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2569On reading Newton as an Epicurean: Kant, Spinozism and the changes to the PrincipiaStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (3): 416-428. 2013.
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862This chapter argues that the standard conception of Spinoza as a fellow-travelling mechanical philosopher and proto-scientific naturalist is misleading. It argues, first, that Spinoza’s account of the proper method for the study of nature presented in the Theological-Political Treatise (TTP) points away from the one commonly associated with the mechanical philosophy. Moreover, throughout his works Spinoza’s views on the very possibility of knowledge of nature are decidedly sceptical (as specifie…Read more
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764Philosophy of Science as First Philosophy The Liberal Polemics of Ernest NagelIn Matthias Neuber & Adam Tamas Tuboly (eds.), Ernest Nagel: Philosophy of Science and the Fight for Clarity, Springer. 2021.This chapter explores Nagel’s polemics. It shows these have a two-fold character: (i) to defend liberal civilization against all kinds of enemies. And (ii) to defend what he calls ‘contextual naturalism.’ And the chapter shows that (i-ii) reinforce each other and undermine alternative political and philosophical programs. The chapter’s argument responds to an influential argument by George Reisch that Nagel’s professional stance represents a kind of disciplinary retreat from politics. In order t…Read more
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498The Certainty, Modality, and Grounding of Newton’s LawsThe Monist 100 (3): 311-325. 2017.Newton began his Principia with three Axiomata sive Leges Motus. We offer an interpretation of Newton’s dual label and investigate two tensions inherent in his account of laws. The first arises from the juxtaposition of Newton’s confidence in the certainty of his laws and his commitment to their variability and contingency. The second arises because Newton ascribes fundamental status both to the laws and to the bodies and forces they govern. We argue the first is resolvable, but the second is no…Read more
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428Smith's Humean criticism of Hume's account of the origin of justiceJournal of the History of Philosophy 44 (1): 47-63. 2006.It is argued that Adam Smith criticizes David Hume's account of the origin of and continuing adherence to the rule of law for being not sufficiently Humean. Hume explained that adherence to the rule of law originated in the self-interest to restrain self-interest. According to Smith, Hume does not pay enough attention to the passions of resentment and admiration, which have their source in the imagination. Smith's offers a more naturalistic and evolutionary account of the psychological pre-condi…Read more
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376This chapter presents the reception of Leo Strauss by analytic philosophers after Strauss’s emigration to the United States. It gives a brief survey of the polemics against Strauss and his school by analytic philosophers, which aided in the self-constitution of analytic philosophy as a rival school of thought in philosophy. But most of the chapter is devoted to recovering the significance and influence of a criticism of Strauss by Ernest Nagel. The chapter argues that this response is of intrins…Read more
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374The main aim of this paper is to analyze Susan Stebbing’s views on the nature of clarity in the 1930s. I limit myself to this period because it allows for a contrast between her sophisticated and significant views on what I call ‘the standard conception of clarity’ with her view on ‘democratic clarity’ developed in her (1939) book, *Thinking to Some Purpose*. I contextualize her views with some alternative characterizations of clarity on offer among other early analytic philosophers (including b…Read more
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339Margaret Cavendish on Human BeingsIn Karolina Hübner (ed.), Human: A History (Oxford Philosophical Concepts), Oxford University Press. pp. 168-194. 2022.Margaret Cavendish is a vitalist, materialist, and monist. She holds that human beings and other natural kinds are parts of the one material entity she calls “nature.” While she thinks that human beings may not be superior to other animals in many ways, she does argue that human beings have a type of knowledge and perception that is unique to their kind, that they strive for the continuance of their being, and that they join together into societies in order to achieve a more peaceful existence. …Read more
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278Newtonian Emanation, Spinozism, Measurement and the Baconian Origins of the Laws of NatureFoundations of Science 18 (3): 449-466. 2013.The first two sections of this paper investigate what Newton could have meant in a now famous passage from “De Graviatione” (hereafter “DeGrav”) that “space is as it were an emanative effect of God.” First it offers a careful examination of the four key passages within DeGrav that bear on this. The paper shows that the internal logic of Newton’s argument permits several interpretations. In doing so, the paper calls attention to a Spinozistic strain in Newton’s thought. Second it sketches four in…Read more
