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16Thomasson on Easy ArgumentsIn Miguel Garcia-Godinez (ed.), Thomasson on Ontology, Springer Verlag. pp. 39-60. 2023.In Ontology Made Easy and elsewhere Amie Thomasson has made a proposal about the significance of easy arguments for metaphysics. Easy arguments are apparently trivial inferences from premises that seem philosophically innocent to conclusions that seem to be philosophically substantial. In this paper my focus will be on well-know easy arguments for the existence of numbers, properties, and composite objects. I critically investigate Thomasson’s proposal about how to understand easy arguments and …Read more
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Validity, paradox, and the ideal of deductive logicIn J. C. Beall (ed.), The Revenge of the Liar: New Essays on the Paradox, Oxford University Press Uk. 2007.
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86Inescapable ConceptsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 102 (1): 159-179. 2024.It seems to be impossible to draw metaphysical conclusions about the world merely from our concepts or our language alone. After all, our concepts alone only concern how we aim to represent the world, not how the world in fact is. In this paper I argue that this is mistaken. We can sometimes draw substantial metaphysical conclusions simply from thinking about how we represent the world. But by themselves such conclusions can be flawed if the concepts from which they are drawn are themselves flaw…Read more
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19Refocusing Frege’s Other Puzzle: A Response to Snyder, Samuels, and ShapiroPhilosophia Mathematica 31 (2): 216-235. 2023.In their recent article ‘Resolving Frege’s other Puzzle’ Eric Snyder, Richard Samuels, and Stewart Shapiro defend a semantic type-shifting solution to Frege’s other Puzzle and criticize my own cognitive type-shifting solution. In this article I respond to their criticism and in turn point to several problems with their preferred solution. In particular, I argue that they conflate semantic function and semantic value, and that their proposal is neither based on general semantic type-shifting prin…Read more
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63The Case Against Higher-Order MetaphysicsMetaphysics 5 (1): 29-50. forthcoming.Although higher-order metaphysics seems prima facie to be a promising new approach to metaphysics, it is nonetheless based on a mistake. This mistake is tied to a misuse of formal languages in metaphysics in general, not just to the use of higher-order rather than lower-order languages. I hope to highlight the mistake by discussing a popular recent example of higher- order metaphysics: the argument that reality is not structured using reasoning inspired by the Russell-Myhill paradox. A key issue…Read more
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26Idealism and the Harmony of Thought and RealityOxford University Press. 2023.Do human beings have a special and distinguished place in reality? In Idealism and the Harmony of Thought and Reality Thomas Hofweber contends that they do. We are special since there is an intimate connection between our human minds and reality itself. This book defends a form of idealism which holds that our human minds constrain, but do not construct, reality as the totality of facts. Reality as the totality of facts is thus not independent of our minds, and our minds play a metaphysically sp…Read more
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260The case against higher-order metaphysicsMetaphysics 1 (5): 29-50. 2022.Although higher-order metaphysics seems prima facie to be a promising new approach to metaphysics, it is nonetheless based on a mistake. This mistake is tied to a misuse of formal languages in metaphysics in general, not just to the use of higher-order rather than lower-order languages. I hope to highlight the mistake by discussing a popular recent example of higher- order metaphysics: the argument that reality is not structured using reasoning inspired by the Russell-Myhill paradox. A key issue…Read more
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86Jody Azzouni, Deflating Existential Consequence: A Case for Nominalism (review)Philosophical Review 116 (3): 465-467. 2007.As the title says, this is a book review of Azzouni’s book. I complain that Azzouni proposes an answer to a question, but it is unclear what question he is trying to answer
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From Remnants to Things, and Back AgainIn Gary Ostertag (ed.), Meanings and Other Things: Themes From the Work of Stephen Schiffer, Oxford University Press. 2016.
