Below you find a list of all my publications (journal articles, chapters, reviews) in English with very brief descriptions of their contents. This list was last updated October 2026.

fc. "Properties", in: Perspectives in Metaphysics, J. Barker (ed.), Routledge University Press.

Chapter in volume on metaphysics discussing what makes something a property rather than an entity belonging to some other category of being, the nature of whatever exists when a property does, reasons for adopting this or that theory of properties, and reasons for or against the existence of properties in the first place. 

fc. (with Naomi Thompson) "No Grounds for Inheritance", in: Epistemology of Grounding, Y. Kappes & D. Aleksiev (eds.), Cambridge University Press.

Paper responding to critique of theses first defended in a previously published paper by myself as well as in a paper by Thompson. Among other things, it criticizes the following claims (all of which are of relevance to a discussion of the nature of objectivity): (1) explanation understood as a type of representation can be fully objective and (2) there can be inheritance of nature in the absence of a match in objectivity between explanation and grounding. 

2026 "Virtus Relativa", in: Contemporary Perspectives and Historical Dimensions, J. Forsman & M. Slavov (eds.), Tampere University Press.

Paper defending the relata-specific solution to Bradley's regress against what I here call the virtus relativa objection: that accounting for the capacity of relations to relate with reference to their relata-specific nature is like explaining opium’s capacity to make you fall asleep with reference to its ‘virtus dormitiva’.  

2025 "What's Wrong with Global Cognitive Relativism?", in: Le Sens du Réel, J.-M. Chevalier, B. Gaultier & J. -H. Vollet (eds.), Collège de France. 

Paper criticizing P. Boghossian's (2006) argument against global cognitive relativism 

2025 "Regress, Relation, and Explanation", in: Objects and Properties: New Perspectives, A. Moran & C. Rossi (eds.), Oxford University Press, pp. 180-201.

Paper further developing and refining previously defended views on the nature and reality of relations in an(other) attempt to defend the view that distinction and plurality is real. 

2024 "Trope-Relations", in: The Routledge Handbook of Properties, Routledge University Press, pp. 250-260.

Chapter discussing the nature of relations, challenges to a theory on which relations are real, and reasons to believe that relations are tropes.

2024 (with A. Fisher) "Introduction: The Importance of Properties", in: The Routledge Handbook of Properties, A.R.J. Fisher & A.-S. Maurin (eds.), Routledge University Press, pp.1-10.

Introduction to the Routledge handbook on properties, which primary function is to introduce that chapters and explain the structure of the volume.

2024 "Eklund vs. Bradley: Regress, Relation, Explanation", in: Festschrift for Matti Eklund, A. Stokke (ed.), Uppsala University Press.

According to Eklund, although what he calls the Bradleyan constitution-regress is the “most interesting” one (2019: 1229), the threat it poses is not very serious at all, that it has a pretty straightforward (re)solution. In this paper, I scrutinize Eklund’s “straightforward resolution” and argue that things may not be quite as straightforward as he believes.

2019 "Grounding & Metaphysical Explanation: It’s Complicated", Philosophical Studies, 176(6): 1573-1594.

Grounding theorists insist that grounding and explanation are intimately related. This claim could be understood as saying either that grounding ‘inherits’ its properties from explanation or as saying that grounding plays an important—possibly an indispensable—role in metaphysical explanation. Or both. I argue that saying that grounding ‘inherits’ its properties from explanation can only be justified if grounding is explanatory by nature, but that this view is untenable. We ought therefore to be ‘separatists’ and view grounding and explanation as distinct. But once grounding has been in this sense distinguished from the explanation it backs, the view that the role grounding plays in explanation justifies its introduction ends up in serious trouble. I conclude that the role grounding plays in explanation does not justify attributing to grounding whatever nature we think it has, and it most likely does not give us any special reason to think grounding exists.  

2019 "A Van Inwagean Defense of Constitutionalism", in: Quo Vadis Metaphysics? M. Szatkowski (ed.), De Gruyter, pp. 103-118.

According to Van Inwagen, that metaphysics is in the business of explaining the nature and existence of whatever inhabits mind-independent reality makes no sense, the view that bundles of properties constitute charactered objects is ‘not even false’, and concomitant notions like those of a ‘constituent’, an ‘immanent universal’, and a ‘trope’ are incomprehensible. In this paper, I argue that the first complaint - that characterizing metaphysics as in the business of explaining makes no sense - makes sense (!) only if understood as a corollary to the claim that it makes no sense to say that the relations that (hierarchically) structure mind-independent reality are inherently explanatory. But then I argue that the claim that bundles of properties constitute charactered objects can be formulated without the eplanatory assumption. Nor does Quineanism, even in its distinctively van Inwagean variety, require that properties be understood as existing ‘apart’ from the objects they characterize. Therefore, it makes sense to say (although it may be false) that properties ‘make up’ objects, that properties exist ‘in’ the objects they constitute, and that properties are immanent universals or tropes.

