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117Remarks on our knowledge of modal factsNorsk Filosofisk Tidsskrift 43 (1): 54--60. 2008.Can we have a posteriori knowledge of modal facts? And if so, is that knowledge fundamentally a posteriori, or does a priori intuition provide the modal component of what is known? Though the latter view seems more straightforward, there are also reasons for taking the first option seriously.
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236Are Natural Kinds Reducible?In Alexander Hieke & Hannes Leitgeb (eds.), Reduction, abstraction, analysis: proceedings of the 31th International Ludwig Wittgenstein-Symposium in Kirchberg, 2008, De Gruyter. pp. 127-136. 2009.We talk as if there are natural kinds and in particular we quantify over them. We can count the number of elements discovered by Sir Humphrey Davy, or the number of kinds of particle in the standard model. Consequently, it looks at first sight at least, that natural kinds are entities of a sort. In the light of this we may ask certain questions: is the apparent existence of natural kinds real or an illusion? And if real, what sort of entity are natural kinds? Are they sui generis? Or can they be…Read more
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268Underdetermination and evidenceIn Bradley John Monton (ed.), Images of empiricism: essays on science and stances, with a reply from Bas C. van Fraassen, Oxford University Press. 2007.I present an argument that encapsulates the view that theory is underdetermined by evidence. I show that if we accept Williamson's equation of evidence and knowledge, then this argument is question-begging. I examine ways of defenders of underdetermination may avoid this criticism. I also relate this argument and my critique to van Fraassen's constructive empiricism.
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49Kuhn, naturalism, and the positivist legacyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 35 (2): 337-356. 2004.I defend against criticism the following claims concening Thomas Kuhn: (i) there is a strong naturalist streak in The structure of scientific revolutions, whereby Kuhn used the results of a posteriori enquiry in addressing philosophical questions; (ii) as Kuhn's career as a philosopher of science developed he tended to drop the naturalistic elements and to replace them with more traditionally philosophical a prior approaches; (iii) at the same there is a significant residue of positivist thought…Read more
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191Justified judgingPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (1). 2007.When is a belief or judgment justified? One might be forgiven for thinking the search for single answer to this question to be hopeless. The concept of justification is required to fulfil several tasks: to evaluate beliefs epistemically, to fill in the gap between truth and knowledge, to describe the virtuous organization of one’s beliefs, to describe the relationship between evidence and theory (and thus relate to confirmation and probabilification). While some of these may be held to overlap, …Read more
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44The epistemological argument against Lewis’s regularity view of lawsPhilosophical Studies 138 (1): 73-89. 2008.I argue for the claim that if Lewis’s regularity theory of laws were true, we could not know any positive law statement to be true. Premise 1: According to that theory, for any law statement true of the actual world, there is always a nearby world where the law statement is false (a world that differs with respect to one matter of particular fact). Premise 2: One cannot know a proposition to be true if it is false in a nearby world (the epistemological safety principle). The conclusion that no l…Read more
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198Structural properties revisitedIn Toby Handfield (ed.), Dispositions and causes, Clarendon Press ;. pp. 215--41. 2009.Those who hold that all fundamental sparse properties have dispositional essences face a problem with structural (e.g. geometrical) properties. In this paper I consider a further route for the dispositional monist that is enabled by the requirement that physical theories should be background-free. If this requirement is respected then we can see how spatial displacement can be a causally active relation and hence may be understood dispositionally.
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415Explanation and lawsSynthese 120 (1): 1--18. 1999.In this paper I examine two aspects of Hempel’s covering-law models of explanation. These are (i) nomic subsumption and (ii) explication by models. Nomic subsumption is the idea that to explain a fact is to show how it falls under some appropriate law. This conception of explanation Hempel explicates using a pair of models, where, in this context, a model is a template or pattern such that if something fits it, then that thing is an explanation. A range of well-known counter-examples to Hempel’s …Read more
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258Scepticism and contrast classesAnalysis 61 (2). 2001.1. Contextualism seeks to acknowledge the power of sceptical arguments while permitting to be true at least some of the assertions of knowledge and justification we commonly make. It seems to me now just as if I am in an office in Edinburgh. According to the sceptic the claim that I am in fact in an office in Edinburgh is unjustified, since there is no reason I can give for this belief that is not also consistent with (or undermined by) the alternative hypothesis that I am in fact on a beach in Hawa…Read more
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233Causation and the manifestation of powersIn Anna Marmodoro (ed.), The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and Their Manifestations, Routledge. 2010.It is widely agreed that many causal relations can be regarded as dependent upon causal relations that are in some way more basic. For example, knocking down the first domino in a row of one hundred dominoes will be the cause of the hundredth domino falling. But this causal relation exists in virtue of the knocking of the first domino causing the falling of the second domino, and so forth. In such a case, A causes B in virtue of there being intermediate events I1 . . . In such that A causes I1, …Read more
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537What is scientific progress?Noûs 41 (1). 2007.I argue that scientific progress is precisely the accumulation of scientific knowledge.
