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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.
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70Mental causation, or something near enoughIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan D. Cohen (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell. pp. 243--64. 2007.
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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
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387Determinism and ChanceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 32 (4): 609-620. 2001.It is generally thought that objective chances for particular events different from 1 and 0 and determinism are incompatible. However, there are important scientific theories whose laws are deterministic but which also assign non-trivial probabilities to events. The most important of these is statistical mechanics whose probabilities are essential to the explanations of thermodynamic phenomena. These probabilities are often construed as 'ignorance' probabilities representing our lack of knowledg…Read more
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63The truth paysSynthese 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.
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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.
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
Philosophy of Probability |
General Philosophy of Science |