•  72
    Infinite Regress Arguments
    The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2018.
  •  15
    Tropes, Necessary Connections, and Non‐Transferability
    Dialectica 60 (2): 99-113. 2006.
    In this paper I examine whether the Humean denial of necessary connections between wholly distinct contingent existents poses problems for a theory of tropes. In section one I consider the substance‐attribute theory of tropes. I distinguish first between three versions of the non‐transferability of a trope from the substratum in which it inheres and then between two versions of the denial of necessary connections. I show that the most plausible combination of these views is consistent. In sectio…Read more
  •  174
    Vagueness and naturalness
    Erkenntnis 72 (2): 281-293. 2010.
    I attempt to accommodate the phenomenon of vagueness with classical logic and bivalence. I hold that for any vague predicate there is a sharp cut-off between the things that satisfy it and the things that do not; I claim that this is due to the greater naturalness of one of the candidate meanings of that predicate. I extend the thought to the problem of the many and Benacerraf cases. I go on to explore the idea that it is ontically indeterminate what the most natural meanings are, and hence onti…Read more
  •  293
    Much Ado About Nothing: A Study of Metaphysical Nihilism
    Erkenntnis 64 (2): 193-222. 2006.
    This paper is an investigation of metaphysical nihilism: the view that there could have been no contingent or concrete objects. I begin by showing the connections of the nihilistic theses to other philosophical doctrines. I then go on to look at the arguments for and against metaphysical nihilism in the literature and find both to be flawed. In doing so I will look at the nature of abstract objects, the nature of spacetime and mereological simples, the existence of the empty set, the dependence …Read more
  •  29
    Notes on the
    with Lucy Allais, Louise Antony, Elizabeth Barnes, John Bigelow, Alexander Bird, John Campbell, and Roberto Casati
    In Robin Le Poidevin (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, Routledge. 2009.
  •  659
    The Grounds of Necessity
    Philosophy Compass 5 (4): 348-358. 2010.
    Some truths are necessary, others could have been false. Why? What is the source of the distinction between the necessary and the contingent? What's so special about the necessary truths that account for their necessity? In this article, we look at some of the most promising accounts of the grounds of necessity: David Lewis' reduction of necessity to truth at all possible worlds; Kit Fine's reduction of necessity to essence; and accounts of necessity that take the distinction between the necessa…Read more
  •  354
    Do We Need Grounding?
    Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 59 (4): 382-397. 2016.
    Many have been tempted to invoke a primitive notion of grounding to describe the way in which some features of reality give rise to others. Jessica Wilson argues that such a notion is unnecessary to describe the structure of the world: that we can make do with specific dependence relations such as the part–whole relation or the determinate–determinable relation, together with a notion of absolute fundamentality. In this paper I argue that such resources are inadequate to describe the particular …Read more
  •  399
    Some argue that Lewisian realism fails as a reduction of modality because in order to meet some criterion of success the account needs to invoke primitive modality. I defend Lewisian realism against this charge; in the process, I hope to shed some light on the conditions of success for a reduction. In §1 I detail the resources the Lewisian modal realist needs. In §2 I argue against Lycan and Shalkowski’s charge that Lewis needs a modal notion of ‘world’ to ensure that worlds correspond to possib…Read more
  • Nie ma obiektów, które byłyby utworami muzycznymi
    Sztuka I Filozofia (Art and Philosophy) 40. 2012.
  •  302
    Back to the open future
    Philosophical Perspectives 25 (1): 1-26. 2011.
    Many of us are tempted by the thought that the future is open, whereas the past is not. The future might unfold one way, or it might unfold another; but the past, having occurred, is now settled. In previous work we presented an account of what openness consists in: roughly, that the openness of the future is a matter of it being metaphysically indeterminate how things will turn out to be. We were previously concerned merely with presenting the view and exploring its consequences; we did not att…Read more
  •  308
    Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology
    Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 62 107-128. 2008.
    Together, these entail that for every true proposition p, there exists some thing which could not exist and p be false.
  •  76
  •  52
    The Routledge companion to metaphysics (edited book)
    Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 2009.
    The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics is organized into three parts: History of Metaphysics, Ontology, and Metaphysics and Science. Each section features an introduction which places the range of essays in context, while a glossary allows reference to key terms and definitions.
  •  42
    A Fictional Realist
    In Christy Mag Uidhir (ed.), Art and Abstract Objects, Oxford University Press. pp. 179. 2013.
  •  38
    A major argument for vegetarianism is that eating animals causes unjustified suffering. While this argument has been articulated by several people, it has received surprisingly little attention. Here I restate it in a way that I believe is most convincing, considering and rejecting the two main justifications for causing suffering in order to eat animals. I compare it to some other prominent arguments for vegetarianism, and discuss a major objection to the argument which focuses on whether the a…Read more
  •  184
    In this paper I argue that warrant for Lewis’ Modal Realism is unobtainable. I consider two familiar objections to Lewisian realism – the modal irrelevance objection and the epistemological objection – and argue that Lewis’ response to each is unsatisfactory because they presuppose claims that only the Lewisian realist will accept. Since, I argue, warrant for Lewisian realism can only be obtained if we have a response to each objection that does not presuppose the truth of Lewisian realism, this…Read more
  •  12
    The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics (edited book)
    with Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew, and Ross P. Cameron
    Routledge. 2009.
