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100Yes, Virginia, there really are paraconsistent logicsJournal of Philosophical Logic 28 (5): 489-500. 1999.B. H. Slater has argued that there cannot be any truly paraconsistent logics, because it's always more plausible to suppose whatever "negation" symbol is used in the language is not a real negation, than to accept the paraconsistent reading. In this paper I neither endorse nor dispute Slater's argument concerning negation; instead, my aim is to show that as an argument against paraconsistency, it misses (some of) the target. A important class of paraconsistent logics - the preservationist logics…Read more
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14Smoke and Mirrors: A Few Nice TricksDialogue 38 (1): 123-134. 1999.Two aims are at work in James Brown'sSmoke and Mirrors:to defend realism against some of its recent detractors, and to expound his own programmatic commitment to a Platonic form of realism. I am sympathetic to his first goal, and dubious about the second, so, as Brown himself predicts, I am enthusiastic about the critical part of the book but critical of his Platonic project. But I will begin this review with a hearty recommendation.Smoke and Mirrorsis clear, articulate, perceptive, occasionally…Read more
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31How to be realistic about inconsistency in scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 21 (2): 281-294. 1990.
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75Defending Backwards CausationCanadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (4). 1992.Whether we’re reading H.G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, or Kurt Vonnegut, time travel is a wonderful narrative trick, freeing a story from the normal ‘one damn thing after another’ progression of time. But many philosophers claim it can never be more than that because backwards causation in general, and time travel in particular, are logically impossible.In this paper I examine one type of argument commonly given for this disappointing conclusion: the time travel paradoxes. Happily for …Read more
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51A solution to the completeness problem for weakly aggregative modal logicJournal of Symbolic Logic 60 (3): 832-842. 1995.
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37Peter Vickers: Understanding Inconsistent Science (review)Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 46 (2): 413-418. 2015.
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58Ethics in Darwin's melancholy visionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (1): 20-29. 2011.Darwinian natural selection draws on Malthus’ harsh vision of human society to explain how organisms come to be adapted to their environments. Natural selection produces the appearance of teleology, but requires only efficient causal processes: undirected, heritable variation combined with effects of the variations on survival and reproduction. This paper draws a sharp distinction between the resulting form of backwards-directed teleology and the future-directed teleology we ascribe to intention…Read more
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514. Bootstrapping Norms: From Cause to IntentionIn Susan Sherwin & Peter Schotch (eds.), Engaged Philosophy: Essays in Honour of David Braybrooke, University of Toronto Press. pp. 343-364. 2006.
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50Philosophy of ecology (edited book)North-Holland. 2011.The most pressing problems facing humanity today - over-population, energy shortages, climate change, soil erosion, species extinctions, the risk of epidemic disease, the threat of warfare that could destroy all the hard-won gains of civilization, and even the recent fibrillations of the stock market - are all ecological or have a large ecological component. in this volume philosophers turn their attention to understanding the science of ecology and its huge implications for the human project. T…Read more
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31Smoke and Mirrors: A Few Nice TricksDialogue 38 (1): 123-. 1999.Two aims are at work in James Brown's Smoke and Mirrors: to defend realism against some of its recent detractors, and to expound his own programmatic commitment to a Platonic form of realism. I am sympathetic to his first goal, and dubious about the second, so, as Brown himself predicts, I am enthusiastic about the critical part of the book but critical of his Platonic project. But I will begin this review with a hearty recommendation. Smoke and Mirrors is clear, articulate, perceptive, occasion…Read more
Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
General Philosophy of Science |