•  1773
    What You Can't Expect When You're Expecting'
    Res Philosophica 92 (2): 1-23. 2015.
    It seems natural to choose whether to have a child by reflecting on what it would be like to actually have a child. I argue that this natural approach fails. If you choose to become a parent, and your choice is based on projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. If you choose to remain childless, and your choice is based upon projections about what you think it would be like for you to have a child, your choice is not rational. This su…Read more
  •  1603
    Temporal Experience
    Journal of Philosophy 107 (7): 333-359. 2010.
    The question I want to explore is whether experience supports an antireductionist ontology of time, that is, whether we should take it to support an ontology that includes a primitive, monadic property of nowness responsible for the special feel of events in the present, and a relation of passage that events instantiate in virtue of literally passing from the future, to the present, and then into the past.
  •  793
    First personal modes of presentation and the structure of empathy
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 60 (3): 189-207. 2017.
    I argue that we can understand the de se by employing the subjective mode of presentation or, if one’s ontology permits it, by defending an abundant ontology of perspectival personal properties or facts. I do this in the context of a discussion of Cappelen and Dever’s recent criticisms of the de se. Then, I discuss the distinctive role of the first personal perspective in discussions about empathy, rational deference, and self-understanding, and develop a way to frame the problem of lacking pros…Read more
  •  765
    A One Category Ontology
    In John A. Keller (ed.), Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes From the Philosophy of Peter van Inwagen, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 32-62. 2017.
    I defend a one category ontology: an ontology that denies that we need more than one fundamental category to support the ontological structure of the world. Categorical fundamentality is understood in terms of the metaphysically prior, as that in which everything else in the world consists. One category ontologies are deeply appealing, because their ontological simplicity gives them an unmatched elegance and spareness. I’m a fan of a one category ontology that collapses the distinction between p…Read more
  •  724
    The self can be understood in objective metaphysical terms as a bundle of properties, as a substance, or as some other kind of entity on our metaphysical list of what there is. Such an approach explores the metaphysical nature of the self when regarded from a suitably impersonal, ontological perspective. It explores the nature and structure of the self in objective reality, that is, the nature and structure of the self from without. This is the objective self. I am taking a different approach. I…Read more
  •  666
    Metaphysics as modeling: the handmaiden’s tale
    Philosophical Studies 160 (1): 1-29. 2012.
    Critics of contemporary metaphysics argue that it attempts to do the hard work of science from the ease of the armchair. Physics, not metaphysics, tells us about the fundamental facts of the world, and empirical psychology is best placed to reveal the content of our concepts about the world. Exploring and understanding the world through metaphysical reflection is obsolete. In this paper, I will show why this critique of metaphysics fails, arguing that metaphysical methods used to make claims abo…Read more
  •  641
    Counterfactuals and causation: history, problems, and prospects
    with John Collins and Ned Hall
    In John Collins, Ned Hall & Laurie Paul (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals, Mit Press. pp. 1--57. 2004.
    Among the many philosophers who hold that causal facts1 are to be explained in terms of—or more ambitiously, shown to reduce to—facts about what happens, together with facts about the fundamental laws that govern what happens, the clear favorite is an approach that sees counterfactual dependence as the key to such explanation or reduction. The paradigm examples of causation, so advocates of this approach tell us, are examples in which events c and e— the cause and its effect— both occur, but: ha…Read more
  •  521
    Transformative Experience and the Problem of Religious Disagreement
    In Matthew A. Benton & Jonathan L. Kvanvig (eds.), Religious Disagreement and Pluralism, Oxford University Press. pp. 127-141. 2021.
    Peer disagreement presents religious believers, agnostics, and skeptics alike with an epistemological problem: how can confidence in any religious claims (including their negations) be epistemically justified? There seem to be rational, well-informed adherents among a variety of mutually incompatible religious and non-religious perspectives, and so the problem of disagreement arises acutely in the religious domain. In this paper, we show that the transformative nature of religious experience and…Read more
  •  506
    Building the world from its fundamental constituents
    Philosophical Studies 158 (2): 221-256. 2012.
    In this paper, I argue that the spatiotemporalist approach way of modeling the fundamental constituents, structure, and composition of the world has taken a wrong turn. Spatiotemporalist approaches to fundamental structure take the fundamental nature of the world to be spatiotemporal: they take the category of spatiotemporal to be fundamental. I argue that the debates over the nature of the fundamental space in the physics show us that (i) the fact that it is conceivable that the manifest world …Read more
  •  416
    The Puzzles of Material Constitution
    Philosophy Compass 5 (7): 579-590. 2010.
    Monists about material constitution typically argue that when Statue is materially constituted by Clay, Statue is just Clay. Pluralists about material constitution deny that constitution is identity: Statue is not just Clay. When Clay materially constitutes Statue, Clay is not identical to Statue. I discuss three familiar puzzles involving grounding, overdetermination and conceptual issues, and develop three new puzzles stemming from the connection between mereological composition and material c…Read more
  •  368
    Causation and Counterfactuals (edited book)
    MIT Press. 2004.
    Thirty years after Lewis's paper, this book brings together some of the most important recent work connecting—or, in some cases, disputing the connection ...
  •  356
    Logical parts
    Noûs 36 (4). 2002.
    I argue for a property mereology and for mereological bundle theory. I then apply this theory to the one over many problem (universals) and puzzles concerning persistence and material constitution.
  •  344
    In defense of essentialism
    Philosophical Perspectives 20 (1). 2006.
    If an object has a property essentially, it has that property in every possible world according to which it exists.2 If an object has a property accidentally, it does not have that property in every possible world according to which it exists. Claims about an object’s essential or accidental properties are de re modal claims, and essential and accidental properties are de re modal properties. Take an object’s modal profile to specify its essential properties and the range of its accidental prope…Read more
  •  306
    Whose Preferences?
