research

My recent research has been focusing on the metaphysics of properties and relations, which, fundamental as it is, led me to study further phenomena both in metaphysics and in intersections with language, logic, science, mind, and meta-ethics. My PhD dissertation provides a new account of fundamentality/naturalness of relations. See a brief description of it below. I have published some of its chapters. See further below. And I am currently preparing others for publication too. See works in progress for some of them.

Besides my dissertation topic, I have been studying other problems I expect to contribute to in the future. These involve laws and counterfactuals, higher-order logic and quantification, and ontological categories and metaphysical explanation.

Here is my CV.

dissertation

I am sympathetic to David Lewis' view that naturalness/fundamentality explains a lot (namely, similarity, dissimilarity, intrinsicality, duplication, causation, laws of nature, meaning, and thought). Indeed, I think the list can be extended (e.g. to essence, change, categories, category mistakes, modes of being, metaphysical dialetheism). But to do so, we need to disentangle the notion of naturalness from Lewis' own specific metaphysical commitments. Moreover, the structure of naturalness must be richer. For starters, naturalness is not a monadic singular property of monadic properties (some of which happen to be properties of tuples). Naturalness is better construed as a relation between categories and relations; moreover, not less surprisingly, naturalness must be somehow attributable to positions (or ‘slots’) of relations.

publications

  • In Naı̈ve Positionalisms with Unlimited Symmetries, I develop two versions of naı̈ve positionalism, the view that an n-adic relation has at most n positions and applies to some objects under an assignment of its positions to these objects. I argue that both versions can escape the problem of limited symmetries, raised by Kit Fine and Maureen Donnelly against naı̈ve positionalism. More specifically, I show that the problem of limited symmetries assumes that each application of a relation to some objects corresponds to one relational state, and I develop many-one positionalism, according to which many applications correspond to just one state whenever the nature of the relation determines that they are necessarily co-obtaining. Moreover, I develop a second version, localist positionalism, according to which, even though the number of applications and of relational states are the same, the identity of applications is determined locally by a symmetry structure that is part of the nature of the relation. Orthogonal to the distinction between the two views above, I also draw a distinction between structuralism and platonism about the identity of positions, and I argue that even though structuralism can provide a distinctive account of the symmetry of some relations, to account for all relations, any of these views on positions is better if combined with one of the two versions of positionalism above. This paper is forthcoming in Philosophical Studies.

  • In Position-Relative Naturalness, I develop and defend a new theory of naturalness according to which relations can be natural to different degrees relative to their different positions. Set-membership, for example, is more natural relative to its set-position than to its member-position. I call this view position-relativism. The alternative view, position-absolutism, implies that existential derivatives of the same non-symmetric relation—such as being a member of something, and having something as a member—must always have the same degree of naturalness. But I argue that this is false. I develop position-relativism, argue that it avoids this problem, and show that it promises to do more. This paper is forthcoming in The Journal of Philosophy.

  • In Negative Natural Properties, Categories, and Mistakes, I develop a theory of naturalness according to which properties are natural relative to categories of objects. This new theory avoids a problem that, I argue, afflicts standard theories: whereas standard theories allow for only one ordering of properties, considerations of the similarity and dissimilarity made by some negative properties—like having no parts, having no members, having no determinate mass, reflecting no visible light—require admitting more than one. Additionally, I argue that my view accounts for genuine categories, category mistakes, and negation as privation, and that it accounts for a distinction between characterizing and non-characterizing fundamentality. This paper is published in Synthese.

  • In Essence and Naturalness, I briefly introduce some aspects of the theory of naturalness that I have been developing, and I show how it can improve analyses of essence in terms of standard necessity. This paper is published in The Philosophical Quarterly.

work in progress

I list here brief descriptions of some papers that are under review or that I am working on right now. Please email me if you have any interest.

  • A paper on symmetry objections to positionalism about relations.
  • A paper on naturalness, change, and inconsistency.
  • A paper on positionalism and regress.
  • A paper on composition of relational states.
  • Yet another paper on positionalism.
  • A paper on laws of nature and non-supervenience arguments.