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17Three Dogmas of ExplanationHistory and Theory 47 (1): 57-68. 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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9Review of Paul Andrew Roth: Meaning and Method in the Social Sciences: A Case for Methodological Pluralism (review)Ethics 99 (2): 434-435. 1989.
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56Narrative Explanations: The Case of HistoryHistory and Theory 27 (1): 1-13. 1988.The very idea of narrative explanation invites two objections: a methodological objection, stating that narrative structure is too far from the form of a scientific explanation to count as an explanation, and a metaphysical objection, stating that narrative structure situates historical practice too close to the writing of fiction. Both of these objections, however, are illfounded. The methodological objection and the dispute regarding the status of historical explanation can be disposed of by r…Read more
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61Chaos, Clio, and Scientistic Illusions of UnderstandingHistory and Theory 34 (1): 30-44. 1995.A number of authors have recently argued that the mathematical insights of "chaos theory" offer a promising formal model or significant analogy for understanding at least some historical events. We examine a representative claim of each kind regarding the application of chaos theory to problems of historical explanation. We identify two lines of argument. One we term the Causal Thesis, which states that chaos theory may be used to plausibly model, and so explain, historical events. The other we …Read more
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59Politics and epistemology: Rorty, MacIntyre, and the ends of philosophyHistory of the Human Sciences 2 (2): 171-191. 1989.In this paper, I examine how a manifest disagreement between Richard Rorty and Alasdair MacIntyre concerning the history of philosophy is but one of a series of deep and interrelated disagreements concerning, in addition, the history of science, the good life for human beings, and, ultimately, the character of and prospects for humankind as well. I shall argue that at the heart of this series of disagreements rests a dispute with regard to the nature of rationality. And this disagreement concern…Read more
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36Logic and translation: A reply to Alan BergerJournal of Philosophy 79 (3): 154-163. 1982.The article argues, "contra" berger, that quine's advocacy alleged of classical logic is not based on any alleged "fit" between classical logic and some empirical account of language learning. roth begins by examining berger's claim that quine has changed his position on the acceptability of alternative logics. in berger's account, quine now accepts alternative logics because he could not defend his commitment to classical logic alone based on empirical evidence (e.g., verdict tables). roth argu…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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47To 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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807The 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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Michael Krausz, ed., Relativism: Interpretation and Confrontation (review)Philosophy in Review 10 66-70. 1990.
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140What 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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17Interpretation 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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119The 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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272Beyond understanding: the career of the concept of understanding in the human sciencesPhilosophy of the Social Sciences. forthcoming.
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72Siegel 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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8Book 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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131Review 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. 2007.
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4Roth 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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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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28History and the manifest image: Hayden white as a philosopher of history1History and Theory 52 (1): 130-143. 2013.
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62The 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
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 |