Research

Overview

My work focuses on issues in foundational metaphysics.  In particular, I'm interested in how we think about the over-arching structure of reality.  It is not uncommon for contemporary analytic philosophers to suppose that it is intuitive that there is something fundamental.  Far from being the result of intuition-mongering, debates over whether or not there is something fundamental, and what those fundamenta are like, can be situated in a long historic arc of philosophical inquiry into ultimate explanations. Cast in this light, contemporary discussions of fundamentality are continuous with historic discussions of God, Being, the Dao and Ultimate Reality, to name but some examples.  To think well about why we are supposed to believe that there is anything fundamental is to think well about what it is to explain everything, what our guiding explanatory principles are, and what the kinds of things are that we think deserve an explanation.  

Papers

•  Bliss R., ‘Antifoundationalism for the Fundamentality Firster’, Australasian Philosophical Review, (forthcoming).

•  Bliss R., ‘Metaphysical Overdetermination’, The Philosophical Quarterly, vol.73, no.1 (2023), pp.1-23.

• Bliss R., ‘Primitivism and Relative Fundamentality’, Inquiry, vol.63, no.7 (2020), pp.693-710.

• Bliss R., ‘What Work the Fundamental?’, Erkenntnis, vol.84, no.2 (2019), pp.359-379.

• Bliss R., ‘Viciousness and Circles of Ground’, Metaphilosophy, vol. 45, no.2 (2014), pp.245-256.

•  Bliss R., ‘Viciousness and the Structure of Reality’, Philosophical Studies, vol.166, no.2 (2013), pp. 399-418.

Book Chapters

• Bliss R., ‘The Principle of Sufficient Reason in Asian Thought: Three Case Studies’, Principle of Sufficient Reason, Fatema Amijee and Michael Della Rocca (eds). Oxford University Press [forthcoming].

•  Bliss R., ‘Some Work for a Theory of Grounding?’, Grounding in Medieval Philosophy, Calvin Normore (ed). Springer (2024).

• Bliss R and J.T.M.Miller, ‘Introduction’, Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, Ricki Bliss and J.T.M Miller (eds), Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics. Routledge (2021).

•  Bliss R., ‘Fundamentality’, Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics, Ricki Bliss and J.T.M Miller (eds), Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics. Routledge (2021).

• Bliss R., ‘Fundamentality’, Routledge Handbook of Grounding, Michael Raven (ed). Routledge (2020).

•  Bliss R and Casati F., ‘Cosmological Questions’, The Significance of Indeterminacy: Perspectives in Continental and Asian Philosophy, Gregory Scott Moss and Robert Scott (ed). Routledge (2018).

• Bliss R and Priest G., ‘The Geography of Fundamentality: An Overview’, in Reality and its Structure:  Essays in Fundamentality, Ricki Bliss and Graham Priest (eds). Oxford University Press (2018).

• Bliss R., ‘Grounding and Reflexivity’, in Reality and its Structure: Essays in Fundamentality, Ricki Bliss, Graham Priest (eds). Oxford University Press (2018).

• Bliss R and Priest G., ‘Metaphysical Dependence and Reality: East and West’, in Buddhist Philosophy: A Comparative Survey, Steven Emmanuel (ed). Basil Blackwell (2017).

•  Bliss R., ‘On Being Humean about the Emptiness of Causation’, in The Moon Points Back, Yasuo Deguchi, Jay Garfield, Graham Priest, Koji Tanaka (eds). Oxford University Press (2015).

Reference

•  Bliss R and Trogdon K., ‘Metaphysical Grounding’, The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, Edward N Zalta (ed) (2015, Completely rewritten 2021).

• Bliss R., ‘Metaphysical Grounding’, Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (2020).

Reviews

•  Review of Jan Westerhoff’s The Non-Existence of the Real World for Philosophy East and West, vol.71, no.3 (2021).

• Review of Alexander Pruss and Joshua Rasmussen’s Necessary Existence for European Journal for the Philosophy of Religion (2020).

• Review of Lin Ma and Jaap van Brakel’s Beyond the Troubled Water of Shifei: From disputations to Walking-Two-Roads in the Zhuangzi for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2020).

• Review of Mark Jago’s Reality-Making for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2016).

• Review of Fabrice Correia and Benjamin Schnieder Metaphysical Grounding: Understanding the Structure of Reality for The Philosophical Review, July (2015).

• Review of Tyron Goldschmidt’s The Puzzle of Existence: Why is there something rather than nothing? for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2013).