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221Hume’s attack on Newton’s philosophyEnlightenment and Dissent 25 167-203. 2009.In this paper, I argue that major elements of Hume’s metaphysics and epistemology are not only directed at the inductive argument from design which seemed to follow from the success of Newton’s system, but also have far larger aims. They are directed against the authority of Newton’s natural philosophy; the claims of natural philosophy are constrained by philosophic considerations. Once one understands this, Hume’s high ambitions for a refashioned ‘true metaphysics’ or ‘first philosophy’, that i…Read more
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210My critical comments on Part I of P. J. E. Kail's Projection and Realism in Hume's Philosophy are divided into two parts. First, I challenge the exegetical details of Kail's take on Hume's important distinction between natural and philosophical relations. I show that Kail misreads Hume in a subtle fashion. If I am right, then much of the machinery that Kail puts into place for his main argument does different work in Hume than Kail thinks. Second, I offer a brief criticism of Kail's argument for…Read more
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202In this paper I investigate two denials in Milton Friedman's Nobel Lecture (1976). The first is [i] the denial that 'Economics and its fellow social sciences' ought to be 'regarded more nearly as branches of philosophy.' The second is [ii] the denial that economics is 'enmeshed with values at the outset because they deal with human behaviour' (267). I show that Friedman's appeal to his methodology in the Nobel lecture fails on conceptual grounds internal to Friedman's methodology. Moreover, I sh…Read more
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194Newton’s Challenge to Philosophy: A Programmatic EssayHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 1 (1): 101-128. 2011.I identify a set of interlocking views that became (and still are) very influential within philosophy in the wake of Newton’s success. These views use the authority of natural philosophy/mechanics to settle debates within philosophy. I label these “Newton’s Challenge.”
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191This chapter explains how the rise of the Mechanical philosophy during the seventeenth century contributed to the transformation of the traditional, Aristotelian schema of four causes into the dominance of efficient causation as the paradigmatic cause by the time of David Hume. But the chapter simultaneously shows that the mechanical philosophy also gave rise to a number of problems internal to it, as diagnosed by Newton and Newtonian natural philosophers, that facilitated more careful analysis …Read more
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180Hume on Foucault: Some PreliminariesCosmos + Taxis 12 (1+2): 45-58. 2023.This paper analyzes two episodes of Foucault’s reading(s) of Hume’s philosophy. In both cases Hume is important to Foucault’s overall argument and aims. In particular, in both Foucault takes a fairly conventional philosophical description of Hume -- as a ‘skeptic’ and ‘empiricist’ -- for granted and shows that these disguise a world-historical significance. In section 1, the paper explores Hume's role in Foucault’s (1966) *The Order of Things*. The paper argues Hume stands in for the hidden role…Read more
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162Wonder in the face of scientific revolutions: Adam Smith on Newton's ‘Proof’ of Copernicanism 1British Journal for the History of Philosophy 13 (4): 697-732. 2005.(2005). Wonder in the face of scientific revolutions: Adam Smith on Newton's ‘Proof’ of Copernicanism. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 697-732. doi: 10.1080/09608780500293042
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153Newton and Spinoza: On motion and matter (and God, of course)Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (3): 436-458. 2012.This study explores several arguments against Spinoza's philosophy that were developed by Henry More, Samuel Clarke, and Colin Maclaurin. In the arguments on which I focus, More, Clarke, and Maclaurin aim to establish the existence of an immaterial and intelligent God precisely by showing that Spinoza does not have the resources to adequately explain the origin of motion. Attending to these criticisms grants us a deeper appreciation for how the authority derived from the empirical success of New…Read more
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150Hume's missing shade of blue reconsidered from a Newtonian PerspectiveJournal of Scottish Philosophy 2 (2): 164-175. 2004.Click to decrease image size.
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136Women in Early Analytic Philosophy: Volume IntroductionJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5 (2). 2017.Introduction to the special issue including papers about Susan Stebbing, Susanne Langer and Maria Kokoszyńska.
