Jonathan Schaffer is an American philosopher specializing in Metaphysics

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

 and Epistemology.

Since earning his PhD. from Rutgers in 1999, Schaffer has published 37 papers. He wrote his dissertation - "Causation and the Probabilities of Processes" - under Brian McLaughin. David Lewis

David Kellogg Lewis

David Kellogg Lewis was an American philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton from 1970 until his death. He is also closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than thirty years...

 served as outside examiner. In 2000, he accepted a position as assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts

University of Massachusetts

This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...

 in Amherst, Massachusetts

Amherst, Massachusetts

Amherst is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States in the Connecticut River valley. As of the 2010 census, the population was 37,819, making it the largest community in Hampshire County . The town is home to Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts...

, earning tenure by 2004.

In 2007, Schaffer accepted a permanent research position at Australian National University

Australian National University

The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...

. He subsequently won awards for two papers published that year, the American Philosophical Association

American Philosophical Association

The American Philosophical Association is the main professional organization for philosophers in the United States. Founded in 1900, its mission is to promote the exchange of ideas among philosophers, to encourage creative and scholarly activity in philosophy, to facilitate the professional work...

's 2008 Article Prize, for "Knowing the Answer" in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research is a bimonthly philosophy journal founded in 1940. Until 1980, it was edited by Marvin Farber, then by Roderick Chisholm and since 1986 by Ernest Sosa...

, and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

The Australasian Journal of Philosophy , founded in Sydney in 1923 as The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, is Australasia's oldest and most respected philosophy journal. Sponsored by the Australasian Association of Philosophy, it aims to publish the best work in the analytic...

s 2008 Best Paper Award, for "From Nihilism to Monism".

In 2010, Schaffer accepted a permanent position at Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

.

Papers

Drafts and reconstructions not included. See his webpage and his updated CV for a current list of published articles, talks, etc.

Metaphysics

• Truthmaker Commitments
• Truth and Fundamentality: On Merrick's Truth and Ontology
• Monism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• From Nihilism to Monism
• Quiddistic Knowledge
• Of Ghostly and Mechanical Events
• Two Conceptions of Sparse Properties
• Is There a Fundamental Level?
• The Problem of Free Mass: Must Properties Cluster?
• The Individuation of Tropes

Epistemology

• The Irrelevance of the Subject: Against Subject-Sensitive Invariantism
• Knowing the Answer
• Closure, Contrast, and Answer
• From Contextualism to Contrastivism
• Perceptual Knowledge Derailed
• Skepticism, Contextualism, and Discrimination
• Knowledge, Relevant Alternatives, and Missed Clues

Causation

• Deterministic Chance?
• Review of Dowe and Noordhof's Cause and Chance: Causation in an Indeterministic World
• Contrastive Causation
• Counterfactuals, Causal Independence, and Conceptual Circularity
• Causes Need Not be Physically Connected to their Effects: The Case for Negative Causation
• Principled Chances
• The Metaphysics of Causation (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Overdetermining Causes
• Review of Dowe's Physical Causation
• Causation, Influence, and Effluence
• Causes as Probability-Raisers of Processes
• Causation by Disconnection
• Overlappings: Probability-Raising without Causation
• Trumping Preemption