-
572Reply to Huemer on the consequence argumentPhilosophical Review 111 (2): 235-241. 2002.In a recent paper, Michael Huemer provides a new interpretation for ‘N’, the operator that occurs in Peter van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument, and argues that, given that interpretation, the Consequence Argument is sound. I have no quarrel with Huemer’s claim that the Consequence Argument is valid. I shall argue instead that his defense of its premises—a defense that allegedly involves refuting David Lewis’s response to van Inwagen—is unsuccessful.
-
87Causation and Free Will, by Carolina Sartorio: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. viii + 188, £35 (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96 (1): 207-208. 2018.
-
230On the abuse of the necessary a posterioriIn Helen Beebee & Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (eds.), The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds, Routledge. pp. 159--79. 2010.
-
195John Foster the divine lawmakerBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (2): 453-457. 2009.
-
575Probability as a guide to lifeIn David Papineau (ed.), The Roots of Reason, Oxford University Press. pp. 217-243. 2003.
-
20Hume’s impact on causationThe Philosophers' Magazine 54 75-79. 2011.Many philosophers came to regard “causation” as an illegitimate pseudo-concept. This was a dominant view in analytic philosophy until quite late in the twentieth century. Russell famously quipped that “the law of causality” was “a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm”.
-
459Seeing causingProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (3): 257-280. 2003.Singularists about causation often claim that we can have experiences as of causation. This paper argues that regularity theorists need not deny that claim; hence the possibility of causal experience is no objection to regularity theories of causation. The fact that, according to a regularity theorist, causal experience requires background theory does not provide grounds for denying that it is genuine experience. The regularity theorist need not even deny that non-inferential perceptual knowledg…Read more
-
177Chance-changing causal processesIn Phil Dowe & Paul Noordhof (eds.), Cause and Chance, Routledge. pp. 39-57. 2003.Scepticism concerning the idea of causation being linked to contingent chance-raising is articulated in Beebee’s challenging chapter. She suggests that none of these approaches will avoid the consequence that spraying defoliant on a weed is a cause of the weed’s subsequent health. We will always be able to abstract away enough of the healthy plant processes so all that’s left is the causal chain involving defoliation and health. In those circumstances, there will be contingent chance-raising. Be…Read more
-
711Necessary Connections and the Problem of InductionNoûs 45 (3): 504-527. 2011.In this paper Beebee argues that the problem of induction, which she describes as a genuine sceptical problem, is the same for Humeans than for Necessitarians. Neither scientific essentialists nor Armstrong can solve the problem of induction by appealing to IBE, for both arguments take an illicit inductive step.
-
1116Hume’s Two Definitions: The Procedural InterpretationHume Studies 37 (2): 243-274. 2011.Hume's two definitions of causation have caused an extraordinary amount of controversy. The starting point for the controversy is the fact, well known to most philosophy undergraduates, that the two definitions aren't even extensionally equivalent, let alone semantically equivalent. So how can they both be definitions? One response to this problem has been to argue that Hume intends only the first as a genuine definition—an interpretation that delivers a straightforward regularity interpretation…Read more
-
36The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds (edited book)Routledge. 2010.Essentialism--roughly, the view that natural kinds have discrete essences, generating truths that are necessary but knowable only _a posteriori_--is an increasingly popular view in the metaphysics of science. At the same time, philosophers of language have been subjecting Kripke’s views about the existence and scope of the necessary _a posteriori_ to rigorous analysis and criticism. Essentialists typically appeal to Kripkean semantics to motivate their radical extension of the realm of the neces…Read more
-
67Reply to Strawson:'David Hume: Objects and Power'In Stewart Duncan & Antonia LoLordo (eds.), Debates in Modern Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses, Routledge. pp. 242. 2013.
-
1245Causing and NothingnessIn L. A. Paul, E. J. Hall & J. Collins (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals, Mit Press. pp. 291--308. 2004.
Leeds, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland