-
4The Paradox of InstrumentalismPSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986 (1): 269-276. 1986.J.J.C. Smart says that instrumentalism makes it “surprising that the world should be such as to contain these odd and ontologically disconnected phenomena…. Is It not odd that the phenomena of the world should be such as to make a purely instrumental theory true? On the other hand, if we interpret the theory in a realist way, then we have no need for such a cosmic coincidence…. A lot of surprising facts no longer seem surprising….” (Smart 1963, p. 39).Intuitively Smart seems right. The instrumen…Read more
-
7Philosophy of ScienceIn Nicholas Bunnin & E. P. Tsui‐James (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Blackwell. 2002.This chapter contains sections titled: The Epistemology of Science The Metaphysics of Science.
-
22Naturalism and PhysicalismIn Kelly James Clark (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Naturalism, Wiley. 2016.This chapter is concerned with materialistic views of the mind and the natural world in general. It examines the scientific evidence for the claim that everything within the spatiotemporal realm is physically constituted, and considers whether this evidence leaves room for any alternatives to this physicalist thesis.
-
13Reply to Laura Gow's critical notice of The Metaphysics of Sensory ExperienceMind and Language 36 (4): 636-640. 2021.I am grateful to Laura Gow for her generous and illuminating comments. I will focus on her queries, as this will allow me to elaborate on some points that were treated rather quickly in the book. Gow challenges me on three points. (1) Does my central argument against representationalism about perception commit me to an overly abstract view of properties? (2) What does my view imply about the representational contents of beliefs prompted by sensory experiences? (3) Do I do sufficient justice to t…Read more
-
12In Knowing the Score, philosopher David Papineau explores what philosophy can teach us about sports, and what sports can teach us about philosophy. Beginning with various sporting questions and challenges, Papineau digs into modern philosophy's most perplexing questions. For instance, he discusses drafting techniques in cycling to shed new light on questions of altruism, and examines cricket family "dynasties" to help broaden the debate over nature v. nurture. When Papineau began writing this bo…Read more
-
76Swampman, teleosemantics and kind essencesSynthese 200 (6): 1-19. 2022.One powerful and influential approach to mental representation analyses representation in terms of biological functions, and biological functions in terms of histories of natural selection. This “teleosemantic” package, however, faces a familiar challenge. Surely representation depends only on the present-day structures of cognitive systems, and not on their historical provenance. “Swampman” drives the point home. Suppose a bolt of lightning creates an intrinsic duplicate of a human being in a s…Read more
-
130Many philosophers take the distinguishing mark of their subject to be its a priori status. In their view, where empirical science is based on the data of experience, philosophy is founded on a priori intuitions. In this paper I shall argue that there is no good sense in which philosophical knowledge is informed by a priori intuitions. Philosophical results have just the same a posteriori status as scientific theories. My strategy will be to pose a familiar dilemma for the friends of a priori phi…Read more
-
The Problem of ConsciousnessIn Uriah Kriegel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Consciousness, Oxford University Press. pp. 14-36. 2020.An introduction to contemporary debates about consciousness
-
5Theory and MeaningOxford University Press. 1979.This book is concerned with those aspects of the theory of meaning for scientific terms that are relevant to questions about the evaluation of scientific theories. The contemporary debate about theory choice in science is normally presented as a conflict between two sets of ideas. The book shows that there is no real contest here; that the two sets of ideas are in fact quite compatible.
-
27Everett, Lotteries, and FairnessThought: A Journal of Philosophy 11 (1): 59-63. 2022.Defenders of the Everettian version of quantum mechanics generally hold that it makes no difference to what we ought to do. This paper will argue against this stance, by considering the use of lotteries to select the recipients of indivisible goods. On orthodox non-Everettian metaphysics this practice faces the objection that only actual and not probable goods matter to distributive justice. However, this objection loses all force within Everettianism. This result should be of interest to both p…Read more
-
347Note on the Completeness of ‘Physics’Analysis 59 (1): 25-29. 1999.David Spurrett, David Papineau; A note on the completeness of ‘physics’, Analysis, Volume 59, Issue 1, 1 January 1999, Pages 25–29, https://doi.org/10.1093/anal.