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130Spinoza on the politics of philosophical understanding Susan James and Eric Schliesser angels and philosophers: with a new interpretation of Spinoza's common notionsProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 111 (3pt3): 497-518. 2011.In this paper I offer three main challenges to James (2011). All three turn on the nature of philosophy and secure knowledge in Spinoza. First, I criticize James's account of the epistemic role that experience plays in securing adequate ideas for Spinoza. In doing so I criticize her treatment of what is known as the ‘conatus doctrine’ in Spinoza in order to challenge her picture of the relationship between true religion and philosophy. Second, this leads me into a criticism of her account of the…Read more
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127In this paper I call attention to Adam Smith’s 'Considerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages' in order to facilitate understanding Adam Smith from a Darwinian perspective. By ‘Darwinian’ I mean a position that explains differential selection over time through natural mechanisms. First, I argue that right near the start of Wealth of Nations Smith signals that human nature has probably evolved over a very long amount of time. Second, I connect this evidence with an infamous passage o…Read more
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125Newton’s substance monism, distant action, and the nature of Newton’s empiricism: discussion of H. Kochiras “Gravity and Newton’s substance counting problem”Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 42 (1): 160-166. 2011.This paper is a critical response to Hylarie Kochiras’ “Gravity and Newton’s substance counting problem,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 40 267–280. First, the paper argues that Kochiras conflates substances and beings; it proceeds to show that Newton is a substance monist. The paper argues that on methodological grounds Newton has adequate resources to respond to the metaphysical problems diagnosed by Kochiras. Second, the paper argues against the claim that Newton is committed to…Read more
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111In this paper I clarify what Newton could have meant when he insisted that gravity is a real force. I interpret Newton’s speculative treatment of gravity as a relational, accidental quality of matter that arises through what Newton calls “the shared action” of two bodies. I argue that when Newton drafted the first edition of the Principia in the mid 1680s, he thought that (at least a part of) the cause of gravity is the disposition inherent in any individual body, but that the force of gravity i…Read more
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1086. Adam Smith on Political LeadershipIn R. J. W. Mills & Craig Smith (eds.), The Scottish Enlightenment: Human Nature, Social Theory and Moral Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Christopher J. Berry, Edinburgh University Press. pp. 132-163. 2021.
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103In this paper I interpret Newton’s speculative treatment of gravity as a relational, accidental property of matter that arises through what Newton calls “the shared action” of two bodies of matter. In doing so, I expand and extend on a hint by Howard Stein. However, in developing the details of my interpretation I end up disagreeing with Stein’s claim that for Newton a single body can generate a gravity/force field. I argue that when Newton drafted the first edition of the Principia in the mid 1…Read more
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103Hume's newtonianism and anti-newtonianismStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.David Hume's philosophy, especially the positive project of his science of man, is often thought to be modeled on Newton's successes in natural philosophy. Hume's self-described experimental method (see the subtitle to Treatise) and the resemblance of his rules of reasoning (Treatise, 1.3.15)1 with Newton's are said to be evidence for this position (Noxon 1973; De Pierris 2002). Hume encourages this view of his project by employing Newtonian metaphors: he talks of an attraction in the mental wor…Read more
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9711. “Two Definitions of ‘Cause,’ Newton, and the Significance of the Humean distinction between Natural and Philosophical Relations,”Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 5 (1): 83-101. 2007.The main aim of this paper is to explore why it is so important for Hume to defi ne ‘cause’ as he does. This will shed light on the signifi cance of the natural/philosophical relation (hereafter NPR) distinction in the Treatise. Hume's use of the NPR distinction allows him to dismiss on general grounds conceptions of causation at odds with his own. In particular, it allows him to avoid having to engage in detailed re-interpretation of potentially confl icting theories formulated by natural philo…Read more
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91ON THE ORIGIN OF MODERN NATURALISM: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BERKELEY’S RESPONSE TO A NEWTONIAN INDISPENSIBILITY ARGUMENTPhilosophica 76 (2): 45-66. 2005.I call attention to Berkeley’s treatment of a Newtonian indispensability argument against his own main position. I argue that the presence of this argument marks a significant moment in the history of philosophy and science: Newton’s achievements could serve as a separate and authoritative source of justification within philosophy. This marks the presence of a new kind of naturalism. A long the way, I argue against the claim tha t there is no explicit opposition or distinction between “philosoph…Read more
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90Locke’s Humean Conventionalism (review)I show that Locke anticipates key features of Hume’s more celebrated analysis of convention. I do so by developing Lenz’s account of Lockean (linguistic) convention and its normativity as presented in Socializing Minds. Locke’s account of linguistic convention shares structural features also visible in Locke’s treatment of the convention money and property. I show that Locke’s ‘Humean’ account of convention responds to a lacuna in Pufendorf’s treatment of linguistic convention that Lenz argues i…Read more
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89Book ReviewsD. D. Raphael, The Impartial Spectator: Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. 143. $35.00 .Leonidas Montes,. Adam Smith in Context: A Critical Reassessment of Some Central Components of His Thought. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pp. 186. $75.00 (review)Ethics 118 (3): 569-575. 2008.
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