-
Logical EmpiricismIn Herman Cappelen, Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology, Oxford University Press. 2016.At different times logical empiricists engaged one another in debates about the proper problems and methods for philosophy or its successor discipline. The most pressing problem focused on how to coordinate the abstract statements of the sciences with what can be experienced and tested. While the new logic was the main tool for coordination for Moritz Schlick, Hans Reichenbach, and Rudolf Carnap, there was no agreement on the nature of logic or its role in coordination. Otto Neurath and Philipp …Read more
-
92Mathematical Structural RealismIn Alisa Bokulich & Peter Bokulich (eds.), Scientific Structuralism, Springer Science+business Media. 2011.Epistemic structural realists have argued that we are in a better epistemic position with respect to the structural claims made by our theories than the non-structural claims. Critics have objected that we cannot make the structure/non-structure distinction precise. I respond that a focus on mathematical structure leads to a clearer understanding of this debate. Unfortunately for the structural realist, however, the contribution that mathematics makes to scientific representation undermines any …Read more
-
23Defending a Realist StanceInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1-15. forthcoming.Should the scientific realist admit that their realism involves what Chakravartty has called an epistemic stance? I argue that the realist should accept the need for a realist stance that licenses the use of inference to the best explanation. However, unlike Chakravartty, I maintain that the realist should insist that their realist stance is rationally obligatory. This requires an anti-voluntarism about stances that involves theoretical reasons for adopting one stance rather than another. I pres…Read more
-
116Critical notice of C. Pincock's Mathematics and Scientific Representation (2012).
-
Part II. Does mathematical explanation require mathematical truth?: Mathematical explanation requires mathematical truthIn Shamik Dasgupta, Brad Weslake & Ravit Dotan (eds.), Current Controversies in Philosophy of Science, Routledge. 2020.
-
111A new perspective on the problem of applying mathematicsPhilosophia Mathematica 12 (2): 135-161. 2004.This paper sets out a new framework for discussing a long-standing problem in the philosophy of mathematics, namely the connection between the physical world and a mathematical domain when the mathematics is applied in science. I argue that considering counterfactual situations raises some interesting challenges for some approaches to applications, and consider an approach that avoids these challenges.
-
16Book Symposium: Collin Rice's Leveraging Distortions (review)Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 95 (C): 230-232. 2022.
-
29
-
21The derivation of Poiseuille’s law: heuristic and explanatory considerationsSynthese 199 (3-4): 11667-11687. 2021.This paper illustrates how an experimental discovery can prompt the search for a theoretical explanation and also how obtaining such an explanation can provide heuristic benefits for further experimental discoveries. The case considered begins with the discovery of Poiseuille’s law for steady fluid flow through pipes. The law was originally supported by careful experiments, and was only later explained through a derivation from the more basic Navier–Stokes equations. However, this derivation emp…Read more
-
23Reichenbach, Russell and scientific realismSynthese 199 (3-4): 8485-8506. 2021.This paper considers how to best relate the competing accounts of scientific knowledge that Russell and Reichenbach proposed in the 1930s and 1940s. At the heart of their disagreements are two different accounts of how to best combine a theory of knowledge with scientific realism. Reichenbach argued that a broadly empiricist epistemology should be based on decisions. These decisions or “posits” informed Reichenbach’s defense of induction and a corresponding conception of what knowledge required.…Read more
-
87A Defense of Truth as a Necessary Condition on Scientific ExplanationErkenntnis 88 (2): 621-640. 2021.How can a reflective scientist put forward an explanation using a model when they are aware that many of the assumptions used to specify that model are false? This paper addresses this challenge by making two substantial assumptions about explanatory practice. First, many of the propositions deployed in the course of explaining have a non-representational function. In particular, a proposition that a scientist uses and also believes to be false, i.e. an “idealization”, typically has some non-rep…Read more
-
13On Hans-Johann Glock, What is Analytic Philosophy?Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 2 (2): 6-10. 2013.
