These are some papers I'm working on or have worked on. Those at awkward stages in their developments are unavailable for download, and those undergoing blind review are not listed. Unsolicited comments on works in progress are encouraged!
Publication:
- McTaggart and indexing the copula, forthcoming in Philosophical Studies
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I show that to the degree that indexing the copula solves the problem of temporary intrinsics, it also shows the invalidity of McTaggart's argument for the incoherence of the A-series. The upshot: McTaggart's argument doesn't give the copula-indexer reason to affirm the unreality of time or embrace presentism.
In Progress:
- A truthmaker view of ontological commitment
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I explain and defend a version of the truthmaker view of ontological commitment. On my view, when we utter a sentence, we ontologically commit to there being something (or some things) that makes (or make) true the proposition expressed by the sentence. Our ontological commitments are not particular, nor are they perspicuously determined. Rather, by uttering sentences, we commit to there being some things or other that make them true. Those things needn't be what we quantify over in our English sentences.
- No epistemic norm of assertion
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I don't like the way with which counter-examples to accounts of the norm of assertion are dealt. In this paper, I explain why.
- Presentism and fatalism revisited
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Mike Rea argued in an AJP paper in 2006 that the conjunction of presentism, libertarianism and bivalence is inconsistent. But it's not. Or so I claim.
- Vagueness in abundance and absence
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I argue that abundantist and nominalist and Platonist theories entail ontic vagueness. When conjoined with the conclusions of Elizabeth Barnes' 2005 paper, we are left with four options: 1) ontic vagueness, 2) epistemicism, 3) Platonism that admits uninstantiable properties, or 4) ostrich nominalism.
Other:
- Orals Notes in Metaphysics
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These are the notes I took when studying for my oral examination in metaphysics, which I took in the spring of 2011.