•  87
    You Can Say That Again
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 14 (1): 338-356. 1989.
  •  76
    Wanted Dead or Alive: Two Attempts to Solve Schrodinger's Paradox
    with David Albert
    PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 277-285. 1990.
    We discuss two recent attempts two solve Schrodinger's cat paradox. One is the modal interpretation developed by Kochen, Healey, Dieks, and van Fraassen. It allows for an observable which pertains to a system to possess a value even when the system is not in an eigenstate of that observable. The other is a recent theory of the collapse of the wave function due to Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber. It posits a dynamics which has the effect of collapsing the state of macroscopic systems. We argue that t…Read more
  •  74
    Dyadic deontic detachment
    Synthese 54 (2). 1983.
  •  72
    A collection of newly commissioned papers on themes from David Albert's Time and Chance (HUP, 2000), with replies by Albert. Introduction [Barry Loewer, Brad Weslake, and Eric Winsberg] I. Overview of Time and Chance 1. The Mentaculus: A Probability Map of the Universe [Barry Loewer] II. Philosophical Foundations 2. The Metaphysical Foundations of Statistical Mechanics: On the Status of PROB and PH [Eric Winsberg] 3. The Logic of the Past Hypothesis [David Wallace] 4. In What Sense Is the Early …Read more
  •  68
    Are Humean Laws Flukes?
    In Christian Loew, Siegfried Jaag & Michael Townsen Hicks (eds.), Humean Laws for Human Agents, Oxford Up. 2023.
    It has been argued contra Humean accounts of scientific laws that on Humean accounts laws are flukes since they are merely true generalizations and it would be an accident or a fluke for a generalization to obtain unless there was a non-Humean law "backing" it. This paper argues that this kind of objection is mistaken. It goes on to describe an account of laws called "the Package Deal Account" that is a descendent of Lewis' BSA on which it is not an accident that our universe has a best systemat…Read more
  •  64
    Leibniz and the ontological argument
    Philosophical Studies 34 (1). 1978.
    According to leibniz, Descartes' ontological argument establishes that if God possibly exists then God exists. To complete the argument a proof that God possibly exists is required. Leibniz attempts a proof-Theoretic demonstration that 'god exists' is consistent and concludes from this that 'god possibly exists is true'. In this paper I formalize leibniz's argument in a system of modal logic. I show that a principle which leibniz implicitly uses, 'if a is consistent then a is possibly true' is e…Read more
  •  63
    Translational semantics
    Synthese 48 (1). 1981.
  •  62
    A companion to David Lewis (edited book)
    Wiley-Blackwell. 2015.
    In _A Companion to David Lewis_, Barry Loewer and Jonathan Schaffer bring together top philosophers to explain, discuss, and critically extend Lewis's seminal work in original ways. Students and scholars will discover the underlying themes and complex interconnections woven through the diverse range of his work in metaphysics, philosophy of language, logic, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, ethics, and aesthetics. The first and only comprehensive study of the work of David…Read more
  •  62
    The truth pays
    Synthese 43 (3). 1980.
    Why is truth valuable? Why are true beliefs generally preferable to false beliefs and why should we often be willing to expend energy and resources to obtain the truth? Pragmatist theories of truth, whatever their shortcomings, are the only ones which attempt to answer these questions. According to James’ version of the pragmatic theory.
  •  54
  •  53
    What Davidson Should Have Said
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 36 (1): 65-78. 1989.
    According to Davidson, a theory of meaning for a language L should specify information such that if someone had this information he would be in a position to understand L. He claims that a theory of truth for L fits this description. Many critics have argued that a truth theory is too weak to be a theory of meaning. We argue that these critics and Davidson's response to them have been misguided. Many critics have been misguided because they have not been clear aboutwhat a theory of meaning is su…Read more
  •  48
    A Putnam's Progress
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 12 (1): 459-473. 1988.
  •  44
    Freedom from Physics
    Philosophical Topics 24 (2): 91-112. 1996.
  •  42
    Editorial introduction
    with Terry M. Goode, Roger D. Rosenkrantz, and John R. Wettersten
    Synthese 30 (1-2): 1-1. 1975.
  •  41
    Humean laws and explanation
    Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 23 (3): 373-385. 2019.
    My primary focus in this paper is on an objection to Humean account of laws and specifically to David Lewis’ “best systems analysis” (BSA). The objection is that the laws according to the BSA (which I call L-laws) fail to account for the ability of laws to explain. In contrast governing laws (which I will call G-laws) are alleged to account for the role of laws in scientific explanations by virtue of their governing role. If governing is required for laws to be explanatory then Humean accounts l…Read more
  •  41
    Help for the good samaritan paradox
    Philosophical Studies 50 (1). 1986.
  •  40
    Three Trivial Truth Theories
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 13 (3). 1983.
    According to Tarski, a theory of truth for a language L is a theory which logically implies for each sentence S of L a sentence of the form:S is true-in-L if and only if p,where rS1 is replaced by a canonical description of a sentence of L and rp1 is replaced by that sentence if L is contained in the metalanguage or by a translation of S if it is not so contained. Tarski constructed consistent and finitely axiomatized theories of truth for various formal languages and showed how to explicitly de…Read more
  •  38
    What is wrong with 'wrongful life' cases?
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 10 (2): 127-146. 1985.
    torts raise a number of interesting and perplexing philosophical issues. In a suit for ‘wrongful life’, the plaintiff (usually an infant) brings an action (usually against a physician) claiming that some negligent action has caused the plaintiff's life, say by not informing the parents of the likely prospect that their child would be born with severe defects. The most perplexing feature of this is that the plaintiff is claiming that he would have been better off if he had never been born. A numb…Read more
  •  37
    Comments on Joseph Agassi
    Synthese 30 (1-2). 1975.
  •  36
    Understanding Scientific Reasoning (review)
    Teaching Philosophy 6 (2): 177-181. 1983.
  •  28
    Knowledge and the Flow of Information
    Philosophy of Science 49 (2): 297-300. 1982.
  •  27
    Absolute obligations and ordered worlds
    Philosophical Studies 72 (1). 1993.
  •  23
    More on Making Mind Matter
    Philosophical Topics 17 (1): 175-191. 1989.
  •  21
    Information and belief
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6 (1): 75-76. 1983.
  •  20
    Preface
    Synthese 70 (2): 157-157. 1987.
  •  20
    An argument for strong supervenience
    In Elias E. Savellos & U. Yalcin (eds.), Supervenience: New Essays, Cambridge University Press. pp. 218--225. 1995.