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9Symmetry as a guide to superfluous theoretical structureIn Katherine Brading & Elena Castellani (eds.), Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections, Cambridge University Press. pp. 371--92. 2003.
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305Quantum mechanics seems to portray nature as nonseparable, in the sense that it allows spatiotemporally separated entities to have states that cannot be fully specified without reference to each other. This is often said to implicate some form of “holism.” We aim to clarify what this means, and why this seems plausible. Our core idea is that the best explanation for nonseparability is a “common ground” explanation, which casts nonseparable entities in a holistic light, as scattered reflections o…Read more
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148In the general project of trying to reconcile the subjective view of the world (how things seem from the perspective of the embedded agent) with the objective view (the view of the world from the outside, as represented, for example, in our best physics), analytic philosophy, especially in recent years, has been almost solely focused on sensory phenomenology.1 There are two very salient features of the subjective view that haven’t been explored even on the descriptive side but that present prima…Read more
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5Temporal ExperienceIn Craig Callender (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time, Oxford University Press. 2011.
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209A Modest Proposal about ChanceJournal of Philosophy 108 (8): 416-442. 2011.First para: Before the 17th century, there was not much discussion, and little uniformity in conception, of natural laws. The rise of science in 17th century, Newton’s mathematization of physics, and the provision of strict, deterministic laws that applied equally to the heavens and to the terrestrial realm had a profound impact in transforming the philosophical imagination. A philosophical conception of physical law built on the example of Newtonian Mechanics became quickly entrenched. Be…Read more
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53Rememberances, Mementos, and Time-CapsulesRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 50 317-. 2002.I want to consider some features of the position put forward by Julian Barbour in The End of Time that seem to me of particular philosophical interest. At the level of generality at which I'll be concerned with it, the view is relatively easy to describe. It can be arrived at by thinking of time as decomposing in some natural way linearly ordered atomic parts, ‘moments’, and combining an observation about the internal structure of moments with an epistemological doctrine about our access to the …Read more
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75On Whether the Atemporal Conception of the World Is Also AmodalAnalytic Philosophy 56 (2): 142-157. 2015.
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33Freedom, Compulsion, and CausationPSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 13. 2007.The intuitive notion of cause carries with it the idea of compulsion. When we learn that the dynamical laws are deterministic, we give this a causal reading and imagine our actions compelled to occur by conditions laid down at the beginning of the universe. Hume famously argued that this idea of compulsion is borrowed from experience and illegitimately projected onto regularities in the world. Exploiting the interventionist analysis of causal relations, together with an insight about the degener…Read more
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93So you think you exist? — In defense of nolipsismIn Thomas M. Crisp, Matthew Davidson & David Vander Laan (eds.), Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga, Springer. 2006.Human beings think of themselves in terms of a privileged non-descriptive designator — a mental “I”. Such thoughts are called “_de se_” thoughts. The mind/body problem is the problem of deciding what kind of thing I am, and it can be regarded as arising from the fact that we think of ourselves non-descriptively. Why do we think of ourselves in this way? We investigate the functional role of “I” (and also “here” and “now”) in cognition, arguing that the use of such non-descriptive “reflexive” des…Read more
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77Causation, Free Will, and NaturalismIn Don Ross, James Ladyman & Harold Kincaid (eds.), Scientific metaphysics, Oxford University Press. pp. 208--235. 2013.This chapter addresses the worry that the existence of causal antecedents to your choices means that you are causally compelled to act as you do. It begins with the folk notion of cause, leads the reader through recent developments in the scientific understanding of causal concepts, and argues that those developments undermine the threat from causal antecedents. The discussion is then used as a model for a kind of naturalistic metaphysics that takes its lead from science, letting everyday concep…Read more
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110Science and the phenomenalPhilosophy of Science 66 (3): 351-69. 1999.The Hard Problem of the mind is addressed and it is argued that physical-phenomenal property identities have the same status as the identification of an ostended bit of physical space and the coordinates assigned the spot on a map of the terrain. It is argued, that is to say, that such identities are, or follow from, stipulations which interpret the map
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56We review and discuss the recent monograph by David Wallace on Everettian Quantum Mechanics. This book is a high point of two decades of work on Everett in both physics and philosophy. It is also a beautiful and welcome exemplar of a modern way of doing metaphysics. We discuss certain aspects more critically, and take the opportunity to sketch an alternative pragmatist approach to probability in Everett, to be fully developed elsewhere.
