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97MistakesSynthese 136 (3): 389-408. 2003.A suggestion famously made by Peter Winch and carried through to present discussions holds that what constitutes the social as a kind consists of something shared – rules or practices commonly learned, internalized, or otherwise acquired by all members belonging to a society. This essays argues against the explanatory efficacy of appeals to this shared something as constitutive of a social kind by examining a violation of social norms or rules, viz., mistakes. I argue that an asymmetric relation…Read more
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74. three dogmas (more or less) of explanationHistory and Theory 47 (1). 2008.What ought to count as an explanation? Such normative questions—what “ought to be” the case?—typically mark the domain that those with a type of philosophical aspiration call their own. Debates in the philosophy of history have for too long been marred by bad advice from just such aspirants. The recurrent suggestion has been that historians have a particular need for a theory of explanation since they seem to have none of their own. But neither the study of the natural sciences nor the study of …Read more
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4Review of Robert Piercey, The Uses of the Past From Heidegger to Rorty: Doing Philosophy Historically (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (10). 2009.
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103The PastsHistory and Theory 51 (3): 313-339. 2012.ABSTRACTThis essay offers a reconfiguration of the possibility‐space of positions regarding the metaphysics and epistemology associated with historical knowledge. A tradition within analytic philosophy from Danto to Dummett attempts to answer questions about the reality of the past on the basis of two shared assumptions. The first takes individual statements as the relevant unit of semantic and philosophical analysis. The second presumes that variants of realism and antirealism about the past ex…Read more
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10To claim that Hayden White has yet to be read seriously as a philosopher of history might seem false on the face of it. But do tropes and the rest provide any epistemic rationale for differing representations of historical events found in histories? As an explanation of White’s influence on philosophy of history, such a proffered emphasis only generates a puzzle with regard to taking White seriously, and not an answer to the question of why his efforts should be worthy of any philosophical atten…Read more
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26What does the sociology of scientific knowledge explain?: or, when epistemological chickens come home to roostHistory of the Human Sciences 7 (1): 95-108. 1994.
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Michael Krausz, ed., Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (review)Philosophy in Review 10 66-70. 1990.
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3The Full Hempel (review)History and Theory 38 (2): 249-263. 1999.Book reviewed in this article: The Logic of Historical Explanation by Clayton Roberts
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14Interpretation as explanationIn David R. Hiley, James Bohman & Richard Shusterman (eds.), The Interpretive turn: philosophy, science, culture, Cornell University Press. pp. 179--196. 1991.
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19Siegel on naturalized epistemology and natural sciencePhilosophy of Science 50 (3): 482-493. 1983.What is the relation of epistemology, understood as the study of the evaluation of knowledge claims, and empirical psychology, understood as the study of the causal generation of a person's beliefs? Quine maintains that the relation is one of “mutual containment”.Epistemology in its new setting, conversely, is contained in natural science, as a chapter of psychology. … We are studying how the human subject of our study posits bodies and projects his physics from his data, and we appreciate that …Read more
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97Beyond understanding: the career of the concept of understanding in the human sciencesPhilosophy of the Social Sciences. forthcoming.
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2Book Reviews : Stewart Richards, ed. Philosophy and Sociology of Science: An Introduction. 2d ed. Blackwell, Oxford, 1987. Pp. 240, US$15.95 (paper (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 21 (1): 130-132. 1991.
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45Review of C. Mantzavinos, Naturalistic Hermeneutics (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2006 (2). 2006.
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Naturalism without FearsIn Stephen P. Turner & Mark W. Risjord (eds.), Handbook of Philosophy of Anthropology and Sociology, Elsevier. pp. 683--708. 2006.
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The object of understandingIn K. R. Stueber & H. H. Kogaler (eds.), Empathy and Agency: The Problem of Understanding in the Human Sciences, Boulder: Westview Press. pp. 243--269. 2000.
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2Roth contends that the controversy in the philosophy of the social sciences over the canons of rationality is the product of the mistaken belief in methodological exclusivism. Drawing on work in contemporary epistemology by W.V.O. Quine, Richard Rorty and Paul Feyerabend, he argues that no single theory of human behavior has methodological priority. He demonstrates how rejecting the notion of universal norms of social inquiry neither reduces epistemology to empirical psychology nor entails epist…Read more
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20The disappearance of the empirical: Some reflections on contemporary culture theory and historiographyJournal of the Philosophy of History 1 (3): 271-292. 2007.This paper surveys the parallel fates of the notion of the empirical in philosophy of science in the 20th century and the notion of experience as evidence in one important line of debate in historiography/philosophy of history. The focus concerns the presumably crucial role some notion of the empirical plays in the assessment of knowledge claims. The significance of 'the empirical' disappears on the assumption that theories either determine what counts as experience or explain away any apparentl…Read more
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19History and the manifest image: Hayden white as a philosopher of history1History and Theory 52 (1): 130-143. 2013.
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4Review of William Rehg, Cogent Science in Context: The Science Wars, Argumentation Theory, and Habermas (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (10). 2009.
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17The philosophy of history: An agendaJournal of the Philosophy of History 1 (1): 1-9. 2007.The Founding declaration of the journal.
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What Does the Sociology of Scientific Knowlegde ExplainIn Irving Velody & Robin Williams (eds.), The Politics of constructionism, Sage Publications. pp. 69--82. 1998.
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7Microfoundations Without Foundations: Comments on LittleSouthern Journal of Philosophy 34 (S1): 57-64. 1996.
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6Three grades of normative involvement: Risjord, Stueber, and Henderson on norms and explanationPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 35 (3): 339-352. 2005.What makes for a good explanation of a person’s actions? Their reasons, or soa natural reply goes. But how do reasons function as part of explanations, that is, within an account of the causes of action? Here philosophers divide concerning the logical relation in which reasons stand to actions. For, tradition holds, reasons evaluatively characterized must be causally inert, inasmuch as the normative features cannot be found in any account of the empirical/descriptive. To countenance reasons as c…Read more
Santa Cruz, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Epistemology |
Philosophy of Social Science |
20th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Metaphilosophy |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Physical Science |