John Heil
Biographic Data
| ID | 953587 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Heil |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Heil |
| SIGNATURE | HEIL J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Virginia Commonwealth University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3432-2131 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Rethinking Metametaphysics
Amie Thomasson's new book, Rethinking Metaphysics (Oxford 2025), centres on the idea that metaphysics, as traditionally pursued, is bankrupt. There are no established metaphysical truths, only endless attempts to accomplish the unaccomplishable. Regarded as a purely a priori endeavour, it loses its connection to reality and its relevance outside philosophy. Connecting metaphysics to reality puts in competition with physics, a competition it is ‘b…
Truthmaking and fundamentality
Hylomorphism
Why Is There No Raising to Object in Spanish? A Study of Code-Switching
Raising to Object (RtoObj), like other types of Raising configurations, features a determiner phrase (DP) in a dual-clausal relationship with both the matrix and the embedded clauses. RtoO is possible in English and a few other languages, most famously, Icelandic. However, it is not possible in many other languages, such as Spanish. As far as we can tell, insight into what licenses RtoObj is largely speculative. The main goal of this paper is to …
Objects, Ordinary and Otherwise
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Philosophy of Mind
The book is intended as a reader-friendly introduction to issues in the philosophy of mind, including mental–physical causal interaction, computational models of thought, the relation minds bear to brains, and assorted -isms: behaviorism, dualism, eliminativism, emergentism, functionalism, materialism, neutral monism, and panpsychism. The Fourth Edition reintroduces a chapter on Donald Davidson and a discussion of ‘Non-Cartesian Dualism’, along w…
Acquisition without evidence
This article provides a Poverty of Stimulus argument for the participation of a dedicated linguistic module in second language acquisition. We study the second language (L2) acquisition of a subset of English infinitive complements that exhibit the following properties: (a) they present an intricate web of grammatical constraints while (b) they are highly infrequent in corpora, (c) they lack visible features that would make them salient, and (d) …
Ontology, Modality, and Mind
During his forty-year career, E. J. Lowe established himself as one of the world’s leading philosophers, publishing eleven single-authored books, four co-edited collections, and well over 200 articles in journals and edited volumes. His scholarship was strikingly broad, ranging from early modern philosophy to the interpretation of quantum mechanics. His most important and sustained contributions were to philosophy of mind, philosophical logic, an…
Metaphysics as the Science of Essence
What is metaphysics? And how is it to be pursued? Elsewhere, I have defended the view that the central task of metaphysics is to chart the possibilities of being : knowledge of what is actual presupposes knowledge of what is possible —of what is really or metaphysically possible. According to this conception of the aim and content of metaphysical theory, metaphysics is above all concerned with identifying the fundamental ontological categories to…
Being of one substance
An attempt is made to provide a consistent, independently motivated metaphysics of the Trinity by invoking an ontology of substances, attributes, and modes in the spirit of Descartes and Spinoza. The Trinity comprises one substance, triply attributed, where distinctions among attributes are ‘of reasoned reason’ only, but ‘founded’ in the nature of the substance
Multisite Replication in Second Language Acquisition Research
We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore the feasibility of such an approach in second language (L2) research. To this end, we addressed open questions in a line of research that has examined whether having learners attend to form while reading or listening to a L2 passage interferes with comprehension. Our results are consistent with findings from the specific paradigm that we replicated in t…
Causal Relations
In this chapter the received view of causation, according to which causal relations are a distinctive species of external relation, and causal relata are taken to be pairs of events, the causing event preceding its effect, is discussed. The relation itself is presumed to be nonreflexive, asymmetrical, and transitive. This chapter considers the implications of adopting a conception of causation according to which causal relations are understood as…
The Problem of Universals in Contemporary Philosophy
Are there any universal entities? Or is the world populated only by particular things? The problem of universals is one of the most fascinating and enduring topics in the history of metaphysics, with roots in ancient and medieval philosophy. This collection of new essays provides an innovative overview of the contemporary debate on universals. Rather than focusing exclusively on the traditional opposition between realism and nominalism, the contr…
Cartesian Transubstantiation
