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4ContentsIn Raymond Jennings, Bryson Brown & Peter Schotch (eds.), On Preserving: Essays on Preservationism and Paraconsistent Logic, University of Toronto Press. 2009.
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73Notes on Hume and Skepticism of the SensesCroatian Journal of Philosophy 3 (3): 289-303. 2003.In A Treatise of Human Nature Hume wrote a long section titled “Of skepticism with regard to the senses.” The discussion examines two key features of our beliefs about the objects making up the external world: 1. They continue to exist, even when unperceived. 2. They are distinct from the mind and its perceptions. The upshot of the discussion is a graceful sort of intellectual despair:I cannot conceive how such trivial qualities of the fancy, conducted by such false suppositions, can ever lead t…Read more
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1On ParaconsistencyIn Dale Jacquette (ed.), A Companion to Philosophical Logic, Blackwell. 2006.This chapter contains sections titled: What is Paraconsistency? Motives for Paraconsistency The Sources of Trivialization A Natural Taxonomy for Paraconsistent Logics Paraconsistent Logics Current Issues.
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3Coherentism and Coherence Truth in the Philosophy of Nicholas RescherIn Robert Almeder (ed.), Rescher Studies: A Collection of Essays on the Philosophical Work of Nicholas Rescher, De Gruyter. pp. 59-88. 2008.
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5Peter Vickers: Understanding Inconsistent Science: Oxford University Press, Oxford 2013, 288 pp, £40.00, ISBN: 978-0-19-969202-6 (review)Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 46 (2): 413-418. 2015.
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38Paraconsistency, Pluralistic Models and Reasoning in Climate ScienceHumana Mente 10 (32): 179-194. 2017.Scientific inquiry is typically focused on particular questions about particular objects and properties. This leads to a multiplicity of models which, even when they draw on a single, consistent body of concepts and principles, often employ different methods and assumptions to model different systems. Pluralists have remarked on how scientists draw on different assumptions to model different systems, different aspects of systems and systems under different conditions and defended the value of di…Read more
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10[Book review] logic on the track of social change (review)In Stephen Everson (ed.), Ethics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 109--1. 1998.
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120The pragmatics of empirical adequacyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 82 (2). 2004.Empirical adequacy is a central notion in van Fraassen's empiricist view of science. I argue that van Fraassen's account of empirical adequacy in terms of a partial isomorphism between certain structures in some model(s) of the theory and certain actual structures (the observables) in the world, is untenable. The empirical adequacy of a theory can only be tested in the context of an accepted practice of observation. But because the theory itself does not determine the correct practice of observa…Read more
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38. Representation of ForcingIn Raymond Jennings, Bryson Brown & Peter Schotch (eds.), On Preserving: Essays on Preservationism and Paraconsistent Logic, University of Toronto Press. pp. 145-160. 2009.
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2Graham Priest, Richard Routley and Jean Norman, eds., Paraconsistent Logic: Essays on the Inconsistent Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 11 (1): 58-60. 1991.
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18Struggling With ConditionalsDialogue 31 (2): 327-. 1992.David Sanford's If P, Then Q is an ambitious book, aimed at two difficult tasks and addressed to two audiences. It combines a survey of historical and contemporary work on-conditionals with a presentation-of, Sanford's personal views. And it is addressed to both undergraduate students, without, logical training, and professionals seriously interested in conditionals. It is marred by the impossibility of achieving both aims in a book this size, and by the strains of simultaneously addressing audi…Read more
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26Philosophy of ecology todayIn Kevin deLaplante, Bryson Brown & Kent A. Peacock (eds.), Philosophy of Ecology, North-holland. pp. 3. 2011.
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10Ecology as historical scienceIn Kevin deLaplante, Bryson Brown & Kent A. Peacock (eds.), Philosophy of Ecology, North-holland. pp. 11--251. 2011.
