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151Externalism and first-person authorityThe Monist 78 (4): 515-33. 1995.If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.
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20Feyerabend: philosophy, science, and societyPolity Press. 1997.This book is the first comprehensive critical study of the work of Paul Feyerabend, one of the foremost twentieth-century philosophers of science. The book traces the evolution of Feyerabend's thought, beginning with his early attempt to graft insights from Wittgenstein's conception of meaning onto Popper's falsificationist philosophy. The key elements of Feyerabend's model of the acquisition of knowledge are identified and critically evaluated. Feyerabend's early work emerges as a continuation …Read more
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36Bird, Kuhn and positivismStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 35 (2): 327-335. 2004.I challenge Alexander Bird’s contention that the divergence between Kuhn’s views and recent philosophy of science is a matter of Kuhn having taken a wrong turn. Bird is right to remind us of Kuhn’s naturalistic tendencies, but these are not clearly an asset, rather than a liability. Kuhn was right to steer clear of extreme referential conceptions of meaning, since these court an unacceptable semantic scepticism. Although he eschewed the concepts of truth and knowledge as philosophers of science …Read more
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8Associative Engines: Connectionism, Concepts, and Representational Change (review)Philosophical Books 37 (2): 125-127. 1996.
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8Christian Erbacher, Wittgenstein’s Heirs and Editors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). 0 + 71 pp., price £15.00 pb, £8.69 Kindle edition (review)Philosophical Investigations 44 (3): 339-342. 2021.Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.
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42Great Books, Bad Arguments: Republic, Leviathan, and The Communist Manifesto. By W. G. RuncimanThe European Legacy 17 (7): 957-958. 2012.No abstract
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39Interactions between archaeology and philosophy are traced, from the ‘New Archaeology’s’ use of ideas from logical empiricism, the subsequent loss of confidence in such ideas, the falsificationist alternative, the rise of ‘scientific realism’, and the influence of the ‘new’ philosophies of science of the 1960s on post-processual archaeology. Some recent ideas from philosophy of science are introduced, and that discipline’s recent trajectory, featuring debate between realists and anti-realists, a…Read more
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12Review: Christine Sypnowich (ed.), The egalitarian conscience: essays in honour of G. A. Cohen (review)The European Legacy 12 (5): 644-5. 2007.
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12Review: A W Carus, Carnap and twentieth century thought: explication as enlightenment. Cambridge University Press, 2007The European Legacy 14 (6): 759-761. 2009.
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26David J. Stump, Conceptual Change and the Philosophy of Science: Alternative Interpretations of the A Priori , xviii + 176 pp., £85 (review)Ratio 30 (1): 100-106. 2016.
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55Feyerabend's retreat from realismPhilosophy of Science 64 (4): 431. 1997.In attempting to assess the legacy of Paul Feyerabend's philosophical work, matters are complicated by the fact that there was a change in his basic orientation towards the philosophy of science around the end of the 1960s. Here I shall indicate one aspect of Feyerabend's divided legacy. My main aims are to sketch the principal themes in his (fairly extensive but little-known) 1990s output, to situate that later output insofar as it bears on the realism/antirealism debate, and (rather precipitou…Read more
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52Luciano Floridi philosophy and computing: An introductionBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (1): 197-200. 2001.
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12Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, and Thomas Uebel: Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between Science and Politics (review)Philosophy in Review 16 (5): 322-324. 1996.
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2Review of Donald Gillies: Artificial Intelligence and Scientific Method_; Robert Cummins and John L. Pollock: _Philosophy and AI: Essays at the Interface (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (4): 610-612. 1997.
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54Review. Artificial intelligence and scientific method. Donald Gillies. Philosophy and AI: essays at the interface. Robert Cummins, John Pollock (eds) (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (4): 610-612. 1997.
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48Science as supermarket: `Post-modern' themes in Paul Feyerabend's later philosophy of scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 29 (3): 425-447. 1998.
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50The rise of Western rationalism: Paul Feyerabend’s storyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 57 79-86. 2016.I summarise certain aspects of Paul Feyerabend’s account of the development of Western rationalism, show the ways in which that account is supposed to run up against an alternative, that of Karl Popper, and then try to give a preliminary comparison of the two. My interest is primarily in whether what Feyerabend called his ‘story’ constitutes a possible history of our epistemic concepts and their trajectory. I express some grave reservations about that story, and about Feyerabend’s framework, fin…Read more
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3The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the BrainPhilosophical Books 37 (3): 198-200. 1996.
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15Hertz, Wittgenstein and Philosophical Method1Philosophical Investigations 31 (1): 48-67. 2007.There have recently appeared claims that the influence Heinrich Hertz exerted over Wittgenstein's later work was far more abiding than previously recognised. I critically evaluate such claims by Gordon Baker and Allan Janik. I first show that Hertz was indeed concerned with the same feature, clarity, which often exercised Wittgenstein. But I then argue that Wittgenstein should not be seen as having adopted the conception of philosophical method, which Hertz deployed in The Principles of Mechanic…Read more
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Language and Thought: Interdisciplinary Themes. Edited by Peter Carruthers and Jill BoucherThe European Legacy 6 (4): 556-557. 2001.
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphilosophy |
Philosophy of Social Science |
Philosophy of Physical Science |