Visiting Assistant Professor
Ph.D. University of Iowa
ernani.magalhaes@mail.wvu.edu

Specializations:

Metaphysics, Epistemology

Research Interests:

Properties include all sorts of things: color, size, shape, density, mass, momentum, intelligence, irritability, fragility, electron charge and spin and lots of other things. It is in some ways unnatural to think of properties – features, qualities, characteristics – as “things.” In certain ways they are radically unlike dogs or ballpoint pens, for example. [Can a color fetch the newspaper?] But bear with me and imagine them as a kind of object.

The dissertation I completed last fall was about the connection between these property “entities” and time. Time more readily lends itself to being an object of thought. We say that time goes by fast, or that “it” heals all wounds. So peculiar as it may be, perhaps time also can be taken to be a kind of something like a property. The central question of my dissertation is whether properties on a certain conception are “in” time. The answer, befitting a philosopher, is “no, but. . .”

The introduction to my dissertation explains the kinds of questions the central problem immediately leads to. (LINK 1)

The specific conception of properties I assume I call in re realism. According to this conception, properties exist only if exemplified (there is blue only if there are blue things); and if two things have the same color, e.g., then the color of the one is literally identical with the color of the other. In this paper (LINK 2), I raise a puzzle about the relationship between in re universals and time, and propose that the key to solving it is to see that universals are not fundamentally but derivatively temporal. The distinction is explained and defended.

Naturally, I worry about showing that approaches to this issue that are incompatible with my own are mistaken. David Armstrong's conception of properties as imminent universals is a very close cousin of the in re realism I describe, except that he sometimes thinks of these entities as unproblematically spatio-temporal. Here I (LINK 3) discuss some of the difficulties with that position, and point to some passages in which he endorses a view much closer to my own.

Other Interests:

When I'm not philosophizing I play a lot of sports: tennis, racquetball, soccer, and volleyball. I try to stay thin and in shape by running. I also fairly obsessively follow current political events.