Mark Jago
Biographic Data
| ID | 1225657 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mark Jago |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mark |
| FAMILY NAME | Jago |
| SIGNATURE | JAGO M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nottingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7283-8556 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Making it Exact
Knowing what it is
Essentialists understand modal properties in terms of the essences of things. Given this view, it is natural to think that our knowledge of modality ultimately derives from our knowledge of the essences of things. Is that view plausible? Do we genuinely have knowledge of the essences of things, in a form substantial enough to ground our modal knowledge? The more we pack into the notion of essence to allow it to underpin modal properties, the hard…
Belief in truthmaker semantics
Stephen Yablo has argued that ascriptions of belief and knowledge are sensitive to subject matter and that theorising in such terms may help resolve philosophical questions about the semantics of such ascriptions. Truthmaker semantics offers a way of theorising about subject matters. My main aim in this paper is to investigate what a semantics for knowledge or belief ascriptions might look like within truthmaker semantics. I then discuss what the…
On ways of being true
There are many ways for truths to be true. How should we understand that idea? One is that there are different kinds of truth: the ways are different truth-like properties. Another understanding is that a truth can be made true in different ways, by different kinds of entities. The former understanding supports alethic pluralism. But the latter can be understood as a kind of monism: truth is the existential property of having some truthmaker or o…
Theodore Sider
Essential bundle theory and modality
Bundle theories identify material objects with bundles of properties. On the traditional approach, these are the properties possessed by that material object. That view faces a deep problem: it seems to say that all of an object’s properties are essential to it. Essential bundle theory attempts to overcome this objection, by taking the bundle as a specification of the object’s essential properties only. In this paper, I show that essential bundle…
Knowing how things might have been
I know that I could have been where you are right now and that you could have been where I am right now, but that neither of us could have been turnips or natural numbers. This knowledge of metaphysical modality stands in need of explanation. I will offer an account based on our knowledge of the natures, or essencess, of things. I will argue that essences need not be viewed as metaphysically bizarre entities; that we can conceptualise and refer t…
Private Schools and Queue-jumping
John White defends the UK private school system from the accusation that it allows an unfair form of ‘queue jumping’ in university admissions. He offers two responses to this accusation, one based on considerations of harm, and one based on meritocratic distribution of university places. We will argue that neither response succeeds: the queue-jumping argument remains a powerful case against the private school system in the UK. We begin by briefly…
Impossible Worlds
The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed an ‘intensional revolution’, a great collective effort to analyse notions which are absolutely fundamental to our understanding of the world and of ourselves—from meaning and information to knowledge, belief, causation, essence, supervenience, conditionality, as well as nomological, metaphysical, and logical necessity—in terms of a single concept. This was the concept of a possible world: a way t…
Reality Making
What kinds of entity are fundamental to reality, and how do dependent entities depend on the fundamental ones? How does one entity metaphysically ground another? Here a new generation of metaphysicians address these and related questions, which are central to contemporary metaphysics.
Hyperintensional propositions
The Impossible
Mark Jago presents a new account of meaningful thought, and how it is meaningful to think about the impossible. He gives a detailed analysis of the concept of hyperintensionality, whereby logically equivalent contents may be distinct, and develops an original theory in terms of possible and impossible worlds
Propositions and same-saying
Constructing worlds
Being Positive About Negative Facts
Negative facts get a bad press. One reason for this is that it is not clear what negative facts are. We provide a theory of negative facts on which they are no stranger than positive atomic facts. We show that none of the usual arguments hold water against this account. Negative facts exist in the usual sense of existence and conform to an acceptable Eleatic principle. Furthermore, there are good reasons to want them around, including their roles…
Logical information and epistemic space
Preference-based belief revision for rule-based agents
Being Positive About Negative Facts
Negative facts get a bad press. One reason for this is that it is not clear what negative facts are. We provide a theory of negative facts on which they are no stranger than positive atomic facts. We show that none of the usual arguments hold water against this account. Negative facts exist in the usual sense of existence and conform to an acceptable Eleatic principle. Furthermore, there are good reasons to want them around, including their roles…
Logical information and epistemic space
Hyperintensional propositions
Essential bundle theory and modality
Bundle theories identify material objects with bundles of properties. On the traditional approach, these are the properties possessed by that material object. That view faces a deep problem: it seems to say that all of an object’s properties are essential to it. Essential bundle theory attempts to overcome this objection, by taking the bundle as a specification of the object’s essential properties only. In this paper, I show that essential bundle…
