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151Implicit ontological commitmentPhilosophical Studies 141 (1). 2008.Quine’s general approach is to treat ontology as a matter of what a theory says there is. This turns ontology into a question of which existential statements are consequences of that theory. This approach is contrasted favourably with the view that takes ontological commitment as a relation to things. However within the broadly Quinean approach we can distinguish different accounts, differing as to the nature of the consequence relation best suited for determining those consequences. It is sugge…Read more
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The Consolations of OptimismIn David Benatar (ed.), Life, Death and Meaning: Key Philosophical Readings on the Big Questions, Rowman & Littlefield. 2004.
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42Concise encyclopedia of philosophy of languageAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 79 (3). 2001.Book Information Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language. Edited by Peter V. Lamarque. Pergamon Press. 1997. Pp. xix + 599. Dfl 298, US$171.50.
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53Evolution by Natural Selection: Confidence, Evidence and The GapCRC Press. 2015.Is the theory of evolution by means of natural selection a tautology? This book explores the explanatory structure of Darwin’s theory at a time when selectionist explanations are being brought forward to explain a wider and wider range of phenomena.
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60On a “most telling” argument for paraconsistent logicSynthese 193 (10). 2016.Priest and others have presented their “most telling” argument for paraconsistent logic: that only paraconsistent logics allow non-trivial inconsistent theories. This is a very prevalent argument; occurring as it does in the work of many relevant and more generally paraconsistent logicians. However this argument can be shown to be unsuccessful. There is a crucial ambiguity in the notion of non-triviality. Disambiguated the most telling reason for paraconsistent logics is either question-begging …Read more
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |