David Lewis Schaeffer, The Political Philosophy of Montaigne

David Lewis: on the Plurality of Worlds

entities, and abstract entities are actual by nature; or perhaps they are “analytic actualists,” holding that ersatz possibilia are actual because it is analytic that everything is actual. Either way, the ersatzist seems to have an advantage over the modal realist in agreeing with common sense that whatever exists is actual. More importantly, the ersatzist has an advantage over the modal realis...

Publications for David Lewis 2017

Chow, E., Walker, S., Hocking, J., Bradshaw, C., Chen, M., Tabrizi, S., Howden, B., Law, M., Maddaford, K., Lewis, D., Templeton, D., et al (2017). A multicentre double-blind randomised controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of daily use of antibacterial mouthwash against oropharyngeal gonorrhoea among men who have sex with men: The OMEGA (Oral Mouthwash use to Eradicate GonorrhoeA) study pro...

The Confessions of Montaigne

Montaigne rarely repented and he viewed confession—both juridical and ecclesiastical—with skepticism. Confession, Montaigne believed, forced a mode of self-representation onto the speaker that was inevitably distorting. Repentance, moreover, made claims about self-transformation that Montaigne found improbable. This article traces these themes in the context of Montaigne‘s Essays, with particul...

Cognitivism in Political Philosophy

A constraint on political cognitivism is that it give some basis for responding to certain worries. These worries prompt political liberals such as Rawls to deny that the search for truth can provide a shared basis for a conception of justice in a pluralistic democratic society.2 On this view, a pluralistic democratic state that avoids the authoritarian use of state power should be neutral abou...

David Hull’s Natural Philosophy of Science