•  3
    Screen Worlds, Virtual Worlds, Constructed Worlds
    Constructivist Foundations 18 (3): 402-403. 2023.
    Open peer commentary on the article “The World of Screen Creatures” by Bin Liu. Abstract: Bin Liu’s defense of phenomenalism via an elaborate and inventive thought experiment is contrasted with more traditional ways of defending that doctrine. A similar distinction in strategies can be drawn between different ways of arguing that we live in a virtual world. The comparison leads to a more general, metaphilosophical conclusion about how to argue for constructivist positions in metaphysics.
  •  67
    On the Value of Make-Believe
    Journal of Aesthetic Education 46 (4): 20-31. 2012.
    Around the middle of the twentieth century, psychologists rediscovered the value of make-believe. Beginning in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a sudden and considerable outpouring of books that explored the pedagogical and therapeutic significance of imaginative play. Numerous experimental studies published since then have emphasized the importance of games of make-believe in the cognitive development and successful socialization of the very young.1 And increased attention to the use of mental im…Read more
  •  5
    Distributive Justice and Gameplay
    Philosophia 51 (4): 2103-2115. 2023.
    In Anarchy, State and Utopia Robert Nozick criticizes a broad range of theories of distributive justice using a thought experiment that involves the financial incentives for playing basketball. In this paper, I defend the so-called “patterning” conceptions of justice that are the targets of Nozick’s “Wilt Chamberlain” argument, via the development of an extended analogy between the distribution of politically relevant resources and the playing of games, as this latter activity is characterized b…Read more
  • Many writers who have discussed the Singularity have treated it not only as the inevitable outcome of advancements in cybernetic technology, but also as natural consequence of broader patterns in the development of human knowledge, or of human history itself. In this paper I examine these claims in light of Karl Popper’s famous philosophical critique of historicism. I argue that, because the Singularity is regarded as both a product of human ingenuity and a reflection of the permanent limitation…Read more
  •  6
    “News! Oh! Yes, I always like news.” Throughout Emma, Jane Austen’s eponymous heroine repeatedly betrays her intense love of gossip. Other characters (notably, Miss Bates and Mr. Knightley) also indulge and rejoice in this style of conversation, as does the novel’s own narrator. In this chapter, the authors propose to examine the multifaceted and ambiguous role played by gossip in Emma, in light of the diverse opinions expressed by a number of critics and philosophers about the ethical and psych…Read more
  •  9
    Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy: Raiding the Temple of Wisdom (edited book)
    Open Court Publishing. 2012.
    Dungeons and Dragons and Philosophy presents twenty-one chapters by different writers, all D&D aficionados but with starkly different insights and points of view. The book is divided into three parts. The first, "Heroic Tier: The Ethical Dungeon-Crawler," explores what D&D has to teach us about ethics. Part II, "Paragon Tier: Planes of Existence," arouses a new sense of wonder about both the real world and the collaborative world game players create. The third part, "Epic Tier: Leveling Up," is …Read more
  •  10
    Stone Soup: Distributional Goods and Principles of Justice
    Social Theory and Practice 46 (4): 869-889. 2020.
    Certain sorts of disputes about principles of distributive justice that have occupied a great deal of attention in recent political philosophy turn out to be fundamentally unresolvable, when they are conducted in ignorance of whether an important subclass of basic social goods exists within any particular society. I employ the folktale ‘Stone Soup’ to illustrate how such distributional goods might come into existence. Using the debate about John Rawls’s Difference Principle as an example, I argu…Read more
  •  4
    Review of Rule-Following and Realism, by Gary Ebbs (review)
    Essays in Philosophy 5 (1): 248-252. 2004.
  •  5
  •  90
    The Transition into Virtual Reality
    Disputatio 11 (55): 437-451. 2019.
    In “The Virtual and the Real,” David Chalmers argues that there is an epistemic and ontological parity between VR and ordinary reality. My argument here is that, whatever the plausibility of these claims, they provide no basis for supposing that there is a similar parity of value. Careful reflection upon certain aspects of the transition that individuals make from interacting with real-world, physical environments to interacting with VR provides a basis for thinking that, to the extent that ther…Read more
  •  9
    Philosophers from Plato and Augustine to Heidegger, Nozick, and Baudrillard have warned us of the dangers of living on too heavy a diet of illusion and make-believe. But contemporary cultural life provides broader, more attractive opportunities to do so than have existed at any other point in history. The gentle forms of self-deceit that such experiences require of us, and that so many have regarded as ethically unwholesome or psychologically self-destructive, can in fact serve as vital means to…Read more
  •  2
    Agonistic Moralism
    Contemporary Aesthetics 16 (1). 2018.
