• Moral Fictionalism and Religious Fictionalism (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2024.
  •  3
    Is Philosophy Progressing Fast Enough?
    In Russell Blackford & Damien Broderick (eds.), Philosophy's Future, Wiley. 2017-04-27.
    Is there enough progress in philosophy? It is notable that even within the discipline, opinions are divided. Optimists think there is more than enough progress in philosophy. Pessimists think we could and should do better. In this chapter I defend an optimistic answer to this question.
  •  100
    The paradox paradox
    Synthese 200 (2): 1-7. 2022.
    In this paper we argue that our conception of and intuitions about paradoxes are themselves paradoxical. Specifically, we argue that our commitment to the existence and nature of paradoxes is inconsistent with a norm of rationality—which is a paradox.
  •  25
    The Prospects for If-Thenism
    Australasian Philosophical Review 1 (2): 113-114. 2017.
  •  15
    A critical introduction to fictionalism
    with Fred Kroon and Jonathan McKeown-Green
    Bloomsbury Academic. 2018.
    A Critical Introduction to Fictionalism provides a clear and comprehensive understanding of an important alternative to realism. Drawing on questions from ethics, the philosophy of religion, art, mathematics, logic and science, this is a complete exploration of how fictionalism contrasts with other non-realist doctrines and motivates influential fictionalist treatments across a range of philosophical issues. Defending and criticizing influential as well as emerging fictionalist approaches, this …Read more
  • Fictionalism, fictional characters, and fictionalist inference
    In Stuart Brock & Anthony Everett (eds.), Fictional Objects, Oxford University Press. 2015.
  •  19
    Realism and Anti-Realism
    with Edwin David Mares
    Routledge. 2006.
    There are a bewildering variety of ways the terms "realism" and "anti-realism" have been used in philosophy and furthermore the different uses of these terms are only loosely connected with one another. Rather than give a piecemeal map of this very diverse landscape, the authors focus on what they see as the core concept: realism about a particular domain is the view that there are facts or entities distinctive of that domain, and their existence and nature is in some important sense objective a…Read more
  •  76
    A Recalcitrant Problem for Abstract Creationism
    Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76 (1): 93-98. 2018.
  •  35
    The Phenomenological Objection to Fictionalism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88 (3): 574-592. 2014.
  •  2
    Creatures of Fiction
    Dissertation, Princeton University. 2002.
    My starting point is the controversial assumption that fictional characters---like Batman, Emma Bovary and Wuthering Heights---do not exist. It is my contention that there simply are no such things. My aim is to show how we might learn to live without them, how we can make sense of talk purportedly about them, and how we can have emotional responses that seem to be directed towards them
  •  134
    The Puzzle of Imaginative Failure
    Philosophical Quarterly 62 (248): 443-463. 2012.
    The Puzzle of Imaginative Failure asks why, when readers are invited to do so, they so often fall short of imagining worlds where the moral facts are different. This is puzzling because we have no difficulty imagining worlds where the descriptive facts are different. Much of the philosophical controversy revolves around the question of whether the reader's lack of imagination in such cases is a result of psychological barriers (an inability or a difficulty on the reader's part to imagine what sh…Read more
  •  28
    Fictional Objects (edited book)
    with Anthony Everett
    Oxford University Press. 2015.
    Eleven original essays discuss a range of puzzling philosophical questions about fictional characters, and more generally about fictional objects. For example, they ask questions like the following: Do they really exist? What would fictional objects be like if they existed? Do they exist eternally? Are they created? Who by? When and how? Can they be destroyed? If so, how? Are they abstract or concrete? Are they actual? Are they complete objects? Are they possible objects? How many fictional obje…Read more
  •  81
    The Phenomenological Objection to Fictionalism
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 86 (1): 574-592. 2013.
  •  350
    Despite protestations to the contrary, philosophers have always been renowned for espousing theories that do violence to common-sense opinion. In the last twenty years or so there has been a growing number of philosophers keen to follow in this tradition. According to these philosophers, if a story of pure fic-tion tells us that an individual exists, then there really is such an individual. According to these realists about fictional characters, ‘Scarlett O’Hara,’ ‘Char-lie Brown,’ ‘Batman,’ ‘Su…Read more
  •  165
  •  166
    The Ubiquitous Problem of Empty Names
    Journal of Philosophy 101 (6): 277-298. 2004.
  •  157
    Fictionalism About Fictional Characters Revisited
    Res Philosophica 93 (2): 377-403. 2016.
    Fictionalism about fictional characters is a view according to which all claims ostensibly about fictional characters are in fact claims about the content of a story. Claims that appear to refer to or quantify over fictional objects contain an implicit prefix of the form “according to such-and-such story. In.
  •  357
    This essay explains why creationism about fictional characters is an abject failure. Creationism about fictional characters is the view that fictional objects are created by the authors of the novels in which they first appear. This essay shows that, when the details of creationism are filled in, the hypothesis becomes far more puzzling than the linguistic data it is used to explain. No matter how the creationist identifies where, when and how fictional objects are created, the proposal conflict…Read more
  •  327
    Fictions, feelings, and emotions
    Philosophical Studies 132 (2). 2007.
    Many philosophers suggest (1) that our emotional engagement with fiction involves participation in a game of make-believe, and (2) that what distinguishes an emotional game from a dispassionate game is the fact that the former activity alone involves sensations of physiological and visceral disturbances caused by our participation in the game. In this paper I argue that philosophers who accept (1) should reject (2). I then illustrate how this conclusion illuminates various puzzles in aesthetics …Read more