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67Screening for genetic disorders: therapeutic abortion and IVFJournal of Medical Ethics 16 (1): 43-47. 1990.This paper examines a proposal to make use of IVF techniques to provide an alternative to therapeutic abortion of fetuses with genetic abnormalities. We begin by describing the proposed procedure, and then show that, considered in itself, it is morally on a par with therapeutic abortion. However, once the wider practical implications are brought into view, the proposed new procedure loses its initial appeal. The pros and cons are not sufficiently clear-cut entirely to rule out the IVF procedure,…Read more
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8Cubism, Perspective, Belief1In Murray Michael & John O'Leary-Hawthorne (eds.), Philosophy in Mind: The Place of Philosophy in the Study of Mind, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 243--276. 1994.
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17Philosophy in Mind: The Place of Philosophy in the Study of Mind (edited book)Kluwer Academic Publishers. 1994.Increasingly, the mind is being treated as a fit subject for scientific inquiry. As cognitive science and empirical psychology strive to uncover the mind's secrets, it is fitting to inquire as to what distinctive role is left for philosophy in the study of mind. This collection, which includes contributions by some of the leading scholars in the field, offers a rich variety of perspectives on this issue. Topics addressed include: the place of a priori inquiry in philosophy of mind, moral psychol…Read more
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13Binary Quantification SystemsNotre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 36 (3): 382-395. 1995.We investigate the formal theory of binary quantifiers, that is, quantifiers that take seriously the surface structure of natural language quantifier phrases. We show how to develop a natural deduction system for logics of this sort and demonstrate soundness and completeness results
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17Introduction: Philosophy in MindIn Murray Michael & John O'Leary-Hawthorne (eds.), Philosophy in Mind: The Place of Philosophy in the Study of Mind, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 1--7. 1994.
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8Philosophy in Mind: The Place of Philosophy in the Study of MindKluwer Academic Publishers. 1994.Introduction: Philosophy in Mind / Michaelis Michael and John O’Leary-Hawthorne -- AI and the Synthetic A Priori / Jose Benardete -- Armchair Metaphysics /Frank Jackson -- Doubts About Conceptual Analysis /Gilbert Harman -- Deflationary Self-Knowledge / Andre Gallois -- How to Get to Know One’s Own Mind: Some Simple Ways / Annette Baier -- Psychology in Perspective / Huw Price -- Can Philosophy of Language Provide the Key to the Foundations of Ethics? /Karl-Otto Apel --Unprincipled Decisions / L…Read more
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26The dialectics of scepticism: Comments on GalloisAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 73 (1). 1995.This Article does not have an abstract
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143Compatibilist semantics in metaphysics: A case studyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (1). 1996.(1996). Compatibilist semantics in metaphysics: A case study. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 117-134. doi: 10.1080/00048409612347101.
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40Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big QuestionsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2004.Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better if we were immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Life, Death, and Meaning brings together key readings, primarily by English-speaking philosophers, on such 'big questions.'.
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37Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions (edited book)Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2004.Do our lives have meaning? Should we create more people? Is death bad? Should we commit suicide? Would it be better to be immortal? Should we be optimistic or pessimistic? Since Life, Death, and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions first appeared, David Benatar's distinctive anthology designed to introduce students to the key existential questions of philosophy has won a devoted following among users in a variety of upper-level and even introductory courses.
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14Naming, Necessity, and More: Explorations in the Philosophical Work of Saul Kripke, edited by Jonathan Berg: London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. xiv + 245, £60 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 94 (4): 836-836. 2016.
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21A Companion To David Lewis, edited by Barry Loewer and Jonathan Schaffer: Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015, pp. xii + 580, £130 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 95 (2): 416-417. 2017.
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48Formal Causes: Definition, Explanation, and Primacy in Socratic and Aristotelian Thought, by Michael T. Ferejohn: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. xii + 211, £35 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (1): 204-205. 2015.
