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14Truth as Convenient FrictionIn Robert B. Talisse & Scott F. Aikin (eds.), The Pragmatism Reader: From Peirce Through the Present, Princeton University Press. pp. 451-470. 2011.
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84Global Expressivism by the Method of DifferencesRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 86 133-154. 2007.In this piece I characterise global expressivism, as I understand it, by contrasting it with five other views: the so-called Canberra Plan; Moorean non-naturalism and platonism; ‘relaxed realism’ and quietism; local expressivism; and response-dependent realism. Some other familiar positions, including fictionalism, error theories, and idealism, are also mentioned, but as sub-cases to one of these five.
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130Making a Difference: Essays on the Philosophy of Causation (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2017.Making a Difference presents fifteen original essays on causation and counterfactuals by an international team of experts. Collectively, they represent the state of the art on these topics. The essays in this volume are inspired by the life and work of Peter Menzies, who made a difference in the lives of students, colleagues, and friends. Topics covered include: the semantics of counterfactuals, agency theories of causation, the context-sensitivity of causal claims, structural equation models, m…Read more
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393What Makes Time Special?Philosophical Review 128 (2): 250-254. 2019.This is my review of Craig Callender's book What Makes Time Special?
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52Carnapian Voluntarism and Global Expressivism: Reply to CarusThe Monist 101 (4): 468-474. 2018.In defending so-called global expressivism I have often seen Carnap as an ally. Both Carnap’s rejection of “externalist” metaphysics and his implicit pluralism about linguistic frameworks seem grist for the global expressivist’s mill. André Carus argues for a third point of connection, via Carnap’s voluntarism. I note two reasons for thinking that this connection is not as close as Carus contends.
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497Ramsey and Joyce on Deliberation and PredictionSynthese 197 4365-4386. 2020.Can an agent deliberating about an action A hold a meaningful credence that she will do A? 'No', say some authors, for 'Deliberation Crowds Out Prediction' (DCOP). Others disagree, but we argue here that such disagreements are often terminological. We explain why DCOP holds in a Ramseyian operationalist model of credence, but show that it is trivial to extend this model so that DCOP fails. We then discuss a model due to Joyce, and show that Joyce's rejection of DCOP rests on terminological choic…Read more
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349New Slant on the EPR-Bell ExperimentBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (2): 297-324. 2013.The best case for thinking that quantum mechanics is nonlocal rests on Bell's Theorem, and later results of the same kind. However, the correlations characteristic of Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR)–Bell (EPRB) experiments also arise in familiar cases elsewhere in quantum mechanics (QM), where the two measurements involved are timelike rather than spacelike separated; and in which the correlations are usually assumed to have a local causal explanation, requiring no action-at-a-distance (AAD). It i…Read more
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47Review Essays: The Common Mind: An Essay on Psychology, Society and PoliticsThe Common Mind: An Essay on Psychology, Society and Politics (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55 (3): 689. 1995.The dustjacket of The Common Mind bears a photograph of the traffic at a Sydney intersection on a wet winter’s evening in 1938. It is rush hour, and the homeward traffic conveys a fine sense of common purpose. The scene has a special resonance for me, for I stood at that very spot with my parents and brothers one similar evening in 1966, on the day we first arrived in Australia. There was a marked pedestrian crossing there then, which we set out to negotiate, taking it for granted that the relev…Read more
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41The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century (edited book)Oup/Ba. 2016.Pragmatism is the idea that philosophical concepts must start with, and remain linked to human experience and inquiry. This book traces and assesses the influence of American pragmatism on British philosophy, with emphasis on Cambridge in the inter-war period, post-war Oxford, and recent developments.
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19Naturalism and the Fate of the M-Worlds: Huw PriceSupplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 71 (1): 247-268. 1997.
