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78Does 'probably' modify sense?Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4). 1983.This Article does not have an abstract
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37On the Origins of the Arrow of Time: Why There is Still a Puzzle about the Low Entropy PastIn Christopher Hitchcock (ed.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of science, Blackwell. pp. 219--239. 2004.
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117For more than a century, physics has known of a puzzling conflict between the T- asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena and the T-symmetry of the underlying microphysics on which these phenomena depend. This paper provides a guide to the current status of this puzzle, distinguishing the central issue from various issues with which it may be confused. It is shown that there are two competing conceptions of what is needed to resolve the puzzle of the thermodynamic asymmetry, which differ with respect …Read more
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22Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement by Nancy Cartwright (review)Isis 82 (3): 605-606. 1991.
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96Newcomb problems turn on a tension between two principles of choice: roughly, a principle sensitive to the causal features of the relevant situation, and a principle sensitive only to evidential factors. Two-boxers give priority to causal beliefs, and one-boxers to evidential beliefs. A similar issue can arise when the modality in question is chance, rather than causation. In this case, the conflict is between decision rules based on credences guided solely by chances, and rules based on credence…Read more
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324Boltzmann’s Time BombBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (1): 83-119. 2002.Since the late nineteenth century, physics has been puzzled by the time-asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena in the light of the apparent T-symmetry of the underlying laws of mechanics. However, a compelling solution to this puzzle has proved elusive. In part, I argue, this can be attributed to a failure to distinguish two conceptions of the problem. According to one, the main focus of our attention is a time-asymmetric lawlike generalisation. According to the other, it is a particular fact abou…Read more
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449Metaphysics after Carnap : the ghost who walks?In Ryan Wasserman, David Manley & David Chalmers (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, Oxford University Press. pp. 320--46. 2009.To appear in David Chalmers, Ryan Wasserman and David Manley, eds., Metametaphysics (OUP, 2009).
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9Time’s Arrow, Time’s Fly-BottleIn Friedrich Stadler & Michael Stöltzner (eds.), Time and History: Proceedings of the 28. International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium, Kirchberg Am Wechsel, Austria 2005, De Gruyter. pp. 253-274. 2006.
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34A Realist Conception of Truth (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (1): 231-234. 2000.
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680Facts and the function of truthBlackwell. 1988.Many areas of philosophy employ a distinction between factual and non-factual (descriptive/non-descriptive, cognitive/non-cognitive, etc) uses of language. This book examines the various ways in which this distinction is normally drawn, argues that all are unsatisfactory, and suggests that the search for a sharp distinction is misconceived. The book develops an alternative approach, based on a novel theory of the function and origins of the concept of truth. The central hypothesis is that the ma…Read more
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196Speech act theory is one of the more lasting products of the linguistic movement in philosophy of the mid−Twentieth century. Within philosophy itself the movement's products did not in general prove so durable. Particularly striking in this respect is the perceived fate of what was one of the most characteristic applications of the linguistic turn in philosophy, namely the view that many traditional philosophical problems are such as to yield to an understanding of the distinctive function of a …Read more
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248Agency and probabilistic causalityBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42 (2): 157-176. 1991.Probabilistic accounts of causality have long had trouble with ‘spurious’ evidential correlations. Such correlations are also central to the case for causal decision theory—the argument that evidential decision theory is inadequate to cope with certain sorts of decision problem. However, there are now several strong defences of the evidential theory. Here I present what I regard as the best defence, and apply it to the probabilistic approach to causality. I argue that provided a probabilistic th…Read more
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264Pragmatism, quasi-realism, and the global challengeIn Cheryl Misak (ed.), New pragmatists, Oxford University Press. pp. 91-121. 2007.William James said that sometimes detailed philosophical argument is irrelevant. Once a current of thought is really under way, trying to oppose it with argument is like planting a stick in a river to try to alter its course: “round your obstacle flows the water and ‘gets there just the same’”. He thought pragmatism was such a river. There is a contemporary river that sometimes calls itself pragmatism, although other titles are probably better. At any rate it is the denial of differences, the ce…Read more
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197What should a deflationist about truth say about meaning?Philosophical Issues 8 107-115. 1997.Paul Horwich aims to apply some the lessons of deflationism about truth to the debate about the nature of a theory of meaning. Having pacified the philosophical debate about truth to his satisfaction, he wants to use a bridge between truth and meaning to extend the same peace−making techniques into new territory. His goal is to make the debate about meaning more hospitable for an account based on use, by showing that certain apparent obstacles to such a theory are illusory, given deflationism ab…Read more
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81Summary: Contemporary writers often claim that chaos theory explains the thermodynamic arrow of time. This paper argues that such claims are mistaken, on two levels. First, they underestimate the difficulty of extracting asymmetric conclusions from symmetric theories. More important, however, they misunderstand the nature of the puzzle about the temporal asymmetry of thermodynamics, and simply address the wrong issue. Both of these are old mistakes, but mistakes which are poorly recognised, even…Read more
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336Naturalism without representationalismIn Mario De Caro & David Macarthur (eds.), Naturalism in question, Harvard University Press. pp. 71--88. 2004.
