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Belief Update across FissionBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 66 (3): 659-682. 2015.When an agent undergoes fission, how should the beliefs of the fission results relate to the pre-fission beliefs? This question is important for the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics, but it is of independent philosophical interest. Among other things, fission scenarios demonstrate that ‘self-locating’ information can affect the probability of uncentred propositions even if an agent has no essentially self-locating uncertainty. I present a general update rule for centred beliefs that g…Read more
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Objects of ChoiceMind 111. 2021.Rational agents are supposed to maximize expected utility. But what are the options from which they choose? I outline some constraints on an adequate representation of an agent’s options. The options should, for example, contain no information of which the agent is unsure. But they should be sufficiently rich to distinguish all available acts from one another. These demands often come into conflict, so that there seems to be no adequate representation of the options at all. After reviewing exist…Read more
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Changing minds in a changing worldPhilosophical Studies 159 (2): 219-239. 2012.I defend a general rule for updating beliefs that takes into account both the impact of new evidence and changes in the subject’s location. The rule combines standard conditioning with a shifting operation that moves the center of each doxastic possibility forward to the next point where information arrives. I show that well-known arguments for conditioning lead to this combination when centered information is taken into account. I also discuss how my proposal relates to other recent proposals, …Read more
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The determinable-determinate relationNoûs 40 (3). 2006.The properties colored and red stand in a special relation. Namely, red is a determinate of colored, and colored is determinable relative to red. Many other properties are similarly related. The determination relation is an interesting topic of logical investigation in its own right, and the prominent philosophical inquiries into this relation have, accordingly, operated at a high level of abstraction.1 It is time to return to these investigations, not just as a logical amusement, but for the pa…Read more
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The fundamental: Ungrounded or all-grounding?Philosophical Studies 177 (9): 2647-2669. 2020.Fundamentality plays a pivotal role in discussions of ontology, supervenience, and possibility, and other key topics in metaphysics. However, there are two different ways of characterising the fundamental: as that which is not grounded, and as that which is the ground of everything else. I show that whether these two characterisations pick out the same property turns on a principle—which I call “Dichotomy”—that is of independent interest in the theory of ground: that everything is either fully g…Read more
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Against Radical Quantum OntologiesPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 95 (3): 564-591. 2017.Some theories of quantum mechanical phenomena endorse wave function realism, according to which the physical space we inhabit is very different from the physical space we appear to inhabit. In this paper I explore an argument against wave function realism that appeals to a type of simplicity that, although often overlooked, plays a crucial role in scientific theory choice. The type of simplicity in question is simplicity of fit between the way a theory says the world is and the way the world app…Read more
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Belief in PsyontologyPhilosophers' Imprint 20 (11). 2020.
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Logical ignorance and logical learningSynthese 198 (10): 9991-10020. 2021.According to certain normative theories in epistemology, rationality requires us to be logically omniscient. Yet this prescription clashes with our ordinary judgments of rationality. How should we resolve this tension? In this paper, I focus particularly on the logical omniscience requirement in Bayesian epistemology. Building on a key insight by Hacking :311–325, 1967), I develop a version of Bayesianism that permits logical ignorance. This includes: an account of the synchronic norms that gove…Read more
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Decision-theoretic paradoxes as voting paradoxesPhilosophical Review 119 (1): 1-30. 2010.It is a platitude among decision theorists that agents should choose their actions so as to maximize expected value. But exactly how to define expected value is contentious. Evidential decision theory (henceforth EDT), causal decision theory (henceforth CDT), and a theory proposed by Ralph Wedgwood that this essay will call benchmark theory (BT) all advise agents to maximize different types of expected value. Consequently, their verdicts sometimes conflict. In certain famous cases of conflict—me…Read more
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Decision theory without finite standard expected valueEconomics and Philosophy 32 (3): 383-407. 2016.
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Three measurement problemsTopoi 14 (1): 7-15. 1995.
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Philosophy of Physics: Space and TimePrinceton University Press. 2012.This concise book introduces nonphysicists to the core philosophical issues surrounding the nature and structure of space and time, and is also an ideal resource for physicists interested in the conceptual foundations of space-time theory. Tim Maudlin's broad historical overview examines Aristotelian and Newtonian accounts of space and time, and traces how Galileo's conceptions of relativity and space-time led to Einstein's special and general theories of relativity. Maudlin explains special rel…Read more
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The metaphysics within physicsOxford University Press. 2007.
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Dutch Books, Coherence, and Logical ConsistencyNoûs 49 (3): 522-537. 2015.In this paper I present a new way of understanding Dutch Book Arguments: the idea is that an agent is shown to be incoherent iff he would accept as fair a set of bets that would result in a loss under any interpretation of the claims involved. This draws on a standard definition of logical inconsistency. On this new understanding, the Dutch Book Arguments for the probability axioms go through, but the Dutch Book Argument for Reflection fails. The question of whether we have a Dutch Book Argument…Read more
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Quantum Entanglement, Bohmian Mechanics, and Humean SupervenienceAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 92 (3): 567-583. 2014.David Lewis is a natural target for those who believe that findings in quantum physics threaten the tenability of traditional metaphysical reductionism. Such philosophers point to allegedly holistic entities they take both to be the subjects of some claims of quantum mechanics and to be incompatible with Lewisian metaphysics. According to one popular argument, the non-separability argument from quantum entanglement, any realist interpretation of quantum theory is straightforwardly inconsistent w…Read more
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Clever bookies and coherent beliefsPhilosophical Review 100 (2): 229-247. 1991.
