Below is a list of selected publications with annotated abstracts. For a full list, see my CV. For preprint versions of some of these, you can visit my Academia.edu page or PhilPeople page. For citation-related metrics, see my page on Google Scholar.
Unpublished work: I have several unpublished pieces (under review, revise & resubmit, and in-progress) that I would be happy to share. These are papers on: (i) the buck-passing account of value; (ii) moral properties and their causal efficacy; (iii) the "just-too-different" objection to naturalism about normativity; (iv) essence explanations of normative facts; and (v) supervenience in ethics;. Feel free to get in touch if you are interested.
"Does Panpsychism Explain Mental Causation?", Erkenntnis, forthcoming. In the contemporary literature on panpsychism, one often finds the claim that a Russellian-monist version of panpsychism, i.e., Russellian panpsychism, is a superior view compared to alternative non-physicalist theories. The argument for this claim is that while Russellian panpsychism can integrate consciousness in the causal order and explain mental causation, alternative theories fail to do so. If this is correct, panpsychism deserves its place as a main contender in solving the mind-body problem. In this paper, I argue that Russellian panpsychism’s superiority in explaining mental causation over competing accounts is illusory. On one reading, the proposed explanation is not an explanation of the phenomenon that is at stake in the mental causation debate. On an alternative reading, it is an explanation of the right phenomenon, but analogous explanations are available to competing accounts with less counterintuitive commitments. While there may be other considerations supporting panpsychism, explaining mental causation is not one.
"Social Constructs and How not to Ground Them", Inquiry, forthcoming. According to a current trend in social ontology, by articulating claims of social construction in terms of metaphysical grounding, we can shed light on the metaphysics of social construction and understand deep truths about social identities like race and gender. Focusing on two recent accounts, I argue that this move from social construction to grounding has limitations. While there are intelligible grounding claims that can explain certain ideas in social ontology, such grounding claims add nothing to what we have learnt from constructionists about race and gender. Although some applications of this grounding approach attempt to remedy this and offer detailed analyses of how social kinds are grounded, they yield results that are inconsistent with some very plausible views about social construction. Thus, if we want to illuminate the metaphysics of social construction, we must explore other alternatives.
"Qualia as Properties of Experiences", in Fisher & Maurin, (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Properties, Routledge, 2024. This is a chapter written for a collection of essays on properties. It defends the idea that qualia are properties of experiences and investigates what it is to be minimally ontologically committed to qualia.
"Truthmaker Puzzles for One-Level Physicalists", Synthese, 2022. According to one-level physicalism, reality is exhausted by fundamental physical entities and properties. This position is sometimes defended on the basis of the truthmaker view of ontological commitment. Accordingly, physicalists can affirm higher-level truths without ontologically committing to any higher-level properties or states of affairs; fundamental physical states of affairs serve as truthmakers of all truths that have truthmakers, and a physicalist’s ontology should consist of nothing but the fundamental physical states of affairs and their constituents. In this paper, I raise a problem for one-level physicalists who defend their views by appealing to the truthmaker view of ontological commitment. I argue that the truthmaker view faces certain puzzles the solutions of which clash with the main tenets of one-level physicalism. I conclude that either truthmaking is not a good guide to ontological commitment or one-level physicalism cannot be defended on the basis of the truthmaker view.
"Physicalism or Anti-Physicalism: A Disjunctive Account", Erkenntnis, 2022 (with Nathan Wildman). In this paper, we make a case for the disjunctive view of phenomenal consciousness: consciousness is essentially disjunctive in being either physical or non-physical in the sense that it has both physical and non-physical possible instances. We motivate this view by showing that it undermines two well-known conceivability arguments in philosophy of mind: the zombie argument for anti-physicalism, and the anti-zombie argument for physicalism. By appealing to the disjunctive view, we argue that two hitherto unquestioned premises of these arguments are false. Furthermore, making use of the resources of this view, we formulate distinct forms of both physicalism and anti-physicalism. On these formulations, it is easy to see how physicalists and anti-physicalists can accommodate the modal intuitions of their opponents regarding zombies and anti-zombies. We conclude that these formulations of physicalism and anti-physicalism are superior to their more traditional counterparts.
"Are Propositional Attitudes Mental States?", Minds and Machines, 2022. I present an argument that propositional attitudes are not mental states. In a nutshell, the argument is that if propositional attitudes are mental states, then only minded beings could have them; but there are reasons to think that some non-minded beings could bear propositional attitudes. To illustrate this, I appeal to cases of genuine group intentionality. I argue that these are cases in which some group entities bear propositional attitudes, but they are not subjects of mental states. Although propositional attitudes are not mental states, I propose that they are typically co-instantiated with mental states. In an attempt to explain this co-instantiation, I suggest that propositional attitudes of minded beings are typically realized by mental states.