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40The role of history in microphysics.In Howard Sankey (ed.), Causation and Laws of Nature, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 331--345. 1999.
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603Causation, Intervention and Agency—Woodward on Menzies and PriceIn Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Huw Price (eds.), Making a Difference: Essays on the Philosophy of Causation, Oxford University Press. pp. 73-98. 2017.In his influential book 'Making Things Happen' and in other places, Jim Woodward has noted some affinities between his own account of causation and that of Menzies and Price, but argued that the latter view is implausibly ‘subjective’. In this piece I discuss Woodward’s criticisms. I argue that the Menzies and Price view is not as different from Woodward’s own account as he believes, and that in so far as it is different, it has some advantages whose importance Woodward misses; but also that the…Read more
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555In a famous paper in Noûs in 1979, John Perry points out that action depends on indexical beliefs. In addition to “third-person” information about her environment, an agent need “first-person” information about where, when and who she is. This conclusion is widely interpreted as a reason for thinking that tensed claims cannot be translated without loss into untensed language; but not as a reason for realism about tensed facts. In another famous paper in the same volume of Noûs, Nancy Cartwright a…Read more
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42In 1963 a group of physicists, mathematicians and philosophers of science assembled in Cornell to discuss the arrow of time. One of them was Richard Feynman, who drew attention to his comments in the published discussions by insisting that they not be attributed to him. (They appeared as the remarks of "Mr. X".) Twenty-eight years later Feynman was gone, but the mysteries of time asymmetry in physics remained as deep as ever. At the end of September, 1991, forty-five physicists and mathematician…Read more
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48Recent work on the arrow of radiationStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 37 (3): 498-527. 2006.In many physical systems, coupling forces provide a way of carrying the energy stored in adjacent harmonic oscillators from place to place, in the form of waves. The wave equations governing such phenomena are time-symmetric: they permit the opposite processes, in which energy arrives at a point in the form of incoming concentric waves, to be lost to some external system. But these processes seem rare in nature. What explains this temporal asymmetry, and how is it related to the thermodynamic as…Read more
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445Causation as a secondary qualityBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (2): 187-203. 1993.In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents.1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical approach to causation, often called the manipulability theory. In the interests of brevity and accuracy, we prefer to call it the agency theory.2 Thus the central thesis of an agency account of causation is something like this: an event A is a cause of a distinct event B…Read more
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273Does time-symmetry imply retrocausality? How the quantum world says “Maybe”?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 43 (2): 75-83. 2012.It has often been suggested that retrocausality offers a solution to some of the puzzles of quantum mechanics: e.g., that it allows a Lorentz-invariant explanation of Bell correlations, and other manifestations of quantum nonlocality, without action-at-a-distance. Some writers have argued that time-symmetry counts in favour of such a view, in the sense that retrocausality would be a natural consequence of a truly time-symmetric theory of the quantum world. Critics object that there is complete t…Read more
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35Psychology in PerspectiveIn Murray Michael & John O'Leary-Hawthorne (eds.), Philosophy in Mind: The Place of Philosophy in the Study of Mind, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 83--98. 1994.[email: [email protected]] If recent literature is to be our guide, the main place of philosophy in the study of the mind would seem to be to determine the place of psychology in the study of the world. One distinctive kind of answer to this question begins by noting the central role of intentionality in psychology, and goes on to argue that this sets psychology apart from the natural sciences. Sometimes to be thus set apart is to be exiled, or rejected, but more often it is a protective move, …Read more
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622The time-asymmetry of causationIn Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Peter Menzies (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press Uk. pp. 414-443. 2009.One of the most striking features of causation is that causes typically precede their effects – the causal arrow is strongly aligned with the temporal arrow. Why should this be so? We offer an opinionated guide to this problem, and to the solutions currently on offer. We conclude that the most promising strategy is to begin with the de facto asymmetry of human deliberation, characterised in epistemic terms, and to build out from there. More than any rival, this subjectivist approach promises to …Read more