Syracuse University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1984
Syracuse, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology
  •  74
    The worst of all worlds
    Philosophia 28 (1-4): 255-268. 2001.
  •  7
    Book reviews (review)
    with Victor N. Constantinescu, Robert Mayhew, Karen Offen, Gloria Mound, Ernest Krausz, Ludwig Finscher, Jean‐Philippe Mathy, Bruno Ferraro, Bent Greve, Jan Bednarich, David Potter, Tracy B. Strong, Steven Botterill, Joseph C. Bertolini, Richard Foulkes, Janusz Mucha, Keith D. White, Kevin J. Hayes, G. M. Ditchfield, Michael Rogin, Mike Hawkins, Devorah Greenberg, Stuart Rowland, Tracey Rowland, Nicholas Aylott, J. K. A. Thomaneck, Robert Winter, Brayton Polka, Sidney Pollard, Chushichi Tsuzuki, Greg Walker, Walter Leimgruber, Martin Conboy, Lavinia Stan, David Ward, Jane E. Phillips, Thomas A. Howard, Pamela M. Barnes, David Ian Rabey, Stephen J. Whitfield, Theodore R. Weeks, Takamaro Hanzawa, Pawel Luków, J. S. Myerov, and Oliver S. Buckton
    The European Legacy 3 (2): 97-148. 1998.
    Romania in Transition. Edited by Lavinia Stan xviii + 218 pp. £39.50 cloth. Early Greek Political Thought from Homer to the Sophists. Edited by Michael Gagarin and Paul Woodruff lvi + 324 pp. $59.95/£40.00 cloth, $18.95/£14.95 paper. Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes. Edited by Natalie Zemon Davis and Arlette Farge. Vol. 3 of A History of Women in the West, general editors, Georges Duby and Michelle Perrot x + 595 pp. $29.95 cloth, $16.95 paper. The Cross and the Pear Tree: A Sephardic Jou…Read more
  •  30
    Freedom from Necessity: The Metaphysical Basis of Responsibility, by Bernard Berofsky (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51 (2): 465-468. 1991.
  • Johna bella filozofia mechaniki kwantowej
    Studia Philosophiae Christianae 30 (2): 151-161. 1994.
  • Worlds, Pluriverses, and Minds
    In Dean Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics: Volume 3, Clarendon Press. 2007.
  •  20
    Practically StrangeDividing Reality
    with Eli Hirsch
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1): 203. 1996.
    In Eli Hirsch’s clever and careful Dividing Reality he asks us to consider several strange languages. For example, in the Gricular language there is no word that applies to all and only green things and none that applies to all and only circular things, but there are the three words “gricular,” which applies to anything that is either green or circular, “grincular,” which applies to anything that is either green or not circular, and “ngricular,” which applies to anything that is either circular …Read more
  •  44
    Practically Strange (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1): 203. 1996.
    In Eli Hirsch’s clever and careful Dividing Reality he asks us to consider several strange languages. For example, in the Gricular language there is no word that applies to all and only green things and none that applies to all and only circular things, but there are the three words “gricular,” which applies to anything that is either green or circular, “grincular,” which applies to anything that is either green or not circular, and “ngricular,” which applies to anything that is either circular …Read more
  •  13
    Hobartian Voluntarism: Grounding a Deontological Conceptionof Epistemic Justification
    Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 81 (2): 130-141. 2000.
  •  12
    Hudson Fine Tunes His Way to Hyperspace
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (2): 436-443. 2008.
  •  30
    Property Counterparts in Ersatz Worlds
    Journal of Philosophy 95 (6): 293. 1998.
  •  11
    Un travail inconnu de Georges Lemaître
    with O. Godart
    Revue d'Histoire des Sciences 31 (4): 345-359. 1978.
  •  38
    3. Worlds, Pluriverses, and Minds
    Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 3 77. 2007.
  •  15
    Review: Practically Strange (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1). 1996.