    American Journal of Bioethics 20 (8): 65-66. 2020.
    Commentary on Walsh, E. 2020. Cognitive transformation, dementia, and the moral weight of advance directives. The American Journal of Bioethics. 20(8): 54–64.
  •  265
    Précis of Transformative Experience
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (3): 760-765. 2015.
    I summarize the main argument of Transformative Experience (OUP 2014). The book develops familiar examples from classical philosophical debates, as well as original examples, to argue that an agent’s decision to undergo a transformative experience—an experience constituted by radical personal and epistemic change for the agent—must either be authentic or irrational, but not both. The Precis of Transformative Experience walks the reader through the main ideas involved in epistemically and persona…Read more
  •  264
    A New Role for Experimental Work in Metaphysics
    Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (3): 461-476. 2010.
    Recent work in philosophy could benefit from paying greater attention to empirical results from cognitive science involving judgments about the nature of our ordinary experience. This paper describes the way that experimental and theoretical results about the nature of ordinary judgments could—and should—inform certain sorts of enquiries in contemporary philosophy, using metaphysics as an exemplar, and hence defines a new way for experimental philosophy and cognitive science to contribute to tra…Read more
  •  261
    Coincidence as overlap
    Noûs 40 (4). 2006.
    I discuss puzzles involving coinciding material objects (such as statues and their constitutive lumps of clay) and propose solutions.
  •  261
    II—L. A. Paul: Categorical Priority and Categorical Collapse
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 87 (1): 89-113. 2013.
    I explore some of the ways that assumptions about the nature of substance shape metaphysical debates about the structure of Reality. Assumptions about the priority of substance play a role in an argument for monism, are embedded in certain pluralist metaphysical treatments of laws of nature, and are central to discussions of substantivalism and relationalism. I will then argue that we should reject such assumptions and collapse the categorical distinction between substance and property.
  •  261
    The Context of Essence
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (1): 170-184. 2004.
    I address two related questions: first, what is the best theory of how objects have de re modal properties? Second, what is the best defence of essentialism given the variability of our modal intuitions? I critically discuss several theories of how objects have their de re modal properties and address the most threatening antiessentialist objection to essentialism: the variability of our modal intuitions. Drawing on linguistic treatments of vagueness and ambiguity, I show how essentialists can a…Read more
  •  259
    Transformative Experience
    Oxford University Press. 2014.
    How should we make choices when we know so little about our futures? L. A. Paul argues that we must view life decisions as choices to make discoveries about the nature of experience. Her account of transformative experience holds that part of the value of living authentically is to experience our lives and preferences in whatever ways they evolve.
  •  184
    Transformative Experience: Replies to Pettigrew, Barnes and Campbell
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 91 (3): 794-813. 2015.
    Summary of Transformative Experience by L.A. Paul and replies to symposiasts. Discussion of undefined values, preference change, authenticity, experiential value, collective minds, mind control.
  •  173
    Causation and preemption
    with Ned Hall
    In Peter Clark & Katherine Hawley (eds.), Philosophy of Science Today, Oxford University Press Uk. 2003.
  •  165
    Transformative Choice: Discussion and Replies
    Res Philosophica 92 (2): 473-545. 2015.
    In “What you can’t expect when you’re expecting,” I argue that, if you don’t know what it’s like to be a parent, you cannot make this decision rationally—at least, not if your decision is based on what you think it would be like for you to become a parent. My argument hinges on the idea that becoming a parent is a transformative experience. This unique type of experience often transforms people in a deep and personal sense, and in the process, changes their preferences. In section 1, I will expl…Read more
  •  153
    I claim that Mill has a theory of poetry which he uses to reconcile nineteenth century associationist psychology, the tendency of the intellect to dissolve associations, and the need for educated members of society to desire utilitarian ends. The heart of the argument is that Mill thinks reading poetry encourages us to feel the feelings of others, and thus to develop pleasurable associations with the pleasurable feelings of others and painful associations with the painful feelings of others. Onc…Read more
  •  132
    Aspiring to be rational (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 102 (2): 481-485. 2021.
    Review of Agnes Callard’s 2018 OUP book 'Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming'.
  •  129
    The First Time as Tragedy, the Second as Farce
    Journal of Consciousness Studies 27 (11-12): 145-153. 2020.
    Commentary on Montero, B. (2020) What experience doesn’t teach: Pain-amnesia and a new paradigm for memory research, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 27 (11–12).
  •  126
    Real world problems
    Episteme 15 (3): 363-382. 2018.
    In the real world, there can be constraints on rational decision-making: there can be limitations on what I can know and on what you can know. There can also be constraints on my ability to deliberate or on your ability to deliberate. It is useful to know what the norms of rational deliberation should be in ideal contexts, for fully informed agents, in an ideal world. But it is also useful to know what the norms of rational deliberation should be in the actual world, in non-ideal contexts, for i…Read more
  •  119
    Choosing for Changing Selves (review)
    Philosophical Review 131 (2): 230-235. 2022.
    Review of Richard Pettigrew, Choosing for Changing Selves
  •  100
    De se preferences and empathy for future selves
    Philosophical Perspectives 31 (1): 7-39. 2017.
    As you face a life-defining change, you might ask yourself: Who will I become? This can be understood as a question about the nature and character of your future life, asked from your first person, or subjective, perspective. The nature and character of your conscious, first person, lived experience is a defining constituent of what it is like to be you. Framed this way, knowing the nature of your future lived experience is a way of knowing your future self. In this paper, I explore this way of …Read more