About
I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, mainly researching metaphysics (including time travel, ontology and metaontology), philosophy of religion and some philosophy of science and mind. I teach metaphysics and philosophy of mind, but supervise postgraduate students in a wide variety of areas.
Qualifications
Ph.D., Philosophy, University of Leeds, Leeds, England, 2007.
Taught M.A., Philosophy, University of Leeds, Leeds, England, 2001.
Joint Honours B.A. Philosophy and English, University of Leeds, Leeds, England, 2000.
Biography
I studied at the University of Leeds, as well as worked there as a teaching assisstant and as the administrator for the CMM (Centre of Metaphysics and Mind.) I moved to Glasgow to take up a one-year temporary teaching post before then taking another temporary post at the University of Birmingham. I was made permanent the year after.
Teaching
I currently teach:
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A Masters course on the Philosophy of Mind, focussing on contemporary views of substance dualism
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Third year metaphysics
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A second year course on van Inwagen's Material Beings
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First year introduction to epistemology
I also convene the third year Philosophical Project module.
Postgraduate supervision
I currently supervise doctoral candidates researching areas including metaontology, the philosophy of time and the nature of causation and conceptual analysis. I can supervise theses in a wide variety of areas of theoretical philosophy, including metaphysics and many areas of philosophy of religion, science and mind.
Research
My research has previously focused on mereology, persistence, supersubstantivalism, vagueness, time travel and the philosophy of groups. I am presently researching:
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Time travel. I'm currently preparing a monograph on the topic. It collects, and expands, some of my previous published work (as well as reconciling certain contradictory positions present within different papers of mine.) It will also cover time travel and: the open future; chance; prima facie contradictory propositions; the Fermi paradox; ethics; philosophy of religion.
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Ontology. I'm currently focusing on methodological principles, particularly the theoretical virtues of ideological parsimony and ontological parsimony (the latter of which I'm starting to think is a bad principle to follow.) I'm also toying with a theory of fundamentality in which the relation 'in virtue of', which holds between different obtaining states of affairs, is a (literal) causal relation.
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Philosophy of religion. I'm specifically interested in analytic metaphysical treatments of Christian philosophical theology (specifically the Trinity and pneumatology), divine hiddenness and religious pluralism.
If I get any spare time I want to do some work on aesthetics, specifically the varieties of indeterminate truth in fiction, and how to understand fictions which can be interacted with in incompatible ways by different people/parties (as you might find in tabletop- and computer-based role-playing games.)
Other activities
Publications
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An Introduction to Ontology, Polity Press, (2013.)
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Talking about something (but really talking about nothing), Analysis Reviews 72 (2012): 329-40.
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Endurantism and Perdurantism, Continuum Companion to Metaphysics (2012).
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An Unwelcome Consequence of the Multiverse Thesis, Synthese 184 (2012): 375-86.
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Undermining Motivations for Universalism, Noûs 45 (2011): 696-713.
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Universalism and Classes, dialectica 65 (2011): 451-72.
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Sider, Hawley, Sider and the Vagueness Argument, Philosophical Studies 154 (2011): 241-50.
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Temporal Parts and Time Travel, Erkenntnis 74 (2011): 225-40.
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Key Concepts in Metaphysics, Routledge, 2010. (co-authored with Helen Beebee and Philip Goff)
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Mereological Explanation and Time Travel, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (2010): 333-45.
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The Metaphysics of Groups, Philosophical Studies 149 (2010): 251-67.
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Composition, Persistence and Identity, in The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics ed. Le Poidevin, Simons, McGonigal and Cameron (2009): 296-309.
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Universalism, Vagueness and Supersubstantivalism, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 87 (2009): 35-42.
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A Mereological Challenge to Endurantism (with Jon Robson) Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2007): 633-40
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Endurantism and Timeless Worlds (with Joseph Melia) Analysis 67 (2007): 140-7.