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Distorted reflectionPhilosophical Review 118 (1): 59-85. 2009.Diachronic Dutch book arguments seem to support both conditionalization and Bas van Fraassen's Reflection principle. But the Reflection principle is vulnerable to numerous counterexamples. This essay addresses two questions: first, under what circumstances should an agent obey Reflection, and second, should the counterexamples to Reflection make us doubt the Dutch book for conditionalization? In response to the first question, this essay formulates a new "Qualified Reflection" principle, which s…Read more
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Imaginary FoundationsErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 5. 2018.Our senses provide us with information about the world, but what exactly do they tell us? I argue that in order to optimally respond to sensory stimulations, an agent’s doxastic space may have an extra, “imaginary” dimension of possibility; perceptual experiences confer certainty on propositions in this dimension. To some extent, the resulting picture vindicates the old-fashioned empiricist idea that all empirical knowledge is based on a solid foundation of sense-datum propositions, but it avoid…Read more
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Principal Values and Weak ExpectationsMind 123 (490): 517-531. 2014.This paper evaluates a recent method proposed by Jeremy Gwiazda for calculating the value of gambles that fail to have expected values in the standard sense. I show that Gwiazda’s method fails to give answers for many gambles that do have standardly defined expected values. However, a slight modification of his method (based on the mathematical notion of the ‘Cauchy principal value’ of an integral), is in fact a proper extension of both his method and the method of ‘weak expectations’. I show th…Read more
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Infinite utilitarianism: More is always betterEconomics and Philosophy 20 (2): 307-330. 2004.We address the question of how finitely additive moral value theories (such as utilitarianism) should rank worlds when there are an infinite number of locations of value (people, times, etc.). In the finite case, finitely additive theories satisfy both Weak Pareto and a strong anonymity condition. In the infinite case, however, these two conditions are incompatible, and thus a question arises as to which of these two conditions should be rejected. In a recent contribution, Hamkins and Montero (2…Read more
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Conditionalization Does Not Maximize Expected AccuracyMind 126 (504): 1155-1187. 2017.Greaves and Wallace argue that conditionalization maximizes expected accuracy. In this paper I show that their result only applies to a restricted range of cases. I then show that the update procedure that maximizes expected accuracy in general is one in which, upon learning P, we conditionalize, not on P, but on the proposition that we learned P. After proving this result, I provide further generalizations and show that much of the accuracy-first epistemology program is committed to KK-like ite…Read more
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Bridging Rationality and AccuracyJournal of Philosophy 112 (12): 633-657. 2015.
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Options and the subjective oughtPhilosophical Studies 158 (2): 343-360. 2012.
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Intrinsicality and HyperintensionalityPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 82 (2): 314-336. 2010.The standard counterexamples to David Lewis’s account of intrinsicality involve two sorts of properties: identity properties and necessary properties. Proponents of the account have attempted to deflect these counterexamples in a number of ways. This paper argues that none of these moves are legitimate. Furthermore, this paper argues that no account along the lines of Lewis’s can succeed, for an adequate account of intrinsicality must be sensitive to hyperintensional distinctions among propertie…Read more
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Fundamental Properties of Fundamental PropertiesIn Karen Bennett Dean Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Volume 8, . pp. 78-104. 2013.Since the publication of David Lewis's ''New Work for a Theory of Universals,'' the distinction between properties that are fundamental – or perfectly natural – and those that are not has become a staple of mainstream metaphysics. Plausible candidates for perfect naturalness include the quantitative properties posited by fundamental physics. This paper argues for two claims: (1) the most satisfying account of quantitative properties employs higher-order relations, and (2) these relations must …Read more
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Bootstrapping in GeneralPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (3): 525-548. 2010.The bootstrapping problem poses a general challenge, afflicting even strongly internalist theories. Even if one must always know that one’s source is reliable to gain knowledge from it, bootstrapping is still possible. I survey some solutions internalists might offer and defend the one I find most plausible: that bootstrapping involves an abuse of inductive reasoning akin to generalizing from a small or biased sample. I also argue that this solution is equally available to the reliabilist. The m…Read more
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Scientific reasoning: the Bayesian approachOpen Court. 1993.
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What Chance‐Credence Norms Should Not BeNoûs 47 (3): 177-196. 2013.A chance-credence norm states how an agent's credences in propositions concerning objective chances ought to relate to her credences in other propositions. The most famous such norm is the Principal Principle (PP), due to David Lewis. However, Lewis noticed that PP is too strong when combined with many accounts of chance that attempt to reduce chance facts to non-modal facts. Those who defend such accounts of chance have offered two alternative chance-credence norms: the first is Hall's and Thau…Read more
Amherst, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Formal Epistemology |
Decision Theory |
Philosophy of Probability |
Philosophy of Physics, Misc |
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphysics |
Normative Ethics |
General Philosophy of Science |
PhilPapers Editorships
Probabilistic Principles |