"The Pursuit of Neutrality in the Metaphysics of Emergence", Analysis, 2022. What marks emergence as a metaphysically interesting idea is that many macro-level entities and their properties are ontologically and causally autonomous in relation to the micro-level entities and properties they depend on---or so argues Jessica Wilson in Metaphysical Emergence (2021). To do so, she adopts a “metaphysically highly neutral” (p. 32) approach to questions about powers, causation, properties, and laws. That is, while explaining what emergence is and arguing that there is indeed emergence in the natural world, she doesn’t restrict her analyses and arguments to any specific metaphysical accounts of these concepts, and she doesn’t commit to any controversial theses about them. In this article, I assess Wilson’s project against this methodological ideal of metaphysical neutrality.
"Rejecting Epiphobia", Synthese, 2021. Epiphenomenalism denies some or all putative cases of mental causation. The view is widely taken to be absurd: if a theory can be shown to entail epiphenomenalism, many see that as a reductio of that theory. Opponents take epiphenomenalism to be absurd because they regard the view as undermining the evident agency we have in action and precluding substantial self-knowledge. In this paper, I defend epiphenomenalism against these objections, and thus against the negative dialectical role that the view plays in philosophy of mind. I argue that nearly in all cases where a theory implies one kind of epiphenomenalism, it is an epiphenomenalism of a non-problematic kind, at least as far as issues about agency and self-knowledge are concerned. There is indeed a problematic version of epiphenomenalism, but that version is not relevant to the debates where its apparent absurdity is invoked.
"Causal Emergence and Epiphenomenal Emergence", Erkenntnis, 2020. According to one conception of strong emergence, strongly emergent properties are nomologically necessitated by their base properties and have novel causal powers relative to them. In this paper, I raise a difficulty for this conception of strong emergence, arguing that these two features (i.e., nomological necessitation and causal novelty) are incompatible. Instead of presenting this as an objection to the friends of strong emergence, I argue that this indicates that there are distinct varieties of strong emergence: causal emergence and epiphenomenal emergence. I then explore the prospects of emergentism with this distinction in the background.
"Mad Qualia", The Philosophical Quarterly, 2019. This paper revisits some classic thought experiments in which experiences are detached from their characteristic causal roles, and explores what these thought experiments tell us about qualia epiphenomenalism, i.e., the view that qualia are epiphenomenal properties. It argues that qualia epiphenomenalism is true just in case it is (nomologically) possible for experiences of the same type to have entirely different causal powers. This is done with the help of new conceptual tools regarding the concept of an epiphenomenal property. One conclusion is that it is not obvious if qualia epiphenomenalism is false; and it is also not obvious what should make us believe that it is false—or for that matter, true. Connections between qualia epiphenomenalism, physicalism, and non-physicalist property dualism are further explored. (Very curiously, pretty much right after this paper was published, a Japanese rock musician released a song entitled "Mad Qualia", which has been more influential than my paper with the same title. I do not know what to make of this cosmic coincidence.)
"Quidditism and Contingent Laws", Thought, 2019. According to contingentism, laws of nature hold contingently. An objection to contingentism is that it implies quidditism, and therefore inherits its implausible consequences. This paper argues that this objection is misguided. Understood one way, quidditism is not an implication of contingentism, hence even if it has implausible consequences, these are not relevant to contingentism. Understood another way, quidditism is implied by contingentism, but it is less clear if this version of quidditism has the same implausible consequences. Whatever the merits of contingentism, the argument from anti‐quidditism is not successful in showing that it is false.
“Emergence, Function, and Realization”, in S.C. Gibb. et. al. (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Emergence, Routledge, 2019. “Realization” and “emergence” are two concepts that are sometimes used to describe same or similar phenomena in philosophy of mind and the special sciences, where such phenomena involve the synchronic dependence of some higher-level states of affairs on the lower-level ones. According to a popular line of thought, higher-level properties that are invoked in the special sciences are realized by, and/or emergent from, lower-level, broadly physical, properties. So, these two concepts are taken to refer to relations between properties from different levels where the lower-level ones somehow “bring about” the higher-level ones. However, for those who specialise in inter-level relations, there are important differences between these two concepts – especially if emergence is understood as strong emergence. The purpose of this chapter is to highlight these differences.
"Epiphenomenal Properties”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2018. What is an epiphenomenal property? This question needs to be settled before we can decide whether higher-level properties are epiphenomenal or not. In this paper, I offer an account of what it is for a property to have some causal power. From this, I derive a characterization of the notion of an epiphenomenal property. I then argue that physically realized higher-level properties are not epiphenomenal, because laws of nature impose causal similarities on the bearers of such properties, and these similarities figure as powers in the causal profiles of these properties.
"Why Incompatibilism about Mental Causation is Incompatible with Non-reductive Physicalism" (With Jonas Christensen), Inquiry, (published online in 2018, fortchoming in print). The exclusion problem is meant to show that non-reductive physicalism leads to epiphenomenalism: if mental properties are not identical with physical properties, then they are not causally efficacious. Defenders of a difference-making account of causation suggest that the exclusion problem can be solved because mental properties can be difference-making causes of physical effects. Here, we focus on what we dub an incompatibilist implementation of this general strategy and argue against it from a non-reductive physicalist perspective. Specifically, we argue that incompatibilism undermines either the non-reductionist or the physicalist aspirations of non-reductive physicalism.