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134Quantum mechanicsStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.Quantum mechanics is, at least at first glance and at least in part, a mathematical machine for predicting the behaviors of microscopic particles — or, at least, of the measuring instruments we use to explore those behaviors — and in that capacity, it is spectacularly successful: in terms of power and precision, head and shoulders above any theory we have ever had. Mathematically, the theory is well understood; we know what its parts are, how they are put together, and why, in the mechanical sen…Read more
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36Me, againIn Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & Harry Silverstein (eds.), Time and Identity, Mit Press. 2010.Thought about the self raises some very special problems. Some of these concern indexical reference quite generally, but there is one having to do with identity over time that seems to be unique to the self. I use an historical exchange between Anscombe and Descartes to bring out the problem, and propose a resolution that casts light both on why self-directed thought presents a unique epistemic predicament and where Descartes’ cogito may have gone wrong.
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202Denial of death We don’t like to think about our deaths, and there are cultural developments – social, technological, economic – that make it easier than ever before to live without constant reminders of our mortality. We hide the evidence of death. We live separately from our old people, and quarantine the dying in hospitals and hospices. It’s impolite to mention death in conversation. We view death not as natural and inevitable stage of life, but as a calamity, a mistake, an accident. This att…Read more
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113The situated selfOxford University Press. 2007.J. T. Ismael's monograph is an ambitious contribution to metaphysics and the philosophy of language and mind. She tackles a philosophical question whose origin goes back to Descartes: What am I? The self is not a mere thing among things--but if so, what is it, and what is its relationship to the world? Ismael is an original and creative thinker who tries to understand our problematic concepts about the self and how they are related to our use of language in particular
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53A philosopher of science looks at idealization in political theorySocial Philosophy and Policy 33 (1-2): 11-31. 2016.:Rawls ignited a debate in political theory when he introduced a division between the ideal and nonideal parts of a theory of justice. In the ideal part of the theory, one presents a positive conception of justice in a setting that assumes perfect compliance with the rules of justice. In the nonideal part, one addresses the question of what happens under departures from compliance. Critics of Rawls have attacked his focus on ideal theory as a form of utopianism, and have argued that political th…Read more
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83There’s a long history of discussion of probability in philosophy, but objective chance separated itself off and came into its own as a topic with the advent of a physical theory - quantum mechanics - in which chances play a central, and apparently ineliminable, role. In 1980 David Lewis wrote a paper pointing out that a very broad class of accounts of the nature of chance apparently lead to a contradiction when combined with a principle that expresses the role of chance in guiding belief. There…Read more
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170How do causes depend on us? The many faces of perspectivalismSynthese 193 (1): 245-267. 2016.Huw Price has argued that on an interventionist account of cause the distinction is perspectival, and the claim prompted some interesting responses from interventionists and in particular an exchange with Woodward that raises questions about what it means to say that one or another structure is perspectival. I’ll introduce his reasons for claiming that the distinction between cause and effect on an interventionist account is perspectival. Then I’ll introduce a distinction between different ways …Read more
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186Curie's principleSynthese 110 (2): 167-190. 1997.A reading is given of Curie''s Principle that the symmetry of a cause is always preserved its effects. The truth of the principle is demonstrated and its importance, under the proposed reading, is defended.As far as I see, all a priori statements in physics have their origin in symmetry. (Weyl, Symmetry, p. 126).
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186Saving the baby: Dennett on autobiography, agency, and the selfPhilosophical Psychology 19 (3): 345-360. 2006.Dennett argues that the decentralized view of human cognitive organization finding increasing support in parts of cognitive science undermines talk of an inner self. On his view, the causal underpinnings of behavior are distributed across a collection of autonomous subsystems operating without any centralized supervision. Selves are fictions contrived to simplify description and facilitate prediction of behavior with no real correlate inside the mind. Dennett often uses an analogy with termite c…Read more
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68Descartes begins his discussion in the Meditations with the question ‘what am I?’ and concludes, famously, that he is a non-material substance. His reasoning turns on the thesis that nothing can be true of his..
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505Doublemindedness: A model for a dual content cognitive architecturePSYCHE: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Research On Consciousness 12. 2006.The outstanding stumbling blocks to any reductive account of phenomenal consciousness remain the subjectivity of phenomenal properties and cognitive and epistemic gaps that plague the relationship between physical and phenomenal properties. I suggest that a deflationary interpretation of both is available to defenders of self- representational accounts
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Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Physical Science |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Philosophy of Mind |
Philosophy of Physical Science |