Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

All Outputs (29)

‘Water’ and ‘Water’: On Twin-Earth and the Metaphysics of Words (2025)
Journal Article
Miller, J. (online). ‘Water’ and ‘Water’: On Twin-Earth and the Metaphysics of Words. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2025.10005

Putnam’s Twin-Earth thought experiment has been hugely influential as an argument in favor of semantic externalism. In this article, I argue that the Twin-Earth thought experiment relies on some previously unnoticed metaphysical assumptions about how... Read More about ‘Water’ and ‘Water’: On Twin-Earth and the Metaphysics of Words.

Words Without Intentions (2025)
Journal Article
Miller, J. (in press). Words Without Intentions. Croatian Journal of Philosophy,

A commonly held position in the literature on the metaphysics of words holds that intentions are either jointly or independently necessary or sufficient for the tokening of a word. In this paper, using a modified version of an example case created by... Read More about Words Without Intentions.

Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Analysis? (2023)
Book Chapter
Miller, J. (2023). Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Analysis?. In M. Garcia-Godinez (Ed.), Thomasson on Ontology (85-108). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-23672-3_5

Amie Thomasson’s work provides numerous ways to rethink and improve our approach to metaphysics. This chapter is my attempt to begin to sketch why I still think the easy approach leaves room for substantive metaphysical work, and why I do not think t... Read More about Who’s Afraid of Conceptual Analysis?.

Sameness of Word (2022)
Journal Article
Miller, J. (2022). Sameness of Word. European Journal of Analytic Philosophy, 18(2), Article A2. https://doi.org/10.31820/ejap.18.2.2

Although the metaphysics of words remains a relatively understudied domain, one of the more discussed topics has been the question of how to account for the apparent sameness of words. Put one way, the question concerns what it is that makes two word... Read More about Sameness of Word.

Hyperintensionality and Ontological Categories (2022)
Journal Article
Miller, J. (2024). Hyperintensionality and Ontological Categories. Erkenntnis, 89(7), 2663–2681. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-022-00646-3

In this paper, I discuss how to distinguish between ontological categories and ordinary categories. Using an argument against van Inwagen’s proposed account of what makes a category ontological as a springboard, I argue that if ontological categories... Read More about Hyperintensionality and Ontological Categories.

Merely Verbal Disputes and Common Ground (2022)
Journal Article
Miller, J. (2023). Merely Verbal Disputes and Common Ground. Theoria, 89(1), 114-123. https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12449

In this paper, I offer a new characterization of what makes a dispute merely verbal. This new characterization makes use of Stalnaker’s notion of ‘common ground’, building on the framework initially outlined by Jenkins. I argue that this common groun... Read More about Merely Verbal Disputes and Common Ground.

There Are No Uninstantiated Words (2022)
Journal Article
Miller, J. (2025). There Are No Uninstantiated Words. Inquiry, 68(2), 209-214. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174x.2022.2078405

Kaplan ([1990]. “Words.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 64: 93–119; [2011]. “Words on Words.” The Journal of Philosophy 108 (9): 504–529) argues that there are no unspoken words. Hawthorne and Lepore ([2011]. “On Words.” The Journal of Philo... Read More about There Are No Uninstantiated Words.

Does Linguistics Need (Weak) Emergence? (2022)
Book Chapter
Miller, J. (2022). Does Linguistics Need (Weak) Emergence?. In S. Wuppuluri, & I. Steward (Eds.), From Electrons to Elephants and Elections (23-38). (1). Springer Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92192-7_3

There are many different sorts of linguistic objects: words, sentences, paragraphs, phonemes, morphemes, and many more. There are also linguistic properties. That is, there are properties that seem, prima facie, to be (perhaps even uniquely) instanti... Read More about Does Linguistics Need (Weak) Emergence?.

What Counts as a 'Good Metaphysical Language'? (2021)
Book Chapter
Miller, J. (2021). What Counts as a 'Good Metaphysical Language'?. In J. Miller (Ed.), The Language of Ontology (102-118). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192895332.003.0007

The objectively best language is intended to refer to some metaphysically privileged language that ‘carves reality at its joints’ perfectly. That is, it is the kind of language that various ‘metaphysical deflationists’ have argued is impossible. One... Read More about What Counts as a 'Good Metaphysical Language'?.

The ontology of words: Realism, nominalism, and eliminativism (2020)
Journal Article
Miller, J. (2020). The ontology of words: Realism, nominalism, and eliminativism. Philosophy Compass, 15(7), Article e12691. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12691

What are words? What makes two token words tokens of the same word‐type? Are words abstract entities, or are they (merely) collections of tokens? The ontology of words tries to provide answers to these, and related questions. This article provides an... Read More about The ontology of words: Realism, nominalism, and eliminativism.

Metaphysics as the Science of the Possible (2020)
Book Chapter
Miller, J. (2020). Metaphysics as the Science of the Possible. In R. Bliss, & J. Miller (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metametaphysics (480-491). Routledge

This chapter considers the view that a central concern of metaphysics is what is possible. That is, the idea is that, unlike science, metaphysics studies not only what is actual, but the ways that reality could be. This view, if right, provides metap... Read More about Metaphysics as the Science of the Possible.