-
112Concrete Scale Models, Essential Idealization, and Causal ExplanationBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 73 (2): 299-323. 2022.This paper defends three claims about concrete or physical models: these models remain important in science and engineering, they are often essentially idealized, in a sense to be made precise, and despite these essential idealizations, some of these models may be reliably used for the purpose of causal explanation. This discussion of concrete models is pursued using a detailed case study of some recent models of landslide generated impulse waves. Practitioners show a clear awareness of the idea…Read more
-
30Bernard Linsky. The Evolution of Principia Mathematica: Bertrand Russell's manuscripts and notes for the second edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011, vii + 407 pp (review)Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 19 (1): 106-108. 2013.Review by: Christopher Pincock The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 106-108, March 2013
-
70Explanatory Relevance and Contrastive ExplanationPhilosophy of Science. 2018.A pluralist about explanation posits many explanatory relevance relations, while an invariantist denies any substantial role for context in fixing genuine explanation. This article summarizes one approach to combining pluralism and invariantism that emphasizes the contrastive nature of explanation. If explanations always take contrasts as their objects and contrasts come in types, then the role for the context in which an explanation is given can be minimized. This approach is illustrated using …Read more
-
18Rejoinder to Soames (review)Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies 26 (1): 77-86. 2006.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2601\PINCREPL.261 : 2006-06-05 11:54 iscussion REJOINDER TO SOAMES C P Philosophy / Purdue U. West Lafayette, , @. y goal in reviewing Soames’ book was to help readers of this journal evalMuate his contribution to the history of analytic philosophy, with a special focus on his discussion of Russell. Soames charges both that I misrepresent …Read more
-
32Richard Semon and Russell’s Analysis of MindRussell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies 26 (2): 101-125. 2006.Russell’s study of the biologist and psychologist Richard Semon is traced to contact with the experimental psychologist Adolf Wohlgemuth and dated to the summer of 1919. This allows a new interpretation of when Russell embraced neutral monism and presents a case-study in Russell’s use of scientific results for philosophical purposes. Semon’s distinctive notion of mnemic causation was used by Russell to clarify both how images referred to things and how the existence of images could be reconciled…Read more
-
14From sunspots to the Southern Oscillation: confirming models of large-scale phenomena in meteorologyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 40 (1): 45-56. 2009.The epistemic problem of assessing the support that some evidence confers on a hypothesis is considered using an extended example from the history of meteorology. In this case, and presumably in others, the problem is to develop techniques of data analysis that will link the sort of evidence that can be collected to hypotheses of interest. This problem is solved by applying mathematical tools to structure the data and connect them to the competing hypotheses. I conclude that mathematical innovat…Read more
-
10Accounting for the unity of experience in Dilthey, Rickert, Bradley and WardIn U. Feest (ed.), Historical Perspectives on Erkl, Max Planck Institute For the History of Science. pp. 187-206. 2007.Forthcoming in U. Feest (ed.), Historical Perspectives on Erkl.
-
35Review of Matthew B. Ostrow, Wittgenstein's Tractatus: A Dialectical Interpretation (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2003 (1). 2003.
-
95On Batterman's 'On the Explanatory Role of Mathematics in Empirical Science'British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (1). 2011.This discussion note of (Batterman [2010]) clarifies the modest aims of my 'mapping account' of applications of mathematics in science. Once these aims are clarified it becomes clear that Batterman's 'completely new approach' (Batterman [2010], p. 24) is not needed to make sense of his cases of idealized mathematical explanations. Instead, a positive proposal for the explanatory power of such cases can be reconciled with the mapping account.
-
26Logicism and Principia Mathematica [review of William Demopoulos, Logicism and Its Philosophical Legacy (review)Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies 35 (1): 82-87. 2015.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:82 Reviews c:\users\arlene\documents\rj issues\type3501\rj 3501 061 red.docx 2015-07-10 4:07 PM LOGICISM BEYOND PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA Chris Pincock Philosophy / Ohio State U. Columbus, oh 43210–1365, usa [email protected] William Demopoulos. Logicism and Its Philosophical Legacy. Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2013. Pp. xii, 272. isbn: 9781107029804.£60.00; us$104.99 (hb). his book brings together eight previously published essays along…Read more
-
92Exploring the boundaries of conceptual evaluationPhilosophia Mathematica 18 (1): 106-121. 2010.This is a critical notice of Mark Wilson's Wandering Significance.
-
19David Corfield, Towards a Philosophy of Real Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 300 pp., $70.00 (review)Philosophy of Science 72 (4): 632-634. 2005.
-
8Towards a Philosophy of Applied MathematicsIn Ø. Linnebo O. Bueno (ed.), New Waves in Philosophy of Mathematics, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.Most contemporary philosophy of mathematics focuses on a small segment of mathematics, mainly the natural numbers and foundational disciplines like set theory. While there are good reasons for this approach, in this paper I will examine the philosophical problems associated with the area of mathematics known as applied mathematics. Here mathematicians pursue mathematical theories that are closely connected to the use of mathematics in the sciences and engineering. This area of mathematics seems …Read more
-
43Sorin Bangu. The Applicability of Mathematics in Science: Indispensability and Ontology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. ISBN 978-0-230-28520-0 . Pp. xiii + 252 (review)Philosophia Mathematica 22 (3): 401-412. 2014.
-
Preston on the Illusory Character of Analytic Philosophy (review)The Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly 136. 2007.
-
73Mathematical models of biological patterns: Lessons from Hamilton’s selfish herdBiology and Philosophy 27 (4): 481-496. 2012.Mathematical models of biological patterns are central to contemporary biology. This paper aims to consider what these models contribute to biology through the detailed consideration of an important case: Hamilton’s selfish herd. While highly abstract and idealized, Hamilton’s models have generated an extensive amount of research and have arguably led to an accurate understanding of an important factor in the evolution of gregarious behaviors like herding and flocking. I propose an account of wh…Read more
-
88How to avoid inconsistent idealizationsSynthese 191 (13): 2957-2972. 2014.Idealized scientific representations result from employing claims that we take to be false. It is not surprising, then, that idealizations are a prime example of allegedly inconsistent scientific representations. I argue that the claim that an idealization requires inconsistent beliefs is often incorrect and that it turns out that a more mathematical perspective allows us to understand how the idealization can be interpreted consistently. The main example discussed is the claim that models of oc…Read more
-
43Comments on A. Casullo’s Essays on a priori knowledge and justificationPhilosophical Studies 173 (6): 1687-1694. 2016.
Columbus, Ohio, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Mathematics |
20th Century Philosophy |
General Philosophy of Science |