•  11
    Consciousness and quantum theory: Strange bedfellows
    In Aleksandar Jokic & Quentin Smith (eds.), Consciousness: New Philosophical Perspectives, Oxford University Press. 2002.
    When I look at the scale of the apparatus I know what it reads. Those absurdly delicate, hopelessly inaccessible, global correlations obviously vanish when they connect up with me. Whether this is because consciousness is beyond the range of phenomena that quantum mechanics is capable of dealing with, or because it has infinitely many degrees of freedom or special super selection rules of its own, I would not presume to guess. But this is a puzzle about consciousness that should not get mixed up…Read more
  •  3
    Probability and Typicality in Statistical Mechanics
    In Angelo Bassi, Sheldon Goldstein, Roderich Tumulka & Nino Zanghì (eds.), Physics and the Nature of Reality: Essays in Memory of Detlef Dürr, Springer. pp. 423-430. 2024.
    Detlef Dürr was inspirational to many who write about issues in the philosophical foundations of physics and probability. For many years I have been interested in his work on statistical mechanics and Bohmian mechanics and especially by the role of typicality in these theories. In my contribution I will say a few words comparing typicality and probability approaches to statistical mechanics and ask whether the approaches are friends or foes.
  •  4
    Ernie Lepore and Barry Loewer present a series of papers on three key ideas of contemporary philosophy: that a theory of meaning for a language is best understood as a theory of truth for that language; that thought and language are best understood together via a theory of interpretation; and that the mental is irreducible to the physical
  •  224
    Physicalism and its Discontents (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2001.
    Physicalism, a topic that has been central to modern philosophy of mind and metaphysics, is the philosophical view that everything in the space-time world is ultimately physical. The physicalist will claim that all facts about the mind and the mental are physical facts and deny the existence of mental events and state insofar as these are thought of as independent of physical things, events and states. This collection of essays, first published in 2001, offers a series of perspectives on this im…Read more
  •  4
    Wanted Dead or Alive: Two Attempts to Solve Schrödinger’s Paradox
    PSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1990 (1): 277-285. 1990.
    In a discussion of Schroedinger’s views on quantum theory John Bell says that Schroedinger did not see how “to account for particle tracks in track chambers…and more generally for the definiteness, the particularity, of experience, as compared with the indefiniteness, the waviness, of the wave function. It is the problem he had had with his cat. He thought it could not be both dead and alive. But the wave function showed no such commitment, superposing the possibilities. Either the wave function…Read more
  •  14
    A Guide to Naturalizing Semantics
    In Bob Hale, Crispin Wright & Alexander Miller (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Language, Wiley. 2017.
    Semantic Naturalism is a metaphysical doctrine about the status of semantic properties. It is the view that, the metaphysical connections between naturalistic and semantic properties are sufficiently systematic and transparent to allow us to see that certain naturalistic conditions are sufficient for certain semantic properties. Most semantic naturalizers also think that the property of being a belief involves an internal mental representation, and that this representation bears the state's sema…Read more
  •  63
    Translational semantics
    Synthese 48 (1). 1981.
  •  53
    What Davidson Should Have Said
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 36 (1): 65-78. 1989.
    According to Davidson, a theory of meaning for a language L should specify information such that if someone had this information he would be in a position to understand L. He claims that a theory of truth for L fits this description. Many critics have argued that a truth theory is too weak to be a theory of meaning. We argue that these critics and Davidson's response to them have been misguided. Many critics have been misguided because they have not been clear aboutwhat a theory of meaning is su…Read more
  •  108
    Solipsistic semantics
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 10 (1): 595-614. 1986.
  •  311
    Mind matters
    Journal of Philosophy 84 (November): 630-642. 1987.
  •  10
    On Field’s truth and The absence of fact – comment
    Philosophical Studies 124 (1): 59-70. 2005.
  •  87
    You Can Say That Again
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 14 (1): 338-356. 1989.
  •  48
    A Putnam's Progress
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 12 (1): 459-473. 1988.
  •  207
    Counterfactuals all the way down? Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9437-9 Authors Jim Woodward, History and Philosophy of Science, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Barry Loewer, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA John W. Carroll, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8103, USA Marc Lange, Department of Philosophy, University of Nor…Read more
  •  197
    More on Making Mind Matter
    Philosophical Topics 17 (1): 175-191. 1989.
