The Challenge to Nihilism
(2019)
Journal Article
All Outputs (48)
Personal Identity (2019)
Book
Who am I? What is a person? What does it take for a person to persist from one time to another? What is the relation between the mind and the body? These are just some of the questions that constitute the problem of personal identity, one of the olde... Read More about Personal Identity.
Personal identity: the simple and complex views revisited (2019)
Journal Article
Eric Olson has argued, startlingly, that no coherent account can be given of the distinction made in the personal identity literature between ‘complex views’ and ‘simple views’. ‘We tell our students,’ he writes, ‘that accounts of personal identity o... Read More about Personal identity: the simple and complex views revisited.
Criteria of identity, personal identity and the simple view (2018)
Book Chapter
Presentism and actualism (2018)
Journal Article
Presentism, some say, is either the analytic triviality that the only things that exist now are ones that exist now or the obviously false claim that the only things that have ever existed or will are ones that exist now. I argue that the correct und... Read More about Presentism and actualism.
The new Aristotelian essentialists (2017)
Journal Article
In recent years largely due to the seminal work of Kit Fine and that of Jonathan Lowe there has been a resurgence of interest in the concept of essence and the project of explaining de re necessity in terms of it. Of course, Quine rejected what he ca... Read More about The new Aristotelian essentialists.
The Simple and Complex Views of Personal Identity Distinguished (2017)
Book Chapter
Modal realism, still at your convenience (2017)
Journal Article
Divers (2014) presents a set of de re modal truths which, he claims, are inconvenient for Lewisean modal realism. We argue that there is no inconvenience for Lewis.
Additional reflections on Putnam, Wright and Brains in Vats (2016)
Journal Article
Putnam’s argument against the sceptical Brain-in-a-Vat hypothesis continues to intrigue. I argue in what follows that the argument refutes a particular kind of sceptic and make a proposal about its more general significance. To appreciate the soundne... Read More about Additional reflections on Putnam, Wright and Brains in Vats.
Plenitude, pluralism and neo-Lockean persons (2015)
Journal Article
Against strong pluralism (2015)
Journal Article
Strong pluralists hold that not even permanent material coincidence is enough for identity. Strong pluralism entails the possibility of purely material objects -- even if not coincident -- alike in all general respects, categorial and dispositional,... Read More about Against strong pluralism.
Identity over time, constitution and the problem of personal identity (2015)
Book Chapter
The Passage of Time (2015)
Journal Article
Eric Olson argues that the dynamic view of time must be false. It requires that the question ‘How fast does time pass?’ has an answer. But its only possible answer, one second per second, is not an answer. I argue that Olson has failed to identify wh... Read More about The Passage of Time.
Two boxing is not the rational option (2015)
Journal Article
In the standard Newcomb scenario two-boxing is not the rational act and, in general, in Newcomb-style cases the ‘two-boxing’ choice is not the rational act. Hence any decision theory which recommends two-boxing is unacceptable.
Two-boxing is irrational (2015)
Journal Article
Philosophers debate whether one-boxing or two-boxing is the rational act in a Newcomb situation. I shall argue that one-boxing is the only rational choice. This is so because there is no intelligible aim by reference to which you can justify the choi... Read More about Two-boxing is irrational.
Castles Built on Clouds: Vague Identity and Vague Objects (2014)
Book Chapter
Can identity itself be vague? Can there be vague objects? Does a positive answer to either question entail a positive answer to the other? In this chapter, we answer these questions as follows: no, no, and yes. First, we discuss Evans’s famous 1978 a... Read More about Castles Built on Clouds: Vague Identity and Vague Objects.
Tollensing van Inwagen (2014)
Journal Article
Presentism and eternalism (2013)
Journal Article
Moderate monism, sortal concepts and relative identity (2013)
Journal Article
A flaw in Kripke's modal argument? (2012)
Journal Article