•  759
    Virtual Reality: Digital or Fictional?
    Disputatio 11 (55): 371-397. 2019.
    Are the objects and events that take place in Virtual Reality genuinely real? Those who answer this question in the affirmative are realists, and those who answer in the negative are irrealists. In this paper we argue against the realist position, as given by Chalmers (2017), and present our own preferred irrealist account of the virtual. We start by disambiguating two potential versions of the realist position—weak and strong— and then go on to argue that neither is plausible. We then introduce…Read more
  •  688
    How to be a modalist about essence
    In Mark Jago (ed.), Reality Making, Oxford University Press. 2016.
    Rather infamously, Kit Fine provided a series of counter-examples which purport to show that the modalist program of analysing essence in terms of metaphysical necessity is fundamentally misguided. Several would-be modalists have since responded, attempting to save the position from this Finean Challenge. This paper evaluates and rejects a trio of such responses, from Della Rocca, Zalta, and Gorman. But I’m not here arguing for Fine’s conclusion – ultimately, this is a fight amongst friends, wit…Read more
  •  625
    The past decade and a half has seen an absolute explosion of literature discussing the structure of reality. One particular focus here has been on the fundamental. However, while there has been extensive discussion, numerous fundamental questions about fundamentality have not been touched upon. In this chapter, I focus on one such lacuna about the modal strength of fundamentality. More specifically, I am interested in exploring the contingent fundamentality thesis - that is, the idea that the fu…Read more
  •  452
    Are you (relevantly) experienced? A moral argument for video games
    In Aidan Thompson, Laura D'Olimpio & Panos Paris (eds.), Educating Character Through the Arts, Routledge. forthcoming.
    Many have offered moral objections to video games, with various critics contending that they depict and promote morally dubious attitudes and behaviour. However, few have offered moral arguments in favour of video games. In this chapter, we develop one such positive moral argument. Specifically, we argue that video games offer one of the only morally acceptable methods for acquiring some ethical knowledge. Consequently, we have (defeasible) moral reasons for creating, distributing, and playing c…Read more
  •  433
    Fiction Unlimited
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 75 (1): 73-80. 2017.
    We offer an original argument for the existence of universal fictions—that is, fictions within which every possible proposition is true. Specifically, we detail a trio of such fictions, along with an easy-to-follow recipe for generating more. After exploring several consequences and dismissing some objections, we conclude that fiction, unlike reality, is unlimited when it comes to truth.
  •  397
    In this paper, we make a case for the disjunctive view of phenomenal consciousness: consciousness is essentially disjunctive in being either physical or non-physical in the sense that it has both physical and non-physical possible instances. We motivate this view by showing that it undermines two well-known conceivability arguments in philosophy of mind: the zombie argument for anti-physicalism, and the anti-zombie argument for physicalism. By appealing to the disjunctive view, we argue that two…Read more
  •  325
    As Vetter says, we are at the “beginning of the debate, not the end” (2015: 300) when it comes to evaluating her potentiality-based account of metaphysical modality. This paper contributes to this developing debate by highlighting three problems for Vetter’s account. Specifically, I begin (§1) by articulating some relevant details of Vetter’s potentiality-based view. This leads to the first issue (§2), concerning unclarity in the idea of degrees of potentiality. Similarly, the second issue (§3) …Read more
  •  218
    Against the reduction of modality to essence
    Synthese (Suppl 6): 1-17. 2018.
    It is a truth universally acknowledged that a claim of metaphysical modality, in possession of good alethic standing, must be in want of an essentialist foundation. Or at least so say the advocates of the reductive-essence-first view, according to which all modality is to be reductively defined in terms of essence. Here, I contest this bit of current wisdom. In particular, I offer two puzzles—one concerning the essences of non-compossible, complementary entities, and a second involving entities …Read more
  •  213
    Grounding, mental causation, and overdetermination
    Synthese 195 (8): 3723-3733. 2018.
