College of Arts and Letters
Department of Philosophy
Office
ET424
Phone
(323) 343-4189
Email
Research Interests
My main research interests are metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, free will, and metaethics.
Publications
| Metaphysics, Sophistry, and Illusion, 2021, Oxford University Press. |
| Free Will, 2014, MIT Press. |
| Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem, 2010, MIT Press. |
| Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics, 1998, Oxford University Press. |
| Mathematical Anti-Realism and Modal Nothingism, 2022, Cambridge University Press. |
| “How to Be an Anti-Platonist,” Platonism, H. Hrachovec and J. Macha (eds.), De Gruyter, 2024, pp. 175-201. |
| “Why Mathematical Fictionalism isn’t Psychologistic,” The Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 24 (2017), pp. 103-11. |
| “Mathematical Pluralism and Platonism,” The Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research,” vol. 34 (2017), pp. 379-98. |
| “Full-Blooded Platonism,” An Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics, R. Marcus and M. McEvoy (eds.), Bloomsbury Press, 2016, pp. 719-32. |
| “A Guide for the Perplexed: What Mathematicians Need to Know to Understand Philosophers of Mathematics,” reprint published in The Best Writings in Mathematics 2015, M. Pitici (ed.), Princeton University Press. |
| “Mill and the Philosophy of Mathematics,” Mill’s A System of Logic: Critical Appraisals, A. Loizides (ed.), Routledge, 2014, pp. 83-100. |
| “Structures, fictions, and the explanatory epistemology of mathematics in science,” (with Elaine Landry, Sorin Bangu, and Christopher Pincock), Metascience, vol. 22 (2013), pp. 247-73. |
| “Reply to Armour-Garb,” Philosophia Mathematica, vol. 19 (2011), pp. 34-48. |
| “Fictionalism, Mathematical Facts, and Logical/Modal Facts,” Fictions and Models, J. Woods (ed.), Philosophia Verlag, 2010, pp. 149-89. |
| “Fictionalism, Theft, and the Story of Mathematics,” Philosophia Mathematica, vol. 17 (2009), pp. 131-62. |
| “Realism and Anti-Realism in Mathematics,” in Philosophy of Mathematics (Handbook of the Philosophy of Science), A.D. Irvine (ed.), Amsterdam: Elsevier/North-Holland, 2009, pp. 35-101. |
| “Mathematical Platonism,” in Proof and Other Dilemmas: Mathematics and Philosophy, B. Gold and R.A. Simons (eds.), Mathematical Association of America Publications, 2008, pp. 179-204. |
| “A Theory of Mathematical Correctness and Mathematical Truth,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 82 (June 2001), pp. 87-114. |
| “Reply to Dieterle,” Philosophia Mathematica, vol. 8 (October 2000), pp. 310-315. |
| “Non-Uniqueness as a Non-Problem,” Philosophia Mathematica, vol. 6 (1998), pp. 63-84. |
| “Towards a Nominalization of Quantum Mechanics,” Mind, vol. 105 (1996), pp. 209-26 |
| “A Fictionalist Account of the Indispensable Applications of Mathematics,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 83 (1996), pp. 291-314. |
| “A Platonist Epistemology,” Synthese, vol. 103 (1995), pp. 303-25. |
| “Platonismo Pleno,” Analisis Filosofico, vol. 14 (1994), pp. 131-48. (Note: this journal is published in Argentina, at the University of Buenos Aires.) |
| “Against (Maddian) Naturalized Platonism,” Philosophia Mathematica, vol. 2 (1994), pp. 97-108. |
| “How We Could Have Libertarian Free Will Even if God Were a Total Know-It-All About the Future,” (with Rebecca Chan), forthcoming in Canadian Journal of Philosophy. |
| “Sapolsky-freedom and Libertarian-freedom,” forthcoming in Teorema, in a book symposium on Robert Sapolsky’s Determined. |
| “Why the Market Value of Free Will is $99.99,” forthcoming in Ted Chiang and Philosophy, D. Friedell (ed.) Palgrave Macmillan. |
| “Libertarianism,” A Companion to Free Will, in the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy Series, J. Campbell, K.M. Mickelson, and V.A.White (eds.), Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2023, pp. 314-334. |
| “Strawson, Ordinary Language, and the Priority of Holding Responsible Over Being Responsible,” Harvard Review of Philosophy, vol. 30 (2023), pp. 1-20. |
| “Free Will, Determinism, and Epiphenomenalism,” Frontiers in Psychology (2019), https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02623. |
| “Determinism and its Relevance to the Free-Will Question,” Handbook of Neuroethics, J. Clausen and N. Levy (eds.), Springer, 2014, pp. 231-51. |
