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Published & Forthcoming Papers:
‘Tzimtzum: The (Meta-)Metaphysics of Divine Contraction.’ (forthcoming). In Daniel Rynhold & Tyron Goldschmidt (eds.) Routledge Companion to Jewish Philosophy. Routledge.
This chapter focuses on a traditional debate about the kabbalistic doctrine of tzimtzum — Divine contraction. According to one conception of tzimtzum, known as tzimtzum kepshuto, God literally contracted himself in order to ‘make space’ for the creation of the world. On the alternative conception of tzimtzum known as tzimtzum lo-kepshuto, Divine contraction is a kind of illusion: There is truly nothing other than God, but God’s apparent contraction allows for the created world’s apparently-separate existence. This chapter is an attempt to understand the disagreement between these two views in philosophical terms, particularly with the help of the concepts of ground and fundamentality. We will see that these notions can be helpful in spelling out the metaphysical commitments that might be attributed to each view, as well as in clarifying precisely what is at stake between them.
‘The World to Come: A Perspective.’ (forthcoming). In Yujin Nagasawa & Mohammad Saleh Zarepour (eds.) Global Dialogues in the Philosophy of Religion: From Religious Experience to the Afterlife. Oxford University Press.
Jewish thinkers have held two opposing conceptions of life after death, or what is known in the Jewish tradition as the World-to-Come (Olam Haba). On the ‘intellectualist’ conception maintained primarily by Maimonides and Gersonides, the World-to-Come is an immaterial realm that exists in the present, which one enters upon death as a ‘pure intellect’ in virtue of the knowledge acquired throughout one’s life. On the alternative ‘supernaturalist’ conception defended by Nachmanides, Crescas, and others, the World-to-Come is the future post-Messianic reality of our own physical world, which one enters by being resurrected in a physical body when this time arrives. In this chapter, we’ll see that each of the two classic views faces challenges in providing a satisfying explanation of how it is that we can come to exist in the World-to-Come as ourselves. After presenting the central commitments of each view and briefly sketching these challenges, I will propose an alternative direction for thinking about the World-to-Come that is grounded in and inspired by Hasidic Jewish thought. I will suggest that the Hasidic tradition can be interpreted so as to offer an alternative conception of the World-to-Come — one that integrates certain core aspects of the two familiar views into a unified metaphysical picture, and may have the resources to resolve the difficulties they face at the same time.
‘A Puzzle for Realism about Ground.’ (2022). dialectica, 76 (1) .
On the metaphysical picture that is commonly associated with theories of grounding, reality has a hierarchical structure: there are multiple ‘levels’ of facts, with facts at the higher levels being grounded in, or holding in virtue of, those at the lower levels. My focus in this paper is on the question of what it would take for reality to truly have such a hierarchical structure. More specifically, what would it take to be a realist about a worldly, metaphysical relation of ground? I argue that there is a tension that is implicit in the notion of ground which makes it difficult to answer this question in a straightforward way. The tension is revealed via the attempt to make sense of the metaphysical status of the grounded — in particular, in the attempt to explain how it is that grounded facts can be distinct from and obtain in addition to their grounds on the one hand, and be ‘nothing over and above’ their grounds at the same time. I argue that straightforward accounts of the metaphysics of the grounded cannot satisfy both of these requirements, and then sketch a novel alternative approach.
‘Above Time: Rabbi Nachman’s tzaddik and enlightened temporal experience.’ (2021). The Monist, 104 (3): 410-425.
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav describes the tzaddik (righteous person of spiritual enlightenment) as experiencing time in a distinctive, enlightened way: What is seventy years for the rest of us feels like a mere fifteen minutes for the tzaddik. Furthermore, even higher levels of enlightenment are possible — for a tzaddik on a higher level, what feels like seventy years for the first tzaddik is again but a mere fifteen minutes. This pattern continues, approaching a limit point which Rabbi Nachman calls “above time,” and which is the perspective on time of the Divine. How might Rabbi Nachman’s claims about enlightened temporal experience be understood? In this paper, my aim is to examine some ways of understanding what it might mean to ‘experience time more quickly’ or to ‘experience 70 years as 15 minutes’ in light of contemporary theories of the structure of temporal experience. I then present a novel interpretation of Rabbi Nachman’s claims which appeals to the contemporary notion of the specious present — a non-zero temporal interval experienced in a unified way as present.