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239Laws and criteriaCanadian Journal of Philosophy 32 (4): 511-42. 2002.Debates concerning the analysis of the concept of law of nature must address the following problem. On the one hand, our grasp of laws of nature is via our knowledge of their instances. And this seems not only an epistemological truth but also a semantic one. The concept of a law of nature must be explicated in terms of the things that instantiate the law. It is not simply that a piece of metal that conducts electricity is evidence for a law that metals conduct electricity. It is also the case t…Read more
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1Rationality and the structure of self-deceptionIn Gianfranco Soldati (ed.), European Review of Philosophy, 1: Philosophy of Mind, Center For the Study of Language and Inf. pp. 19-38. 1994.
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385Antidotes all the way down?Theoria 19 (3). 2004.Dispositions are related to conditionals. Typically a fragile glass will break if struck with force. But possession of the disposition does not entail the corresponding simple (subjunctive or counterfactual) conditional. The phenomena of finks and antidotes show that an object may possess the disposition without the conditional being true. Finks and antidotes may be thought of as exceptions to the straightforward relation between disposition and conditional. The existence of these phenomena are …Read more
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206The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and its Significance: An Essay Review of the Fiftieth Anniversary Edition (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63 (4): 859-883. 2012.Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited books of the twentieth century. Its iconic and controversial nature has obscured its message. What did Kuhn really intend with Structure and what is its real significance? 1 Introduction 2 The Central Ideas of Structure 3 The Philosophical Targets of Structure 4 Interpreting and Misinterpreting Structure 4.1 Naturalism 4.2 World-change 4.3 Incommensurability 4.4 Progress and the nature of revolutionary change 4.5 Relat…Read more
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1Kuhn and the Historiography of ScienceIn William J. Devlin & Alisa Bokulich (eds.), Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions - 50 Years On, Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, Vol. 311. Springer. 2015.
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31On whether some laws are necessaryAnalysis 62 (3): 257-270. 2002.In Bird 2001 I argued that a law that might seem to many to be contingent is in fact necessary. In short the argument is this. Given the existence of salt and water, Coulomb’s law of electrostatic attraction is sufficient to make the former dissolve in the latter. So any possible world in which salt failed to dissolve in water would be one in which Coulomb’s law is false. However, it is also the case that the existence of salt depends on Coulomb’s law. If Coulomb’s law is false then …Read more
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21Thomas KuhnRoutledge. 2000.Thomas Kuhn transformed the philosophy of science. His seminal 1962 work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" introduced the term 'paradigm shift' into the vernacular and remains a fundamental text in the study of the history and philosophy of science. This introduction to Kuhn's ideas covers the breadth of his philosophical work, situating "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" within Kuhn's wider thought and drawing attention to the development of his ideas over time. Kuhn's work is as…Read more
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405Illocutionary silencingPacific Philosophical Quarterly 83 (1). 2002.Rae Langton and Jennifer Hornsby have argued that pornography might create a climate whereby a woman’s ability to refuse sex is literally silenced or removed. Their central argument is that a failure of ‘uptake’ of the woman’s intention means that the illocutionary speech act of refusal has not taken place. In this paper, I challenge the claims from the Austinian philosophy of language which feature in this argument. I argue that uptake is not in general required for illocution, nor is it requir…Read more
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228Review of Alexander Bird, Nature's Metaphysics: Laws and Properties (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (6). 2008.This is a rewarding book. In terms of area, it has one foot firmly planted in metaphysics and the other just as firmly set in the philosophy of science. Nature's Metaphysics is distinctive for its thorough and detailed defense of fundamental, natural properties as essentially dispositional and for its description of how these dispositional properties are thus suited to sustain the laws of nature as (metaphysically) necessary truths.
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58Synthese Vol 149 No. 3 Metaphysics in ScienceSynthese. 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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310Social knowing: The social sense of 'scientific knowledge'Philosophical Perspectives 24 (1): 23-56. 2010.There is a social or collective sense of ‘knowledge’, as used, for example, in the phrase ‘the growth of scientific knowledge’. In this paper I show that social knowledge does not supervene on facts about what individuals know, nor even what they believe or intend, or any combination of these or other mental states. Instead I develop the idea that social knowing is an analogue to individual knowing, where the analogy focuses on the functional role of social and individual knowing.
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97David Armstrong, Charlie Martin, and Ullin place, edited by Tim Crane dispositions: A debate; Stephen Mumford dispositionsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (1): 137-149. 2001.
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