A Coherent Common Sense View
in Ordinary Objects
October 2007; published online September 2007.
Chapter. Subjects: metaphysics. 4933 words.
This chapter begins by bringing out three common mistakes that lie behind the various arguments against ordinary objects discussed in this book. It goes on to suggest that all of these mistakes may...
A Daring Soft Libertarian Response to Present Luck
in Free Will and Luck
February 2006; published online February 2006.
Chapter. Subjects: metaphysics. 14436 words.
This chapter constructs a libertarian view that grants the main moral of Frankfurt-style cases, and offers a resolution of the problem of present luck. Attention to how human beings may develop from...
‘A Dead Cadaverous Thing’
in Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy
September 2009; published online September 2009.
Chapter. Subjects: metaphysics. 2230 words.
In England, ontological mechanism comes under fire. Figures such as Ralph Cudworth and Henry More argue that this ontology is too impoverished to explain such phenomena as cohesion, gravity, the...
A Posteriori Entailment
in Ignorance and Imagination
July 2006; published online September 2006.
Chapter. Subjects: metaphysics. 11368 words.
This chapter presents the view that the supervenience of the experiential on the non-experiential is irreducibly a posteriori — the a posteriori entailment view. The main problem for this view...
An a Priori Argument for Realism
in Knowledge and Reality
February 2002; published online November 2003.
Chapter. Subjects: metaphysics. 10014 words.
McGinn presents an indirect, a priori argument for the conjunction of realism about the external world and realism about the mind. The argument is indirect because McGinn's principal targets are the...
A Priori Entailment
in Ignorance and Imagination
July 2006; published online September 2006.
Chapter. Subjects: metaphysics. 9653 words.
In this chapter, an analogous argument in the case of the a priori entailment view is advanced. On the one hand, the mere idea of priori entailment will not answer the argument — further material...
“A Small Tincture of Pyrrhonism”
in Pyrrhonian Skepticism
August 2004; published online May 2006.
Chapter. Subjects: metaphysics. 13239 words.
This essay distinguishes varieties of skepticism along six dimensions. It argues that Hume is unmitigated in his rational support skepticism and in his prescriptive skepticism about certain “high and...
Abandoning the Levels Conception: First Steps
in From an Ontological Point of View
May 2003; published online November 2003.
Chapter. Subjects: metaphysics. 4153 words.
Proponents of the idea that reality is hierarchical appeal to the ‘multiple realizability’ of higher‐level properties. The ontology of multiple realizability is fuzzy, however, and in any case, we...
Aberrations of the Realism Debate*
in Putting Metaphysics First
October 2009; published online February 2010.
Chapter. Subjects: metaphysics. 11732 words.
This chapter begins by arguing that contrary to received opinion, the issue of realism about the physical world has almost nothing to do with semantic issues about truth. It follows that it is an...
Abilities
in Making Sense of Freedom and Responsibility
July 2011; published online September 2011.
Chapter. Subjects: metaphysics. 7138 words.
It has been argued that the ability to do otherwise is required for both praiseworthy and blameworthy actions, because so-called Frankfurt-cases can be constructed for each kind of action. If this...