‘Temporal Ontology and the Metaphysics of Perspectives.’ (2020). Erkenntnis, 85 (2): 431-453.
The question of what exists is often seen as one of the metaphysician’s primary concerns — an ontological stance is a central and basic component of a great many positions in metaphysics. Consider, in particular, the debate surrounding the metaphysics of time: the question of whether non-present entities exist is typically thought of as one of the fundamental issues at stake in the debate, with each position on the nature of time consisting in part of an answer to this question of ontology. My purpose in this paper is to raise some worries about this focus on ontology, and to sketch an alternative approach to conceptualizing the debate — one that I think can help us get a clearer and deeper understanding of the fundamental issues at stake. I focus in particular on the case of time and the ontology of non-present objects, but the framework I present is ultimately meant to apply more broadly to a range of debates involving ontology. On the framework I propose, the basic question at stake in this and other analogous debates is the following: Of the various perspectives we might adopt on reality, which perspective is fundamental? I explain what this means and how it can help us reconceptualize the relevant metaphysical issues.
‘Ground and Realism.’ (2020). In Michael J. Raven (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Metaphysical Grounding. New York: Routledge.
Questions of ground and questions of realism appear to be tightly connected in a number of ways, but there has not been consensus on precisely how these connections should be understood, nor a full explication of the various approaches one might take on this issue. My aim in this chapter is to spell out several ways in which we might see these questions as connected, and thereby clarify the role for questions of ground in metaphysical inquiry more generally.
‘Presentism and the Specious Present: From temporal experience to meta-metaphysics.’ (2019). dialectica, 73 (1-2): 247-266.
In the debate between presentism and eternalism, presentism is often assumed to be the position that is in line with ordinary intuitions and experience, with eternalism being the counter-intuitive position that must explain these intuitions and appearances away. I argue that this assumption is problematic, in that presentism’s supposed agreement with our experience is conditional on the assumption that presentism is correct. In particular, attention to specious present models of temporal experience reveals the possibility of a deep disconnect between presentism and experience — on which presentism fails in accommodating the very intuitions that are supposed to motivate the view. I argue that this complexity in the dialectic suggests that we should see the debate between presentism and eternalism in a new light.
‘Actuality and the Amodal Perspective.’ (2013). Philosophical Studies, 164 (1): 15-40.
In this paper, I examine our intuitive understanding of metaphysical contingency, and ask what features a metaphysical picture must possess in order to satisfy our intuitions about modal matters. After spelling out what I think are the central intuitions in this domain, I examine the debate between the two most widely held views on the nature of modality, namely, modal realism and modal actualism. I argue that while each of these views is able to accommodate some of our intuitions, it leaves others unsatisfied. I then present an alternative metaphysical picture, which I argue can accommodate our intuitions in a way that the traditional views cannot. More specifically, I argue that our intuitions about modality call for a pluralist view of the structure of reality — a view on which there is more than one ultimate ‘shape’ to the fundamental facts, each corresponding to a distinct metaphysically privileged perspective on reality.
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Work in Progress & Under Review:
‘The Sense of Self’
The sense of self is often understood to be an experience as of being or having a self — the sense that there is a certain entity at the center and foundation of one’s inner mental life and experience. On this construal, the sense of self is naturally associated with a corresponding ontological claim — namely, that there is in fact such an entity that is the self — and realism about self is understood in ontological terms. In this paper, I argue that this way of understanding both the sense of self and realism about self is mistaken. I begin by examining the phenomenology of self-experience, and presenting an alternative understanding of its structure — on which the experience of self does not involve the implicit ontological commitment we typically take it to have. I argue that the alternative model is both phenomenologically more accurate than the ontological picture, and gives rise to an alternative, more viable understanding of what is involved in being a realist about self.
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