Chris Daly

The methodology of genuine modal realism

David Lewis’s genuine modal realism is a controversial thesis in modal metaphysics. Charles Chihara and Ross Cameron have each argued that Lewis’s defence of his thesis involves his committing serious methodological errors; in particular, that his replies to two well-known and important objections are question-begging. Scott Shalkowski has further argued that Lewis’s attempt to analyse modal talk in non-modal terms is viciously circular. This paper considers the methodology which Lewis uses to argue for his thesis, and the paper tries to show that it is guilty of no methodological errors.

Is ontological revisionism uncharitable

Abstract Some philosophers (‘nihilists’) deny the existence of composite material objects. Other philosophers (‘universalists’) hold that whenever there are some things, they compose something. The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize an objection to these revisionary views: the objection that nihilism and universalism are both unacceptably uncharitable because each of them implies that a great deal of what we ordinarily believe is false. Our main business is to show how nihilism and universalism can be defended against the objection. A secondary point is that universalism is harder to defend than nihilism.

What Kind of Creatures Are We?, by Noam Chomsky

One sometimes hears that humanity’s most urgent task is to reduce the odds of human extinction. But preserving our species is only likely to be so urgent if creating persons is morally permissible in the first place. Debating Procreation: Is it Wrong to Reproduce? offers a first-rate treatment of the latter question. Its authors, David Benatar and David Wasserman, are not only very capable philosophers, but also extremely gifted writers. The result is a highly engaging and provocative book. In the first five chapters, Benatar defends the following three arguments for the antinatalist conclusion that procreation is always wrong:

Agnosticism about Ontology

Let ‘ontological realism’ be the view that ontological issues are intelligible, that they are substantial, and that they are resolvable. Different philosophers use the phrase ‘ontological realism’ in different ways. We use it in a relatively weak, accommodating sense. Some philosophers, such as Ted Sider, use ‘ontological realism’ to designate the view that there is a single most natural quantifier meaning. That is not part of our use of the term. We wish to build into the phrase no more than the above characterization.