Ground grounded

Philosophical Studies - Most facts of grounding involve nonfundamental concepts, and thus must themselves be grounded. But how? The leading approaches—due to Bennett, deRosset, and...     

Against Vague Existence

Philosophical Studies -     

Tooley's solution to the inference problem

Conclusion Tooley's speculative theory, I have tried to show, is beset with difficulties. I warned that this theory threatens to fail in its goal of illuminating the possible nature of a necessitation relation if it employs radical principles about parts and wholes and universals. Secondly, I argued that regardless of how we interpret the crucial phrase existing only as a part of, the speculative theory cannot solve the inference problem without appealing to such radical principles. Finally, I considered and rejected a version of Tooley's speculative theory that attempts to solve the inference problem using the Indiscernibility of Identicals.I conclude that the speculative theory fails. Tooley must fall back to the stipulative theory and live with the lack of an illuminating solution to the inference problem. But this is not to admit defeat. While it would be nice to have a more complete account of its workings, we may view the introduction of the necessitation relation as a theoretical posit, analogous to the positing of subatomic particles in physics to account for various data.I would like to thank Phillip Bricker for his persistent help with this paper. I would also like to thank David Lewis and an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies for their comments.     

Suicide: bad act or good intervention

This article develops a different perspective on the ethics of suicide, based on theoretical and clinical grounds. In terms of value theory, applying "good" or "bad" to the suicide act makes no sense. We need to shift our focus from a search for an ethical statement about suicide (e.g., "rational suicide") to the ethical justification for intervention based on the needs and interests of an affirming therapeutic profession. We choose to intervene because of values we hold about well-functioning, existence, potential for human life; and because as emphatic, social beings, we feel for others and are motivated by that feeling. This justification leads us to suggest a situational case-centered ethics for suicide intervention.     

Intrinsic properties

Conclusion It seems that no quasi-logical analysis of naturalness, intrinsicality, or duplication is possible; this at least in part lends credibility to the practice of taking one as a primitive. And I have argued that Lewis's analysis of intrinsicality is indeed successful, Dunn's objections notwithstanding. There are other important questions about Lewis's project that I have not answered. Is his analysis of duplication successful? Does the notion of naturalness make sense? Even if naturalness cannot be defined, can it be explained in an illuminating manner? Rather than taking one of the notions as primitive, should we analyze the notions in terms of some other extra-logical notion? Important questions, but questions for another time.