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511 The Future State and the Signs of DesireIn Manuel Fasko & Peter West (eds.), Berkeley’s Doctrine of Signs, De Gruyter. pp. 211-226. 2024.
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16Locke and Leibniz on Substance (edited book)Routledge. 2015.Locke and Leibniz on Substance gathers together papers by an international group of academic experts, examining the metaphysical concept of substance in the writings of these two towering philosophers of the early modern period. Each of these newly-commissioned essays considers important interpretative issues concerning the role that the notion of substance plays in the work of Locke and Leibniz, and its intersection with other key issues, such as personal identity. Contributors also consider th…Read more
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305Causation and Modern Philosophy (edited book)Routledge. 2010.This volume brings together a collection of new essays by leading scholars on the subject of causation in the early modern period, from Descartes to Lady Mary Shepherd. Aimed at researchers, graduate students and advanced undergraduates, the volume advances the understanding of early modern discussions of causation, and situates these discussions in the wider context of early modern philosophy and science. Specifically, the volume contains essays on key early modern thinkers, such as Descartes, …Read more
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8George BerkeleyIn John Shand (ed.), Central Works of Philosophy V2: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Routledge. pp. 137-165. 2005.
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32The Subtraction Argument for the Possibility of Free MassPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (1): 50-57. 2009.Jonathan Schaffer has recently argued that there can be objects having only mass. We show that his argument is either invalid or question begging.
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74The subtraction argument for the possibility of free massPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 80 (1): 50-57. 2009.Could an object have only mass and no other property? In giving an affirmative answer to this question, Jonathan Schaffer (2003, pp. 136-8) proposes what he calls ‘the subtraction argument’ for ‘the possibility of free mass’. In what follows, we aim to assess the cogency of this argument in comparison with an argument of the same general form which has also been termed a subtraction argument, namely, Thomas Baldwin’s (1996) subtraction argument for metaphysical nihilism, which is the claim that …Read more
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128Justifying metaphysical nihilism: A response to CameronPhilosophical Quarterly 59 (234): 132-137. 2009.Ross Cameron charges the subtraction argument for metaphysical nihilism with equivocation: each premise is plausible only under different interpretations of 'concrete'. This charge is ungrounded; the argument is both valid and supported by basic modal intuitions.
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202Is metaphysical nihilism interesting?Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2): 210-231. 2009.Suppose nothing exists. Then it is true that nothing exists. What makes that true? Nothing! So it seems that if nothing existed, then the principle that every truth is made true by something (the truthmaker principle) would be false. So if it is possible that nothing exists, a claim often called 'metaphysical nihilism', then the truthmaker principle is not necessary. This paper explores various ways to resolve this conflict without restricting metaphysical nihilism in such a way that it would be…Read more
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137Combinatorialism and the possibility of nothingAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (2). 2006.We argue that Armstrong's Combinatorialism allows for the possibility of nothing by giving a Combinatorial account of the empty world and show that such an account is consistent with the ontological and conceptual aims of the theory. We then suggest that the Combinatorialist should allow for this possibility given some methodological considerations. Consequently, rather than being 'spoils for the victor', as Armstrong maintains, deciding whether there might have been nothing helps to determine w…Read more
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185What is the principle of recombination?Dialectica 62 (4): 483-494. 2008.In this paper, we give a precise characterization of the principle of recombination and argue that it need not be subject to any restrictions.
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87Action, knowledge and embodiment in Berkeley and LockePhilosophical Explorations 21 (1): 41-59. 2018.Embodiment is a fact of human existence which philosophers should not ignore. They may differ to a great extent in what they have to say about our bodies, but they have to take into account that for each of us our body has a special status, it is not merely one amongst the physical objects, but a physical object to which we have a unique relation. While Descartes approached the issue of embodiment through consideration of sensation and imagination, it is more directly reached by consideration of…Read more
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Some Issues in Berkeley's Account of Sense PerceptionIn Stefan Storrie (ed.), Berkeley's Three Dialogues: New Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 24-39. 2018.
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101Temporal externalismPhilosophical Papers 32 (1): 97-107. 2003.Abstract Temporal Externalism is the view that future events can contribute to determining the present content of our thoughts and utterances. Two objections to Temporal Externalism are discussed and rejected. The first is that Temporal Externalism has implausible consequences for the epistemology of biology and other taxonomic sciences (Brown, 2000). The second is that it is committed to implausible claims about dispositions
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76“Let the Occult Quality Go”: Interpreting Berkley's Metaphysics of ScienceEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 5 (1). 2009.
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279Another Failed Refutation of ScepticismTeorema: International Journal of Philosophy 36 (2): 19-30. 2017.Jessica Wilson has recently offered a more sophisticated version of the self-defeat objection to Cartesian scepicism. She argues that the assertion of Cartesian scepticism results in an unstable vicious regress. The way out of the regress is to not engage with the Cartesian sceptic at all, to stop the regress before it starts, at the warranted assertion that the external world exists. We offer three reasons why this objection fails: first, the sceptic need not accept Wilson’s characterization of…Read more
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27Response to Atherton: No Atheism Without SkepticismIn Stewart Duncan & Antonia LoLordo (eds.), Debates in Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses, Routledge. pp. 216. 2013.
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104Catching Berkeley's shadowSouthern Journal of Philosophy 49 (2): 116-136. 2011.Berkeley thinks that we only see the size, shape, location, and orientation of objects in virtue of the correlation between sight and touch. Shadows have all of these spatial properties and yet are intangible. In Seeing Dark Things (2008), Roy Sorensen argues that shadows provide a counterexample to Berkeley's theory of vision and, consequently, to his idealism. This paper shows that Berkeley can accept both that shadows are intangible and that they have spatial properties
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5Berkeley : arguments for idealismIn Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, Routledge. 2009.
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51On believing that I am thinkingProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 98 (2): 125-44. 1998.It is argued that a second-order belief to the effect that I now have some particular propositional attitude is always true (Incorrigibility). This is not because we possess an infallible cognitive faculty of introspection, but because that x believes that he himself now has attitude A to proposition P entails that x has A to P. Incorrigibility applies only to second-order beliefs and not to mere linguistic avowals of attitudes. This view combines a necessary asymmetry between 1st and 3rd person…Read more
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140Berkeley's world: an examination of the Three dialoguesOxford University Press. 2002.Tom Stoneham offers a clear and detailed study of Berkeley's metaphysics and epistemology, as presented in his classic work Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, originally published in 1713 and still widely studied. Stoneham shows that Berkeley is an important and systematic philosopher whose work is still of relevance to philosophers today.
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18Self-knowledgeIn Ilkka Niiniluoto, Matti Sintonen & Jan Wolenski (eds.), Handbook of Epistemology, Kluwer Academic. pp. 647--672. 2004.
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29Comment on Davies: A general dilemma?Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 92 225-231. 1992.Tom Stoneham; Comment on Davies: A General Dilemma?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 92, Issue 1, 1 June 1992, Pages 225–232, https://doi.org/10.