    Recently, Kroedel and Schulz have argued that the exclusion problem—which states that certain forms of non-reductive physicalism about the mental are committed to systematic and objectionable causal overdetermination—can be solved by appealing to grounding. Specifically, they defend a principle that links the causal relations of grounded mental events to those of grounding physical events, arguing that this renders mental–physical causal overdetermination unproblematic. Here, we contest Kroedel …Read more
  •  212
    Modality, Sparsity, and Essence
    Philosophical Quarterly 63 (253): 760-782. 2013.
    Rather infamously, Kit Fine provided a series of counter‐examples which purport to show that attempts to understand essence in terms of metaphysical necessity are ‘fundamentally misguided’. Here, my aim is to put forward a new version of modalism that is, I argue, immune to Fine's counter‐examples. The core of this new modalist account is a sparseness restriction, such that an object's essential properties are those sparse properties it has in every world in which it exists. After first motivati…Read more
  •  159
    Load bare-ing particulars
    Philosophical Studies 172 (6): 1419-1434. 2015.
    Bare particularism is a constituent ontology according to which substances—concrete, particular objects like people, tables, and tomatoes—are complex entities constituted by their properties and their bare particulars. Yet, aside from this description, much about bare particularism is fundamentally unclear. In this paper, I attempt to clarify this muddle by elucidating the key metaphysical commitments underpinning any plausible formulation of the position. So the aim here is primarily catechisma…Read more
  •  122
    The puzzle of virtual theft
    Analysis 80 (3): 493-499. 2020.
    How can you steal something that doesn’t exist? This question confronts those of us who take an irrealist view of virtual objects and agree with the Supreme Court of the Netherlands that robbery took place when two boys used non-virtual violence to coerce a third boy into relinquishing his virtual amulet and mask. Here we outline this Puzzle of Virtual Theft, along with the closely related Puzzle of Virtual Value. After demonstrating how these puzzles are deeply problematic for the irrealist, we…Read more
  •  105
    Against the epistemology of essence
    Connaissance Philosophique Et Connaissance des Essences. 2023.
    While recent history has seen significant debate concerning the nature and extension of essence, comparatively little attention has been paid to the epistemology of essence. This is strange, as, plausibly, what answers we give to the metaphysical questions about essence will (or should) be partially constrained by our essence epistemology. Here, I aim to go some way towards filling this lacuna. In particular, I here argue that there is no plausible epistemic story available for non-modal account…Read more
  •  76
    The Necessity of Naturalness
    Erkenntnis 1-9. 2022.
    Are properties perfectly natural (or not) relative to worlds, or are they perfectly natural (or not) tout court? That is, could there be a property P that is instanti-ated at worlds w1 and w2, and is perfectly natural at w1 but not at w2? Here, we offer an original argument for the non-world-relativity of perfect naturalness. Along the way, we reply to a prima facie compelling argument for the contin-gency of perfect naturalness, based upon the connection between natural prop-erties an…Read more
  •  65
    Necessity by accident
    Argumenta 7 (2): 323-335. 2022.
    General consensus has it that contingencies lack the requisite modal umph to serve as explanations for the modal status of necessities. The central aim of this paper is to show that this received opinion is incorrect: contingent necessity-makers are in fact possible. To do so, I identify certain conditions the satisfaction of which entail the possibility of contingent necessity-makers. I then argue for two broad instances where these conditions are satisfied. Consequently, the associated necessi…Read more
  •  60
    A Note on Lange on Contingent Necessity-Makers
    Erkenntnis 86 (3): 763-771. 2019.
    Lange has argued that contingencies lack the modal strength to be necessity-makers. Here, I argue that Lange’s case turns upon a faulty premise, and that there is no obvious fixes he might pursue. The general upshot is that his argument gives us no reason to think that contingencies could not be necessity-makers after all.
  •  54
    The Possibility of Empty Fictions
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 77 (1): 35-42. 2019.
  •  53
    A Note on Morato on Modality and Explanation
    Erkenntnis 82 (5): 967-974. 2017.
    This brief note critically assesses the central arguments in Morato’s recent contribution to the growing literature on Blackburn’s dilemma about necessity. In particular, I demonstrate that neither of Morato’s two novel reconstructions of the dilemma’s contingency horn succeed, since both turn on false premises; and, Morato fails to adequately motivate his own response to these reconstructions. The upshot is that Morato has set himself a pair of flawed problems, then offered a flawed solution.
