Forthcoming in Clocks and Clouds, ed. Richard Dietz and Sebastiano Moruzzi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Argues that any sentence whatsoever will become false when prefaced with enough iterations of the ‘definitely’ operator.
Revised version will soon be available.
Suppose that it is necessary that if one believes that the F is F if any unique thing is, one believes of the F, if there is one, that it is F if any unique thing is. I argue that it follows (in all but a few cases) that it is also necessary that if one knows a priori that the F is F if any unique thing is, one knows a priori of the F, if there is one, that it is F if any unique thing is. I claim that because of this, a priori knowledge of de re propositions, including contingent de re propositions, is a relatively common phenomenon. However, because attributions of belief and knowledge are context-sensitive, the question whether it possible to know a priori of a given object that it is F if anything is will typically have different answers in different contexts.
No plans for publication.
A short reply to Roger White’s paper ‘The Generalised Sleeping Beauty Problem: A Challenge for Thirders’. I argue that the mode of reasoning employed by White leads to an implausible view according to which that Beauty's credence in Heads when she wakes up should be near 1/3, unless she is confident that her two wakings will be exactly alike in all evidential respects. I also say how this mode of reasoning should be resisted.
‘There are No Abstract Objects’
Forthcoming in Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, ed. John Hawthorne, Theodore Sider and Dean Zimmerman. Oxford: Blackwell.
I explicate and defend the claim that, fundamentally speaking, there are no numbers, sets, properties or relations. The clarification consists in some remarks on the relevant sense of ‘fundamentally speaking’ and the contrasting sense of ‘superficially speaking’. The defence consists in an attempt to rebut two arguments for the existence of such entities. The first is a version of the indispensability argument, which purports to show that certain mathematical entities are required for good scientific explanations. The second is a speculative reconstruction of Armstrong’s version of the One Over Many argument, which purports to show that properties and relations are required for good philosophical explanations, e.g. of what it is for one thing to be a duplicate of another.
‘What we disagree about when we disagree about ontology’ (penultimate draft)
In Fictionalist Approaches to Metaphysics, ed. Mark Kalderon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
In this paper I attempt two things. First, I argue that one can coherently imagine different communities using languages structurally similar to English, but in which the meanings of the quantifiers vary, so that the answers to ontological questions, such as ‘Under what circumstances do some things compose something?’, are different. Second, I argue that nevertheless, one can make sense of the idea that of the various possible assignments of meanings to the quantifiers, one is especially fundamental, so that there is still room for genuine debate as regards the answers to ontological questions construed in the fundamental way. My attempt to explain what is distinctive about the fundamental senses of the quantifiers involves a generalisation of the idea that claims of existence are never analytic.
‘Propositions and Counterpart Theory’ (offsite)
Analysis 65 (2005): 210-18.
I argue that there is a conflict between two positions defended by David Lewis: counterpart theory, and the identification of propositions with sets of possible worlds. There is no adequate answer to the question whether a world where Humphrey has one winning and one losing counterpart is or is not a member of the set that is the proposition that Humphrey wins. If one says it is, it will follow that it is possible for that proposition to be true without Humphrey winning; if one says that it is not, it will follow that it is possible for Humphrey to win without that proposition being true.
‘Non-symmetric Relations’ (penultimate draft)
In Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, vol. 1, ed. Dean Zimmerman, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 2004: 155-192.
Presupposing that most predicates do not correspond directly to genuine relations, I argue that all genuine relations are symmetric. My main argument depends on the premise that there are no brute necessities, interpreted so as to require logical and metaphysical necessity to coincide for sentences composed entirely of logical vocabulary and primitive predicates. Given this premise, any set of purportedly primitive predicates by which one might hope to express the facts about non-symmetric relations order their relata will generate an objectionable multiplication of possibilities. In the final section I give a different argument, based on the weaker premise that brute necessities should not be multiplied without necessity.
‘Merricks on the Existence of Human Organisms’(offsite)
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67 (2003): 711-718.
I criticise Merricks's argument in Objects and Persons for the claim that facts about consciousness do not supervene on the microphysical facts, raising doubts about each of its premises, and showing that in conjunction they have some extremely implausible consquences. I also argue that even if this argument were successful, it would do little to diminish the plausibility of the claim that every event caused by a human organism is “overdetermined” (in Merricks’s sense) by that organisms's constituent atoms. Finally, I pose a dilemma for Merricks: do people ever cause things in virtue of having straightforwardly physical properties like mass? I see trouble either way.
‘Vagueness Without Ignorance’ (offsite)
In Philosophical Perspectives 17: Language and Philosophical Linguistics, ed. John Hawthorne and Dean Zimmerman, Blackwell, 2003: 83-114.
I motivate and briefly sketch a linguistic theory of vagueness, on which the notion of indeterminacy is understood in terms of the conventions of language: a sentence is indeterminate iff the conventions of language either forbid asserting it and forbid asserting its negation, under the circumstances, or permit asserting either. I then consider an objection that purports to show that if this theory (or, as far as I can see, any other theory of vagueness that deserved the label “linguistic”) were true, there would be no such thing as indeterminacy. I respond to this objection by arguing on independent grounds against its main premise, the widely-accepted claim that if it is indeterminate whether P, no human being knows whether P. I defend an alternative view according to which, when it is indeterminate whether P, it is often also indeterminate whether we know that P.
‘Composition as a Fiction’ (with Gideon Rosen) (penultimate draft) (disclaimer)
In The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics, ed. Richard M. Gale. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
We introduce several theories of composition, including Nihilism, according to which there are no composite objects; Universalism, according to which any objects whatsoever compose something; and an intermediate position we attribute to common sense. We argue that neither common sense nor science can give us an adequate reason to rule out any of these theories. We suggest that as long as one cannot rule out the hypothesis that composite objects are much rarer than common sense takes them to be, one should adopt a policy of regulating one's talk and verbalised thought in accordance with the fiction that common sense is right about composition.
‘Sleeping Beauty: In Defence of Elga’ (offsite)
Analysis 62 (2002): 292-295.
I argue for the “thirder” solution to the Sleeping Beauty puzzle. The argument turns on an analogy with a variant case, in which a coin-toss on Monday night determines whether one's memories of Monday are permanently erased, or merely suspended in such a way that they will return some time after one wakes up on Tuesday.
‘Non-cognitivism and Wishful Thinking’ (offsite)
Noûs 36 (2002): 97-103.
Even if non-cognitivists about some subject-matter can meet Geach’s challenge to explain how there can be valid implications involving sentences which express non-cognitive attitudes, they face a further problem. I argue that a non-cognitivist cannot explain how, given a valid argument whose conclusion expresses a belief and at least one of whose premises expresses a non-cognitive attitude, it could be reasonable to infer the conclusion from the premises.
Review of Resemblance Nominalism by Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (offsite)
Mind 114 (2205): 457-61.
The Simplicity of Everything (disclaimer)
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