“Must Strong Emergence Collapse?” (With Jessica Wilson), Philosophica, 2017. There have recently been complaints from various quarters that strong emergence doesn’t make sense, on grounds that any purportedly strongly emergent features or associated powers can be seen to ‘collapse’, one way or another, into the lower-level base features upon which they depend. On one version of this collapse objection, certain ways of individuating lower-level physical features entail that such features will have dispositions to produce any purportedly strongly emergent features, undermining the supposed metaphysical novelty of the emergent features and the physical acceptability of the base features (see Howell 2009 and Taylor 2015). On another, certain ways of assigning powers to features entail that lower-level physical features will inherit any powers had by purportedly strongly emergent features (see Kim, 1998 and 2006, and others). Here we present and defend four different responses that might be given to the collapse objection as directed against a ‘novel power’ approach to strong emergence: first, distinguishing between direct and indirect having of powers; second, distinguishing between lightweight and heavyweight dispositions; third, taking strong emergence to be relative to sets of fundamental interactions; fourth, taking strongly emergent features to be ‘new object entailing’, in ways that block lower-level inheritance of powers. (For a reply to this paper, see Elanor Taylor's "Power emergentism and collapse problem", forthcoming in Philosophy of Science).
“Lawful Mimickers”, Analysis, 2017. The nomic view of dispositions holds that properties confer dispositions on their bearers with nomological necessity. The argument against nomic dispositions challenges the nomic view: if the nomic view is true, then objects don’t have dispositions, but ‘mimic’ them. This paper presents an explication of disposition conferral which shows that the nomic view is not vulnerable to this objection.
“An Argument for Power Inheritance”, The Philosophical Quarterly, 2016. Non-reductive physicalism is commonly understood as the view that mental properties are realized by physical properties. Here, I argue that the realization relation in question is a power inheritance relation: if a property P realizes a property Q, then the causal powers of Q are a subset of the causal powers of P. Whereas others have motivated this claim by appealing to its theoretical benefits, I argue that it is in fact entailed by two theses: (1) realization is a same-subject necessitation relation; (2) properties have their causal powers derivatively on the causal powers of their bearers. Although the power inheritance claim that is defended here has many opponents, I take it that the two theses that entail it are either plausible or widely assumed.
“Realization Relations in Metaphysics”, Minds and Machines, 2015. “Realization” is a technical term that is used by metaphysicians, philosophers of mind, and philosophers of science to denote some dependence relation that is thought to obtain between higher-level properties and lower-level properties. It is said that mental properties are realized by physical properties; functional and computational properties are realized by first-order properties that occupy certain causal/functional roles; dispositional properties are realized by categorical properties; so on and so forth. Given this wide usage of the term “realization”, it would be right to think that there might be different dependence relations that this term denotes in different cases. Any relation that is aptly picked out by this term can be taken to be a realization relation. The aim of this state-of-the-field article is to introduce the central questions about the concept of realization, and provide formulations of a number of realization relations. In doing so, I identify some theoretical roles realization relations should play, and discuss some theories of realization in relation to these theoretical roles. (This can be read alongside my Oxford Bibliographies entry on Realization).
Journal Special Issue: Non-Standard Approaches to Emergence, (co-edited with Olivier Sartenaer) Synthese, forthcoming. Includes articles by Karen Crowther, Samuel Fletcher, Paul Humphreys, Gil Santos, Ludger Van Dijk, Michele Paolini Paoletti, and Kenneth Silver. Our introduction article is here.
Here are some book reviews I wrote:
Metaphysical Emergence, by Jessica Wilson. In The Philosophical Quarterly, forthcoming.
Mental Causation: A Counterfactual Theory, by Thomas Kroedel. In Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2020.
The Multiple Realization Book by Thomas Polger and Larry Shapiro”. In Analysis, 2017.
Qualia and Mental Causation in a Physical World: Themes from the Philosophy of Jaegwon Kim, edited by Terence Horgan, Marcelo Sabates, and David Sosa. In The Philosophical Quarterly, 2015.
Mental Causation and Ontology, edited by S. C. Gibb, E. J. Lowe, and R. D. Ingthorsson. In Mind, 2014.
And, here are a few short pieces that are not so much relevant to my main research projects:
"Memory, confabulation, and epistemic failure", Logos & Episteme, 2018.
“Sensory Substitution and Non-Sensory Feelings”, in F. Macpherson (ed.), Sensory Substitution and Augmentation, Oxford University Press, 2019 (with David Suarez, Diana Acosta-Navas & Kevin Connolly).
"A New Response to the New Evil Demon Problem", Logos & Episteme, 2017.
And finally, here are some blog posts:
“Group Beliefs without Group Minds?”, Imperfect Cognitions Blog, 2022.
"Introducing The Illusions Index”, The Brains Blog, 2017 (with Fiona Macpherson).
“The Mental Causation Question and Emergence”, iCog Blog, 2016.