According to the received view of the metaphysics of the Eucharist endorsed by the Catholic Church after the thirteenth century, sacramental bread and wine are 'converted' into Christ's body and blood (this is transubstantiation). To account for the appearances, it was further supposed that accidents of the bread and wine remain on the altar inhering in no substance. Such a view is difficult to square with Aristotelian physics, but much more diff…
Cause, Mind, and Reality
Methodological Considerations in Code-Switching Research
This article addresses methodological concerns in research on grammatical aspects of code-switching. Data from code-switching have the potential for a unique contribution to linguistics by giving us access to combinations of linguistic features that may be difficult (or impossible) to observe in monolingual data. Nonetheless, the use of code-switching data for linguistic inquiry is not without issues. In this paper, we focus on three methodologic…
The Universe As We Find It
"What does reality encompass? Is reality exclusively physical? Or does reality include nonphysical--mental, and perhaps 'abstract'--aspects? What is it to be physical or mental, or to be an abstract entity? What are the elements of being, reality's new materials? How is the manifest image we inherit from our culture and refine in the special sciences related to the scientific image as we have it in fundamental physics? Can physics be understood a…
Philosophy of Mind
This comprehensive textbook, written by a leading author in the field, provides a survey of mainstream conceptions of the nature of mind accessible to readers with little or no background in philosophy. Included are the dualist, behaviourist, and functionalist accounts of the nature of mind, along with a critical assessment of recent trends in the subject. The problem of consciousness, widely thought to be the chief roadblock to our understanding…
Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics
Aristotelian (or neo-Aristotelian) metaphysics is currently undergoing something of a renaissance. This volume brings together fourteen essays from leading philosophers who are sympathetic to this conception of metaphysics, which takes its cue from the idea that metaphysics is the first philosophy. The primary input from Aristotle is methodological, but many themes familiar from his metaphysics will be discussed, including ontological categories,…
Physicalism, or Something Near Enough
Book Review| January 01 2008 Physicalism, or Something Near Enough Jaegwon Kim, Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. xiii + 186 pp. John Heil John Heil Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2008) 117 (1): 119–122. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2007-027 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Sh…
Dispositions
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction is a comprehensive and accessible survey of main themes, positions and debates in philosophy of mind. John Heil introduces and discusses the major topics in succinct, user-friendly, self-contained chapters:* Cartesian dualism* Descartes's legacy* non-Cartesian dualism* behaviorism* the identity theory* functionalism* the representational theory of mind* qualia* radical interpretation* the intentiona…
From an Ontological Point of View
Implicit in much contemporary philosophy is a Picture Theory of language according to which we can ‘read off’ features of the world from features of our ways of talking about the world. Predicates applying truthfully to objects, for instance, are taken to name properties of those objects possessed by every object to which the predicates apply. Such a principle might be thought to follow from a more general ‘truth‐making’ requirement (truths requi…
The Possibility of Metaphysics
The Possibility of Metaphysics
1. The Possibility of Metaphysics 2. Objects and Identity 3. Identity and Unity 4. Time and Persistence 5. Persistence and Substance 6. Substance and Dependence 7. Primitive Substances 8. Categories and Kinds 9. Matter and Form 10. Abstract Entities 11. Facts and the World 12. The Puzzle of Existence Bibliography Index
Dispositions
Multisite Replication in Second Language Acquisition Research
We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore the feasibility of such an approach in second language (L2) research. To this end, we addressed open questions in a line of research that has examined whether having learners attend to form while reading or listening to a L2 passage interferes with comprehension. Our results are consistent with findings from the specific paradigm that we replicated in t…
What Gibson's Missing
Truthmaking and fundamentality
Epistemic Responsibility
Gibsonian Sins of Omission
The Molyneux Question
Does Psychology Presuppose Rationality
Hylomorphism
Acquisition without evidence
This article provides a Poverty of Stimulus argument for the participation of a dedicated linguistic module in second language acquisition. We study the second language (L2) acquisition of a subset of English infinitive complements that exhibit the following properties: (a) they present an intricate web of grammatical constraints while (b) they are highly infrequent in corpora, (c) they lack visible features that would make them salient, and (d) …
