Academic Articles Pluralism, Alternate Composition Cases, and Conditional Grounding, to appear in Objects and Properties: New Essays in Metaphysics, (eds.) Alex Moran & Carlo Rossi, Oxford University Press. Download. I consider a challenge to the pluralist thesis that the properties of complex wholes are grounded in the properties and relations of their basic parts. I propose a solution that invokes the notion of conditional grounding, which has the interesting implication that certain intrinsic properties can have extrinsic conditions on their instantiation. Grounding Physicalism and the Knowledge Argument, Philosophical Perspectives: A Supplement to Noûs (Mind) 37 (1): 269-289. (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12190. Download. I develop a novel physicalist response to Frank Jackson's 'knowledge argument' within a ground-theoretic setting. Notably, this response preserves the compelling insight, typically only respected by dualist views, that Mary learns something genuinely new when she experiences red for the first time. Grounding Physicalism and "Moorean" Connections, Inquiry, (2023). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2023.2253863. Download. The paper explains how the attractive thesis that phenomenal properties have wholly phenomenal essences can be incorporated within a physicalist framework, namely by appealing to substantive grounding laws that allow for "Moorean" connections between properties whose essences fail to touch. Disjunctivism and the Causal Conditions of Hallucination, Erkenntnis, (2022) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-022-00526-w. Download. I explain how disjunctivists can resist the troublesome thesis (which they generally feel compelled to accept) that the kind of experience involved in hallucinatory cases is also present in cases of genuine perception. This is achieved by embedding key insights from the traditional causal theory of perception within a disjunctivist setting. Living Without Microphysical Supervenience, Philosophical Studies 179 (1): 405-428 (2022), DOI: http://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01664-7. Download. The doctrine of Microphysical Supervenience states that intrinsic properties microphysically supervene. The trouble is that this attractive thesis seems to lead to the absurd result that each human person contains a "mighty host" of conscious beings within their boundaries (as large undetached proper parts). In the paper, I explain how one can reject Microphysical Supervenience, avoid the absurd overgeneration of conscious beings, and yet retain the attractive 'microphysicalist' view to the effect that consciousness is an intrinsic property of persons whose instantiations are wholly metaphysically grounded in underlying microphysical facts. Memory Disjunctivism: A Causal Theory, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, (2021), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00569-y. Download. (Second-place runner up in the Philosophy of Memory Essay Prize hosted by Centre for Philosophy of Memory at the Institute de Philosophie de Grenoble.) I consider a pair of causal arguments that threaten to undermine an otherwise attractive disjunctivist theory of episodic memory. I explain how a unified and effective response to these two arguments can be given if one embeds within a disjunctive account of memory certain key insights from the rival causal theory of memory. Grounding the Qualitative: A New Challenge for Panpsychism, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 28 (9/10): 163-180 (2021). DOI: https://doi.org/10.53765/20512201.28.9.163. Download. I develop a novel challenge for panpsychism which turns on the idea that the mind-body problem is in fact an instance of a more general problem concerning the place of qualitative properties in the physical world. I suggest that while this objection may not apply to other (non-panpsychist) forms of Russellian monism, there is also reason to think that grounding physicalists are just as well placed as Russellian monists to deal with the challenge. Naïve Realism, Hallucination, Causation: A New Response to the Screening Off Problem, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 27 (2): 368-382 (2019). DOI: https://doi.org.10.1090/00048402.2018.1458142. Download. I reconsider the 'screening off argument', which seems to force naive realists and other disjunctivists into saying unpalatable things about the nature of hallucinatory experience. I develop an alternate response that leaves naive realists and disjunctivists with considerably more freedom to theorise about the hallucinatory case. Naïve Realism, Seeing Stars, and Perceiving the Past, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 97 (2): 368-382 (2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/papq.12238. Download. I develop a version of the classic 'time-lag' argument against naive realism, by looking closely at the question: what happens, in a naive realist framework, when I look up at a star that no longer exists? I suggest that naive realists ought to adopt an eternalist theory of time, and argue that in cases such as the deceased star case, the perceiving subject is literally looking into the past, and in an experiential state that includes past items among its constituents. The Paradox of Decrease and Dependent Parts, Ratio, 31 (3): 273-284 (2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/rati.12185. Download. I develop a novel and unified answer to the paradoxes of decrease and increase which turns crucially on the neo-Aristotelian idea that material objects have both independent and dependent parts. Kind-Dependent Grounding, Analytic Philosophy, 59 (3): 359-390 (2018). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/phib.12134. Download. I argue that certain grounding relations are kind-dependent, meaning that in some cases, a thing can be F in virtue of being G only if it meets the background condition of being a.K. I use this idea to develop novel solutions to two recalcitrant metaphysical puzzles: the 'grounding problem' (or 'statue-lump problem'), which involves coincident objects, and the 'thinking parts problem', which involves an absurd over-generation of conscious beings. Special Issues/Edited Volumes Objects and Properties: New Essays in Metaphysics, (co-edited with Carlo Rossi), to appear with Oxford University Press. Is Consciousness Everywhere: Essays on Panpsychism, special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, 28 (9/10), (2021) (co-edited with Philip Goff). Re-printed as an edited volume with Imprint Academic, 2022. Click here to download the Introduction to the volume, co-written by the editors. Reviews Review of J. L. Austin: Philosopher and D-Day Intelligence Officer, by M. W. Rowe, OUP', forthcoming in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Review of The Meaning of Mourning: Perspectives on Death, Loss, and Grief, by Mikolaj Slawjowski-Rode (ed.), Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming in Philosophy in Review. Review of The Mind-Body Problem and Metaphysics: An Argument from Consciousness to Mental Substance, by Ralph Weir, Routledge, The Philosophical Quarterly. Journal version. Penultimate version. Calme, Luxe, Tranquillité: Review of Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life, by Emily Austin, OUP. August 2023, Times Literary Supplement. Read online. Draft. Review of The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience, by David Papineau, OUP, Philosophy in Review. 41 (4): 256-257. Download. The Redness of the Rose: Is Reality Permeated by Mentality? Review of Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, by Philip Goff, April 2020, Times Literary Supplement. Read online. Review of Animalism: New Essays on Persons, Animals, and Identity, by Stephan Blatti and Paul Snowdon (eds), OUP, Philosophy in Review, 37 (3): 94-96 (2017). Download. Doctoral Thesis Austinian Disjunctivism Defended: A Presentational Theory of Visual Experience (2019) PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge (Queens' College). Download. |