-
23Comments on Jaegwon Kim's Mind and the Physical WorldPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3): 655-662. 2002.
-
18A Guide to Naturalizing SemanticsIn Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley. 2017.Semantic Naturalism is a metaphysical doctrine about the status of semantic properties. It is the view that, the metaphysical connections between naturalistic and semantic properties are sufficiently systematic and transparent to allow us to see that certain naturalistic conditions are sufficient for certain semantic properties. Most semantic naturalizers also think that the property of being a belief involves an internal mental representation, and that this representation bears the state's sema…Read more
-
18On The Likelihood Principle and a Supposed AntinomyPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1978. 1978.Allan Birnbaum has alleged that use of a likelihood criterion can find strong evidence against a true hypothesis with probability one. It is shown that, correctly applied, use of the likelihood function does not lead to any such result. Specifically, Birnbaum's example involves composite hypotheses, and, from a Bayesian point of view, the support of a composite hypothesis can be adequately assessed only by averaging the likelihoods of its constituent simple hypotheses.
-
18Why is there anything except physics?In Jakob Hohwy & Jesper Kallestrup (eds.), Being Reduced: New Essays on Reduction, Explanation, and Causation, Oxford University Press. 2008.
-
11Probability and Typicality in Statistical MechanicsIn Angelo Bassi, Sheldon Goldstein, Roderich Tumulka & Nino Zanghi (eds.), Physics and the Nature of Reality: Essays in Memory of Detlef Dürr, Springer. pp. 423-430. 2024.Detlef Dürr was inspirational to many who write about issues in the philosophical foundations of physics and probability. For many years I have been interested in his work on statistical mechanics and Bohmian mechanics and especially by the role of typicality in these theories. In my contribution I will say a few words comparing typicality and probability approaches to statistical mechanics and ask whether the approaches are friends or foes.
-
11Consciousness and quantum theory: Strange bedfellowsIn Aleksandar Jokic & Quentin Smith (eds.), Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford University Press. 2002.When I look at the scale of the apparatus I know what it reads. Those absurdly delicate, hopelessly inaccessible, global correlations obviously vanish when they connect up with me. Whether this is because consciousness is beyond the range of phenomena that quantum mechanics is capable of dealing with, or because it has infinitely many degrees of freedom or special super selection rules of its own, I would not presume to guess. But this is a puzzle about consciousness that should not get mixed up…Read more
-
8Counterfactuals and the Second LawIn Huw Price & Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited, Oxford University Press. 2006.
-
8Meaning, Mind, and Matter: Philosophical EssaysOxford University Press. 2011.Ernie Lepore and Barry Loewer present a series of papers on three key ideas of contemporary philosophy: that a theory of meaning for a language is best understood as a theory of truth for that language; that thought and language are best understood together via a theory of interpretation; and that the mental is irreducible to the physical
-
730-Second Philosophies: The 50 Most Thought-Provoking Philosophies, Each Explained in Half a Minute (edited book)Metro Books. 2009.Language & Logic -- Glossary -- Aristotle's syllogisms -- Russell's paradox & Frege's logicism -- profile: Aristotle -- Russell's theory of description -- Frege's puzzle -- Gödel's theorem -- Epimenides' liar paradox -- Eubulides' heap -- Science & Epistemology -- Glossary -- I think therefore I am -- Gettier's counter example -- profile: Karl Popper -- The brain in a vat -- Hume's problem of induction -- Goodman's gruesome riddle -- Popper's conjectures & refutations -- Kuhn's scientific revol…Read more
-
6From physics to physicalismIn Carl Gillett & Barry Loewer (eds.), Physicalism and its Discontents, Cambridge University Press. 2001.The appeal of materialism lies precisely in this, in its claim to be natural metaphysics within the bounds of science. That a doctrine which promises to gratify our ambition (to know the noumenal) and our caution (not to be unscientific) should have great appeal is hardly something to be wondered at. (Putnam (1983), p.210) Materialism says that all facts, in particular all mental facts, obtain in virtue of the spatio- temporal distribution, and properties, of matter. It was, as Putnam says, “met…Read more
-
5What Davidson Should Have SaidGrazer 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
-
5Wanted Dead or Alive: Two Attempts to Solve Schrödinger’s ParadoxPSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (1): 277-285. 1990.In a discussion of Schroedinger’s views on quantum theory John Bell says that Schroedinger did not see how “to account for particle tracks in track chambers…and more generally for the definiteness, the particularity, of experience, as compared with the indefiniteness, the waviness, of the wave function. It is the problem he had had with his cat. He thought it could not be both dead and alive. But the wave function showed no such commitment, superposing the possibilities. Either the wave function…Read more
-
2"I have come to think that the laws of physics are real because my experience with the laws of physics does not seem to me to be very different in any fundamental way from my experience with rocks. For those who have not lived with the laws of physics, I can offer the obvious argument that the laws of physics as we know them work, and there is no other known way of looking at nature that works in anything like the same sense.".
-
1Prima Facie obligation: its deconstruction and reconstructionIn Ernest Lepore (ed.), John Searle and His Critics, Blackwell. 1991.
-
David Lewis's humean theory of objective chanceIn Antony Eagle (ed.), Philosophy of Probability: Contemporary Readings, Routledge. 2011.
-
DeterminismIn Martin Curd & Stathis Psillos (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science, Routledge. 2008.
-
Why There Is Anything except PhysicsIn Jakob Hohwy & Jesper Kallestrup (eds.), Being Reduced: New Essays on Reduction, Explanation, and Causation, Oxford University Press. 2008.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
Philosophy of Probability |
General Philosophy of Science |