Category Archives: philosophy of language

I Was Not Almost a Bag of Turnips

I’ve been writing about Weak Substantivalism. Here are the two previous posts.
1. Two Kinds of Substantivalism2. They Are There: Some Consequences for Weak Substantivalism
In the second post, I promised to post about some more counter-intuitive consequences of weak substantivalism. Here they are.
More Counter-Intuitive Consequences for Weak SubstantivalismSuppose we have an Andy-shaped bag of turnips. Suppose [...]

They Are There: Some Consequences of Weak Substantivalism

A few days ago I laid out three views about the nature of space-time. Here’s a quick summary of those views. For those of you who read the last post, you can probably skip down to the section titled “They are There”
Relationalism - Space is not real. Talk about space is reducible to talk about [...]

A-Theory and Vagueness

This is pretty half-baked, but consider the following proposition:

(1) January 9, 2008 is present.
I think it is a vague matter whether or not this is true. Imagine the minutes are slowly ticking away on January 8. It’s 11:59. As the time passes, January 9 will be determinately present, but exactly when that happens [...]

Ways-Millianism: A Puzzle (Part Three)

So, it’s time for the puzzle. First, a quick recap.
1. Ways-Millianism (Part One) I explained how Millianism responds to Frege Puzzles using ways of believing.
2. Ways-Millianism (Part Two) I explained how this strategy can be extended (and has already been extended) to respond to a variety of philosophical problems and puzzles.
Now for the puzzle…The strategy [...]

Ways-Millianism: A Puzzle (Part Two)

In Ways-Millianism: A Puzzle (Part One), I explained how ways of believing can be employed to respond to Frege Puzzles. In this post, I’ll explain how this strategy gives us a nice tool for our philosopher’s toolkit. However, adding that tool introduces what appears to me to be a serious puzzle. I’ll discuss that puzzle [...]

Ways-Millianism: A Puzzle (Part One)

I want to discuss a puzzle for a view called Ways-Millianism. I’ll do it in two parts. In this post I’m going to briefly present a Frege Puzzle for Millianism and the Ways-Millianism response. The puzzle I want to discuss relies on understanding how the Ways-Millian responds to Frege Puzzles.
If you’re already familiar [...]