Publications

• Having a disposition and making a contribution
  Acta Analytica (Forthcoming)

  Dispositional accounts of various phenomena have claimed that dispositions can be intrinsically masked. In cases of intrinsic masking, something has a disposition while also having an intrinsic property that would prevent that disposition from manifesting in the face of its stimulus. This paper develops a theory of disposition ascriptions capable of recognizing such dispositions. The theory is modeled on the view that dispositions are powers. I propose that having a disposition is a matter of exerting a corresponding kind of influence. Unlike powers theories, however, the account largely falls silent on questions of fundamental metaphysics. It does not build dispositions into fundamental ontology, posit necessary connections between properties, or otherwise appeal to sui generis modality.

• Teaching and Learning Guide for: Taking stock of regularity theories of causation
  Philosophy Compass (Aug 2023) | Link

  A guide to teaching “Taking stock of regularity theories of causation.”

• Taking stock of regularity theories of causation
  Philosophy Compass (Mar 2021) | Link

  Regularity theories occupy a relatively small place in the contemporary literature on causation. Though they are inarguably of historical importance, they are often framed as facing, in the words of David Lewis, dark prospects. Given the litany of challenges facing every extant theory of causation, a cursory survey of the causation literature would suggest that regularity theories must be in some way especially flawed. This paper takes stock of the regularity theory of causation. It will introduce the theory and then consider three challenges to it: the problem of joint effects, the problems of redundant causation, and omission-involving causation. The first is often cited as a special, and especially challenging, problem for regularity theories. But the force of this problem has been greatly overstated. The threat to regularity theories instead comes from the latter two.

• Regularity as a form of constraint
  Australasian Journal of Philosophy (Jan 2016) | Link

  Regularity theories of causation are guided by the idea that causes are collectively sufficient for their effects. Following Mackie, that idea is typically refined to distinguish collections that include redundant members from those that do not. Causes must be collectively sufficient for their effects without redundancy. While Mackie was surely right that the regularity theory must distinguish collections that are in some sense minimally sufficient for an effect from those that include unnecessary hangers-on, I believe that redundancy is the wrong mark of that distinction. I propose a way to develop the regularity theory without it. Rather than distinguish minimal from mere sufficiency in terms of redundancy, we should look instead to the influence that events have in the world. Causes, so construed, must have just enough collective influence to assure that an effect occurs. I argue that such an account provides a uniform solution to the problem of epiphenomena and a pair of related problems that arise for prior iterations of the regularity theory.

• Causal contribution and causal exclusion
  Philosophers’ Imprint (Dec 2014) | Link

  Causation is extrinsic. What an event causes depends not just on its own nature and the laws, but on the environment in which it occurs. Had an event occurred under different conditions, it may have had different effects. Yet we often want to say that causation, in at least some respect, is not extrinsic. Events exert an influence on the world themselves, independently of what other events do or do not occur in their surroundings. This paper develops an account of such influence and argues that it provides a solution to the causal exclusion problem. By locating that solution largely within the metaphysics of causation, we can solve the exclusion problem without taking on a commitment to a theory of mind.

Recent talks and work in progress

Talks and drafts of work in progress are available on request

• Adverbialism about dispositions