  •  3
    Comments on “Nonfunctional Semantics in Plant Signaling” by Mark Bauer
    Southwest Philosophy Review 34 (2): 73-77. 2018.
  •  76
    The Subject of Experience (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 68 (273): 870-873. 2018.
    The Subject of Experience. By Galen Strawson.
  •  36
    Experience Machines: The Philosophy of Virtual Worlds (edited book)
    Rowman & Littlefield. 2017.
    In his classic work Anarchy, State and Utopia, Robert Nozick asked his readers to imagine being permanently plugged into a 'machine that would give you any experience you desired'. The authors in this volume re-evaluate the merits of Nozick’s argument, and use it to examine subsequent developments in culture and technology.
  •  54
    The Problem With (Quasi-Realist) Expressivism
    Southwest Philosophy Review 28 (1): 33-41. 2012.
  •  30
    The Cry of Nature
    Southwest Philosophy Review 27 (1): 215-223. 2011.
  •  85
    Mind and anomalous monism
    Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2005.
    Anomalous Monism is a type of property dualism in the philosophy of mind. Property dualism combines the thesis that mental phenomena are strictly irreducible to physical phenomena with the denial that mind and body are discrete substances. For the anomalous monist, the plausibility of property dualism derives from the fact that although mental states, events and processes have genuine causal powers, the causal relationships that they enter into with physical entities cannot be explained by appea…Read more
  • Computability Theory and Ontological Emergence
    with Jon Cogburn
    American Philosophical Quarterly 48 (1): 63. 2011.
    It is often helpful in metaphysics to reflect upon the principles that govern how existence claims are made in logic and mathematics. Consider, for example, the different ways in which mathematicians construct inductive definitions. In order to provide an inductive definition of a class of mathematical entities, one must first define a base class and then stipulate further conditions for inclusion by reference to the properties of members of the base class. These conditions can be deflationary, …Read more
  •  24
    Response to “Moral Heroism and the Requirement Claim” by Kyle Fruh
    Southwest Philosophy Review 30 (2): 13-16. 2014.
  •  74
    Computability theory and literary competence
    British Journal of Aesthetics 46 (4): 369-386. 2006.
    criticism defend the idea that an individual reader's understanding of a text can be a factor in determining the meaning of what is written in that text, and hence must play a part in determining the very identity conditions of works of literary art. We examine some accounts that have been given of the type of readerly ‘competence’ that a reader must have in order for her responses to a text to play this sort of constitutive role. We argue that the analogy drawn by Stanley Fish and Jonathan Cull…Read more
  •  55
    The virtuous parent
    Journal of Value Inquiry 44 (4): 499-508. 2010.
  •  63
    On the Conceivability of an Omniscient Interpreter
    Dialogue 46 (4): 627-636. 2007.
    I examine the “omniscient interpreter” (OI) argument against scepticism that Donald Davidson published in 1977 only to retract it twenty-two years later. I argue that the argument's persuasiveness has been underestimated. I defend it against the charges that Davidson assumes the actual existence of an OI and that Davidson's other philosophical commitments are incompatible with the very conceivability of an OI. The argument's surface implausibility derives from Davidson's suggestion that an OI wo…Read more
  •  4
    How can _Wii Sports_ teach us about metaphysics? Can playing _World of Warcraft_ lead to greater self-consciousness? How can we learn about aesthetics, ethics and divine attributes from _Zork_, _Grand Theft Auto_, and _Civilization_? A variety of increasingly sophisticated video games are rapidly overtaking books, films, and television as America's most popular form of media entertainment. It is estimated that by 2011 over 30 percent of US households will own a Wii console - about the same perce…Read more
  •  28
    Reply to Rosebury
    Journal of Moral Philosophy 6 (2): 245-248. 2009.
    In his paper 'Moral Responsibility and Moral Luck,' Brian Rosebury argues that believers in moral luck ignore the fact that an agent's moral responsibilities often encompass certain epistemic obligations not usually recognized by commonsense morality. I have suggested in my article 'Virtue Epistemology and Moral Luck' that the plausibility of Rosebury's position depends upon a philosophically dubious account of the relation between first- and third-person perspectives on ethically significant ev…Read more