Matti Eklund
Chair Professor of Theoretical Philosophy
Department of Philosophy
Uppsala University
Sweden
email: matti.eklund@filosofi.uu.se
I have worked primarily in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of logic. My book Choosing Normative Concepts (Oxford University Press 2017) deals mainly with issues in metaethics. A current research project is Alien Structure: Language and Metaphysics, funded by the Swedish Research Council. A book with the same title, published with Oxford University Press, is forthcoming.
CV available here.
Monographs
Alien Structure: Language and Reality, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.
Choosing Normative Concepts (2017), Oxford University Press. (Book symposium published in Inquiry. Reviews published or forthcoming in Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Ethics, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Philosophical Review, Utilitas and Pro-Fil.)
Articles
Forthcoming
"Carnapian Frameworks Revisited", in Panu Raatikainen (ed.), Essays in the Philosophy of Language, Acta Philosophica Fennica.
"Normative Concepts", in David Copp and Connie Rosati (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Metaethics, Oxford University Press.
"Normative Properties", in Anthony Fischer and Anna-Sofia Maurin (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Properties, Routledge.
"Edwards on Truth Pluralism", Inquiry, book symposium on Douglas Edwards' The Metaphysics of Truth. Published online first 2022.
"Should Moral Intuitionism go Social?", Noûs. Coauthored with Marvin Backes and Eliot Michaelson. Published online first 2022. Available here.
2023
"Schmoughts for Naught? Reply to Vermaire", Journal of Philosophy 120.
"Possible Limits on Conceptual Engineering: Magnetism, Fixed Points, and Inescapability", Argumenta 16.
"Thomasson on Modal Language", in Miguel Garcia-Godinez (ed.), Thomasson on Ontology, Palgrave MacMillan.
2022
“Who Cares if We're not Fully Real? Comments on Kris McDaniel's The Fragmentation of Being”, Philosophical Studies 179. Available here .
"Thin Entities", Theoria 89.
2021
"Reply to Hernandez and Laskowski", Southwest Philosophy Review 37.
“Conceptual Engineering in Philosophy”, in Justin Khoo and Rachel Sterken (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Social and Political Philosophy of Language, Routledge. Available here.
“What is Deflationism about Truth?”, Synthese 198, available open access here. Also printed in Douglas Edwards (ed.), Truth: A Contemporary Reader, Bloomsbury, 2019.
“Collapse and the Varieties of Quantifier Variance”, in James Miller (ed.), The Language of Ontology, Oxford University Press. Available here.
2020
“Reply to Critics”, Inquiry, available here. For book symposium on my Choosing Normative Concepts. Replies to contributions by Stephanie Leary, Kris McDaniel, Tristram McPherson and David Plunkett.
“The Existence of Personites”, Philosophical Studies 177, available open access here.
"The Normative Pluriverse", Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 18, available here.
“Making Sense of Logical Pluralism”, Inquiry 63, available here.
“The Metametaphysics of Neo-Fregeanism”, in Ricki Bliss and James Miller (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, Routledge. Available here.
“Variance Theses in Ontology and Metaethics”, in Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen and David Plunkett (eds.), Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics, Cambridge University Press. Available here.
2019
“Incoherentism and the Sorites Paradox”, Sergi Oms and Elia Zardini (eds.), The Sorites Paradox, Cambridge University Press. Available here.
“Reply to Bykvist and Olson”, Utilitas 31: 347-9. Available here. Reply to Krister Bykvist and Jonas Olson’s review of my Choosing Normative Concepts.
“Inconsistency and Replacement”, Inquiry 62 (2019): 387-402. (Symposium on Kevin Scharp, Replacing Truth(OUP, 2013). Available here. (Here is Scharp's reply to myself and the other critics.)
“Alien Structure and Themes From Analytic Philosophy”, Giornale di Metafisica 41, available here.
“Regress, Unity, Facts, and Propositions”, Synthese 196 (2019): 1225-47. Available open access here.
2018
“Modesty, Esotericism and Ineffability: Remarks on Hofweber”, Analysis 78: 291-303. Available here. (Here is Hofweber's reply to myself and the other critic, Gabriel Uzquiano.)
2017
“En värld som utgörs av begrepp: G.E. Moores tidiga metafysik”, in George Masterton, Keizp Matsubara and Kim Solin (eds.), Från Skaradjäkne till Uppsalaprofessor(Festschrift for Lars-Göran Johansson), Uppsala Philosophical Studies, 2017. Unpublished English version, “A World Formed of Concepts: The Early Metaphysics of G.E. Moore”, available here.
“Review Essay: Thickness and Evaluation”. Critical notice of Pekka Väyrynen, The Lewd, the Rude and the Nasty(OUP, 2013) Journal of Moral Philosophy. Available here.
