•  135
    One of the most serious theoretical obstacles to contemporary spacetime substantivalism is Earman and Norton's hole argument. We argue that applying the bundle theory of substance to spacetime points allows spacetime substantivalists to escape the conclusion of this argument. Some philosophers have claimed that the bundle theory cannot be applied to substantival spacetime in this way due to problems in individuating spacetime points in symmetrical spacetimes. We demonstrate that it is possible t…Read more
  •  27
    Harm and the Boundaries of Disease
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 42 (4): 467-484. 2017.
    What is the relationship between harm and disease? Discussions of the relationship between harm and disease typically suffer from two shortcomings. First, they offer relatively little analysis of the concept of harm itself, focusing instead on examples of clear cases of harm such as death and dismemberment. This makes it difficult to evaluate such accounts in borderline cases, where the putative harms are less severe. Second, they assume that harm-based accounts of disease must be understood nor…Read more
  •  8
    Information, veridicality, and inferential knowledge
    with Nir Fresco and Aditya Ghose
    American Philosophical Quarterly 54 (1): 61-75. 2017.
    Is information always true? According to some authors, including Dretske, Grice, Barwise, and recently, Floridi, who has defended the Veridicality Thesis, the answer is positive. For, on Floridi’s view, there is an intimate relation between information and knowledge, which is always true. It is argued in this article that information used in inferential knowledge can, nevertheless, be false, thereby showing that the Veridicality Thesis is false.
  •  1
    Philosophers and scientists often describe theories, laws, and explanations as applying to the world at different 'levels'. The idea of a 'level of application' is often used to demarcate disciplinary or sub-disciplinary boundaries in the sciences. For instance, stoichiometric laws and quantum mechanical laws might be said to describe chemical phenomena at different levels. More generally, the idea of levels is used to distinguish more fundamental laws or theories from less fundamental ones: mor…Read more
  •  99
    Reductive levels and multi-scale structure
    Synthese 165 (1). 2008.
    I discuss arguments about the relationship between different “levels” of explanation in the light of examples involving multi-scale analysis. I focus on arguments about causal competition between properties at different levels, such as Jaegwon Kim’s “supervenience argument.” A central feature of Kim’s argument is that higher-level properties can in general be identified with “micro-based” properties. I argue that explanations from multi-scale analysis give examples of explanations that are probl…Read more
  •  30
    How embodied is cognition?
    with David D. Hutto
    The Philosophers' Magazine 68 77-83. 2015.
  •  8
    Tim Maudlin, The Metaphysics Within Physics Reviewed by (review)
    Philosophy in Review 28 (1): 54-56. 2008.
  •  27
    Emergent Expertise?
    Educational Philosophy and Theory 46 (6): 692-708. 2014.
    The concept of emergence appears in various places within the literature on expertise and expert practice. Here, I examine some of these applications of emergence in the light of two prominent accounts of emergence from the philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. I evaluate these accounts with respect to several specific contexts in which emergence seems to be an appropriate way of characterizing expertise in groups. While it is sometimes assumed that emergent phenomena are in some way ine…Read more
  •  50
    Reviews (review)
    Philosophical Psychology 22 (1). 2009.