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31From Correlation to Causation: What Do We Need in the Historical Sciences?Acta Biotheoretica 64 (3): 241-262. 2016.Changes in the methodology of the historical sciences make them more vulnerable to unjustifiable speculations being passed off as scientific results. The integrity of historical science is in peril due the way speculative and often unexamined causal assumptions are being used to generate data and underpin the identification of correlations in such data. A step toward a solution is to distinguish between plausible and speculative assumptions that facilitate the inference from measured and observe…Read more
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Three Essays in PhilosophyDissertation, Princeton University. 1998.This dissertation consists of three essays on philosophical topics. The first is an examination of David Lewis's influential case for the thesis that mental states are physical states. This essay concludes that even if mental states are physically constituted, they are not identical with physical states. The second essay responds from a classical point of view to the challenge in the work of Michael Dummett to classical logic by showing how a semantical anti-realist can justify classical inferen…Read more
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48Philosophy, Certainty and Semantic StretchAustralasian Philosophical Review 1 (3): 281-290. 2017.ABSTRACTLloyd encourages us to look anew at philosophy and science by using a comparative methodology, comparing the familiar Western form of philosophy, for example, with the forms found in ancient China. Taking lessons from comparative biology, this paper attempts to show that such comparison can only take place when we understand what we are looking at in the familiar case. The question of the centrality of the drive for certainty is addressed. Why has certainty been so attractive and what do…Read more
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62On a “most telling” argument for paraconsistent logicSynthese 193 (10). 2016.Priest and others have presented their “most telling” argument for paraconsistent logic: that only paraconsistent logics allow non-trivial inconsistent theories. This is a very prevalent argument; occurring as it does in the work of many relevant and more generally paraconsistent logicians. However this argument can be shown to be unsuccessful. There is a crucial ambiguity in the notion of non-triviality. Disambiguated the most telling reason for paraconsistent logics is either question-begging …Read more
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51Tichý on Kripke on A Posteriori NecessitiesPhilosophical Studies 92 (1/2). 1998.In Tichy's influential attack, a number of egregious errors are attributed to Kripke's seminal distinction of epistemic and metaphysical dimensions in meaning. I argue that Tichy's work is based on important misunderstandings. In particular Tichy attributes to Kripke the mistaken view that it is propositions, that is sets of worlds, which are the proper object of the appellation "a priori" and "a posteriori". I show that this is a mistaken attribution. Further, I argue that propositions cannot b…Read more
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2“Group Blame, Responsibility & Guilt: An Exercise in Social Ontology”Humanitas Asiatica 2 39-58. 2001.
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68Information and Veridicality: Information Processing and the Bar-Hillel/Carnap ParadoxPhilosophy of Science 83 (1): 131-151. 2016.Floridi’s Theory of Strongly Semantic Information posits the Veridicality Thesis. One motivation is that it can serve as a foundation for information-based epistemology being an alternative to the tripartite theory of knowledge. However, the Veridicality thesis is false, if ‘information’ is to play an explanatory role in human cognition. Another motivation is avoiding the so-called Bar-Hillel/Carnap paradox. But this paradox only seems paradoxical, if ‘information’ and ‘informativeness’ are syno…Read more
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15“Accounting for commitments: A priori knowledge, Ontology and logical entailments”In Stephen Cade Hetherington (ed.), Aspects of Knowing: Epistemological Essays, Elsevier Science. pp. 35. 2006.
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58The problems with double-indexing accounts of the a prioriPhilosophical Studies 118 (1-2): 67-81. 2004.Inspired by two-dimensional modal logic, some have sought to provide analyses of the notion of the contingent a priori which identify the a priori with truths which have a necessary diagonal. I argue that these analyses fail insofar as they miss the crucial epistemic aspect of the a priori. Augmenting these analyses with specifically epistemic accounts might be possible, but the interest would then reside in these epistemic accounts of the a priori and not in the formal models.
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23Facing inconsistency: Theories and our relations to themEpisteme 10 (4): 351-367. 2013.Classical logic is explosive in the face of contradiction, yet we find ourselves using inconsistent theories. Mark Colyvan, one of the prominent advocates of the indispensability argument for realism about mathematical objects, suggests that such use can be garnered to develop an argument for commitment to inconsistent objects and, because of that, a paraconsistent underlying logic. I argue to the contrary that it is open to a classical logician to make distinctions, also needed by the paraconsi…Read more
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103Problems with Lewis' argument for the identity theoryRatio 26 (1): 51-61. 2012.David Lewis presented a celebrated argument for the identity theory of mind. His argument has provided the model for the program of analytic functionalism. He argues from two premises, that mental states are analytically tied to their causal roles and that, contingently, there is never a need to explain any physical change by going outside the realm of the physical, to the conclusion that mental states are physical. I show that his argument is mistaken and that it trades on a crucial ambiguity i…Read more
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |