Home

Determinism

… there is widespread confusion about what ‘determinism’ means. Certainly the standard textbook definitions are wrong. Wrong in the way that definitions are wrong: they don’t capture what anyone really means by the term.

Trolley Problems

Philosophical treatments of the Trolley Problem ignore morally significant subtleties.

Why Time has a Direction

The direction of time is the direction of contingent counterfactual dependence and hence causation.

Why we cannot change the past

Presented at the “Free Will Physics and Metaphysics” conference. Rutgers University, May 12th,2022

The Simple Theory of Counterfactuals

The account of counterfactuals that most philosophers endorse is wrong. The correct theory is Johanthan Bennett’s Simple Theory.

The Dif

Our topic is the difference variously labeled as that between, on the one hand, “doing” or “causing” or “making” something happen and, on the other, “allowing” or “letting” it happen. Our goal here is to say “What’s the Dif?”

The Computational Theory of the Laws of Nature

An alternative to the Best System Account of Laws based upon Algorithmic Information Theory.

Blackburn, Truth and other Hot Topics

Blackburn and Fodor fail to appreciate the threat incommensurability poses to our belief in objective truth.

Retributive Ethics

Begin with the principle:It is impermissible to harm others (other things being equal)…

The Good, The Bad and Peter Singer

Singer says that failing to donate money to help suffering from poverty and preventable diseases is as morally bad as standing by as a child drowns. But how bad is that I wonder?

The Retributive Theory of Property

Retributive ethics derives property rights from conventionally agreed to permissions to harm others.

The Origins of Property: A Parable with Morals

Once upon a time there was a primitive tribe that hunted and gathered in a verdant forest in a temperate clime.

The Retributive Theory of Rights

The theory analyses rights as permissions to harm others.