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83Four Species of Reflexivity and History of Economics in Economic Policy ScienceJournal of the Philosophy of History 5 (3): 425-445. 2011.This paper argues that history of economics has a fruitful, underappreciated role to play in the development of economics, especially when understood as a policy science. This goes against the grain of the last half century during which economics, which has undergone a formal revolution, has distanced itself from its `literary' past and practices precisely with the aim to be a more successful policy science. The paper motivates the thesis by identifying and distinguishing four kinds of reflexivi…Read more
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68My critical comments on Part I of P. J. E. Kail's Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy are divided into two parts. First, I challenge the exegetical details of Kail's take on Hume's important distinction between natural and philosophical relations. I show that Kail misreads Hume in a subtle fashion. If I am right, then much of the machinery that Kail puts into place for his main argument does different work in Hume than Kail thinks. Second, I offer a brief criticism of Kail's argument for…Read more
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222Newton’s Challenge to Philosophy: A Programmatic EssayHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 1 (1): 101-128. 2011.I identify a set of interlocking views that became (and still are) very influential within philosophy in the wake of Newton’s success. These views use the authority of natural philosophy/mechanics to settle debates within philosophy. I label these “Newton’s Challenge.”
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117In this paper I interpret Newton’s speculative treatment of gravity as a relational, accidental property of matter that arises through what Newton calls “the shared action” of two bodies of matter. In doing so, I expand and extend on a hint by Howard Stein. However, in developing the details of my interpretation I end up disagreeing with Stein’s claim that for Newton a single body can generate a gravity/force field. I argue that when Newton drafted the first edition of the Principia in the mid 1…Read more
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86Interpreting Spinoza: Critical EssaysBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (4). 2011.British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 19, Issue 4, Page 822-826, July 2011
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176Hume's missing shade of blue reconsidered from a Newtonian PerspectiveJournal of Scottish Philosophy 2 (2): 164-175. 2004.Click to decrease image size.
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85Spinoza's Conatus as an essence preserving, attribute-neutral immanent cause: toward a new interpretation of attributes and modesIn Keith Allen & Tom Stoneham (eds.), Causation and Modern Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 3--65. 2010.
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Areas of Interest
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