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4The Causal Closure of the Physical and NaturalismIn Brian McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of mind, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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224The status of teleosemantics, or how to stop worrying about swampmanAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (2): 279-89. 2001.This Article does not have an abstract
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60Mathematical fictionalismInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 2 (2). 1988.No abstract
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307There Are No Norms of BeliefIn Timothy Chan (ed.), The Aim of Belief, Oxford University Press. 2013.This paper argues that there is no distinctive species of normativity attaching to the adoption of beliefs.
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350Causation is macroscopic but not irreducibleIn Sophie C. Gibb & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Mental Causation and Ontology, Oxford University Press. pp. 126. 2013.In this paper I argue that causation is an essentially macroscopic phenomenon, and that mental causes are therefore capable of outcompeting their more specific physical realizers as causes of physical effects. But I also argue that any causes must be type-identical with physical properties, on pain of positing inexplicable physical conspiracies. I therefore allow macroscopic mental causation, but only when it is physically reducible
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28Pure, mixed, and spurious probabilities and their significance for a reductionist theory of causationMinnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13 307-348. 1989.
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233In the ZoneRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 73 175-196. 2013.On the Friday afternoon of the 3 rd test at Trent Bridge in 2001, the series was in the balance. The Australians had won the first two tests easily, but England now found themselves in a position of some strength. They had restricted Australia to a first-innings lead of just 5 runs, and had built a lead of 120 with six wickets in hand. Mark Ramprakash was in and had been batting steadily for well over an hour. Even though this Australian side was as strong as any in cricket history, England had …Read more
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12Who would have thought it? Poker has become a mass-audience spectator sport. Names like Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson, Phil ‘Unabomber’ Laak, and Dave ‘The Devilfish’ Ulliott may not be familiar to all readers of the TLS, but on any normal night you can see these top poker professionals on the nether reaches of the satellite channels, as they bluff and bully their way to pots worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like their counterparts in tennis and golf, they tour the world, playing in lucrative to…Read more
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392The poverty of analysisAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 83 (1): 1-30. 2009.I argue that philosophy is like science in three interesting and non-obvious ways. First, the claims made by philosophy are synthetic, not analytic: philosophical claims, just like scientific claims, are not guaranteed by the structure of the concepts they involve. Second, philosophical knowledge is a posteriori, not a priori: the claims established by philosophers depend on the same kind of empirical support as scientific theories. And finally, the central questions of philosophy concern actual…Read more
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650What Exactly is the Explanatory Gap?Philosophia 39 (1): 5-19. 2011.It is widely agreed among contemporary philosophers of mind that science leaves us with an ‘explanatory gap’—that even after we know everything that science can tell us about the conscious mind and the brain, their relationship still remains mysterious. I argue that this agreed view is quite mistaken. The feeling of a ‘explanatory gap’ arises only because we cannot stop ourselves thinking about the mind–brain relation in a dualist way
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50Introduction: Prospects and problems for teleosemanticsIn Graham Macdonald & David Papineau (eds.), Teleosemantics: New Philosophical Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 1--22. 2006.
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6Review: Correlations and Causes (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42 (3). 1991.
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38Explanatory gaps and dualist intuitionsIn Lawrence Weiskrantz & Martin Davies (eds.), Frontiers of consciousness, Oxford University Press. pp. 2008--55. 2008.I agree with nearly everything Martin Davies says. He has written an elegant and highly informative analysis of recent philosophical debates about the mind–brain relation. I particularly enjoyed Davies’ discussion of B.A. Farrell, his precursor in the Oxford Wilde Readership (now Professorship) in Mental Philosophy. It is intriguing to see how closely Farrell anticipated many of the moves made by more recent ‘type-A’ physicalists who seek to show that, upon analysis, claims about conscious state…Read more
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44Why is there a cognitive gulf between other animals and humans? Current fashion favours our greater understanding of Theory of Mind as an answer, and Language is another obvious candidate. But I think that analysis of the evolution of means-end cognitive mechanisms suggests that there may be a further significant difference: where animals will only perform those means which they (or their ancestors) have previously used as a route to some end, humans can employ observation to learn that some nov…Read more
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4Methodology: The Elements of the Philosophy of ScienceIn A. C. Grayling (ed.), Philosophy 1: A Guide Through the Subject, Oxford University Press. 1998.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
General Philosophy of Science |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |
Areas of Interest
Metaphilosophy |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
General Philosophy of Science |