2016
“Hale and Wright on the Metaontology of Neo-Fregeanism”, in Philip Ebert and Marcus Rossberg (eds.), Abstractionism, Oxford University Press, 2016. Available here.
“Carnap’s Legacy for the Contemporary Metaontological Debate”, Stephan Blatti and Sandra Lapointe (eds.), Ontology after Carnap, Oxford University Press, 2016. Available here.
“Kripke, normativitet och meaning”, Filosofisk tidskrift, 2016. (In Swedish.) Available here. Unpublished English version available here.
2015
“Intuitions, Conceptual Engineering, and Conceptual Fixed Points”, in Christopher Daly (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophical Methods, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Available here.
2014
“Rayo’s Metametaphysics”, Inquiry 57 (2014): 483-97. Available here. (Rayo’s reply to me can be found in his “Reply to Critics”, same journal issue, available here.)
“Replacing Truth?”, in Alexis Burgess and Brett Sherman (eds.), Metasemantics, Oxford University Press, 2014. Available here.
“On Quantification and Ontology”, Oxford Handbooks Online(2014). Available here.
2013
“Carnap’s Metaontology”, Noûs 47 (2013): 229-49. Available here.
“Evaluative Language and Evaluative Reality”, in Simon Kirchin (ed.), Thick Concepts, Oxford University Press, 2013. Available here.
“Williams on the Normative Silence of Indeterminacy”, Analysis 73 (2013): 264-71. Available here.
“Trends and Progress in Philosophy”, Metaphilosophy 44 (2013): 276-92. Available here.
“Metaphysical Vagueness and Metaphysical Indeterminacy”, Metaphysica14 (2013): 165-79. Available here.
2012
“The Multitude View on Logic”, in New Waves in Philosophical Logic, edited by Greg Restall and Gillian Russell, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Available here.
“Multitude, Tolerance and Language-Transcendence”, Synthèse187 (2012): 833-47. (Special volume, The Philosophy of Logical Consequence and Inference, edited by Sten Lindström, Erik Palmgren and Dag Westerståhl.) Available here.
“Alternative Normative Concepts”,Analytic Philosophy53 (2012): 139-57. Available here.
“Theories of Truth”, in Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Language, edited by Delia Graff Fara and Gillian Russell, Routledge, 2012. Available here.
2011
“Recent Work on Vagueness”, Analysis Reviews71 (2011): 352-63.
“Being Metaphysically Unsettled: Barnes and Williams on Metaphysical Indeterminacy and Vagueness”, Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, vol. 6 (2011), edited by Karen Bennett and Dean Zimmerman. Available here. (The paper is a reply to Barnes and Williams “A Theory of Metaphysical Indeterminacy” in the same volume – available here. Barnes and Williams respond in turn in their “Response to Eklund”, same volume, available here.)
“What are Thick Concepts?”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (2011): 25-49. Available here.
2010
“Vagueness and Second-Level Indeterminacy”, in Cuts and Clouds, edited by Richard Dietz and Sebastiano Moruzzi, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010. Available here.
“Rejectionism About Truth”, in New Waves in Truth, edited by Nikolaj Jang Pedersen and Cory Wright, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Available here.
2009
“On Some Recent Criticisms of the ‘Linguistic’ Approach to Ontology”, Dialectica 63 (2009): 313-23. Available here.
“The Frege-Geach Problem and Kalderon’s Moral Fictionalism”, Philosophical Quarterly 59 (2009): 705-12. Available here.
“Bad Company and Neo-Fregean Philosophy”, Synthèse170 (2009): 393-414. (Special issue focusing on the Bad Company objection to Neo-Fregean philosophy of arithmetic, edited by Øystein Linnebo.) Availablehere.
“Förkastliga värdebegrepp och Karl Marx antimoralism”, Filosofisk Tidskrift(2009). (In Swedish.)
“Carnap and Ontological Pluralism”, in Metametaphysics, edited by David Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman, Oxford University Press, 2009. Available here.
“Reality and Thought”, in John Shand (ed.), Central Issues of Philosophy, Blackwell, 2009.
2008
“Reply to Beall and Priest”, Australasian Journal of Logic 6 (2008): 94-106. Available here. (This is a reply to Beall and Priest, “Not So Deep Inconsistency: Reply to Eklund”, AJL 5 (2007), available here.)
“The Liar Paradox, Expressibility, Possible Languages”, in The Revenge of the Liar, edited by J. C. Beall, Oxford University Press, 2008. Available here.
“Deconstructing Ontological Vagueness”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy38 (2008): 117-40. Available here.
“Putnam on Ontology”, Maria Uxia Rivas Monroy, Concepcion Martinez Vidal and Celeste Cancela (eds.), Following Putnam's Trail: On Realism and Other Issues, Rodopi, 2008. (Proceedings from conference on Hilary Putnam’s pragmatism in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, May 2004.) Available here.
