My research focuses on Philosophical Logic and Metaphysics, primarily the metaphysics and logic of modality. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the distinction between truth in, and truth at, a possible world and how it might help articulate and defend propositional contingentism. Recently, I've been thinking about ontological nihilism—the view that there are fundamentally no objects. I'm interested in how we might better defend this view with the use of higher-order languages and logic. I'm also interested in the metaphysics of properties/propositions.
Publications
"Some ways the ways the world could have been can't be". Journal of Philosophical Logic. 2024 [Link]
Let serious propositional contingentism (SPC) be the package of views which consists in (i) the thesis that propositions expressed by sentences featuring terms depend, for their existence, on the existence of the referents of those terms, (ii) serious actualism---the view that it is impossible for an object to exemplify a property and not exist---and (iii) contingentism---the view that it is at least possible that some thing might not have been something. SPC is popular and compelling. But what should we say about possible worlds, if we accept SPC? Here, I first show that a natural view of possible worlds, well-represented in the literature, in conjunction with SPC is inadequate. Though I note various alternative ways of thinking about possible worlds in response to the first problem, I then outline a second more general problem---a master argument---which generally shows that any account of possible worlds meeting very minimal requirements will be inconsistent with compelling claims about mere possibilia which the serious propositional contingentist should accept.
"Serious Actualism and Nonexistence". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 2024 [Link]
Fine (1985) and Pollock (1985) influentially argue that serious actualism is false because of properties like the property of non-existence. I argue that such arguments are indeed successful. However, I also argue that we should distinguish a weaker formulation of serious actualism using the actualist distinction between truth in, and truth at, a possible world. This weaker formulation is then shown to be consistent with the existence and possible exemplification of properties like the property of nonexistence. I end with a novel argument for the truth of the weaker formulation.
"Serious Actualism, Typography, and Incompossible Sentences". Erkenntnis. 2023 [Link]
I present a simple puzzle about sentence tokens which seems to show that serious actualism is false. I argue that the best resolution to it does not work: it fails to capture the right distinctions we ought to make between what I call typographical sentence types--an interesting and previously undiscussed class of fine-grained sentence types which are partially individuated by their typography, or how they look when written out.
"Propositional contingentism and possible worlds". Synthese 200 (5), pp. 1-34. 2022. [Link]
Propositional contingentists make use of possible worlds frequently. However, a neglected question concerns whether there are any notions of worlds which are both theoretically adequate and consistent with propositional contingentism. Here, I argue that no adequate notion of a possible world is available to at least those who subscribe to one natural formulation of propositional contingentism. I also show that this result contrasts with a simple and adequate definition of a possible world available to the necessitist—those who hold that necessarily everything necessarily exists.
Publications
"Some ways the ways the world could have been can't be". Journal of Philosophical Logic. 2024 [Link]
Let serious propositional contingentism (SPC) be the package of views which consists in (i) the thesis that propositions expressed by sentences featuring terms depend, for their existence, on the existence of the referents of those terms, (ii) serious actualism---the view that it is impossible for an object to exemplify a property and not exist---and (iii) contingentism---the view that it is at least possible that some thing might not have been something. SPC is popular and compelling. But what should we say about possible worlds, if we accept SPC? Here, I first show that a natural view of possible worlds, well-represented in the literature, in conjunction with SPC is inadequate. Though I note various alternative ways of thinking about possible worlds in response to the first problem, I then outline a second more general problem---a master argument---which generally shows that any account of possible worlds meeting very minimal requirements will be inconsistent with compelling claims about mere possibilia which the serious propositional contingentist should accept.
"Serious Actualism and Nonexistence". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 2024 [Link]
Fine (1985) and Pollock (1985) influentially argue that serious actualism is false because of properties like the property of non-existence. I argue that such arguments are indeed successful. However, I also argue that we should distinguish a weaker formulation of serious actualism using the actualist distinction between truth in, and truth at, a possible world. This weaker formulation is then shown to be consistent with the existence and possible exemplification of properties like the property of nonexistence. I end with a novel argument for the truth of the weaker formulation.
"Serious Actualism, Typography, and Incompossible Sentences". Erkenntnis. 2023 [Link]
I present a simple puzzle about sentence tokens which seems to show that serious actualism is false. I argue that the best resolution to it does not work: it fails to capture the right distinctions we ought to make between what I call typographical sentence types--an interesting and previously undiscussed class of fine-grained sentence types which are partially individuated by their typography, or how they look when written out.
"Propositional contingentism and possible worlds". Synthese 200 (5), pp. 1-34. 2022. [Link]
Propositional contingentists make use of possible worlds frequently. However, a neglected question concerns whether there are any notions of worlds which are both theoretically adequate and consistent with propositional contingentism. Here, I argue that no adequate notion of a possible world is available to at least those who subscribe to one natural formulation of propositional contingentism. I also show that this result contrasts with a simple and adequate definition of a possible world available to the necessitist—those who hold that necessarily everything necessarily exists.