Papers forthcoming or in progress:

• new!Putting Things Together -- draft of June 2009 Consider what happens when I mix together flour, salt, yeast, and water to make a loaf of bread. It is in important ways quite different from what happens when I nail together pieces of wood to make a table. Nonetheless, it is completely familiar, and conceptually central. In this paper, I argue that there is a cross-time notion of making that is both causal and compositional. Our compositional concepts are messy, and tangled up with causation and persistence in ways that have gone largely unnoticed by contemporary metaphysicians. "Construction Area: No Hard Hat Required" -- undergoing further revision; new draft will be posted eventually A variety of relations widely invoked by philosophers -- composition, constitution, realization, micro-basing, emergence, and many others -- are species of what I call 'building relations'. I argue that they are conceptually intertwined, articulate what it takes for a relation to count as a building relation, and argue that -- contra appearances -- it is an open possibility that these relations are all determinates of a common determinable, or even that there is really only one building relation.
• "Maybe Sometime" -- coming soonish
• "Metametametaphysics" -- probably coming soonish
• "What You Don't Know Can Hurt You"
  Contribution to a PPR book symposium on Daniel Stoljar's Ignorance and Imagination: The Epistemic Origin of the Problem of Consciousness
• "Zombies Everywhere!"
  A very short note drawing analogies between 3 hitherto unconnected views. It's an Analysis reject, and hence will probably never see the light of day, but I think it's kind of fun.
• "Why I am Not a Dualist" -- draft of August 2006Abstract: Why am I not a dualist? One way to answer that question is to explain, in detail, where I think the arguments for dualism go wrong. But another way to answer the question is to explain why I am committed to finding fault with them in the first place. What is wrong with the view itself? After briefly arguing that the extant arguments against dualism are not really all that compelling, I propose a new one. The basic idea is that dualism simply does not help. The dualist is in just as bad a position vis à vis the mysteries of consciousness as the physicalist. Consequently, no appeal to those mysteries can support dualism.

• "Composition, Colocation, and Metaontology" -- in Metametaphysics, eds. David Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, Oxford University Press, 2009. (I have posted the penultimate draft; please cite the published version.)
  Abstract: The paper is an extended discussion of what I call the 'dismissive attitude' towards metaphysical questions. It has three parts. In the first part, I distinguish three quite different versions of dismissivism. I also argue that there is little reason to think that any of these positions is correct about the discipline of metaphysics as a whole; it is entirely possible that some metaphysical disputes should be dismissed and others should not be. Doing metametaphysics properly requires doing metaphysics first. I then put two particular disputes on the table to be examined in the rest of the paper: the dispute over whether composite objects exist, and the dispute about whether distinct objects can be colocated. In the second part of the paper, I argue against the claim that these disputes are purely verbal disputes. In the third part of the paper, I present a new version of dismissivism, and argue that it is probably the correct view about the two disputes in question. They are not verbal disputes, and the discussion about them to date has not remotely been a waste of time. At this stage, however, our evidence has run out. I argue that neither side of either dispute is simpler than the other, and that the same objections in fact arise against both sides. (For example, the compositional nihilist does not in fact escape the problem of the many, and the one-thinger does not in fact escape the grounding problem.)
  
• "Exclusion Again" -- in Being Reduced, ed. Jakob Hohwy and Jesper Kallestrup, Oxford University Press, 2008. (I have posted the penultimate draft; please cite the published version.) Abstract: Philosophers of mind use the exclusion problem in two importantly different ways. Sometimes it is used as an argument for physicalism, and sometimes it is used as an argument for a particular version of physicalism. I argue that although the former is a good argument, the latter is not. All physicalists have a well-motivated solution to the exclusion problem that no dualist has. This solution centrally involves denying what is called the 'exclusion principle'--that all effects that have more than one sufficient cause count as overdetermined. I suggest that there are two apparent ways to motivate denying this claim. One of them--the successful one--turns on endorsing the claim that the mental supervenes with metaphysical necessity upon the physical, and is consequently available to all and only physicalists. The other turns on rejecting a production view of causation in favor of a pure dependence view. But although this move is available to dualists, it provides no reason to deny the exclusion principle. Consequently, dualists really do have to either endorse epiphenomenalism or deny the completeness of physics. All physicalists, in contrast, have a well-motivated alternative available.
  
  
• Mental Causation entry for Philosophy Compass
  This is an overview or "research bulletin" about mental causation, with particular emphasis on highlighting areas that are ripe for further investigation.
  If you cannot access the official version linked above, go here.
  
• Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Supervenience (with Brian McLaughlin)
  
  
• "Two Axes of Actualism" -- The Philosophical Review 114:3 ("July 2005", actually published in 2006) Abstract: Actualists usually express their view by means of the slogan 'everything is actual'. But it's far from clear what that is supposed to mean. This paper is a critical examination of the various things it might mean (and has been taken to mean). I argue that the actualist faces two key choices--and explain which choices she should make.
  If you cannot access the official version linked above, go here.
  
• "Proxy 'Actualism'" -- Philosophical Studies 129:2, pp. 263-294 (May 2006)
  Abstract: Bernard Linsky and Edward Zalta have recently proposed a new form of actualism. I characterize the general form of their view and the motivations behind it. I argue that it is not exactly new--it bears marked similarities to Alvin Plantinga's view--and that it definitely isn't actualist.
  If you cannot access the official version linked above, go here.
  
• "Spatio-Temporal Coincidence and the Grounding Problem" -- Philosophical Studies 118:3, pp. 339-371 (April 2004)
  Abstract: A lot of people believe that distinct objects can occupy precisely the same place for the entire time during which they exist. Such people have to provide an answer to the 'grounding problem'--they have to explain how such things, alike in so many ways, nonetheless manage to fall under different sortals, or have different modal properties. I argue in detail that they cannot say that there is anything in virtue of which spatio-temporally coincident things have those properties. However, I also argue that this may not be as bad as it looks, and that there is a way to make sense of the claim that such properties are primitive.
  If you cannot access the official version linked above, go here.
  
• "Global Supervenience and Dependence" --- Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68:3 (May 2004)
  Abstract: Two versions of global supervenience have recently been distinguished from each other. I introduce a third version, which is more likely what people had in mind all along. However, I argue that one of the three versions is equivalent to strong supervenience in every sense that matters, and that neither of the other two versions counts as a genuine determination relation. I conclude that global supervenience has little metaphysically distinctive value.
  If you cannot access the official version linked above, go here.
  
• "Why the Exclusion Problem Seems Intractable, and How, Just Maybe, To Tract It" --- Nous 37:3, pp. 471-497 (September 2003)
  Abstract: A growing number of people try to solve the exclusion problem by claiming that an effect can have distinct mental and physical causes without being overdetermined. I argue that those who hold this view bear a significant burden of proof that they have not discharged. I show how they can do so, and develop a strategy for defending this sort of response to the exclusion problem.
  If you cannot access the official version linked above, go here.