2018 Review of The Elements and Patterns of Being—Essays in Metaphysics, ed. by A. R. J. Fisher, NDPR. 

Review of a collection of papers by D.C. Williams (both published and previously unpublished) as well as of the long and extremely informative introduction by A.R.J. Fisher.

2016        “Tropes: For and Against”, in Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong, EIDE – Foundations of Ontology, De Gruyter, F. Calemi (ed.).

This paper critically scrutinizes D.M. Armstrong’s main reasons for rejecting the trope view. All of them, it is maintained, fail to convince. 

2015 "States of Affairs and the Relation Regress", in: The Problem of Universals in Contemporary Philosophy, G. Galluzzo & M.J. Loux (eds.), Cambridge University Press, pp. 195-214.

Text developing and defending arguments (1) for reality as requiring difference-making and (2) for a particular understanding of the nature and function of metaphysical explanation, then turning these theses into a sustained attack on the reality of states of affairs. 

2014        “Segelberg on Unity and Complexity”, in: Philosophy and Botany. Essays on Ivar Segelberg. H. Malmgren, (ed.), Thales, pp. 36-64.

Ivar Segelberg claims that there are both collections and complex unities, and that the difference between the two consists in the presence in worlds in which the complex unity (and not just the collection) exists of an infinity of states of affairs of increasingly higher order. I argue that Segelberg's suggestion can succeed only if we give up a fundamental and deeply intuitive assumption - that explanation must ground out - and that giving up this assumption may turn out to be (too) costly.

2013 "Infinite Regress Arguments”, in: Johanssonian Investigations, C. Svennerlind, J. Almäng, & R. Ingthorsson (eds.), Ontos Verlag, pp. 421-438.

Paper discussing the nature and function of infinite regress arguments, tentatively suggesting an understanding of such arguments and the (vicious) regresses they track in explanatory terms.

2013 "Exemplification as Explanation", Axiomathes 23(2): 401-417.

Paper discussing the role of metaphysical explanation, both for our understanding of the structure of reality and, more specifically, for justifying the reality of this or that F. 

2013 Review of Tropes - Properties, Objects and Mental Causation, by D. Ehring , The Journal of Philosophy, 110(2): 111-115.

Review of Douglas Ehring's book on tropes.

2012 "Bradley's Regress", Philosophy Compass, 7(11): 794-807.

Ever since F. H. Bradley first formulated his (in)famous regress argument philosophers have been hard at work trying to refute it. The argument fails, it has been suggested, either because its conclusion just does not follow from its premises, or it fails because one or more of its premises should be given up. In this paper, the Bradleyan argument, as well as some of the many and varied reactions it has received, is scrutinized. 

2011 "An Argument for the Existence of Tropes", Erkenntnis, 74(1): 69-79. 

That there could be ontologically complex concrete particulars is self-evidently true. A reductio may however be formulated which contradicts this truth. In this paper I argue that all of the reasonable ways in which we might refute this reductio will require the existence of at least some tropes. 

2010 "Trope Theory and the Bradley Regress", Synthese 175(3): 311-326.

Trope theory is the view that the world is a world of abstract particular qualities. But if all there is are tropes, how do we account for the truth of propositions ostensibly made true by some concrete particular? A common answer is that concrete particulars are nothing but tropes in compresence. This answer seems vulnerable to an argument (first presented by F. H. Bradley) according to which any attempt to account for the nature of relations will end up either in contradiction, nonsense, or will lead to a vicious infinite regress. I investigate Bradley’s argument and claim that it fails to prove what it sets out to. It fails, I argue, because it does not take all the different ways in which relation and relata may depend on one another into account. If relations are entities that are distinct from yet essentially dependent upon their relata, the Bradleyan problem is solved. We are then free to say that tropes in compresence are what make true propositions ostensibly made true by concrete particulars. 

2010 "A World of Tropes?" in: Worldviews, Science, and Us: Studies of Analytic Metaphysics, R. Vanderbeeken & B. D’Hooghe (eds.), World Scientific Publishers, pp. 107-130.

The revisionary metaphysician seemingly faces an unfortunate dilemma where she is forced to choose between the Scylla of too little regimentation and the Charbydes of too much. Many take this to be an impossible dilemma, and regard it as a reductio against the revisionary framework itself. In this paper, I argue that the dilemma is not necessarily impossible. To be justified, ontological theorising must be regimented just enough. To escape the dilemma, therefore, the revisionary metaphysician must, to be able to answer the question: Why should one hold that the world is a world of tropes? first answer another question: Can revisionary theorising be regimented just enough? I suggest that truthmaker theory might, if added to a revisionary framework, offer the resources necessary to obtain just the right amount of regimentation for its revisionary ontological conclusions to be justified. The world is a world of tropes if (minimally) tropes can fulfil their truthmaking function. That tropes can fulfil their truthmaking function only tells us that the world could be a world of tropes, it does not tell us why we should prefer a theory of tropes as truthmakers to a theory of, say, states of affairs. I therefore end the paper with a discussion of the limits of theory comparison in revisionary ontology. 