Traces of Things Past
This paper consists of two parts. In Part I, an attempt to get around certain well-known criticisms of the trace theory of memory is discussed. Part II consists of an account of the so-called “logical” notion of a memory trace. Trace theories are sometimes thought to be empirical hypotheses about the functioning of memory. That this is not the case, that trace theories are in fact philosophical theories, is shown, I believe, in the arguments whic…
Augustine's Attack on Skepticism
Augustine's attack on skepticism in the Contra Academicos is, it seems to me, both interesting and important. Its interest lies in the fact that the argument developed by Augustine is rather more sophisticated than most commentators seem willing to admit. It is important because it places the moral and epistemological features of skepticism in a new and revealing light, and in so doing offers, I think, a plausible refutation of skeptical doctrine…
A Factor Analytic Study of Wppsi Scores of Educationally Deprived and Normal Children
The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence was administered to 372 children, one group being educationally deprived and the other normal, all being Caucasian. Factor analysis showed a three-factor structure: Verbal, Performance, and Picture Completion. There were no significant differences in factor structure of the two groups, suggesting similarity of factor structures. Apparently, the homogeneity of groups on cultural and demograp…
Traces of Things Past
This paper consists of two parts. In Part I, an attempt to get around certain well-known criticisms of the trace theory of memory is discussed. Part II consists of an account of the so-called “logical” notion of a memory trace. Trace theories are sometimes thought to be empirical hypotheses about the functioning of memory. That this is not the case, that trace theories are in fact philosophical theories, is shown, I believe, in the arguments whic…
Tractatus 4.0141
Making Things Simple
What Gibson's Missing
Gibsonian Sins of Omission
Speechless Brutes
Thoughts on the virtues
The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism
This book raises questions about the nature of philosophy by examining the source and significance of one central philosophical problem: how can we know anything about the world around us? Stroud discusses and criticizes the views of such philosophers as Descartes, Kant, J.L. Austin, G.E. Moore, R. Carnap, W.V. Quine, and others
Does Psychology Presuppose Rationality
Perception and Cognition
The Molyneux Question
Cause, Mind, and Reality
Epistemic Responsibility
In and Out of the Black Box
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access In and Out of the Black Box: On the Philosophy of Cognition. By D. W. Hamlyn. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Pp. viii + 179. Price £25.00.) John Heil John Heil Davidson College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 41, Issue 163, April 1991, Pages 247–249, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219600 Published: 01 April 1991
A Retrospective Study of the Effect of an Athlete's Sudden Death on Teammates
This study investigated the psychological effects of a teammate's sudden death on the remaining team members at the end of their collegiate careers (4 years later). The football players ( N = 10) were interviewed and answered a series of open-ended questions asking them for their feelings, emotions, and attitudes since the death of their teammate. The data were drawn from verbatim transcriptions of the interviews and were inductively content anal…
Mental Causation
Common sense and philosophical tradition agree that mind makes a difference. What we do depends not only on how our bodies are put together, but also on what we think. Explaining how mind can make a difference has proved challenging, however. Some have urged that the project faces an insurmountable dilemma: either we concede that mentalistic explanations of behaviour have only a pragmatic standing or we abandon our conception of the physical doma…
Metaphysics of Consciousness
The Nature of True Minds
The Nature of True Minds
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access The Nature of True Minds. By John Heil. (Cambridge UP, 1992. Pp. xi + 238. Price £40.00 h/b, £14.95 p/b.) Grant Gillett Grant Gillett University of Otago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 45, Issue 179, April 1995, Pages 240–241, https://doi.org/10.2307/2220425 Published: 01 April 1995
The Nature of True Minds
Mental Causation
Mental Reality
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Mental Reality. By Galen Strawson. (;MIT Press, 1994. Pp. xviii + 337. Price $34.95.) John Heil John Heil Davidson College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 46, Issue 184, July 1996, Pages 414–416, https://doi.org/10.2307/2956461 Published: 01 July 1996
A World of States of Affairs
Philosophy (39 works) · Epistemology (36 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Classical Philosophy and Thought (19 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Metaphysics (17 works) · Linguistics (9 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (9 works) · Contemporary philosophy (7 works) · History (7 works)