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22The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To the Vienna StationPhilosophical Review 102 (4): 597. 1993.
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18Proper Names, Beliefs, and Definite DescriptionsDissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst. 1984.This dissertation investigates issues raised by these two questions: what kinds of propositions are ordinarily expressed by uses of sentences that contain proper names; and what kinds of beliefs are ordinarily on the minds of speakers when they use sentences that contain proper names? It develops a new view about the connections between beliefs, linguistic behavior, and propositional content, one that explicitly denies that the kinds of propositions typically expressed by uses of such sentences …Read more
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14Effective Field Theories: A Case Study for Torretti’s Perspective on Kantian ObjectivityIn Cristián Soto (ed.), Current Debates in Philosophy of Science: In Honor of Roberto Torretti, Springer Verlag. pp. 61-79. 2023.Those enlightened philosophers of physics acknowledging some manner of descent from Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’ have long found encouragement and inspiration in the writings of Roberto Torretti. In this tribute, I focus on his “perspective on Kant’s perspective on objectivity” (2008), a short but highly stimulating attempt to extract the essential core of the Kantian doctrine that ‘objects of knowledge’ are constituted, not given, or with Roberto’s inimitable pungency, that “objectivity is an…Read more
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14Contingency, a Prioricity and AcquaintancePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (2): 323-343. 1993.
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9Hilbert on General Covariance and CausalityIn David E. Rowe, Tilman Sauer & Scott A. Walter (eds.), Beyond Einstein: Perspectives on Geometry, Gravitation, and Cosmology in the Twentieth Century, Springer New York. pp. 67-77. 2018.Einstein and Hilbert both struggled to reconcile general covariance and causality in their early work on general relativity. In Einstein’s case, this first led to his infamous “hole argument”, a stumbling block that persuaded him early on that generally covariant field equations for gravitation could never be found. After his breakthrough to general covariance in the fall of 1915, the resolution came in form of the “point-coincidence argument.” Hilbert from the beginning took a different view of…Read more
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9Recovering First Philosophy in Philosophy of PhysicsPhilosophy Today 49 (Supplement): 13-22. 2005.
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7Otto Neurath (review)Philosophical Review 107 (2): 327-329. 1998.This collaborative work provides an intellectual portrait of a man known to most students of philosophy today only as a lesser founding member of the Vienna Circle. It makes a strong case for the intrinsic interest and continuing relevance of much of Neurath’s thought to contemporary science studies, considered broadly. Together with several other recent works on Neurath, it forces a substantial revision in any assessment of the Vienna Circle and its legacy. Finally, it describes, in some detail…Read more
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7Designation and Convention: A Chapter of Early Logical EmpiricismPSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (2): 149-157. 1990.We have yet to fully understand the mariner or the measure to which logical empiricism emerged as a conventionalist response to both traditional Kantian and empiricist epistemology and to the apparent triumphs of “conventionalist stratagems” (in Popper’s aspersive locution) in the foundations of science. By “conventionalism”, however, is here understood a broader sense than customary, an extrapolation of views on the foundations of geometry and physics (associated in the first instance with Poin…Read more
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6EinsteinRoutledge. 2017.Albert Einstein was the most influential physicist of the twentieth century. Less well-known is that fundamental philosophical problems, such as concept formation, the role of epistemology in developing and explaining the character of physical theories, and the debate between positivism and realism, played a central role in his thought as a whole. Thomas Ryckman shows that already at the beginning of his career, at a time when the twin pillars of classical physics, Newtonian mechanics and Maxwel…Read more
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2The "relativized a priori" : an appreciation and a critiqueIn Michael Friedman, Mary Domski & Michael Dickson (eds.), Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science, Open Court. 2010.
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QBism : realism about what?In Philipp Berghofer & Harald A. Wiltsche (eds.), Phenomenology and Qbism: New Approaches to Quantum Mechanics, Routledge. 2023.
Stanford, California, United States of America
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mathematics |
Philosophy of Physical Science |