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29Understanding Understanding (review)International Philosophical Quarterly 13 (4): 586-588. 1973.
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13Review: Yoemon Sampei, On the Principle of Effective Choice and its Applications (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 40 (2): 243-244. 1975.
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50Postscript to 'a problem about frequencies in direct inference'Philosophical Studies 48 (1). 1985.
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15This paper investigates the possibility of extending the likelihood treatment of support to situations in which the evidence and the hypotheses supported by the evidence are all outcomes of a chance process. An example is when we ask how much support the observed sequence of heads and tails gives to the hypothesis that the next toss will be a head. I begin by discussing Sober’s approach to a problem of this type: that of estimating how much support the observation that I have a mind gives to the…Read more
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24Review: Kevin T. Kelly, Oliver Schulte, The Computable Testability of Theories Making Uncomputable Predictions (review)Journal of Symbolic Logic 61 (3): 1049-1049. 1996.
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65Price on the Wheeler-feynman theoryBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (1): 288-294. 1994.
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134Foundations of statistical mechanics—two approachesPhilosophy of Science 70 (1): 126-144. 2003.This paper is a discussion of David Albert's approach to the foundations of classical statistical menchanics. I point out a respect in which his account makes a stronger claim about the statistical mechanical probabilities than is usually made, and I suggest what might be motivation for this. I outline a less radical approach, which I attribute to Boltzmann, and I give some reasons for thinking that this approach is all we need, and also the most we are likely to get. The issue between the two a…Read more
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111Wheeler–Feynman Again: A Reply to PriceBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (3): 381-383. 1995.
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146Constructive empiricismSynthese 101 (2). 1994.Constructive Empiricism, the view introduced in The Scientific Image, is a view of science, an answer to the question “what is science?” Arthur Fine’s and Paul Teller’s contributions to this symposium challenge especially two key ideas required to formu- late that view, namely the observable/unobservable and accept- ance/belief distinctions. I wish to thank them not only for their insightful critique but also for the support they include. For they illuminate and counter some misunderstandings of…Read more
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17Perception and Cognition: Issues in the Foundations of PsychologyPhilosophical Review 89 (3): 482. 1980.
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252Correspondence truth and scientific realismSynthese 159 (1). 2007.I argue that one good reason for Scientific Realists to be interested in correspondence theories is the hope they offer us of being able to state and defend realistic theses in the face of well-known difficulties about modern physics: such theses as, that our theories are approximately true, or that they will tend to approach the truth. I go on to claim that this hope is unlikely to be fulfilled. I suggest that Realism can still survive in the face of these difficulties, as a claim about the kin…Read more
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38Theories of Truth and ReferenceErkenntnis 13 (1): 111--129. 1978.Much recent work in the philosophy of language has been concerned with the project of constructing a theory of reference and truth for natural languages. I shall discuss certain assumptions which have been tacitly in the background of most of this work; what I hope my rather sceptical discussion will show is that the project of giving a theory of reference and truth is much more problematic - and more closely tied to questions of general philosophical interest - than is usually suspected.
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2Possibility: Physical and metaphysicalIn Carl Gillett & Barry M. Loewer (eds.), Physicalism and Its Discontents, Cambridge University Press. 2001.
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30Levi's decision theoryPhilosophy of Science 57 (1): 158-168. 1990.Suppose my utilities are representable by a set of utility assignments, each defined for atomic sentences; suppose my beliefs are representable by a set of probability assignments. Then each of my utility assignments together with each of my probability assignments will determine a utility assignment to non-atomic sentences, in a familiar way. This paper is concerned with the question, whether I am committed to all the utility assignments so constructible. Richard Jeffrey (1984) says (in effect)…Read more
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227Gauges: Aharonov, Bohm, Yang, HealeyPhilosophy of Science 66 (4): 606-627. 1999.I defend the interpretation of the Aharonov-Bohm effect originally advanced by Aharonov and Bohm, i.e., that it is caused by an interaction between the electron and the vector potential. The defense depends on taking the fiber bundle formulation of electrodynamics literally, or almost literally
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36Discussion: Malament on Time ReversalPhilosophy of Science 73 (4): 448-458. 2006.David Malament has recently responded to David Albert's argument that classical electrodynamics is not time-reversal invariant by introducing a novel conception of time reversal, which supports the conventional view that under time reversal the magnetic field changes sign but the electric field remains unchanged. I will argue here that Malament's transformation has both passive and active versions. I will claim that the passive version is not relevant to Albert's argument, and the active version…Read more
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Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Physical Science |