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48Humean laws and explanationPrincipia: 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
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137The package deal account of laws and propertiesSynthese 199 (1-2): 1065-1089. 2020.This paper develops an account of the metaphysics of fundamental laws I call “the Package Deal Account ” that is a descendent of Lewis’ BSA but differs from it in a number of significant ways. It also rejects some elements of the metaphysics in which Lewis develops his BSA. First, Lewis proposed a metaphysical thesis about fundamental properties he calls “Humean Supervenience” according to which all fundamental properties are instantiated by points or point sized individuals and the only fundame…Read more
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32Comments on Jaegwon Kim's Mind and the Physical WorldPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3): 655-662. 2002.
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Freedom from Physics: Quantum Mechanics and Free WillIn Tim Crane & Katalin Farkas (eds.), Metaphysics: a guide and anthology, Oxford University Press. 2004.
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78A 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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122Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental CausationJournal of Philosophy 98 (6): 315. 2001.
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96Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Fred I. DretskePhilosophy of Science 49 (2): 297-300. 1982.
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26Comments 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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8Counterfactuals and the Second LawIn Huw Price & Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited, Oxford University Press. 2007.
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1Prima Facie obligation: its deconstruction and reconstructionIn Ernest Lepore (ed.), John Searle and His Critics, Blackwell. 1991.
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14Why is there anything except physics?Synthese 170 (2). 2009.In the course of defending his view of the relation between the special sciences and physics from Jaegwon Kim’s objections Jerry Fodor asks “So then, why is there anything except physics?” By which he seems to mean to ask if physics is fundamental and complete in its domain how can there be autonomous special science laws. Fodor wavers between epistemological and metaphysical understandings of the autonomy of the special sciences. In my paper I draw out the metaphysical construal of his view and…Read more
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140It is not so much a distinct and established academic discipline as it is a sort of boundary, a sort of frontier, across which theoretical physics and modern western philosophy have been interrogating and informing and unsettling one another, for something on the order of four hundred years now, about the character of matter, the nature of space and time, the question of determinism, meaning of chance, the possibility of knowledge, and much else besides.
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6An argument for strong supervenienceIn Elias E. Savellos & Ümit D. Yalçin (eds.), Supervenience: New Essays, Cambridge University Press. pp. 218--225. 1995.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
Philosophy of Probability |
General Philosophy of Science |