•  829
    A Passage Theory of Time
    Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 11 95-122. 2018.
    This paper proposes a view of time that takes passage to be the most basic temporal notion, instead of the usual A-theoretic and B-theoretic notions, and explores how we should think of a world that exhibits such a genuine temporal passage. It will be argued that an objective passage of time can only be made sense of from an atemporal point of view and only when it is able to constitute a genuine change of objects across time. This requires that passage can flip one fact into a contrary fact, ev…Read more
  •  428
    Standpoints: A Study of a Metaphysical Picture
    Journal of Philosophy 120 (3): 117-138. 2023.
    There is a type of metaphysical picture that surfaces in a range of philosophical discussions, is of intrinsic interest, and yet remains ill-understood. According to this picture, the world contains a range of standpoints relative to which different facts obtain. Any true representation of the world cannot but adopt a particular standpoint. The aim of this paper is to propose a regimentation of a metaphysics that underwrites this picture. Key components are a factive notion of metaphysical relat…Read more
  •  370
    On Bitcoin: A Study in Applied Metaphysics
    Philosophical Quarterly 73 (3): 783-802. 2023.
    This essay is dedicated to the memory of Katherine Hawley.1Bitcoin was invented to serve as a digital currency that demands no trust in financial institutions, such as commercial and central banks. This paper discusses metaphysical aspects of bitcoin, in particular the view that bitcoin is socially constructed, non-concrete, and genuinely exists. If bitcoin is socially constructed, then one may worry that this reintroduces trust in the communities responsible for the social construction. Althoug…Read more
  •  325
    On the fragmentalist interpretation of special relativity
    Philosophical Studies 177 (1): 21-37. 2020.
    Fragmentalism was first introduced by Kit Fine in his ‘Tense and Reality’. According to fragmentalism, reality is an inherently perspectival place that exhibits a fragmented structure. The current paper defends the fragmentalist interpretation of the special theory of relativity, which Fine briefly considers in his paper. The fragmentalist interpretation makes room for genuine facts regarding absolute simultaneity, duration and length. One might worry that positing such variant properties is a t…Read more
  •  281
    Subjective Facts about Consciousness
    Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10 (n/a): 530-553. 2023.
    The starting point of this paper is the thought that the phenomenal appearances that accompany mental states are somehow only there, or only real, from the standpoint of the subject of those mental states. The world differs across subjects in terms of which appearances obtain. Not only are subjects standpoints across which the world varies, subjects are standpoints that we can ‘adopt’ in our own theorizing about the world (or stand back from). The picture that is suggested by these claims has an…Read more
  •  246
    On Fine’s fragmentalism
    Philosophical Studies 172 (12): 3119-3133. 2015.
    Fragmentalism is the view that reality is not a metaphysically unified place, but fragmented in a certain sense, and constituted by incompatible facts across such fragments. It was introduced by Kit Fine in a discussion of tense realist theories of time. Here I discuss the conceptual foundations of fragmentalism, identify several open questions in Fine’s characterization of the view, and propose an understanding of fragmentalism that addresses these open questions
  •  242
    Against Fundamentality‐Based Metaphysics
    Noûs 52 (3): 587-610. 2018.
    Metaphysical views typically draw some distinction between reality and appearance, endorsing realism about some subject matters and antirealism about others. There are different conceptions of how best to construe antirealist theories. A simple view has it that we are antirealists about a subject matter when we believe that this subject matter fails to obtain. This paper discusses an alternative view, which I will call the fundamentality-based conception of antirealism. We are antirealists in th…Read more
  •  159
    Content Disjunctivism and the Perception of Appearances
    Philosophers' Imprint 21 (18). 2021.
    Content disjunctivism is the view that veridical experience involves contents and objects that differ from those of corresponding hallucinations. On one formulation of this view, we are aware of ordinary material things in our surroundings when we experience veridically, and we are aware of mere appearances when we hallucinate. This paper proposes a way of developing this view and offers some considerations in support. Central to the proposed regimentation will be a distinction between different…Read more
  •  136
    In defense of disjointism
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.
    Disjointism is the view that co-located objects do not share any parts. A human-shaped statue is composed from a torso, head and limbs; the co-located lumpof clay is only composed from chunks of clay. This essay discusses the tenability of this relatively neglected view, focusing on two objections. The first objection is that disjointism implies co-located copies of microphysical particles. I argue that it doesn’t imply this and that there are more plausible disjointist views of tiny parts avail…Read more
  •  123
    Perspectival Variance and Worldly Fragmentation
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (1): 42-57. 2016.
    Objects often manifest themselves in incompatible ways across perspectives that are epistemically on a par. The standard response to such cases is to deny that the properties that things appear to have from different perspectives are properties that things really have out there. This type of response seems worrying: too many properties admit of perspectival variance and there are good theoretical reasons to think that such properties are genuinely instantiated. So, we have reason to explore view…Read more
  •  80
    A fragmented world
    Dissertation, University of St Andrews. 2015.
    Objects often manifest themselves in incompatible ways across perspectives that are on a par. Phenomena of this kind have been responsible for crucial revisions to our conception of the world, both philosophical and scientific. The standard response to them is to deny that the way things appear from different perspectives are ways things really are out there, a response that is based on an implicit metaphysical assumption that the world is a unified whole. This dissertation explores the possibil…Read more
  •  57
    On relativist approaches to many-one identity
    Synthese 198 (Suppl 18): 4453-4465. 2018.
    Composition as identity is the view that a whole is identical to its parts taken collectively. Such a view raises the question of how the same portion of reality can be both one thing and many things. A primitivist view holds that there is no explanation to be had and that we simply need to accept that being one thing and being many things are compatible. One might think that we can do better by resorting to relativization. A relativist view may seem to explain how the same portion of reality ca…Read more