    In Eli Hirsch’s clever and careful Dividing Reality he asks us to consider several strange languages. For example, in the Gricular language there is no word that applies to all and only green things and none that applies to all and only circular things, but there are the three words “gricular,” which applies to anything that is either green or circular, “grincular,” which applies to anything that is either green or not circular, and “ngricular,” which applies to anything that is either circular …Read more
  •  56
    Hudson fine tunes his way to hyperspace (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (2). 2008.
  •  27
    Time, Causality, and the Quantum Theory (review)
    Review of Metaphysics 37 (2): 408-409. 1983.
    Henry Mehlberg, an eminent philosopher educated in the best traditions of Polish logic, till his death professor at the University of Chicago, was for a long time interested in an interdisciplinary study of time, especially in its physical and philosophical aspects. "Mehlberg's command of the most recent relevant developments in theoretical physics was outstanding even within the relatively small circle of philosophers working in the foundations of physics, most of whom are better known than he"…Read more
  •  411
    Temporal parts of four dimensional objects
    Philosophical Studies 46 (3). 1984.
    I offer a clear conception of a temporal part that does not make the existence of temporal parts implausible. This can be done if (and only if) we think of physical objects as four dimensional, The fourth dimension being time. Unless we are willing to deny the existence of most spatial parts, Or willing to accept the possibility of coincident entities, Or accept something even more implausible, We should accept the existence of temporal parts
  •  215
    The Donkey Problem
    Philosophical Studies 140 (1): 83-101. 2008.
    The Donkey Problem (as I am calling it) concerns the relationship between more and less fundamental ontologies. I will claim that the moral to draw from the Donkey Problem is that the less fundamental objects are merely conventional. This conventionalism has consequences for the 3D/4D debate. Four-dimensionalism is motivated by a desire to avoid coinciding objects, but once we accept that the non-fundamental ontology is conventional there is no longer any reason to reject coincidence. I therefor…Read more
  •  53
    Painted Mules and the Cartesian Circle
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (1). 1996.
    René Descartes, one of the dominant figures in the history of philosophy, has been accused of one of the most obvious mistakes in the history of philosophy — the so-called cartesian circle. It is my goal in this paper to arrive at an understanding of Descartes's work that attributes to him a theory that should be of philosophical interest to contemporary epistemologists, is consistent with, and suggested by, the actual text, and avoids the circle.I begin with a brief explanation of the supposed …Read more
  •  58
    Five layers of interpretation for possible worlds
    Philosophical Studies 90 (2): 205-214. 1998.
  •  18
    The Mad Scientist Meets the Robot Cats
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (2): 333-337. 1996.
    In 1962 Hilary Putnam forced us to face the possibility of robot cats. More than twenty years later Daniel Dennett found himself doing battle with mad scientists and other “bogeymen.” Though these two examples are employed in different philosophical arena, there is an important connection between them that has not been emphasized. Separating the concept associated with a kind term from the extension of that term, as Putnam and others have urged, raises the possibility of accepting counterexample…Read more
  •  237
    Things change
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (3): 695-704. 1992.
  •  72
    Non-backtracking Counterfactuals and the Conditional Analysis
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 15 (1): 75-85. 1985.
    The conditional analysis of ability statements has many versions. In this paper I will deal with the version which claims that ‘x can do y’ is equivalent to ‘if x were to choose to do y, then x would do y.’ However, my comments should be equally applicable to any analysis of ability statements that can properly be called a version of the conditional analysis. The intuition behind the conditional analysis is that what it is for one to be able to do something is for one's choice to be effective. T…Read more
  •  166
    Anti-Essentialism and Counterpart Theory
    The Monist 88 (4): 600-618. 2005.
    Anti-essentialism holds that no thing has any modal properties except relative to a conceptualization—for instance, relative to a description. One and the same thing might be essentially rational relative to the description “mathematician” but only accidentally rational relative to the description “bicyclist.” Anti-essentialism was dominant in pre-Kripkean days. The old description theory of names made room for anti-essentialism by reducing apparently true de re modal attributions to de dicto on…Read more
  •  90
    Transworld Identity for the Ersatzist
    Philosophical Topics 30 (1): 77-101. 2002.