Metaphysics

“The Dispensability of (Merely) Intentional Objects.” Philosophical Studies 141 (2008): 359-383.

The ontology of (merely) intentional objects is a can of worms. If we can avoid ontological commitment to such entities, we should. In this paper, I offer a strategy for accomplishing that. This is to reject the traditional act-object account of intentionality in favor of an adverbial account. According to adverbialism about intentionality, having a dragon thought is not a matter of being related thought-wise to dragons but of engaging in the activity of thinking dragon-wise.

“Composition as a Secondary Quality.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89 (2008): 359-383.

I propose a new account of mereological composition, according to which (roughly) there is a y that the xs compose just in case a normal intuiter would, under normal conditions, intuit that there is.

“Tropes and Facts.” Metaphysica 6 (2005): 83-90.

I argue that tropes and facts are two kinds of abstract particular, distinguished by the linguistic expressions appropriate for picking them out. Tropes are picked out by perfect nominals (whose parent sentence feature a copula), facts by imperfect nominals (whose parent sentence featured either a verb or a copula).

“Trope Theory and the Metaphysics of Appearances.” American Philosophical Quarterly 41 (2004): 5-20.

A traditional account of appearances construes them as mental particulars, such as sense data. In this paper, I offer a trope-theoretic account of appearances that treats them as external, non-mental particulars.