  •  23
    More on Making Mind Matter
    Philosophical Topics 17 (1): 175-191. 1989.
  •  5
    Language & Logic -- Glossary -- Aristotle's syllogisms -- Russell's paradox & Frege's logicism -- profile: Aristotle -- Russell's theory of description -- Frege's puzzle -- Gödel's theorem -- Epimenides' liar paradox -- Eubulides' heap -- Science & Epistemology -- Glossary -- I think therefore I am -- Gettier's counter example -- profile: Karl Popper -- The brain in a vat -- Hume's problem of induction -- Goodman's gruesome riddle -- Popper's conjectures & refutations -- Kuhn's scientific revol…Read more
  •  72
    A collection of newly commissioned papers on themes from David Albert's Time and Chance (HUP, 2000), with replies by Albert. Introduction [Barry Loewer, Brad Weslake, and Eric Winsberg] I. Overview of Time and Chance 1. The Mentaculus: A Probability Map of the Universe [Barry Loewer] II. Philosophical Foundations 2. The Metaphysical Foundations of Statistical Mechanics: On the Status of PROB and PH [Eric Winsberg] 3. The Logic of the Past Hypothesis [David Wallace] 4. In What Sense Is the Early …Read more
  •  5
    What Davidson Should Have Said
    with Ernest LePore
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 36 (1): 65-78. 1989.
    According to Davidson, a theory of meaning for a language L should specify information such that if someone had this information he would be in a position to understand L. He claims that a theory of truth for L fits this description. Many critics have argued that a truth theory is too weak to be a theory of meaning. We argue that these critics and Davidson's response to them have been misguided. Many critics have been misguided because they have not been clear aboutwhat a theory of meaning is su…Read more
  •  40
    Three Trivial Truth Theories
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 13 (3). 1983.
    According to Tarski, a theory of truth for a language L is a theory which logically implies for each sentence S of L a sentence of the form:S is true-in-L if and only if p,where rS1 is replaced by a canonical description of a sentence of L and rp1 is replaced by that sentence if L is contained in the metalanguage or by a translation of S if it is not so contained. Tarski constructed consistent and finitely axiomatized theories of truth for various formal languages and showed how to explicitly de…Read more
  •  68
    Are Humean Laws Flukes?
    In Christian Loew, Siegfried Jaag & Michael Townsen Hicks (eds.), Humean Laws for Human Agents, Oxford Up. 2023.
    It has been argued contra Humean accounts of scientific laws that on Humean accounts laws are flukes since they are merely true generalizations and it would be an accident or a fluke for a generalization to obtain unless there was a non-Humean law "backing" it. This paper argues that this kind of objection is mistaken. It goes on to describe an account of laws called "the Package Deal Account" that is a descendent of Lewis' BSA on which it is not an accident that our universe has a best systemat…Read more
  •  41
    Humean laws and explanation
    Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 23 (3): 373-385. 2019.
    My primary focus in this paper is on an objection to Humean account of laws and specifically to David Lewis’ “best systems analysis” (BSA). The objection is that the laws according to the BSA (which I call L-laws) fail to account for the ability of laws to explain. In contrast governing laws (which I will call G-laws) are alleged to account for the role of laws in scientific explanations by virtue of their governing role. If governing is required for laws to be explanatory then Humean accounts l…Read more
  •  123
    The package deal account of laws and properties
    Synthese 199 (1-2): 1065-1089. 2020.
    This paper develops an account of the metaphysics of fundamental laws I call “the Package Deal Account ” that is a descendent of Lewis’ BSA but differs from it in a number of significant ways. It also rejects some elements of the metaphysics in which Lewis develops his BSA. First, Lewis proposed a metaphysical thesis about fundamental properties he calls “Humean Supervenience” according to which all fundamental properties are instantiated by points or point sized individuals and the only fundame…Read more
  •  28
    Knowledge and the Flow of Information
    Philosophy of Science 49 (2): 297-300. 1982.
  •  19
    Comments on Jaegwon Kim's Mind and the Physical World
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65 (3): 655-662. 2002.
  • Freedom from Physics: Quantum Mechanics and Free Will
    In Tim Crane & Katalin Farkas (eds.), Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology, Oxford University Press Uk. 2004.