoy bear a distinct parthood relation to members of their own kind. Perhaps there are other kinds of objects that enjoy a k…Read more
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15Against maxcon simplesAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 81 (2). 2003.In a recent paper titled ' Simples ', Ned Markosian asks and answers the Simple Question, which is, 'under what circumstances is it true of some object that it has no proper parts?' Markosian 's answer to the simple question is MaxCon, which states that an object is a simple if and only if it is a maximally continuous object. I present several arguments against MaxCon
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28Tropes and ordinary physical objectsPhilosophical Studies 104 (3): 269-290. 2001.I argue that a solution to puzzles concerning the relationship ofobjects and their properties – a version of the `bundle' theory ofparticulars according to which ordinary objects are mereologicalfusions of monadic and relational tropes – is also a solution topuzzles of material constitution involving the allegedco-location of material objects. Additionally, two argumentsthat have played a prominent role in shaping the current debate,Mark Heller's argument for Four Dimensionalism and Peter vanInw…Read more
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24Metaphysics, History, PhenomenologyRes Philosophica 91 (3): 339-365. 2014.There are three interconnected goals of this paper. The first is to articulate and motivate a view of the methodology for doing metaphysics that is broadly phenomenological in the sense of Husserl circa the Logical Investigations. The second is to articulate an argument for the importance of studying the history of philosophy when doing metaphysics that is in accordance with this methodology. The third is to confront this methodology with a series of objections and determine how well it fares in…Read more
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18Existence and NumberAnalytic Philosophy 54 (2): 209-228. 2013.The Frege-Russell view is that existence is a second-order property rather than a property of individuals. One of the most compelling arguments for this view is based on the premise that there is an especially close connection between existence and number. The most promising version of this argument is by C.J.F Williams (1981, 1992). In what follows, I argue that this argument fails. I then defend an account according to which both predications of number and existence attribute properties to ind…Read more
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26Being and Almost NothingnessNoûs 44 (4): 628-649. 2010.I am attracted to ontological pluralism, the doctrine that some things exist in a different way than other things.1 For the ontological pluralist, there is more to learn about an object’s existential status than merely whether it is or is not: there is still the question of how that entity exists. By contrast, according to the ontological monist, either something is or it isn’t, and that’s all there is say about a thing’s existential status. We appear to be to be ontological committed to what I …Read more
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Syracuse UniversityProfessor
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University of Notre DameDepartment of PhilosophyWilliam J. and Dorothy K. O'Neill Professor of Philosophy
Syracuse, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
20th Century Philosophy |