Abstract: Truthmaker theorists typically claim not only that all truths have truthmakers (Truthmaker Maximalism), but also that there is some enlightening metaphysical theory to be given of the nature of those truthmakers (e.g. that they are Armstrongian states of affairs, or tropes, or concrete individuals). Call this latter thesis the “Material Theory Thesis” (it is the thesis that there is some true material theory of truthmakers). I argue that the Material Theory Thesis is inconsistent with Truthmaker Maximalism.

Abstract: Borges’ short story “The Aleph” describes a situation that seems to some philosophers to be an example of mereological circularity: of two distinct, non-coinciding individuals, each of which is a part of the other. Is this coherent? I describe a way of generalising classical mereology that allows for this type of circularity.

In this paper I develop an account of permissives (“You may…”) that is consistent with my overall theory of imperatives (for which see Command and consequence).

Abstract: An imperative conditional is a conditional in the imperative mood (by analogy with “indicative conditional”, “subjunctive conditional”). What, in general, is the meaning and the illocutionary effect of an imperative conditional? I survey four answers: the answer that imperative conditionals are commands to the effect that an indicative conditional be true; two versions of the answer that imperative conditionals express irreducibly conditional commands; and finally, the answer that imperative conditionals express a kind of hybrid speech act between command and assertion.

In the paper I attempt to describe a metaphysically neutral minimal mereology, SPO (for supplementary pre-ordering). I explore some of the formal features of this system, show that it has axiomatic bases with both “part” and “overlap” as primitives, and relate it to existing literature on the topic.

Another paper on imperative consequence, this time critiquing Jörgensen’s (1937) “transformational” strategy - the idea that an argument containing imperatives can be translated into an argument not containing imperatives and which is valid iff the original argument was.

In “Command and Consequence”, I gave a two-dimensional semantics for a language containing an imperativising operator !, in which ! was a Stalnaker dagger-like operator. I suggested (and in this paper will prove) that the resulting logic is the normal modal logic KDDc4.

“Once we have distinguished intrinsic value from value as-an-end, is there any point in carrying on talking about intrinsic value? Does the concept of intrinsic value, as distinct from value as-an-end, have any interesting role to play in ethical theory?”

I wrote this in 2002, and don’t have any plans to publish it. It has been cited however, so I maintain the final draft here.

I wrote this paper between 1999 and 2001, and placed a draft on my website. It will never be published, though some portions of it made their way into my Theories of Location, but has been widely cited so I maintain the final draft here for reference.