  •  45
    Glitches as fictional (mis)communication
    with Nele Van de Mosselear
    In Timothy Barker & Maria Korolkova (eds.), Miscommunication: Error, mistakes, media, Bloomsbury. pp. 300-315. 2021.
    Here, we focus on the underexplored fictional relevance of videogame glitches. For this purpose, we will make use philosophical theories on fiction, as well as standard suggestions about how best to deal with unintended errors within fiction. Focusing on glitches like that of Red Dead Redemption’s "manimals", we argue that glitches, more than any kinds of mistakes in traditional, non-interactive fictions, can actually have a significant influence on the fictional worlds of the work in which they…Read more
  •  43
    Enduring Senses
    Synthese 200 (291): 1-21. 2022.
    The meanings of words seem to change over time. But while there is a growing body of literature in linguistics and philosophy about meaning change, there has been little discussion about the metaphysical underpinnings of meaning change. The central aim of this paper is to push this discussion forward by surveying the terrain and advocating for a particular metaphysical picture. In so doing, we hope to clarify various aspects of the nature of meaning change, as well as prompt future philosophical…Read more
  •  31
    Don’t stop make-believing
    Journal of the Philosophy of Sport 46 (2): 261-275. 2019.
    ABSTRACTHow is it that we can rationally assert that sport outcomes do not really matter, while also seeming to care about them to an absurd degree? This is the so-called puzzle of sport. The broadly Waltonian solution to the puzzle has it that we make-believe the outcomes matter. Recently, Stear has critiqued this Waltonian solution, raising a series of five objections. He has also leveraged these objections to motive his own contextualist solution to the puzzle. The aim of this paper is to def…Read more
  •  30
    Online affective manipulation
    In Michael Klenk & Fleur Jongepier (eds.), The Philosophy of Online Manipulation, Routledge. pp. 311-326. 2022.
    The aim of this chapter is broadly exploratory: we want to better understand online affective manipulation and what, if anything, is morally problematic about it. To do so, we begin by pulling apart various forms of online affective manipulation. We then proceed to discuss why online affective manipulation is properly categorized as manipulative, as well as what is wrong with (online) manipulation more generally. Building on this, we next argue that, at its most extreme, online affective manipul…Read more
  •  30
    Playing with Art in Suits’ Utopia
    Sport, Ethics and Philosophy 13 (3-4): 456-470. 2019.
    ABSTRACTAccording to Bernard Suits, people in Utopia would spend their time playing games and would not spend any time creating or engaging with artworks. Here, we argue against this claim. We do s...
  •  27
    Emotions in Sport and Games (edited book)
    Routledge. 2020.
    Emotions play an important role in both sport and games, from the pride and joy of victory, the misery and shame of defeat, and the anger and anxiety felt along the way. This volume brings together experts in the philosophy of sport and games and experts in the philosophy of emotion to investigate this important area of research. The book discusses the role of the emotions for both participants and spectators of sports and games, including detailed discussions of suffering, shame, anger, anxiety…Read more
  •  26
    Against the reduction of modality to essence
    Synthese 198 (S6): 1455-1471. 2018.
    It is a truth universally acknowledged that a claim of metaphysical modality, in possession of good alethic standing, must be in want of an essentialist foundation. Or at least so say the advocates of thereductive-essence-firstview, according to which all modality is to be reductively defined in terms of essence. Here, I contest this bit of current wisdom. In particular, I offer two puzzles—one concerning the essences of non-compossible, complementary entities, and a second involving entities wh…Read more
  •  23
    No Trouble with Poetic Licence: a reply to Xhignesse
    British Journal of Aesthetics 58 (3): 319-326. 2018.
    Recently, Xhignesse has argued that the principle of poetic licence, which roughly states that any class of propositions is true in some possible fiction, ought to be rejected. Here, we defend PPL from Xhignesse’s objection by demonstrating that, properly understood, his purported counter-example case is either irrelevant or unproblematic. The upshot is that Xhignesse has given us no reason to reject PPL.