-
124Probabilities and the many minds interpretation of quantum mechanicsAnalysis 55 (4): 239-246. 1995.
-
621Teleosemantics, selection and novel contentsBiology and Philosophy 34 (3): 36. 2019.Mainstream teleosemantics is the view that mental representation should be understood in terms of biological functions, which, in turn, should be understood in terms of selection processes. One of the traditional criticisms of teleosemantics is the problem of novel contents: how can teleosemantics explain our ability to represent properties that are evolutionarily novel? In response, some have argued that by generalizing the notion of a selection process to include phenomena such as operant cond…Read more
-
601Probability as a guide to lifeIn David Papineau (ed.), The Roots of Reason, Oxford University Press. pp. 217-243. 2003.
-
90
-
421Physicalism decomposedAnalysis 65 (1): 33-39. 2005.In this paper we distinguish two issues that are often run together in discussions about physicalism. The first issue concerns levels. How do entities picked out by non-physical terminology, such as biological or psychological terminology, relate to physical entities? Are the former identical to, or metaphysically supervenient on, the latter? The second issue concerns physical parts and wholes. How do macroscopic physical entities relate to their microscopic parts? Are the former generally deter…Read more
-
425The Statistical Nature of CausationThe Monist 105 (2): 247-275. 2022.Causation is a macroscopic phenomenon. The temporal asymmetry displayed by causation must somehow emerge along with other asymmetric macroscopic phenomena like entropy increase and the arrow of radiation. I shall approach this issue by considering ‘causal inference’ techniques that allow causal relations to be inferred from sets of observed correlations. I shall show that these techniques are best explained by a reduction of causation to structures of equations with probabilistically independent…Read more
-
TeleosemanticsIn David Livingstone Smith (ed.), How Biology Shapes Philosophy: New Foundations for Naturalism, Cambridge University Press. pp. 95-120. 2016.
-
38The Metaphysics of Sensory ExperienceOxford University Press. 2021.What is going on when we are consciously aware of a visual scene, or hear sounds, or otherwise enjoy sensory experience? David Papineau argues controversially for a purely qualitative account: conscious sensory experiences are intrinsic states with no essential connection to external circumstances or represented properties.
-
37Causal Factors, Causal Inference, Causal ExplanationAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 60 (1). 1986.There are two concepts of causes, property causation and token causation. The principle I want to discuss describes an epistemological connection between the two concepts, which I call the Connecting Principle. The rough idea is that if a token event of type Cis followed by a token event of type E, then the support of the hypothesis that the first event token caused the second increases as the strength of the property causal relation of C to E does. I demonstrate the principle, illustrate its ap…Read more
-
503David Lewis and Schrödinger's CatAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (1): 153-169. 2004.In 'How Many Lives Has Schrödinger's Cat?' David Lewis argues that the Everettian no-collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics is in a tangle when it comes to probabilities. This paper aims to show that the difficulties that Lewis raises are insubstantial. The Everettian metaphysics contains a coherent account of probability. Indeed it accounts for probability rather better than orthodox metaphysics does.
-
1132Essential Properties are Super-Explanatory: Taming Metaphysical ModalityJournal of the American Philosophical Association (3): 1-19. 2020.This paper aims to build a bridge between two areas of philosophical research, the structure of kinds and metaphysical modality. Our central thesis is that kinds typically involve super-explanatory properties, and that these properties are therefore metaphysically essential to natural kinds. Philosophers of science who work on kinds tend to emphasize their complexity, and are generally resistant to any suggestion that they have “essences”. The complexities are real enough, but they should not be…Read more
-
42Correction to: The disvalue of knowledgeSynthese 198 (6): 5333-5333. 2019.The original article has been corrected.
-
176The disvalue of knowledgeSynthese 198 (6): 5311-5332. 2019.I argue that the concept of knowledge is a relic of a bygone age, erroneously supposed to do no harm. I illustrate this claim by showing how a concern with knowledge distorts the use of statistical evidence in criminal courts, and then generalize the point to show that this concern hampers our enterprises across the board and not only in legal contexts.
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 |