-
3LeibnizIn W. H. Newton‐Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2017.Although one of the most important and prolific thinkers of all time, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) spent his life as a courtier, wasting time in diplomatic business or preparing documents to shore up claims of lineage or territory for his patrons. He also spent a good deal of time on practical matters of engineering, such as his dreams of a system of windmills that would have ameliorated the chronic flooding of the Harz silver mines, and on his visionary mechanical calculators. Most of …Read more
-
3William S. Robinson, Brains and People: An Essay on Mentality and Its Causal Conditions Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 10 (6): 252-255. 1990.
-
2Brain Fiction: Self-Deception and the Riddle of Confabulation, by William Hirstein (review)Philosophy in Review 25 (4): 262-264. 2005.
-
2David Copp, ed., Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence and Disarmament Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 8 (11): 436-438. 1988.
-
1Scientific Anti-Realism and the Philosophy of MindPacific Philosophical Quarterly 67 (2): 136. 1986.
-
1Metaphysics, Role in ScienceIn W. H. Newton‐Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2017.We must begin with the admission that the term “metaphysics” does not have a very precise or agreed upon meaning (no more does “science”). In current philosophy of science, “metaphysics” is, by and large, a pejorative term applied to whatever is regarded as illicitly nonempirical. Traditionally, metaphysics is regarded as the study of what lies behind the world of appearance ‐ perhaps constitutes that world, but is itself the only true reality. Obviously, a great many people would regard science…Read more
-
1Isaac Levi, For the Sake of the Argument: Ramsey Test Conditionals, Inductive Inference, and Nonmonotonic Reasoning Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 17 (3): 181-183. 1997.
-
1PhysicalismIn W. H. Newton‐Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2017.The crudest formulation of physicalism is simply the claim that everything is physical, and perhaps that is all physicalism ought to imply. But in fact a large number of distinct versions of physicalism are currently in play, with very different commitments and implications. There is no agreement about the detailed formulation of the doctrine, even though a majority of philosophers would claim to be physicalists, and a vast majority of them are physicalists of one sort or another. There are seve…Read more
-
1
-
1Supervenience and DeterminationIn W. H. Newton‐Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2017.In the mid‐part of the twentieth century, the union of youthful science and the ancient philosophical dream of metaphysical completion begot a visionary doctrine known as the unity of science (see unity of science). This view of the relationship among scientific theories maintained that any theory aspiring to be truly “scientific” must fit into a hierarchy in which every theory was reducible to the theory immediately below it, save for the foundational theory of physics. Reduction would be accom…Read more
-
1PanpsychismIn Brian McLaughlin, Ansgar Beckermann & Sven Walter (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press. 2009.
-
1The Worm in the Cheese Leibniz, Consciousness and MatterStudia Leibnitiana 23 (1): 79-91. 1991.Leibniz argumentiert in der Monadologie, daß das Bewußtsein nicht auf rein mechanische und materielle Prozesse reduziert werden kann. Diesem wohlbekannten Argument wird bisweilen ein elementarer Trugschluß der Zusammensetzung vorgeworfen. Meiner Meinung nach hingegen weist dieses Argument eher auf ein grundlegendes Problem in unserem physikalischen Verständnis des menschlichen Geistes hin, einem Verständnis, das auch heute noch akzeptiert wird. Ich zeige jedoch weiterhin, daß Leibniz nicht erkan…Read more
-
1The constructed and the secret selfIn Andrew Brook & R. DeVidi (eds.), Self-Reference and Self-Awareness, John Benjamins. 2001.
-
1Jeremy Butterfield and Constantine Pagonis, eds., From Physics to Philosophy Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 20 (5): 318-319. 2000.
-
1Jerry Fodor, A Theory of Content and Other Essays Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 11 (5): 316-318. 1991.
-
1Thought and SyntaxPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992 481-491. 1992.It has been argued that Psychological Externalism is irrelevant to psychology. The grounds for this are that PE fails to individuate intentional states in accord with causal power, and that psychology is primarily interested in the causal roles of psychological states. It is also claimed that one can individuate psychological states via their syntactic structure in some internal "language of thought". This syntactic structure is an internal feature of psychological states and thus provides a key…Read more
-
Beyond theories: Cartwright and HackingIn James R. Brown (ed.), Philosophy of Science: The Key Thinkers, Continuum Books. pp. 213. 2012.
-
Emergence and efficacyIn Christina E. Erneling & David Martel Johnson (eds.), The Mind as a Scientific Object: Between Brain and Culture, Oup Usa. 2005.
-
Materialism and the Foundations of RepresentationDissertation, University of Toronto (Canada). 1981.This thesis divides into two main sections. The first is an attempt to show that the Psycho-physical Identity Theory is false, and is so even if we grant that human behaviour is in principle completely explicable in purely physical terms . This section is a sustained criticism of a staight-forward argument in favour of the Identity Theory, namely: Mental items cause behaviour. All behaviour is caused by physical items. So mental items are physical items. ;This section is also divisible into two …Read more
-
David Copp, ed., Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence and Disarmament (review)Philosophy in Review 8 436-438. 1988.