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146Philosophical devices: proofs, probabilities, possibilities, and setsOxford University Press. 2012.This book is designed to explain the technical ideas that are taken for granted in much contemporary philosophical writing. Notions like "denumerability," "modal scope distinction," "Bayesian conditionalization," and "logical completeness" are usually only elucidated deep within difficult specialist texts. By offering simple explanations that by-pass much irrelevant and boring detail, Philosophical Devices is able to cover a wealth of material that is normally only available to specialists. The …Read more
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18The empirical evidence often justifies belief in scientific theories. For instance, the great wealth of chemical and other relevant data leaves us with no real alternative to believing that matter is made of atoms. Similarly, the natural history of past and present organisms makes it irrational to deny that life on earth has evolved from a common ancestry. Again, the character and epidemiology of infectious diseases effectively establishes that they are caused by microbes. Peter Lipton did much …Read more
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1Arguments for supervenience and physical realizationIn Elias E. Savellos & Ümit D. Yalçin (eds.), Supervenience: New Essays, Cambridge University Press. 1995.
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29Reuniting (scene) phenomenology with (scene) accessBehavioral and Brain Sciences 30 (5-6): 521-521. 2007.Block shows that we can consciously see a scene without being able to identify all the individual items in it. But in itself this fails to drive a wedge between phenomenology and access. Once we distinguish scene phenomenology from item phenomenology, the link between phenomenology and access is restored
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7Friendly thoughts on the evolution of cognition (critical discussion of Kim Sterelny, Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition, 2003)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (3): 491-502. 2004.
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117The philosophy of science (edited book)Oxford University Press. 1996.The newest addition to the successful Oxford Readings in Philosophy series, this collection contains the most important contributions to the recent debate on the philosophy of science. The contributors crystallize the often heated arguments of the last two decades, assessing the skeptical attitudes within philosophy of science and the counter-challenges of the scientific realists. Contributors include Nancy Cartwright, Brian Ellis, Arthur Fine, Clark Glymour, Larry Laudan, Peter Lipton, Alan Mus…Read more
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25A reduction of causation to probabilities would be a great achievement, if it were possible.  In this paper I want to defend this reductionist ambition against some recent criticisms from Gurol Irzik (1996) and Dan Hausman (1998). In particular, I want to show that the reductionist programme can be absolved of a vice which is widely thought to disable it--the vice of infidelity
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32X*—Is Epistemology Dead?Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 82 (1): 129-142. 1982.David Papineau; X*—Is Epistemology Dead?, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 82, Issue 1, 1 June 1982, Pages 129–142, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.
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37Scientific realism without referenceIn Michele Marsonet (ed.), The Problem of Realism, Ashgate. pp. 174--189. 2002.
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1Review of T. W. HUTCHISON: Knowledge and Ignorance in Economics (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 31 (1): 98-103. 1980.
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45Theory 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. On the one hand are notions of objectivity, realism, rationality, and progress in science. On the other is the view that meanings depend on theory, with associated claims about the theory dependence of observation, the…Read more
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65Must a physicalist be a microphysicalist?In Jakob Hohwy & Jesper Kallestrup (eds.), Being Reduced: New Essays on Reduction, Explanation, and Causation, Oxford University Press. 2008.This chapter challenges the entailment from physicalism to microphysicalism — the view that all facts metaphysically supervene on the microphysical facts. It observes that physicalists can avoid microphysicalism by rejecting physical microscopism. Humean supervenience is a strong version of microphysicalism, and it is false if a non-Humean view of laws is true. But such a view is consistent with physicalism. A weaker form of microphysicalism adds microphysical non-Humean laws to get a broader mi…Read more
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8Response to Ehring’s ’Papineau on Causal Asymmetry’British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (4): 521-525. 1988.
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113The tyranny of common senseThe Philosophers' Magazine 34 (34): 19-25. 2006.Sometimes I despair of my philosophical colleagues. They are so conservative. I don’t mean this in a political sense. In conventional party-political terms, most professional philosophers are probably well to the left of centre. As a group, they have a strong sense of fairness and little commitment to the social status quo. But this political openmindedness doesn’t normally carry over to their day jobs. When it comes to philosophical ideas, they are congenitally suspicious of intellectual innova…Read more
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13Causes and mixed probabilitiesInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 4 (1). 1990.Abstract In Section 1 I examine the use of probabilistic data to establish causal conclusions in non?experimental research. In Section 2 I show that the probabilities involved in such research are inhomogeneous ?mixed? probabilities. Section 3 then argues that such mixed probabilities are responsible for the way common causes screen off correlations between their joint effects. Section 4 concludes that mixed probabilities are therefore crucial for the nature of the causal relation itself
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19Social learning and the Baldwin effectIn Antonio Zilhao (ed.), Evolution, Rationality, and Cognition: A Cognitive Science for the Twenty-First Century, Routledge. 2005.Article
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207Physicalism, consciousness and the antipathetic fallacyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 71 (2): 169-83. 1993.This Article does not have an abstract
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289A thirder and an Everettian: A reply to Lewis's 'Quantum Sleeping Beauty'Analysis 69 (1): 78-86. 2009.Since the publication of Elga's seminal paper in 2000, the Sleeping Beauty paradox has been the source of much discussion, particularly in this journal. Over the past few decades the Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics 1 has also been much debated. There is an interesting connection between the way these two topics raise issues about subjective probability assignments.This connection is often alluded to, but as far as we know Peter J. Lewis's ‘Quantum Sleeping Beauty’ is the first att…Read more
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101Response to Ehring's 'papineau on causal asymmetry'British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (4): 521-525. 1988.
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 |