Andrew Cullison

Joshua Knobe has run a series of experiments that suggest that our intuitions about whether or not an action was intentional may be influenced by whether or not the effects of the action were harmful/bad. Here’s a brief summary of one of those studies. In a case where an exec sought to max company profits [...]

Filed under: Uncategorized, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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I’ve been on a David Lewis kick recently. Here’s more. David Lewis considers two different epistemic objections to Lewisian Modal Realism (hereafter LMR). The first argues that modal realism is incompatible with modal knowledge. The second is that modal realism is incompatible with knowledge about the external world. I want to talk about the second [...]

Filed under: epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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UPDATE: I think Mike Almeida is right. The response I lay out won’t work. Suppose you have the option of saving a drowning child. Further suppose that Lewisian Modal Realism is true. Here are your options. SAVE THE CHILD You save the child. However, consider what is true about the pluriverse if you save the [...]

Filed under: ethics, metaphysics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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In On the Plurality of Worlds David Lewis resists an objection to his view by appealing to functionalism. The problem is roughly that for any number of worlds you suppose are in the pluriverse, you’ll be committed to the absurd thesis that there are more worlds than there really are. Here is the argument.

Filed under: metaphysics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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The word on Twitter that Ted Sider is now a mereological nihilist (See here and here). Evidently, he defended this view at the Pacific APA four days ago. I’ve already been regretting not going to the Pacific APA this year. All reports indicate that it was awesome, and this is just one more reason to [...]

Filed under: metaphysics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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For those of you who subscribe to my blog, sorry about all of those test posts. I was trying to get a plugin called “Postmaster” to work, and I’m still having problems. Here’s a picture of Simon reading that should make up for the inconvenience. Evidently, Lecture II is delicious.

Filed under: metaphysics by Andrew Cullison
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Consider the following theses. (A) For any person P, P exists iff P is alive. (B) For any person P, P is alive iff P is not dead. (C) Whether or not some person is dead is vague. (D) Whether or not someone exists is not vague. On the face of it, these four theses [...]

Filed under: metaphysics, philosophy, philosophy of language by Andrew Cullison
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Attention metaphysicians and philosophers interested in the four-dimensionalist/three-dimensionalist debate. A few mathematicians have created some videos that are designed to help people try and visualize a four-dimensional object. Pretty cool.

Filed under: metaphysics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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The journal mashups are still churning out interesting stuff. This article came up. Here’s the abstract. Presentism: Through Thick and Thin Abstract: Presentism is the view that whatever exists presently exists. Without defending Presentism, I argue first that Presentists should be Time-Free Presentists – Presentists whose views do not imply that there exist irreducible times. [...]

Filed under: metaphysics by Andrew Cullison
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In an earlier post (How Long Is The Present?) we had a little warm-up exercise. I assumed that presentism must hold that the only time that exists is a durationless present moment. I also tried to motivate it with two arguments. Let’s just take that assumption for granted in this post. Presentism must hold that [...]

Filed under: Uncategorized, metaphysics, philosophy by Andrew Cullison
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