-
1592The completeness of physicsDissertation, University of Natal, Durban. 1999.The present work is focussed on the completeness of physics, or what is here called the Completeness Thesis: the claim that the domain of the physical is causally closed. Two major questions are tackled: How best is the Completeness Thesis to be formulated? What can be said in defence of the Completeness Thesis? My principal conclusions are that the Completeness Thesis can be coherently formulated, and that the evidence in favour if it significantly outweighs that against it. In opposition to th…Read more
-
110Physicalism as an empirical hypothesisSynthese 194 (9): 3347-3360. 2017.Bas van Fraassen claims that materialism involves false consciousness. The thesis that matter is all that there is, he says, fails to rule out any kinds of theories. The false consciousness consists in taking materialism to be cognitive rather than an existential stance, or attitude, of deference to the current content of science in matters of ontology, and a favourable attitude to completeness claims about the content of science at a time. The main argument Van Fraassen provides for saying that…Read more
-
407Does intragenomic conflict predict intrapersonal conflict?Biology and Philosophy 31 (3): 313-333. 2016.Parts of the genome of a single individual can have conflicting interests, depending on which parent they were inherited from. One mechanism by which these conflicts are expressed in some taxa, including mammals, is genomic imprinting, which modulates the level of expression of some genes depending on their parent of origin. Imprinted gene expression is known to affect body size, brain size, and the relative development of various tissues in mammals. A high fraction of imprinted gene expression …Read more
-
982Notions of Cause: Russell’s Thesis RevisitedBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58 (1): 45-76. 2007.We discuss Russell's 1913 essay arguing for the irrelevance of the idea of causation to science and its elimination from metaphysics as a precursor to contemporary philosophical naturalism. We show how Russell's application raises issues now receiving much attention in debates about the adequacy of such naturalism, in particular, problems related to the relationship between folk and scientific conceptual influences on metaphysics, and to the unification of a scientifically inspired worldview. In…Read more
-
106What Is Addiction? (edited book)The MIT Press. 2010.Leading addiction researchers survey the latest findings in addiction science, countering the simplistic cultural stereotypes of the addict.
University Of Natal, Durban
Alumnus, 2000
Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Philosophy of Biology |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
PhilPapers Editorships
Causal Closure of the Physical |