Knowing how things might have been
I know that I could have been where you are right now and that you could have been where I am right now, but that neither of us could have been turnips or natural numbers. This knowledge of metaphysical modality stands in need of explanation. I will offer an account based on our knowledge of the natures, or essencess, of things. I will argue that essences need not be viewed as metaphysically bizarre entities; that we can conceptualise and refer t…
Constructing worlds
Belief in truthmaker semantics
Stephen Yablo has argued that ascriptions of belief and knowledge are sensitive to subject matter and that theorising in such terms may help resolve philosophical questions about the semantics of such ascriptions. Truthmaker semantics offers a way of theorising about subject matters. My main aim in this paper is to investigate what a semantics for knowledge or belief ascriptions might look like within truthmaker semantics. I then discuss what the…
Preference-based belief revision for rule-based agents
Logical information and epistemic space
Being Positive About Negative Facts
Negative facts get a bad press. One reason for this is that it is not clear what negative facts are. We provide a theory of negative facts on which they are no stranger than positive atomic facts. We show that none of the usual arguments hold water against this account. Negative facts exist in the usual sense of existence and conform to an acceptable Eleatic principle. Furthermore, there are good reasons to want them around, including their roles…
Propositions and same-saying
Constructing worlds
The Impossible
Mark Jago presents a new account of meaningful thought, and how it is meaningful to think about the impossible. He gives a detailed analysis of the concept of hyperintensionality, whereby logically equivalent contents may be distinct, and develops an original theory in terms of possible and impossible worlds
Hyperintensional propositions
Reality Making
What kinds of entity are fundamental to reality, and how do dependent entities depend on the fundamental ones? How does one entity metaphysically ground another? Here a new generation of metaphysicians address these and related questions, which are central to contemporary metaphysics.
Impossible Worlds
The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed an ‘intensional revolution’, a great collective effort to analyse notions which are absolutely fundamental to our understanding of the world and of ourselves—from meaning and information to knowledge, belief, causation, essence, supervenience, conditionality, as well as nomological, metaphysical, and logical necessity—in terms of a single concept. This was the concept of a possible world: a way t…
Private Schools and Queue-jumping
John White defends the UK private school system from the accusation that it allows an unfair form of ‘queue jumping’ in university admissions. He offers two responses to this accusation, one based on considerations of harm, and one based on meritocratic distribution of university places. We will argue that neither response succeeds: the queue-jumping argument remains a powerful case against the private school system in the UK. We begin by briefly…
Theodore Sider
Essential bundle theory and modality
Bundle theories identify material objects with bundles of properties. On the traditional approach, these are the properties possessed by that material object. That view faces a deep problem: it seems to say that all of an object’s properties are essential to it. Essential bundle theory attempts to overcome this objection, by taking the bundle as a specification of the object’s essential properties only. In this paper, I show that essential bundle…
Knowing how things might have been
I know that I could have been where you are right now and that you could have been where I am right now, but that neither of us could have been turnips or natural numbers. This knowledge of metaphysical modality stands in need of explanation. I will offer an account based on our knowledge of the natures, or essencess, of things. I will argue that essences need not be viewed as metaphysically bizarre entities; that we can conceptualise and refer t…
On ways of being true
There are many ways for truths to be true. How should we understand that idea? One is that there are different kinds of truth: the ways are different truth-like properties. Another understanding is that a truth can be made true in different ways, by different kinds of entities. The former understanding supports alethic pluralism. But the latter can be understood as a kind of monism: truth is the existential property of having some truthmaker or o…
Belief in truthmaker semantics
Stephen Yablo has argued that ascriptions of belief and knowledge are sensitive to subject matter and that theorising in such terms may help resolve philosophical questions about the semantics of such ascriptions. Truthmaker semantics offers a way of theorising about subject matters. My main aim in this paper is to investigate what a semantics for knowledge or belief ascriptions might look like within truthmaker semantics. I then discuss what the…
Knowing what it is
Essentialists understand modal properties in terms of the essences of things. Given this view, it is natural to think that our knowledge of modality ultimately derives from our knowledge of the essences of things. Is that view plausible? Do we genuinely have knowledge of the essences of things, in a form substantial enough to ground our modal knowledge? The more we pack into the notion of essence to allow it to underpin modal properties, the hard…
Making it Exact
Metaphysics (14 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (13 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Philosophy of language (11 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (9 works) · Philosophy of science (7 works) · Artificial Intelligence (6 works) · Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge (6 works)