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405Mental disorder, illness and biological disfunctionPhilosophy 37 73-82. 1994.I shall begin with the "anti-psychiatry" view that the lack of a physical basis excludes many familiar mental disorders from the category of "illness". My response to this argument will be that anti-psychiatrists are probably right to hold that most mental disorders do not involve any physical disorder, but that they are wrong to conclude from this that these mental disorders are not illnesses
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12Causal Powers By R. Harré and E. Madden Basil Blackwell, 1975, viii + 191 pp., £4.75 (review)Philosophy 52 (199): 113-. 1977.
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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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80Review article: Correlations and causesBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42 (3): 397-412. 1991.
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28Salmon, Statistics, and Backwards CausationPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1978 302-313. 1978.In order to explain why falling barometers don't cause rain, a "no-eclipsing" requirement needs to be added to the regularity account of causation. This refinement of the regularity account allows us to see how conclusions about deterministic causes can be based on statistical premises, and thus indicates a criticism of Wesley Salmon 's "statistical relevance" account of causation. The refinement also casts some light on the problem of backwards causation
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228Kripke's proof is ad hominem not two-dimensionalPhilosophical Perspectives 21 (1). 2007.Identity theorists make claims like ‘pain = C-fibre stimulation’. These claims must be necessary if true, given that terms like ‘pain’ and ‘C-fibre stimulation’ are rigid. Yet there is no doubt that such claims appear contingent. It certainly seems that there could have been C-fibre stimulation without pains or vice versa. So identity theorists owe us an explanation of why such claims should appear contingent if they are in fact necessary.
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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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40Précis of thinking about consciousness (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (1). 2005.
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130Can any sciences be special?In Graham Macdonald & Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Emergence in Mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 179--197. 2010.
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270Reply to Lewis: Metaphysics versus epistemologyAnalysis 69 (1): 89-91. 2009.Peter J. Lewis argued that the Everettian interpretation of quantum mechanics implies the unpopular halfer position in the Sleeping Beauty debate. We retorted that it is perfectly coherent to be an Everettian and an ordinary thirder. In a recent reply to our paper Lewis further clarifies the basis for his thinking. We think this brings out nicely where he goes wrong: he underestimates the importance of metaphysical considerations in determining rational credences.
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35NORMATIVITY AND JUDGEMENT I–David PapineauAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 73 (1): 17-43. 1999.
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65The Roots of Reason: Philosophical Essays on Rationality, Evolution, and ProbabilityOxford University Press. 2003.David Papineau presents a controversial view of human reason, portraying it as a normal part of the natural world, and drawing on the empirical sciences to illuminate its workings. In these six interconnected essays he discusses both theoretical and practical rationality, and shows how evolutionary theory, decision theory, and quantum mechanics offer fresh approaches to some long-standing problems
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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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199Phenomenal Concepts and the Private Language ArgumentAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 48 (2): 175. 2011.In this paper I want to consider whether the 'phenomenal concepts' posited by many recent philosophers of mind are consistent with Wittgenstein’s private language argument. The paper will have three sections. In the first I shall explain the rationale for positing phenomenal concepts. In the second I shall argue that phenomenal concepts are indeed inconsistent with the private language argument. In the last I shall ask whether this is bad for phenomenal concepts or bad for Wittgenstein.
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16An unnatural anti-realismStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 20 (1): 133-138. 1989.
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77Review of Daniel Stoljar, Ignorance and Imagination: The Epistemic Origin of the Problem of Consciousness (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (4). 2007.
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4I am lucky to have two such penetrating commentators as Robert Kirk and Andrew Melnyk. It is also fortunate that they come at me from different directions, and so cover different aspects of my book. Robert Kirk has doubts about the overall structure of my enterprise, and in particular about my central commitment to a distinctive species of phenomenal concepts. Andrew Melnyk, by contrast, offers no objections to my general brand of materialism. Instead he focuses specifically on my discussion of …Read more
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Theories ofIn Barry C. Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press. pp. 175. 2006.
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190The Case for MaterialismIn Brie Gertler & Lawrence A. Shapiro (eds.), Arguing About the Mind, Routledge. pp. 4--125. 2007.
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Mind, health, and biological purposeIn A. Phillips Griffiths (ed.), Philosophy, Psychology, and Psychiatry, Cambridge University Press. 1995.
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45Comments on François Recanati’s Mental Files: Doubts about IndexicalityDisputatio 5 (36): 159-175. 2013.Papineau-David_Doubts-about-indexicality
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6The antipathetic fallacy and the boundaries of consciousnessIn Thomas Metzinger (ed.), Conscious Experience, Ferdinand Schoningh. 1995.
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27Materialism is the view that mental states are one and the same as physical states. (This is different from saying they are caused by physical states, or eliminated by physical states.) Dualism in the view that mental states are extra to the physical realm. Kripke’s metaphor: if materialism were true, not even God could make a world physically just like ours but with no sensations, feelings or thoughts.
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 |