•  21
    Hume is the Enemy of Pyrrho
    Philosophy 96 (4): 651-674. 2021.
    I offer reasons against reading Hume as a Pyrrhonian sceptic. I argue that Hume's scepticism is motivated differently, that his sceptical strategies are not analogous to Pyrrhonism's, and that it is profitable to read Hume as a critic of Pyrrhonism. I hold that the most informative point of comparison between Hume and Sextus Empiricus is a point of difference, namely, their stands on the connection between suspension of judgement (epochê) and tranquillity (ataraxia). For Sextus, tranquillity flo…Read more
  •  581
    Quasi-Realism and Inductive Scepticism in Hume’s Theory of Causation
    Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (4): 637-650. 2019.
    Interpreters of Hume on causation consider that an advantage of the ‘quasi-realist’ reading is that it does not commit him to scepticism or to an error theory about causal reasoning. It is unique to quasi-realism that it maintains this positive epistemic result together with a rejection of metaphysical realism about causation: the quasi-realist supplies an appropriate semantic theory in order to justify the practice of talking ‘as if’ there were causal powers in the world. In this paper, I probl…Read more
  •  867
    Hume on External Existence: A Sceptical Predicament
    Dissertation, University of Sydney. 2018.
    This thesis investigates Hume’s philosophy of external existence in relation to, and within the context of, his philosophy of scepticism. In his two main works on metaphysics – A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40) and the first Enquiry (first ed. 1748) – Hume encounters a predicament pertaining to the unreflective, ‘vulgar’ attribution of external existence to mental perceptions and the ‘philosophical’ distinction between perceptions and objects. I argue that we should understand this predicamen…Read more
  •  348
    Modelling with words: Narrative and natural selection
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 62 20-24. 2017.
    I argue that verbal models should be included in a philosophical account of the scientific practice of modelling. Weisberg (2013) has directly opposed this thesis on the grounds that verbal structures, if they are used in science, only merely describe models. I look at examples from Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) of verbally constructed narratives that I claim model the general phenomenon of evolution by natural selection. In each of the cases I look at, a particular scenario is descri…Read more