Kinds and their Terms: On the Language and Ontology of the Normative and the Empirical. This is an abstract of my dissertation. The dissertation itself is located at the intersection of moral philosophy, philosophy of science, and philosophy of language. [pdf]
PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Special Predicates. A development of the argument I put forward in the third chapter of my M.A. thesis, I argue that while predicates peculiar to the special sciences appear genuine (i.e., they denote real properties), they are in fact merely-Cambridge. [pdf]
Kornblith's Natural Kinds and the Problem of Euthyphro. I argue that the anti-reductionist scientific realism about natural kinds--or, "Euthyphro Realism"--entailed by Hilary Kornblith's argument for naturalized epistemology in his Knowledge and its Place in Nature faces a dilemma betweem denying scientific realism, on the one hand, and, on the other, embracing reductionism about natural kinds. [pdf]
METAPHYSICS AND CAUSATION
The De Facto Designator Defense of the Identity of Indiscernibles. In this paper, I appeal to Kripke's notion of de facto rigid designation in order to defend Leibniz's Identity of Indiscernibles. [pdf]
Counterfactual Causation and the Problem of Indiscretion. In this paper, I offer a brief argument that David Lewis's counterfactual analysis of causation is too weak, which allows for some unsettling consequences. [pdf]
Processes and Predication. Drawing from Phil Dowe's process theory of causation, this paper presents a micro-quantities process theory of causation that (a) avoids certain objections to Dowe's theory and (b) accords well with some attempts to reduce higher-level kinds to lower-level kinds. [pdf]
MASTER'S THESIS
Special Predication: A Naturalistic Account of the Special Sciences.. Thesis for M.A. in philosophy. [pdf]
