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37Strong Emergence and Freedom: Comment on A. StephanIn Graham Macdonald & Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Emergence in Mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 240--251. 2010.
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6IntroductionVivarium 45 (2): 131-135. 2007.The aim of this introduction is to improve on the traditional way of summing up the history of the notions of power and disposition, by uncovering some of the complexities that remain hidden behind such an oversimplification.
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108Reducing causality to transmissionErkenntnis 48 (1): 1-25. 1998.The idea that causation can be reduced to transmission of an amount of some conserved quantity between events is spelled out and defended against important objections. Transmission is understood as a symmetrical relation of copresence in two distinct events. The actual asymmetry of causality has its origin in the asymmetrical character of certain irreversible physical processes and then spreads through the causal net. This conception is compatible with the possibility of backwards causation and …Read more
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25Causalité et lois de la natureJ. Vrin. 1999.La philosophie des sciences de l'empirisme logique avait discredite la causalite comme etant un concept du sens commun irremediablement vague et confus, pour lui substituer le concept d'explication scientifique. Cependant, dans nombre de theories contemporaines, notamment en philosophie de l'esprit et du langage, le concept de causalite continue a jouer un role de premier plan. Ce livre montre qu'il est possible de concevoir la causalite d'une maniere compatible avec des connaissances scientifiq…Read more
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66On the Content of Natural Kind ConceptsActa Analytica 16 55-79. 2001.The search for a nomological account of what determines the content of concepts as they are represented in cognitive systems, is an important part of the general project of explaining intentional phenomena in naturalistic terms. I examine Fodor's "Theory of Content" and criticize his strategy of combining constraints in nomological terms with contraints in terms of actual causal relations. The paper focuses on the problem of the indeterminacy of the content of natural kind concepts. A concept li…Read more
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78Humans have only finite discriminatory capacities. This simple fact seems to be incompatible with the existence of appearances. As many authors have noted, the hypothesis that appearances exist seems to be refuted by reductio: Let A, B, C be three uniformly coloured surfaces presented to a subject in optimal viewing conditions, such that A, B, and C resemble one another perfectly except with respect to their colours. Their colours differ slightly in the following way: the difference between A an…Read more
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29The Causal Efficacy of Macroscopic Dispositional PropertiesIn Max Kistler & Bruno Gnassounou (eds.), Dispositions and Causal Powers, Ashgate. pp. 103--132. 2007.
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71Dispositions and Causal Powers (edited book)Ashgate. 2007.This collection of essays, by leading international researchers, examines the case for realism with respect to dispositions and causal powers in both ...
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18Perspectives on causes and dispositions: Toby Handfield : Dispositions and causes, Oxford University Press, 2009, 343 pp, £45.00, HBMetascience 19 (3): 403-407. 2010.
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22Causation as Transference and ResponsibilityIn Wolfgang Spohn, Marion Ledwig & Michael Esfeld (eds.), Current Issues in Causation, Mentis. pp. 115-133. 2001.During the last decades there has been a remarkable renewal of interest in theories of causation which is linked to the decline of the orthodoxy of the Logical empiricist school. A number of alternatives to the traditional covering-law account have been proposed. I shall defend a version of an approach that has been undeservedly neglected: the Transference Theory of causation. Accounts of this type elaborate the intuition that there is a material link between the cause and the effect, consisting…Read more
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584Necessary LawsIn Jan Faye, Paul Needham, Uwe Scheffler & Max Urchs (eds.), Nature’s Principles, Springer. pp. 201-227. 2005.In the first part of this paper, I argue against the view that laws of nature are contingent, by attacking a necessary condition for its truth within the framework of a conception of laws as relations between universals. I try to show that there is no independent reason to think that universals have an essence independent of their nomological properties. However, such a non-qualitative essence is required to make sense of the idea that different laws link the same universals in different possibl…Read more
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9Le combinatorialisme et le réalisme nomologique sont-ils compatibles?In Jean-Maurice Monnoyer (ed.), La Structure du Monde, Vrin, Paris. pp. 199--221. 2004.English title: Are combinatorialism and nomological realism compatible?
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162Some problems for Lowe's four-category ontologyAnalysis 64 (2). 2004.In E.J. Lowe's ontology, (individual) objects are property-bearers which 1) have identity and 2) are countable. This makes it possible to become or cease to be an object, by beginning or ceasing to fulfil one of these conditions. But the possibility of switching fundamental ontological categories should be excluded. Furthermore, Lowe does not show that “quasi-individuals” (which are not countable) can exist. I argue against Lowe that kinds cannot be property-bearers in a more genuine sense than …Read more
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24Réduction fonctionnelle et réduction logiquePhilosophiques 27 (1): 27-38. 2000.Kim attribue aux émergentistes un modèle de « réduction logique » dans lequel la prédiction ou l’explication d’une occurrence de la propriété réduite ne requiert, outre des informations sur le niveau réducteur, que des principes logiques et mathématiques. Sur la base de cette interprétation, je conteste deux thèses de Kim. La première concerne la légitimité du modèle émergentiste de réduction. J’essaie de montrer, à l’aide de l’exemple de l’addition des masses, que l’adoption de la réduction log…Read more
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Causalité et lois de la nature, coll. « Mathesis »Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 191 (2): 258-259. 2001.
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77Causes as events and factsDialectica 53 (1). 1999.The paper defends the view that events are the basic relata of causation, against arguments based on linguistic analysis to the effect that only facts can play that role. According to those arguments, causal contexts let the meaning of the expressions embedded in them shift: even expressions possessing the linguistic form that usually designates an event take a factual meaning.However, defending events as fundamental relata of causation turns out to be possible only by attributing a – different …Read more
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133Is functional reduction logical reduction?Croatian Journal of Philosophy 5 (14): 219-234. 2005.The functionalist conception of mental properties, together with their multiple realizability, is often taken to entail their irreducibility. It might seem that the only way to revise that judgement is to weaken the requirements traditionally imposed on reduction. However, Jaegwon Kim has recently argued that we should, on the contrary, strengthen those requirements, and construe reduction as what I propose to call “logical reduction”, a model of reduction inspired by emergentism. Moreover, Kim …Read more
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67Réduction «rôle-occupant», réduction «micro-macro» et explication réductrice a prioriDialogue 44 (2): 225-248. 2005.It has been argued that most truths about macroscopic states of affairs are entailed by a (hypothetical) complete descriptionPof the world in microscopic terms. In principle, micro-reductive explanations of non-microphysical truths could be constructeda priori.Against this claim, I show that reductive explanation requires knowledge about the phenomena to be reduced which cannot bea prioriextracted from microphysical information alone. Such reductions proceed in two steps: a “reductionR0” (“role-…Read more
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18Erklärung und KausalitätPhilosophia Naturalis 39 (1): 89-109. 2002.Causation is analysed in terms of transference of amounts of conserved quantities between events. Such amounts are tropes. However, causal explanations are directly made true, not by transmission relations but by relations of causal responsibility, of a fact Fc about the cause event c for a fact Ge about the effect event e. Causal responsibility is analysed in terms of causation between events c and e and a law of nature holding between the properties F and G. This account overcomes many objecti…Read more
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University of Paris 1 Panthéon-SorbonneDepartment for Teaching and Research in Philosophy (UFR10)Regular Faculty
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Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueInstitute for the History and Philosophy of Science and TechnologyRegular Faculty