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559"Click!" Bait for CausalistsIn Arif Ahmed (ed.), Newcomb's Problem, Cambridge University Press. pp. 160-179. 2018.Causalists and Evidentialists can agree about the right course of action in an (apparent) Newcomb problem, if the causal facts are not as initially they seem. If declining $1,000 causes the Predictor to have placed $1m in the opaque box, CDT agrees with EDT that one-boxing is rational. This creates a difficulty for Causalists. We explain the problem with reference to Dummett's work on backward causation and Lewis's on chance and crystal balls. We show that the possibility that the causal facts …Read more
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486Heart of DARCnessAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (1): 136-150. 2019.There is a long-standing disagreement in the philosophy of probability and Bayesian decision theory about whether an agent can hold a meaningful credence about an upcoming action, while she deliberates about what to do. Can she believe that it is, say, 70% probable that she will do A, while she chooses whether to do A? No, say some philosophers, for Deliberation Crowds Out Prediction (DCOP), but others disagree. In this paper, we propose a valid core for DCOP, and identify terminological causes …Read more
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275Carnap, Quine and the Fate of MetaphysicsElectronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 5 (1). 1997.[1] Imagine a well-trained mid-century American philosopher, caught in a rare traffic jam on the New Jersey Turnpike one warm summer afternoon in the early 1950s. He dozes in his warm car ... and awakes in the same spot on a chill Fall evening in the late 1990s, remembering nothing of the intervening years. It is as if he has been asleep at the wheel for almost half a century!
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189Causation, Chance, and the Rational Significance of Supernatural EvidencePhilosophical Review 121 (4): 483-538. 2012.In “A Subjectivist’s Guide to Objective Chance,” David Lewis says that he is “led to wonder whether anyone but a subjectivist is in a position to understand objective chance.” The present essay aims to motivate this same Lewisean attitude, and a similar degree of modest subjectivism, with respect to objective causation. The essay begins with Newcomb problems, which turn on an apparent tension between two principles of choice: roughly, a principle sensitive to the causal features of the relevant …Read more
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293Naturalism Without MirrorsOup Usa. 2011.This volume brings together fourteen major essays by one of contemporary philosophy's most challenging thinkers. Huw Price links themes from Quine, Carnap, Wittgenstein and Rorty, to craft a powerful critique of contemporary naturalistic metaphysics. He offers a new positive program for philosophy, cast from a pragmatist mould.
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138The Direction of Causation: Ramsey's Ultimate ContingencyPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992. 1992.The paper criticizes the attempt to account for the direction of causation in terms of objective statistical asymmetries, such as those of the fork asymmetry. Following Ramsey, I argue that the most plausible way to account for causal asymmetry is to regard it as "put in by hand", that is as a feature that agents project onto the world. Its temporal orientation stems from that of ourselves as agents. The crucial statistical asymmetry is an anthropocentric one, namely that we take our actions to …Read more
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98Backward causation, hidden variables and the meaning of completenessPRAMANA - Journal of Physics 56 199-209. 2001.Bell’s theorem requires the assumption that hidden variables are independent of future measurement settings. This independence assumption rests on surprisingly shaky ground. In particular, it is puzzlingly time-asymmetric. The paper begins with a summary of the case for considering hidden variable models which, in abandoning this independence assumption, allow a degree of ‘backward causation’. The remainder of the paper clarifies the physical significance of such models, in relation to the issue a…Read more
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11Action Explanation and the Nature of MindIn Peter Slezak (ed.), Computers, Brains and Minds, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 221--251. 1989.
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231How to stand up for non-cognitivistsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (2): 275-292. 1996.Is non-cognitivism compatible with minimalism about truth? A contemporary argument claims not, and therefore that moral realists, for example, should take heart from the popularity of semantic minimalism. The same is said to apply to cognitivism about other topics—conditionals, for example—for the argument depends only on the fact that ordinary usage applies the notions of truth and falsity to utterances of the kind in question. Given this much, minimalism about truth is said to leave no room fo…Read more
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139Why is the future so different from the past? Why does the past affect the future and not the other way round? The universe began with the Big Bang - will it end with a `Big Crunch'? Now in paperback, this book presents an innovative and controversial view of time and contemporary physics. Price urges physicists, philosophers, and anyone who has ever pondered the paradoxes of time to look at the world from a fresh perspective, and throws fascinating new light on some of the great mysteries of th…Read more
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307Mind and WorldPhilosophical Books 38 (3): 169-181. 1994.How do rational minds make contact with the world? The empiricist tradition sees a gap between mind and world, and takes sensory experience, fallible as it is, to provide our only bridge across that gap. In its crudest form, for example, the traditional idea is that our minds consult an inner realm of sensory experience, which provides us with evidence about the nature of external reality. Notoriously, however, it turns out to be far from clear that there is any viable conception of experience w…Read more
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76Exchange on "Truth as convenient friction"In Mario De Caro & David Macarthur (eds.), Naturalism and Normativity, Cambridge University Press. 2010.
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63Does 'probably' modify sense?Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4). 1983.This Article does not have an abstract
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271Reinterpreting the Wheeler—Feynman Absorber Theory: Reply to LeedsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (4): 1023-1028. 1994.
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116For 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