| “Replies to McKenna, Pereboom, and Kane,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 169 (2014), 71-92; this was part of a symposium on my book Free Will as an Open Scientific Problem. The other contributors to the symposium are Michael McKenna, Derk Pereboom, and Robert Kane. |
| “Interview on Free Will and Moral Responsibility”, Methòde, vol. 2 (2013), pp. 1-11. |
| “Why There are no Good Arguments for any Interesting Version of Determinism,” Synthese, vol. 168 (2009), pp. 1-21. |
| “The Metaphysical Irrelevance of the Compatibilism Debate (and, More Generally, of Conceptual Analysis),” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. 47 (Spring 2009), pp. 1-24. |
| “A Coherent, Naturalistic, and Plausible Formulation of Libertarian Free Will,” Nous, vol. 38 (September 2004), pp. 379-406. |
| “Libertarianism as a Scientifically Reputable View,” Philosophical Studies, vol. 93 (February 1999), pp. 189-211. |
| “Deflationism and Anti-Metaphysicalism about Temporal Ontology,” forthcoming in the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Time, N. Emery (ed.) Routledge. |
| “Why Metaphysical Debates are not Merely Verbal (or How to Have a Non-Verbal Metaphysical Debate),” Synthese, vol. 197 (2020), pp. 1181-1201. |
| “How to Be a Fictionalist About Material Constitution (And Just About Anything Else),” Philosophical Fictionalism, B. Armour-Garb and F. Kroon (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2020, pp. 142-67. |
| “Why The Debate About Composition is Factually Empty (Or Why There’s No Fact of the Matter Whether Anything Exists),” Synthese, vol. 195 (2018), pp. 3975-4008. |
| “Anti-Metaphysicalism, Necessity, and Temporal Ontology,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 92 (2016), pp. 145-67. |
| “A Solution to the Paradox of Analysis,” with Terry Horgan, Analysis, vol. 76 (2016), pp. 3-7. |
| “Conceptual Analysis and X-Phi,” Synthese, vol. 193 (2016), pp. 2367-88. |
| “Attitudes Without Propositions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 58 (December 1998), pp. 805-26. |
| "Is There a Fact of the Matter Between Direct Reference Theory and (Neo-) Fregeanism?," Philosophical Studies, vol. 154 (2011), pp. 53-78. |
| "Indexical Propositions and De Re Belief Ascriptions," Synthese, vol. 146 (September, 2005), pp. 325-55. |
| "Indexical Senses," Theoria (March 1998). (Note: this journal is published in Yugoslavia, at the University of Belgrade.) |
| "Moral Folkism and the Deflation of (Lots of) Normative and Metaethics," Abstract Objects: For and Against, J.L. Falguera Lopez and C. Martinez-Vidal (eds.), Synthese Library, 2020, pp. 297-318. |
| "Bare Bones Moral Realism and the Objections from Relativism," Blackwell Companion to Relativism, S. Hales (ed.), Blackwell Press, 2011, pp. 368-390. |
| “Realism and Anti-Realism About Metaphysics,” forthcoming in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. |
| “Abstract Objects,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy, http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/, 2019. |
| “Fictionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictionalism/, 2008 (updated 2018). |
| “Fictionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics,” in Oxford Bibliographies in Philosophy, http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/, 2012 (updated 2018). |
| “Platonism in Metaphysics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism/, 2004 (updated 2016). |
| “Kurt Gödel,” Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/236770/Kurt-Godel#, 2009. |
| “Philosophy of Mathematics,” Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/369237/philosophy-of-mathematics, 2007. |
| Review of Effective Intentions by Alfred Mele, Philosophical Review, vol. 120 (2011), pp. 447-52. |
| “Can We Know That Platonism is True?” (review essay of Jerrold Katz’s Realistic Rationalism), Philosophical Forum, vol. 34, (Fall/Winter 2003), pp. 459-75. |
| Review of Thinking About Mathematics by Stewart Shapiro, The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, vol. 8 (March 2002), pp. 89-91. |
| Review of Naturalism in Mathematics by Penelope Maddy, Philosophy of Science, vol. 66 (September 1999), pp. 502-04. |
| Review Essay on Mathematics as a Science of Patterns by Michael Resnik, Philosophia Mathematica, vol. 7 (February 1999), pp. 108-26. |
| Review of Metaphysical Myths, Mathematical Practice by Jody Azzouni, The Journal of Symbolic Logic, vol. 60 (1995), pp. 1312-14. |
Educational Background
- Ph.D. Philosophy 1992
City University of New York Graduate Center
- B.A. Philosophy, Psychology, and Mathematics 1986
University of Colorado, Boulder