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103Internalism, Externalism, and the KK PrincipleErkenntnis 86 (6): 1-20. 2019.This paper examines the relationship between the KK principle and the epistemological theses of externalism and internalism. In particular we examine arguments from Okasha :80–86, 2013) and Greco :169–197, 2014) which deny that we can derive the denial of the KK principle from externalism.
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94The aim of belief and the aim of scienceTheoria. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of Science 34 (2): 171. 2019.I argue that the constitutive aim of belief and the constitutive aim of science are both knowledge. The ‘aim of belief’, understood as the correctness conditions of belief, is to be identified with the product of properly functioning cognitive systems. Science is an institution that is the social functional analogue of a cognitive system, and its aim is the same as that of belief. In both cases it is knowledge rather than true belief that is the product of proper functioning.
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188Understanding the replication crisis as a base rate fallacyBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 000-000. 2018.
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287Against CreativityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (3): 694-713. 2019.Creativity is typically defined as a disposition to produce valuable ideas. We argue that this is a mistake and defend a new definition of creativity in terms of the imagination. It follows that creativity has instrumental value at most and then only in the right circumstances. We consider the role of tradition and judgment in worthwhile creativity and argue that there is frequently a tension between greater creativity and the production of value.
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140I—Fundamental Powers, Evolved Powers, and Mental PowersAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 92 (1): 247-275. 2018.Powers have in recent years become a central component of many philosophers’ ontology of properties. While I have argued that powers exist at the fundamental level of properties, many other theorists of powers hold that there are also non-fundamental powers. In this paper I articulate my reasons for being sceptical about the existing reasons for holding that there are non-fundamental powers. However, I also want to promote a different argument for the existence of a certain class of non-fundamen…Read more
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65What can cognitive science tell us about scientific revolutions?Theoria 27 (3): 293-321. 2012.Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions is notable for the readiness with which it drew on the results of cognitive psychology. These naturalistic elements were not well received and Kuhn did not subsequently develop them in his pub- lished work. Nonetheless, in a philosophical climate more receptive to naturalism, we are able to give a more positive evaluation of Kuhn’s proposals. Recently, philosophers such as Nersessian, Nickles, Andersen, Barker, and Chen have used the results of work on …Read more
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35Antidotes all the way down?Theoria 19 (3): 259-269. 2010.This paper explores the question: can fundamental dispositions suffer from finks and antidotes? I use my response to shed light on the question: can the fundamental laws of physics be ceteris paribus laws?
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20Philosophy of Science a Unified Approach, written by Gerhard SchurzGrazer Philosophische Studien 94 (4): 638-640. 2017._ Source: _Page Count 5
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81Review of Philosophy of Science a Unified Approach, by Gerhard Schurz (review)Grazer Philosophische Studien. forthcoming.Review of Gerhard Schurz's Philosophy of Science - A Unified Approach. Routledge, Abingdon 2014
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109Evidence and InferencePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 96 (2): 299-317. 2018.I articulate a functional characterisation of the concept of evidence, according to which evidence is that which allows us to make inferences that extend our knowledge. This entails Williamson's equation of knowledge with evidence.
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60Systematicity, knowledge, and bias. How systematicity made clinical medicine a scienceSynthese 196 (3): 863-879. 2019.This paper shows that the history of clinical medicine in the eighteenth century supports Paul Hoyningen-Huene’s thesis that there is a correlation between science and systematicity. For example, James Jurin’s assessment of the safety of variolation as a protection against smallpox adopted a systematic approach to the assessment of interventions in order to eliminate sources of cognitive bias that would compromise inquiry. Clinical medicine thereby became a science. I use this confirming instanc…Read more
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8Review of Craig Dilworth: The Metaphysics of Science (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (2): 284-286. 1997.
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10Further Antidotes: a Response to GundersenPhilosophical Quarterly 50 (199): 229-233. 2000.In my ‘Dispositions and Antidotes’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 48, I raise an objection to the conditional analysis of dispositions, both in its simple formulation and in a more sophisticated version due to David Lewis, The Philosophical Quarterly, 47. The objection suggests that a disposition may be continuously present and the appropriate stimulus occur without the manifestation occurring, because some outside influence, an antidote, interferes. Gundersen in The Philosophical Quarterly, 50, …Read more
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55Scientific progress as accumulation of knowledge: a reply to RowbottomStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 39 (2): 279-281. 2008.I defend my view that scientific progress is constituted by the accumulation of knowledge against a challenge from Rowbottom in favour of the semantic view that it is only truth that is relevant to progress.Keywords: Scientific progress; Knowledge; Aim of inquiry; Darrell Rowbottom.
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24IntroductionSynthese 149 (3): 445-450. 2006.This volume contains essays by five British philosophers and one Swedish philosopher working in metaphysics and in particular metaphysics as it relates to the philosophy of science. These philosophers are the core of a tight network of European philosophers of science and metaphysicians and their essays have evolved as a result of workshops in Lund, Edinburgh, and Athens.
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85Fred Gifford (ed.): Philosophy of Medicine (review)Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 34 (1): 53-57. 2013.
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16Review of Karl Popper: The Myth of the Framework_; Karl Raimund Popper: _Knowledge and the Body-Mind Problem: In Defence of Interaction (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (1): 149-151. 1996.
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308Laws and essencesRatio 18 (4). 2005.Those who favour an ontology based on dispositions are thereby able to provide a dispositional essentialist account of the laws of nature. In part 1 of this paper I sketch the dispositional essentialist conception of properties and the concomitant account of laws. In part 2, I characterise various claims about the modal character of properties that fall under the heading ‘quidditism’ and which are consequences of the categoricalist view of properties, which is the alternative to the dispositiona…Read more
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126Selection and explanationIn Johannes Persson & Petri Ylikoski (eds.), Rethinking Explanation, Springer. pp. 131--136. 2007.Selection explanations explain some non-accidental generalizations in virtue of a selection process. Such explanations are not particulaizable - they do not transfer as explanations of the instances of such generalizations. This is unlike many explanations in the physical sciences, where the explanation of the general fact also provides an explanation of its instances (i.e. standard D-N explanations). Are selection explanations (e.g. in biology) therefore a different kind of explanation? I argue…Read more
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38Can Scientific Practices Put Norms Back into Nature? (review)Metascience 13 (1): 106-108. 2004.Review of Joseph Rouse, How Scientific Practises Matter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003
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253Kuhn, nominalism, and empiricismPhilosophy of Science 70 (4): 690-719. 2003.In this paper I draw a connection between Kuhn and the empiricist legacy, specifically between his thesis of incommensurability, in particular in its later taxonomic form, and van Fraassen's constructive empiricism. I show that if it is the case the empirically equivalent but genuinely distinct theories do exist, then we can expect such theories to be taxonomically incommensurable. I link this to Hacking's claim that Kuhn was a nominalist. I also argue that Kuhn and van Fraassen do not differ as…Read more
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130Abductive knowledge and Holmesian inferenceIn Tamar Szabó Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, Oxford University Press. pp. 1--31. 2005.The usual, comparative, conception of inference to the best explanation (IBE) takes it to be ampliative. In this paper I propose a conception of IBE ('Holmesian inference') that takes it to be a species of eliminative induction and hence not ampliative. This avoids several problems for comparative IBE (for example, how could it be reliable enough to generate knowledge?). My account of Holmesian inference raises the suspicion that it could never be applied, on the grounds that scientific hypothes…Read more
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