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86Yes, Virginia, there really are paraconsistent logicsJournal of Philosophical Logic 28 (5): 489-500. 1999.B. H. Slater has argued that there cannot be any truly paraconsistent logics, because it's always more plausible to suppose whatever "negation" symbol is used in the language is not a real negation, than to accept the paraconsistent reading. In this paper I neither endorse nor dispute Slater's argument concerning negation; instead, my aim is to show that as an argument against paraconsistency, it misses (some of) the target. A important class of paraconsistent logics - the preservationist logics…Read more
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13Smoke and Mirrors: A Few Nice TricksDialogue 38 (1): 123-134. 1999.Two aims are at work in James Brown'sSmoke and Mirrors:to defend realism against some of its recent detractors, and to expound his own programmatic commitment to a Platonic form of realism. I am sympathetic to his first goal, and dubious about the second, so, as Brown himself predicts, I am enthusiastic about the critical part of the book but critical of his Platonic project. But I will begin this review with a hearty recommendation.Smoke and Mirrorsis clear, articulate, perceptive, occasionally…Read more
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62How to be realistic about inconsistency in scienceStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 21 (2): 281-294. 1990.
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64Defending Backwards CausationCanadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (4). 1992.Whether we’re reading H.G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, or Kurt Vonnegut, time travel is a wonderful narrative trick, freeing a story from the normal ‘one damn thing after another’ progression of time. But many philosophers claim it can never be more than that because backwards causation in general, and time travel in particular, are logically impossible.In this paper I examine one type of argument commonly given for this disappointing conclusion: the time travel paradoxes. Happily for …Read more
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47A solution to the completeness problem for weakly aggregative modal logicJournal of Symbolic Logic 60 (3): 832-842. 1995.
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28Peter Vickers: Understanding Inconsistent Science (review)Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 46 (2): 413-418. 2015.
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45Ethics in Darwin's melancholy visionStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42 (1): 20-29. 2011.Darwinian natural selection draws on Malthus’ harsh vision of human society to explain how organisms come to be adapted to their environments. Natural selection produces the appearance of teleology, but requires only efficient causal processes: undirected, heritable variation combined with effects of the variations on survival and reproduction. This paper draws a sharp distinction between the resulting form of backwards-directed teleology and the future-directed teleology we ascribe to intention…Read more
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214. Bootstrapping Norms: From Cause to IntentionIn Susan Sherwin & Peter Schotch (eds.), Engaged Philosophy: Essays in Honour of David Braybrooke, University of Toronto Press. pp. 343-364. 2006.
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44Philosophy of ecology (edited book)North-Holland. 2011.The most pressing problems facing humanity today - over-population, energy shortages, climate change, soil erosion, species extinctions, the risk of epidemic disease, the threat of warfare that could destroy all the hard-won gains of civilization, and even the recent fibrillations of the stock market - are all ecological or have a large ecological component. in this volume philosophers turn their attention to understanding the science of ecology and its huge implications for the human project. T…Read more
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28Smoke and Mirrors: A Few Nice TricksDialogue 38 (1): 123-. 1999.Two aims are at work in James Brown's Smoke and Mirrors: to defend realism against some of its recent detractors, and to expound his own programmatic commitment to a Platonic form of realism. I am sympathetic to his first goal, and dubious about the second, so, as Brown himself predicts, I am enthusiastic about the critical part of the book but critical of his Platonic project. But I will begin this review with a hearty recommendation. Smoke and Mirrors is clear, articulate, perceptive, occasion…Read more
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57Logic and aggregationJournal of Philosophical Logic 28 (3): 265-288. 1999.Paraconsistent logic is an area of philosophical logic that has yet to find acceptance from a wider audience. The area remains, in a word, disreputable. In this essay, we try to reassure potential consumers that it is not necessary to become a radical in order to use paraconsistent logic. According to the radicals, the problem is the absurd classical account of contradiction: Classically inconsistent sets explode only because bourgeois classical semantics holds, in the face of overwhelming evide…Read more
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3David N. Stamos, The Species Problem: Biological species, ontology, and the metaphysics of biology Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 24 (5): 371-374. 2004.
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66Logic on the Track of Social ChangeClarendon Press. 1995.The book sets out a new logic of rules, developed to demonstrate how such a logic can contribute to the clarification of historical questions about social rules. The authors illustrate applications of this new logic in their extensive treatments of a variety of accounts of social changes, analysing in these examples the content of particular social rules and the course of changes in them.
Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
Philosophy of Biology |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Logic and Philosophy of Logic |
General Philosophy of Science |