•  124
    Particles, particle labels, and quanta: The toll of unacknowledged metaphysics (review)
    Foundations of Physics 21 (1): 43-62. 1991.
    The practice of describing multiparticle quantum systems in terms of labeled particles indicates that we think of quantum entities as individuatable. The labels, together with particle indistinguishability, create the need for symmetrization or antisymmetrization (or, in principle, higher-order symmetries), which in turn results in “surplus formal structure” in the formalism, formal structure which corresponds to nothing in the real world. We argue that these facts show quanta to be unindividuat…Read more
  •  1043
    Conventional scientific realism is just the doctrine that our theoretical terms refer. Conventional antirealism denies, for various reasons, theoretical reference and takes theory to give us only information about the word of the perceptual where reference, it would appear, is secure. But reference fails for the perceptual every bit as much for the perceptual as for the theoretical, and for the same reason: the world is too complicated for us to succeed in attaching specific referents to our ter…Read more
  •  863
    This paper challenges “traditional measurement-accuracy realism”, according to which there are in nature quantities of which concrete systems have definite values. An accurate measurement outcome is one that is close to the value for the quantity measured. For a measurement of the temperature of some water to be accurate in this sense requires that there be this temperature. But there isn’t. Not because there are no quantities “out there in nature” but because the term ‘the temperature of thi…Read more
  •  32
    Is Supervenience Just Disguised Reduction?
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 23 (1): 93-99. 2010.
  •  53
    The Projection Postulate and Bohr's Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1980 201-223. 1980.
    This article explains why Bohr does not need to discuss the projection postulate or the "problem of measurement". Beginning with a thumbnail sketch of Bohr 's general views, it is argued that Bohr interprets the state function as giving a statistical summary of experimental outcomes. Against the objection that Bohr was too much a microrealist to endorse such an instrumentalist statistical interpretation it is suggested that he rejected the issue of microrealism as not well formed. It is shown th…Read more
  •  163
  •  295
    The gauge argument
    Philosophy of Science 67 (3): 481. 2000.
    This paper examines the so-called "gauge argument" sometimes used by physicists to motivate the introduction of gauge fields, here facilitated by an informal exposition of the fiber bundle formalism. The discussion suggests some preliminary ways of understanding the connection between gauge fields and interactions
  •  98
    A metaphysics for contemporary field theories
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 28 (4): 507-522. 1997.
  •  22
    Book review
    with James T. Cushing, Roberto Peccei, and Leopold Halpern
    Foundations of Physics 20 (10): 1241-1263. 1990.
  •  343
    Huggett and Weingard's critical review provides an opportunity to continue the interpretive examination of quantum field theory in terms of some specific issues as well as comparison of alternative approaches to the subject. This note recasts their example of inequivalent Fock spaces in an effort to further clarify what it illustrates. Questions are addressed about the role of analogy in developing quantum field theory and about the conflict between formal vs. concrete methods in both physics an…Read more
  •  61
    Indicative introduction
    Philosophical Studies 31 (3). 1977.
  •  100
    The philosophy of physics
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 33 (4): 725-730. 2002.
  •  67
    Comments on the Papers of Cushing and Redhead: "Models, High-Energy Theoretical Physics and Realism" and "Quantum Field Theory for Philosophers"
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1982. 1982.
    In response to Cushing it is urged that the vicissitudes of quantum field theory do not press towards a nonrealist attitude towards the theory as strongly as he suggests. A variety of issues which Redhead raises are taken up, including photon localizability, the wave-particle distinction in the classical limit, and the interpretation of quantum statistics, vacuum fluctuations, virtual particles, and creation and annihilation operators. It is urged that quantum field theory harbors an unacknowled…Read more
  •  34
    Against Against Overlap and Endurance
    In Gerhard Preyer & Frank Siebelt (eds.), Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David Lewis, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 105--21. 2001.