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Carl Alan Matheson

University of Manitoba
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Syracuse University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1986
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics
Aesthetics
  •  72
    Critical Notice (review)
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (3): 463-489. 1996.
    Theory ChangeScientific Progress
  •  186
    The Logical Impossibility of Collision
    with A. David Kline
    Philosophy 62 (242): 509-515. 1987.
    Absolutely no one still believes that every physical interactionconsists of material bodies bumping into each other. Those who have tried to work out a completely mechanistic physics have been unable to explain common phenomena like liquidity, gravitation and magnetism. In fact, there is great reason to doubt that such a physics could ever account for attractive forces in general.
  •  70
    Historicist theories of rationality
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
    Rationality
  •  121
    How the laws of physics don't even fib
    with A. David Kline
    Psa 1986 33--41. 1986.
    The most recent challenge to the covering-law model of explanation (N. Cartwright, How the laws of Physics Lie) charges that the fundamental explanatory laws are not true. In fact explanation and truth are alleged to pull in different directions. We hold that this gets its force from confusing issues about the truth of the laws in the explanation and the precision with which those laws can yield an exact description of the event to be explained. In defending this we look at Cartwright's major ca…Read more
    Ceteris Paribus Laws