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72A 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
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115Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental CausationJournal of Philosophy 98 (6): 315. 2001.
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94Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Fred I. DretskePhilosophy of Science 49 (2): 297-300. 1982.
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24Comments on Jaegwon Kim’s M ind and the Physical WorldPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3): 655-662. 2002.NRP is a family of views differing by how they understand “reduction” and “physicalism.” Following Kim I understand the non-reduction as holding that some events and properties are distinct from any physical events and properties. A necessary condition for physicalism is that mental properties, events, and laws supervene on physical ones. Kim allows various understandings of “supervenience” but I think that physicalism requires at least the claim that any minimal physical duplicate of the actual…Read more
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386David Lewis’s Humean Theory of Objective ChancePhilosophy of Science 71 (5): 1115--25. 2004.The most important theories in fundamental physics, quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, posit objective probabilities or chances. As important as chance is there is little agreement about what it is. The usual “interpretations of probability” give very different accounts of chance and there is disagreement concerning which, if any, is capable of accounting for its role in physics. David Lewis has contributed enormously to improving this situation. In his classic paper “A Subjectivist's …Read more
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173Comments on Jaegwon Kim’s Mind and the Physical WorldPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3). 2002.NRP is a family of views differing by how they understand “reduction” and “physicalism.” Following Kim I understand the non-reduction as holding that some events and properties are distinct from any physical events and properties. A necessary condition for physicalism is that mental properties, events, and laws supervene on physical ones. Kim allows various understandings of “supervenience” but I think that physicalism requires at least the claim that any minimal physical duplicate of the actual…Read more
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200Copenhagen versus Bohmian Interpretations of Quantum Theory1 (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (2): 317-328. 1998.
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68Leibniz and the ontological argumentPhilosophical 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
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DeterminismIn Martin Curd & Stathis Psillos (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science, Routledge. 2008.
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211A guide to naturalizing semanticsIn C. Wright & Bob Hale (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Blackwell: Oxford. pp. 108-126. 1997.
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115The role of 'conceptual role semantics'Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 23 (July): 305-15. 1982.
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46What 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
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113Symposiums papers: Two no-collapse interpretations of quantum theoryNoûs 23 (2): 169-186. 1989.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
Philosophy of Probability |
General Philosophy of Science |