•  13
    Defending a Realist Stance
    International 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
  •  92
    A new perspective on the problem of applying mathematics
    Philosophia 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.
  •  16
    Book Symposium: Collin Rice's Leveraging Distortions (review)
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 95 (C): 230-232. 2022.
  •  15
    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
  •  14
    Reichenbach, Russell and scientific realism
    Synthese 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
  •  77
    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
  •  11
    On Hans-Johann Glock, What is Analytic Philosophy?
    Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 2 (2): 6-10. 2013.
  •  88
    Concrete Scale Models, Essential Idealization, and Causal Explanation
    British 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
  •  32
    Review by: Christopher Pincock The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Volume 19, Issue 1, Page 106-108, March 2013
  •  64
    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
  •  14
    Richard Semon and Russell’s Analysis of Mind
    Russell: 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
  •  16
    Rejoinder 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
  •  9
    From sunspots to the Southern Oscillation: confirming models of large-scale phenomena in meteorology
    Studies 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
  •  37
  •  40
    Preface
    Synthese 190 (2): 187-188. 2013.
  •  223
    A Role for Mathematics in the Physical Sciences
    Noûs 41 (2): 253-275. 2007.
    Conflicting accounts of the role of mathematics in our physical theories can be traced to two principles. Mathematics appears to be both (1) theoretically indispensable, as we have no acceptable non-mathematical versions of our theories, and (2) metaphysically dispensable, as mathematical entities, if they existed, would lack a relevant causal role in the physical world. I offer a new account of a role for mathematics in the physical sciences that emphasizes the epistemic benefits of having math…Read more
  •  15
    Review of Nikolay Milkov, A Hundred Years of English Philosophy (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2004 (10). 2004.
  •  41
    Overextending Partial Structures: Idealization and Abstraction
    Philosophy of Science 72 (5): 1248-1259. 2005.
    The partial structures program of da Costa, French and others offers a unified framework within which to handle a wide range of issues central to contemporary philosophy of science. I argue that the program is inadequately equipped to account for simple cases where idealizations are used to construct abstract, mathematical models of physical systems. These problems show that da Costa and French have not overcome the objections raised by Cartwright and Suárez to using model-theoretic techniques i…Read more
  •  115
    Mathematics and Scientific Representation
    Oxford University Press USA. 2012.
    Mathematics plays a central role in much of contemporary science, but philosophers have struggled to understand what this role is or how significant it might be for mathematics and science. In this book Christopher Pincock tackles this perennial question in a new way by asking how mathematics contributes to the success of our best scientific representations. In the first part of the book this question is posed and sharpened using a proposal for how we can determine the content of a scientific re…Read more
  •  70
    Fictions in Science: Philosophical Essays on Modeling and Idealization (review)
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 25 (2). 2011.
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 25, Issue 2, Page 196-199, June 2011
  •  13
    Carnap and the Unity of Science: 1921–1928
    In Thomas Bonk (ed.), Language, Truth and Knowledge, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 87--96. 2003.
  •  15
    The Limits of the Relative A Priori
    Soochow Journal of Philosophical Studies 16. 2007.
  •  35
    This book offers new perspectives on the history of analytical philosophy, surveying recent scholarship on the philosophical study of mind, language, logic and reality over the course of the last 200 years. Each chapter contributes to a broader engagement with a wider range of figures, topics and disciplines outside of philosophy than has been traditionally associated with the history of analytical philosophy. The book acquaints readers with new aspects of analytical philosophy’s revolutionary p…Read more
  •  87
    Russell’s Influence On Carnap’s Aufbau
    Synthese 131 (1): 1-37. 2002.
    This paper concerns the debate on the nature of Rudolf Carnap'sproject in his 1928 book The Logical Structure of the Worldor Aufbau. Michael Friedman and Alan Richardson haveinitiated much of this debate. They claim that the Aufbauis best understood as a work that is firmly grounded inneo-Kantian philosophy. They have made these claims in oppositionto Quine and Goodman's ``received view'' of the Aufbau. Thereceived view sees the Aufbau as an attempt to carry out indetail Russell's external world…Read more
  •  61
    Mathematics, Science, and Confirmation Theory
    Philosophy of Science 77 (5): 959-970. 2010.
    This paper begins by distinguishing intrinsic and extrinsic contributions of mathematics to scientific representation. This leads to two investigations into how these different sorts of contributions relate to confirmation. I present a way of accommodating both contributions that complicates the traditional assumptions of confirmation theory. In particular, I argue that subjective Bayesianism does best accounting for extrinsic contributions, while objective Bayesianism is more promising for intr…Read more
  •  45
    Ian Hacking why is there philosophy of mathematics at all? (review)
    British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 67 (3): 907-912. 2016.
  • Comments on Leiber’s “Russell and Wittgenstein”
    The Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly 125. 2005.