    The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics is an outstanding, comprehensive and accessible guide to the major themes, thinkers, and issues in metaphysics. The Companion features over fifty specially commissioned chapters from international scholars which are organized into three clear parts: History of Metaphysics Ontology Metaphysics and Science. Each section features an introduction which places the range of essays in context, while an extensive glossary allows easy reference to key terms and defi…Read more
  •  1863
    Parts generate the whole but they are not identical to it
    In Aaron J. Cotnoir & Donald L. M. Baxter (eds.), Composition as Identity, Oxford University Press. 2014.
    The connection between whole and part is intimate: not only can we share the same space, but I’m incapable of leaving my parts behind; settle the nonmereological facts and you thereby settle what is a part of what; wholes don’t seem to be an additional ontological commitment over their parts. Composition as identity promises to explain this intimacy. But it threatens to make the connection too intimate, for surely the parts could have made a different whole and the whole have had different parts…Read more
  •  40
    The thesis that composition is identity (CAI) is the thesis that the Xs compose A iff the Xs is identical to A.1 If this thesis is to be compatible with any mereological view other than mereological nihilism, we must allow that many-one identity statements make sense: that is, that it makes sense to say of a plurality of things that they are (collectively) identical to some one thing. Identity, on this view, holds between every thing and itself, but can also between a thing and some things.
  •  275
    Ross P. Cameron argues that the flow of time is a genuine feature of reality. He suggests that the best version of the A-Theory is a version of the Moving Spotlight view, according to which past and future beings are real, but there is nonetheless an objectively privileged present. Cameron argues that the Moving Spotlight theory should be viewed as having more in common with Presentism than with the B-Theory. Furthermore, it provides the best account of truthmakers for claims about what was or w…Read more
  •  403
    I argue that the truthmaker theorist should be a priority monist if she wants to avoid commitment to mysterious necessary connections. In section 1 I briefly discuss the ontological options available to the truthmaker theorist. In section 2 I develop the argument against truthmaker theory from the Humean denial of necessary connections. In section 3 I offer an account of when necessary connections are objectionable. In section 4 I use this criterion to narrow down the options from section 1. In …Read more
  •  380
    Truthmakers and Modality
    Synthese 164 (2). 2008.
    This paper attempts to locate, within an actualist ontology, truthmakers for modal truths: truths of the form or . In Sect. 1 I motivate the demand for substantial truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 21 criticise Armstrong's account of truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 31 examine essentialism and defend an account of what makes essentialist attributions true, but I argue that this does not solve the problem of modal truth in general. In Sect. 41 discuss, and dismiss, a theistic account o…Read more
  •  620
    How to have a radically minimal ontology
    Philosophical Studies 151 (2). 2010.
    In this paper I further elucidate and defend a metaontological position that allows you to have a minimal ontology without embracing an error-theory of ordinary talk. On this view 'there are Fs' can be strictly and literally true without bringing an ontological commitment to Fs. Instead of a sentence S committing you to the things that must be amongst the values of the variables if it is true, I argue that S commits you to the things that must exist as truthmakers for S if it is true. I rebut so…Read more
  •  180
    On the source of necessity
    In Bob Hale & Aviv Hoffmann (eds.), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic and Epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2010.
    Simon Blackburn posed a dilemma for any realist attempt to identify the source of necessity. Either the facts appealed to to ground modal truth are themselves necessary, or they are contingent. If necessary, we begin the process towards regress; but if contingent, we undermine the necessity whose source we wanted to explain. Bob Hale attempts to blunt both horns of this dilemma. In this paper I examine their respective positions and attempt to clear up some confusions on either side. I come to d…Read more
  •  192
    Necessity and triviality
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (3): 401-415. 2010.
    In this paper I argue that there are some sentences whose truth makes no demands on the world, being trivially true in that their truth-conditions are trivially met. I argue that this does not amount to their truth-conditions being met necessarily: we need a non-modal understanding of the notion of the demands the truth of a sentence makes, lest we be blinded to certain conceptual possibilities. I defend the claim that the truths of pure mathematics and set theory are trivially true, and hence a…Read more
  •  380
    How to Be a Truthmaker Maximalist
    Noûs 42 (3). 2008.
    When there is truth, there must be some thing (or things) to account for that truth: some thing(s) that couldn’t exist and the true proposition fail to be true. That is the truthmaker principle. True propositions are made true by entities in the mind-independently existing external world. The truthmaker principle seems attractive to many metaphysicians, but many have wanted to weaken it and accept not that every true proposition has a truthmaker but only that some important class of propositions…Read more
  •  445
    The contingency of composition
    Philosophical Studies 136 (1): 99-121. 2007.
    There is widespread disagreement as to what the facts are concerning just when a collection of objects composes some further object; but there is widespread agreement that, whatever those facts are, they are necessary. I am unhappy to simply assume this, and in this paper I ask whether there is reason to think that the facts concerning composition hold necessarily. I consider various reasons to think so, but find fault with each of them. I examine the theory of composition as identity, but argue…Read more
  •  476
    Truthmaker necessitarianism and maximalism
    Logique Et Analyse 48 (189-192): 43-56. 2005.
    In this paper I examine two principles of orthodox truthmaker theory: truthmaker maximalism - the doctrine that every (contingent) truth has a truthmaker, and truthmaker necessitarianism - the doctrine that the existence of a truthmaker necessitates the truth of any proposition which it in fact makes true. I argue that maximalism should be rejected and that once it is we only have reason to hold a restricted form of necessitarianism