2008 "Does Ontology Matter?" in: Tropes, Universals and the Philosophy of Mind, S. Gozzano & F. Orilia (eds.), De Gruyter, pp. 31-56.

D. Robb, C. B. Martin and J. Heil have argued that the problem of the causal relevance of mental properties (dis)solves when properties are treated as tropes rather than as universals. Though similar in appearance, their positions differ importantly. Robb relies on the notion that properties are tropes, but close scrutiny of their position suggests that Martin and Heil do not. Martin and Heil reject the Picture Theory (the view that language pictures reality). I argue that this rejection is sufficient in itself to (dis)solve the problem of mental properties’ causal relevance. The Picture Theory should indeed be rejected; but if it is, not only can the argumentative role that tropes are supposed to play in this context no longer be offered as a reason for accepting an ontology of tropes rather than universals; many other reasons often cited in our attempts to justify one ontology over another must be given up as well. If ontological conclusions are to be justified, the old Picture Theory must be replaced by a new and better one. The paper ends with a sketch of such a theory.

2008 “The One over Many”, in Problems from Armstrong, ed. By M. Keinänen & T. DeMey, Acta Philosophica Fennica, 84.

This paper investigates the One over Many argument. It argues that this argument can be understood in at least two senses, both different from, but in a sense included in, the sense in which the One-over-Many is regarded as an argument for the existence of universals. In both of these senses, it is argued, it is possible to accept the One-over-Many while denying the existence of universals.This established, I examine the argument from the One over-Many as given within the framework of Armstrong’s theory of universals. Within this framework there is another thesis of great import, that of scientific realism. I argue that, as you accept a scientific realism, the support provided by the argument from the One-over-Many dissolves, or, vice versa, if you claim support from the argument the results of your scientific realism seem to be contradicted. I argue that the way to resolve this tension is to give up the argument from the One-over-Many. In particular, this will results in a weakening of Armstrong’s case for the existence of universals. 

2007 “Infinite Regress: Virtue of Vice?”, in: Hommage à Wlodek, T. Rønnow-Rasmussen,  B. Petersson, J. Josefsson & D. Egonsson (eds.), URL:https://www.fil.lu.se/hommageawlodek/index.htm 

In this paper I argue that the infinite regress of resemblance is vicious in the guise it is given by Russell but that it is virtuous if generated in a (contemporary) trope theoretical framework. To explain why this is so I investigate the infinite regress argument. I find that there is but one interesting and substantial way in which the distinction between vicious and virtuous regresses can be understood: The Dependence Understanding. I argue, furthermore, that to be able to decide whether an infinite regress exhibits a dependence pattern of a vicious or a virtuous kind, facts about the theoretical context in which it is generated become essential. It is precisely because of differences in context that he Russellian resemblance regress is vicious whereas its trope theoretical counterpart is not. 

2005 "Same but Different", Metaphysica  6(1): 131-146. 

Paper responding to a critique of my If Tropes (2002) put forward by Herbert Hochberg in his “Relations, Properties and Particulars” (2004). 

2005 (with N-E Sahlin) "Some Ontological Speculations: Ramsey on Particulars, Universals, and Facts" in: Ramsey's Ontology, special issue of Metaphysica, 3(3): 7-28.

Paper critically discussing the ontological implications of Ramsey's solution to the problem of universals.

2005 (with I. Brinck) "Revisionary Metaphysics. An Interview with D.M. Armstrong", Theoria, 71:1, pp. 3-19.

Interview with David Armstrong.

2001 (with J. Persson) "Realistic Metaphysics. An interview with D. H. Mellor", Theoria, 67:(2): 96-113.

Interview with Hugh Mellor.

1998 "Davidson on Properties", Dialectica, 52:1, 13-22.

D. Davidson claims that, by studying the most general aspects of natural language, we will also be studying the most general aspects of reality.In particular, this means that, through the application of a systematic truth theory to natural language, we will be able to reveal its basic structure, its true logical form. Once this logical form has been spelled out, we will be able to determine the finite stock of important constituents of which sentences are built, and also the specific roles these “atoms” play in the relevant structure. Since the structure of language can be said to “mirror” the structure of reality, this also means that we can now say something about the basic constituents of the world. We will be able to tell which kinds of entities exist and which do not. So what exists is what, according to the (complete) theory, functions as values of the quantified variables, once the logical form, the basic structure, of all the sentences of the language has been spelled out. Davidson has claimed that what all this quantificational structure will demand from ontology is the existence of objects and particular events. In this paper, I concentrate on some of the likely consequences of the adoption of this method of reaching ontological conclusions. In particular, I will try to show that Davidson’s own way of arguing for the existence of events along these lines can be applied to cases where he seemingly would have to commit himself to the existence of properties too.