2007
“The Ontological Significance of Inscrutability”, Philosophical Topics 35 (2007): 115-34. (Actual date of publication: 2010.) Available here.
“The Picture of Reality as an Amorphous Lump”, in Ted Sider, John Hawthorne and Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, Blackwell, 2007. Available here.
“Meaning-Constitutivity”, Inquiry50 (2007): 559-74. Special issue edited by Douglas Patterson. Available here.
“Characterizing Vagueness”, Philosophical Compass, http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/philosophy/, 2007. Available here.
“Sider on Existence”, Noûs 41 (2007): 519-28. (With David Liebesman.) Available here. (Sider’s reply “Against Vague and Unnatural Existence: Reply go Liebesman and Eklund”, Noûs2009, can be found here.)
“Fictionalism”, in Ed Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007. Revised 2011 and 2015. Available here.
2006
“Neo-Fregean Ontology”, Philosophical Perspectives, 20, Metaphysics, (2006), ed. John Hawthorne. Available here.
“Metaontology” Philosophy Compass, Blackwell, 2006. Available here.
“Schiffer on Vagueness” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (2006): 12-23. Available here.
“The Liar Paradox and Metaphysics”, in J. Skilters, M. Eklund, O. Jonsson and O. Wiegand (eds.), Paradox: Logical, Cognitive and Communicative Aspects (Proceedings of the First International Symposium of Cognition, Logic and Communication), University of Latvia Press, Riga, Latvia, 2006, pp. 25-31.
2005
“Fiction, Indifference, and Ontology”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research71 (2005): 557-79. Available here. [Italian translation, “Finzione, Indifferenzia e Ontologia” published in Rivista di Estetica 32 (2006): 71-92.]
“What Vagueness Consists in”, Philosophical Studies 125 (2005): 27-60. Available here.
2004
“Personal Identity, Concerns, and Indeterminacy”, The Monist87 (2004): 489-511. Special issue on personal identity, edited by Tamar Gendler and Dean Zimmerman. Available here.
2002
“Personal Identity and Conceptual Incoherence”, Noûs36 (2002): 465-85. Available here.
“Inconsistent Languages”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research64 (2002): 251-75. Available here.
“Deep Inconsistency”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy80 (2002): 321-31. Available here.
“A Vindication of Tarski’s Claims About the Liar Paradox”, in Timothy Childers and Ondrej Majer (eds.), The Logica Yearbook 2001, Prague: Filosofia, pp. 49-55. (Proceedings of the Logica 2001 conference in Zahradky, Czech Republic.)
“Is Hintikka’s Logic First-Order?”, Synthèse 131 (2002): 371-88. (With Daniel Kolak.) Available here.
“Peter van Inwagen on Material Beings”, Ratio15 (2002): 245-56. Available here.
“Paradoxer: en allmän diagnos”, Filosofisk tidskrift 23 (2002): 42-52.
2001
“Supervaluationism, Vagueifiers, and Semantic Overdetermination”, Dialectica 55 (2001): 363-78. Available here.
2000
“The Aims of Logical Empiricism as a Philosophy of Science”, Acta Analytica 15 (2000): 137-59.
1996
“On How Logic Became First-Order”, Nordic Journal of Philosophical Logic1 (1996): 147-67.
Book reviews:
Review of Simon Kirchin, Thick Evaluation, Oxford University Press, 2017, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews(2018). Available here.
Review of Amie Thomasson, Ontology Made Easy, Oxford University Press, 2015, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews(2017). Available here.
Review of Nikolaj Pedersen and Cory Wright (eds.), Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates, Oxford University Press, 2013, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews(2014). Available here.
Review of Alexis Burgess and John Burgess, Truth, Princeton University Press, 2011, History and Philosophy of Logic33 (2012): 106-8.
Review of Eli Hirsch, Quantifier Variance and Realism: Essays in Metaontology, Oxford University Press, 2011, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Available here.
Review of Timothy Williamson, The Philosophy of Philosophy, Wiley-Blackwell, 2008, Australasian Journal of Philosophy88 (2010): 752-4. Available here.
Review of Heather Dyke, Metaphysics and the Representational Fallacy, Routledge, 2007, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2008). Available here.
Review of Fraser MacBride (ed.), Identity and Modality, Oxford University Press, 2006, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews(2007). Available here.
Review of Stewart Shapiro, Vagueness in Context, Oxford University Press, 2006. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews(2006). Available here.
Review of Crispin Wright, Saving the Differences, Harvard University Press, 2003. Philosophical Review113 (2004): 288-92.
Review of William Alston (ed.), Realism and Antirealism, Cornell University Press, 2002. Dialogue44 (2005):786-88.
Review of J.C. Beall (ed.), Liars and Heaps, Oxford University Press, 2003. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews(2004). Available here.