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31Time’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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292Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2007.The difference between cause and effect seems obvious and crucial in ordinary life, yet missing from modern physics. Almost a century ago, Bertrand Russell called the law of causality 'a relic of a bygone age'. In this important collection 13 leading scholars revisit Russell's revolutionary conclusion, discussing one of the most significant and puzzling issues in contemporary thought
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118Semantic Deflationism and the Frege PointIn Savas L. Tsohatzidis (ed.), Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives, Routledge. 1994.
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141Will There Be Blood? Brandom, Hume, and the Genealogy of ModalsPhilosophical Topics 36 (2): 87-97. 2008.
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93`Could a question be true?': Assent and the basis of meaningPhilosophical Quarterly 33 (133): 354-364. 1983.
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222It is often objected that the Everett interpretation of QM cannot make sense of quantum probabilities, in one or both of two ways: either it can’t make sense of probability at all, or it can’t explain why probability should be governed by the Born rule. David Deutsch has attempted to meet these objections. He argues not only that rational decision under uncertainty makes sense in the Everett interpretation, but also that under reasonable assumptions, the credences of a rational agent in an Evere…Read more
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207The Semantic Foundations of MetaphysicsIn Ian Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson, Oxford University Press. pp. 111-140. 2009.In the first chapter of From Metaphysics to Ethics, Frank Jackson begins, as he puts it, ‘by explaining how serious metaphysics by its very nature raises the location problem.’ (1998, p. 1) He gives us two examples of location problems. The first concerns semantic properties, such as truth and reference: Some physical structures are true. For example, if I were to utter a token of the type ‘Grass is green’, the structure I would thereby bring into existence would be true ... How are the semantic…Read more
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158This is a lightly edited version of my comments on Lecture 4 of Bob Brandom’s Locke Lectures, as repeated in Prague in April 2007. Recordings of the Prague lectures, including commentaries and discussions, are available here. The slides that accompanied my talk are available there.
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157This paper revisits some views about negation I defended in two early papers. Some of the themes of those papers have been developed sympathetically in recent work by Tim Smiley, Lloyd Humberstone and Ian Rumfitt. However, Rumfitt and Peter Gibbard have both criticised arguments I offered in defence of Double Negation Elimination (DNE), against a Dummettian intuitionist. I reconsider those arguments, arguing that although they survive Rumfitt’s and Gibbard’s attacks, the case against Dummett is for …Read more