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59The Metaphysics of MeasurementIn John Forge (ed.), Measurement, Realism and Objectivity Essays on Measurement in the Social and Physical Sciences, Reidel. 1987.My thesis is that there are good reasons for a philosophical account of measurement to deal primarily with the properties or magnitudes of objects measured, rather than with the objects themselves. The account I present here embodies both a realism about measurement and a realism about the existence of the properties involved in measurement. It thus provides an alternative to most current treatments of measurement, many of which are operationalistic or conventionalistic, and nearly all of which …Read more
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20C. Stephen Layman. The power of logic. Mayfield Publishing Company, Mountain View, Calif., London, and Toronto, 1999, ix + 566 pp (review)Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 7 (1): 79-81. 2001.
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44The early, largely automatic stages of human visual processing involve things like feature detectors (e.g., edge detectors) that do not involve our concepts or beliefs. These stages are called data-driven or bottom up aspects of perceptual information processing. But in the later stages of processing perception often is affected by our concepts, beliefs, and expectations. Such processes are said to be hypothesis-driven or expectation-driven; they are also known as..
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487How ontology might be possible: Explanation and inference in metaphysicsMidwest Studies in Philosophy 23 (1). 1999.
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1Leibniz's calculus of real additionStudia Leibnitiana 26 (1): 1-30. 1994.In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird Leibniz' wahrscheinlich detailliertestes und ausgefeiltestes System untersucht: ein Kalkül der Einfügung und eine der Konjunktion ähnliche Operation, die er realis abjectio nennt. Das System soll hinreichend detailliert und mit hinreichender Präzision vorgestellt werden, um zu zeigen, daβ es ausgefeilt formal logisch ist und eine Anzahl originärer und wichtiger Züge aufweist. Neben seinem eigenständigen Interesse ist dieses System wichtig wegen seiner Auswirkungen…Read more
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15Review: C. Stephen Layman, The Power of Logic (review)Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 7 (1): 79-81. 2001.
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2PropertiesIn Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Metaphysics Research Lab. 2014.
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2Review of John W. Carroll: Laws of Nature (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (4): 603-609. 1995.
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68Many linguists, including Noam Chomsky, contend that language in the sense we ordinary think of it, in the sense that people in Germany speak German, is a historical or social or political notion, rather than a scientific one. For example, German and Dutch are much closer to one another than various dialects of Chinese are. But the rough, commonsense divisions between languages will suffice for our purposes.
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45Sense and NonsenseCanadian Journal of Philosophy 9 (4). 1979.“What kind of psychological theory could relate our use of words to sets of possible worlds?” So queries a recent author, but the question is rhetorical, the insinuation being that any analysis or explanation of semantical notions in terms of possible worlds will involve an account that won't square with a naturalistic view of language acquisition or use. Such feelings are widespread; my purpose here is to argue that they are unjustified.
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