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121The unrevisability of logicPhilosophical Perspectives 35 (1): 251-274. 2021.Can it ever be rational to revise one's own logic by one's own lights? In this paper I argue that logic is never rationally revisable, even if one's own logic gives rise to paradoxes and allows one to derive any conclusion whatsoever. Instead of revising logic, we need to revise a certain widely held position in the philosophy of logic, one tied to the standard conception of validity and to the alleged monotonicity of deductive reasoning. I develop the alternative conception of validity and of d…Read more
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19A Subject with No Object: Strategies for Nominalistic Interpretation of MathematicsPhilosophical and Phenomenological Research 62 (3): 723-727. 2001.
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6A Subject with No Object: Strategies for Nominalistic Interpretation of MathematicsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (3): 723-726. 2001.Nominalists, who believe that everything there is is concrete and nothing is abstract, seem to have a problem with mathematics. Mathematics says that there are lots of prime numbers, and prime numbers don’t seem to be concrete. What should a nominalist do with mathematics? In the last few decades several programs in the philosophy of mathematics have been formulated which are, more or less explicitly, accounts of what a nominalist can say about mathematics. These programs, and the criticism of t…Read more
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241Idealism and the Harmony of Thought and RealityMind 128 (511): 699-734. 2019.Although idealism was widely defended in the history of philosophy, it is nowadays almost universally considered a non-starter. This holds in particular for a strong form of idealism, which asserts that not just minds or the mental in general, but our human minds in particular are metaphysically central to reality. Such a view seems to be excessively anthropocentric and contrary to what we by now know about our place in the universe. Nonetheless, there is reason to think that such a strong form …Read more
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67Rayo’s The Construction of Logical SpaceInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (4): 442-454. 2014.I wonder which one in a series of characters Agustín Rayo really is, with an emphasis on objective correctness and semantics.
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769How to endurePhilosophical Quarterly 61 (242). 2011.The terms `endurance' and `perdurance' are commonly thought to denote distinct ways for an object to persist, but it is surprisingly hard to say what these are. The common approach, defining them in terms of temporal parts, is mistaken, because it does not lead to two coherent philosophical alternatives: endurance so understood becomes conceptually incoherent, while perdurance becomes not just true but a conceptual truth. Instead, we propose a different way to articulate the distinction, in term…Read more
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42Replies to Eklund and UzquianoAnalysis 78 (2): 315-334. 2018.My thanks to Matti Eklund and Gabriel Uzquiano for their thoughtful and challenging critical essays. In these replies I hope to respond to what I took to be their main points. The focus of their essays is different for the most part, but there is overlap in their discussion of the ineffable. I will thus largely reply to their essays separately, with the exception of the discussion of the ineffable, where I will reply to their points jointly. Let’s start, alphabetically, with Eklund.
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69Ontology and the Ambitions of MetaphysicsAnalysis 78 (2): 289-291. 2018.Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics By HofweberThomasOxford University Press, 2016. xvi + 366 pp. £50.00
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52Dickie's Epistemic Theory of ReferencePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (3): 725-730. 2017.
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27Replies to Bennett, Rayo, and SattigPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (2): 488-504. 2017.
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36Précis of Ontology and the Ambitions of MetaphysicsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (2): 463-465. 2017.
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269Logic and ontologyStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2005.A number of important philosophical problems are problems in the overlap of logic and ontology. Both logic and ontology are diverse fields within philosophy, and partly because of this there is not one single philosophical problem about the relation between logic and ontology. In this survey article we will first discuss what different philosophical projects are carried out under the headings of "logic" and "ontology" and then we will look at several areas where logic and ontology overlap.
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29Extraction, displacement, and focus: A Reply to Balcerak JacksonLinguistics and Philosophy 37 (3): 263-267. 2014.
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5Un enigma per l’ontologiaRivista di Estetica 32 (32): 41-69. 2006.1 Ontologia L’ontologia è la disciplina filosofica che cerca di scoprire che cosa c’è: quali entità costituiscono la realtà, di che materia è fatto il mondo? Dunque l’ontologia è parte della metafisica ed infatti sembra rappresentare all’incirca la metà della metafisica. Essa cerca di stabilire quali (generi di) cose ci siano, l’altra metà cerca di scoprire quali siano le proprietà (generali) di queste cose e quali relazioni (generali) intercorrano fra esse. La risoluzione di questioni nell’a...
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Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mathematics |