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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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3The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things, by A. W. Moore (review)Mind 124 (496): 1344-1347. 2015.This a review of Moore's book, The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics.
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20Modal realismsPhilosophical Perspectives 20 (1). 2006.Possibilism—the view that there are non-actual, merely possible entities—is a surprisingly resilient doctrine.1 One particularly hardy strand of possibilism—the modal realism championed by David Lewis—continues to attract both foes who seek to demonstrate its falsity (or at least stare its advocates into apostasy) and friends who hope to defend modal realism (or, when necessary, modify modal realism so as to avoid problematic objections).2 Although I am neither a foe nor friend of modal realism …Read more
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37Extended simplesPhilosophical Studies 133 (1). 2007.I argue that extended simples are possible. The argument given here parallels an argument given elsewhere for the claim that the shape properties of material objects are extrinsic, not intrinsic as is commonly supposed. In the final section of the paper, I show that if the shape properties of material objects are extrinsic, the most popular argument against extended simples fails.
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12Brutal SimplesOxford Studies in Metaphysics 3 233. 2007.I argue that there are is no informative statement of necessary and sufficient conditions for being a mereological simple.
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14Pasnau on category realism: author Meets Critics, Robert Pasnau, Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671Philosophical Studies 171 (1): 17-25. 2014.From the perspective of a contemporary metaphysician, Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671 is a fantastic book. It is an impressively rich, detailed, and thorough examination of a multitude of important metaphysical puzzles and arguments, written in a clear, engaging, lively, funny, and even on one occasion vulgar manner. The number of topics covered is astonishing: substance, attribute, form, matter, the metaphysics of predication, parts and wholes, the metaphysics of extension across space, persisten…Read more
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19Heidegger's Metaphysics of Material BeingsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 87 (2): 332-357. 2012.Heidegger distinguishes between things that are present-at-hand and things that are ready-to-hand. I argue that, in Heidegger, this distinction is between two sets of entities rather than between two ways of considering one and the same set of entities. I argue that Heidegger ascribes distinct temporal, essential, and phenomenological properties to these two different kinds of entities.
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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 |