Janice Dowell’s primary focus in metaphysics has been on methodology: What is the nature of our intuitions about cases such that they are able to serve as a source of evidence for metaphysical hypotheses? What is required to show that one set of properties is not ‘over and above’ some other set? With respect to the first question, she argues that our evidentially most powerful intuitions are our actual reactions to the discovery the actual world has certain features and that best armchair reasoning serves as an approximation of that. With respect to the second question, she defend a unique view that contrasts with two familiar rivals. On one view, advocated by David Chalmers, Brie Gertler, and Frank Jackson, metaphysical reductions require reductive explanations, a priori entailments of the truths to be reduced from the reducing truths, together with an appropriate conceptual analysis. The main opponents of that view, Ned Block, Brian McLaughlin, and Robert Stalnaker, argue that acceptance of a putative metaphysical reduction requires nothing more than abductive reasoning. The Chalmers/Gertler/Jackson view enjoys two important advantages over their rivals: Reductive explanations 1) leave no explanatory gaps and 2) provide clear grounds for distinguishing reduction from eliminativism. Securing those advantages in their framework, however, requires conceptual analyses, something that their opponents rightly see as widely unavailable. In contrast to both these positions, she shows how the kind of a priori entailments that Chalmers, Gertler, and Jackson see as required for reductive explanation don’t require the aid of conceptual analyses. The resulting view offers a method for justifying metaphysical reductions that shares the primary advantages of the Chalmers/Gertler/Jackson method, without sharing its primary weakness.
Reina Hayaki specializes in philosophical logic and metaphysics. Her most recent projects involve the logic and ontology of modality and of fiction. She has written on the extent to which formal and more serious parallels can be drawn between possible worlds and fictions, and between possibilia and fictional characters. For example, she has argued that S5 is not the correct modal logic either for modality or (less surprisingly) for nested fictions. She is currently working on two related but broader issues: modality as a type of normativity, and a theory of truth in fiction.
Harry Ide's work in metaphysics focuses on classical metaphysics. He is current working on a book about theories of universals from Plato through the Neoplatonists, which looks especially at their use in explaining imperfect similarity and in knowledge.
Jennifer McKitrick’s specific focus within metaphysics is causal powers, or dispositions. She takes issue with those who construe dispositions as ontologically suspect, reducible, superfluous, or inert. However, she also debates with those within the dispositions literature who are no longer arguing about the existence of dispositions, but are still disagreeing on finer points about the prevalence, nature, and role of dispositions in a broader metaphysical picture. Among those who favor inclusion of dispositions in their ontology, there are many who would restrict the category of dispositions to certain intrinsic, natural properties. McKitrick advocates a more inclusive approach, according to which dispositions are a heterogeneous group of properties that differ with respect to being fundamental or grounded in something else, intrinsic or extrinsic, simple or complex, fundamental or derivative, necessarily or contingently manifesting, trigger-able or trigger-less. In addition to several published essays on these themes, McKitrick is further articulating her approach to dispositions in her current book project, which has the working title “Dispositional Pluralism.”
Joe Mendola is working on determinables, individuation, modal truthmakers, and the interpretation of physical theories.