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9ContentsIn Raymond Jennings, Bryson Brown & Peter Schotch (eds.), On Preserving: Essays on Preservationism and Paraconsistent Logic, University of Toronto Press. 2009.
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81Notes 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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2On 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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6Coherentism 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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8Peter 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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41Paraconsistency, 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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11[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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58Logic 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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69Logic 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.
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79Rational Inconsistency and ReasoningInformal Logic 14 (1). 1992.Nicholas Rescher has argued we must tolerate inconsistency because of our cognitive limitations. He has also produced, together with R. Brandom, a serious attempt at exploring the logic of inconsistency. Inconsistency tolerance calls for a systematic rewriting of our logical doctrines: it requires a paraconsistent logic. However, having given up all aggregation of premises, Rescher's proposal for a paraconsistenl logic fails to account for the reductive reasoning Rescher appeals to in his accoun…Read more
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7Ethics 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.
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137Chunk and permeate, a paraconsistent inference strategy. Part I: The infinitesimal calculusJournal of Philosophical Logic 33 (4): 379-388. 2004.In this paper we introduce a paraconsistent reasoning strategy, Chunk and Permeate. In this, information is broken up into chunks, and a limited amount of information is allowed to flow between chunks. We start by giving an abstract characterisation of the strategy. It is then applied to model the reasoning employed in the original infinitesimal calculus. The paper next establishes some results concerning the legitimacy of reasoning of this kind - specifically concerning the preservation of the …Read more
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8On Preserving: Essays on Preservationism and Paraconsistent Logic (edited book)University of Toronto Press. 2009.
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83Skepticism About the Past and the Problem of the CriterionCroatian Journal of Philosophy 6 (2): 291-306. 2006.An argument for skepticism about the past exploits a circularity in the arguments connecting present observations to claims about past events. Arguments supporting claims about the past depend on current observations together with processes linking current observations to those claims. But knowledge of processes requires knowledge of the past: Knowledge of the present alone cannot provide evidence for claims about the past. A practical, coherentist response to this challenge rejects the assumpti…Read more
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44Old Quantum Theory: A Paraconsistent ApproachPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992. 1992.Just what forms do (or should) our cognitive attitudes towards scientific theories take? The nature of cognitive commitment becomes particularly puzzling when scientists' commitments are) inconsistent. And inconsistencies have often infected our best efforts in science and mathematics. Since there are no models of inconsistent sets of sentences, straightforward semantic accounts fail. And syntactic accounts based on classical logic also collapse, since the closure of any inconsistent set under c…Read more
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5Evolution: a historical perspectiveGreenwood Press. 2007.Looks at how the case for evolution developed over time, covering Darwin and the Beagle, heredity and natural selection, DNA, and man's place in the natural world.
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121The 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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68. 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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21Struggling 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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28Philosophy of ecology todayIn Kevin deLaplante, Bryson Brown & Kent A. Peacock (eds.), Philosophy of Ecology, North-holland. pp. 3. 2011.
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12Ecology as historical scienceIn Kevin deLaplante, Bryson Brown & Kent A. Peacock (eds.), Philosophy of Ecology, North-holland. pp. 11--251. 2011.
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88Yes, 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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14Smoke 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
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 |