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2IntroductionIn Helen Beebee & Julian Dodd (eds.), Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, Clarendon Press. 2005.
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906Humean compatibilismMind 111 (442): 201-223. 2002.Humean compatibilism is the combination of a Humean position on laws of nature and the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. This article's aim is to situate Humean compatibilism in the current debate among libertarians, traditional compatibilists, and semicompatibilists about free will. We argue that a Humean about laws can hold that there is a sense in which the laws of nature are 'up to us' and hence that the leading style of argument for incompatibilism?the consequence argume…Read more
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535The Two Definitions and the Doctrine of NecessityProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (1pt3): 413-431. 2007.
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534Causation and ObservationIn Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Peter Menzies (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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65Review. Causation & Persistence: A Theory of Causation. D Ehring (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1): 181-184. 1998.
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396Hume on CausationRoutledge. 2006.Hume is traditionally credited with inventing the ‘regularity theory’ of causation, according to which the causal relation between two events consists merely in the fact that events of the first kind are always followed by events of the second kind. Hume is also traditionally credited with two other, hugely influential positions: the view that the world appears to us as a world of unconnected events, and inductive scepticism: the view that the ‘problem of induction’, the problem of providing a j…Read more
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906Does Anything Hold the Universe Together?Synthese 149 (3): 509-533. 2006.According to ‘regularity theories’ of causation, the obtaining of causal relations depends on no more than the obtaining of certain kinds of regularity. Regularity theorists are thus anti-realists about necessary connections in nature. Regularity theories of one form or another have constituted the dominant view in analytic Philosophy for a long time, but have recently come in for some robust criticism, notably from Galen Strawson. Strawson’s criticisms are natural criticisms to make, but have n…Read more
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1212Transfer of warrant, begging the question, and semantic externalismPhilosophical Quarterly 51 (204): 356-74. 2001.
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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.
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585Reply 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.
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234On 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.
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195John Foster the divine lawmakerBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (2): 453-457. 2009.
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22Hume’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”.
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580Probability as a guide to lifeIn David Papineau (ed.), The Roots of Reason, Oxford University Press. pp. 217-243. 2003.
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