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1303Are psychiatric kinds real?European Journal of Analytic Philosophy 6 (1): 11-27. 2010.The paper considers whether psychiatric kinds can be natural kinds and concludes that they can. This depends, however, on a particular conception of ‘natural kind’. We briefly describe and reject two standard accounts – what we call the ‘stipulative account’ (according to which apparently a priori criteria, such as the possession of intrinsic essences, are laid down for natural kindhood) and the ‘Kripkean account’ (according to which the natural kinds are just those kinds that obey Kripkean sema…Read more
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1285Causing and NothingnessIn L. A. Paul, E. J. Hall & J. Collins (eds.), Causation and Counterfactuals, Mit Press. pp. 291--308. 2004.
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1217Transfer of warrant, begging the question, and semantic externalismPhilosophical Quarterly 51 (204): 356-74. 2001.
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1147Hume’s Two Definitions: The Procedural InterpretationHume Studies 37 (2): 243-274. 2011.Hume's two definitions of causation have caused an extraordinary amount of controversy. The starting point for the controversy is the fact, well known to most philosophy undergraduates, that the two definitions aren't even extensionally equivalent, let alone semantically equivalent. So how can they both be definitions? One response to this problem has been to argue that Hume intends only the first as a genuine definition—an interpretation that delivers a straightforward regularity interpretation…Read more
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922Humean compatibilismMind 111 (442): 201-223. 2002.Humean compatibilism is the combination of a Humean position on laws of nature and the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. This article's aim is to situate Humean compatibilism in the current debate among libertarians, traditional compatibilists, and semicompatibilists about free will. We argue that a Humean about laws can hold that there is a sense in which the laws of nature are 'up to us' and hence that the leading style of argument for incompatibilism?the consequence argume…Read more
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916Does Anything Hold the Universe Together?Synthese 149 (3): 509-533. 2006.According to ‘regularity theories’ of causation, the obtaining of causal relations depends on no more than the obtaining of certain kinds of regularity. Regularity theorists are thus anti-realists about necessary connections in nature. Regularity theories of one form or another have constituted the dominant view in analytic Philosophy for a long time, but have recently come in for some robust criticism, notably from Galen Strawson. Strawson’s criticisms are natural criticisms to make, but have n…Read more
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737Necessary Connections and the Problem of InductionNoûs 45 (3): 504-527. 2011.In this paper Beebee argues that the problem of induction, which she describes as a genuine sceptical problem, is the same for Humeans than for Necessitarians. Neither scientific essentialists nor Armstrong can solve the problem of induction by appealing to IBE, for both arguments take an illicit inductive step.
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626Hume on causation : the projectivist interpretationIn Huw Price & Richard Corry (eds.), Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited, Oxford University Press. 2006.
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604The Non-Governing Conception of Laws of NaturePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (3): 571-594. 2000.Recently several thought experiments have been developed (by John Carroll amongst others) which have been alleged to refute the Ramsey-Lewis view of laws of nature. The paper aims to show that two such thought experiments fail to establish that the Ramsey-Lewis view is false, since they presuppose a conception of laws of nature that is radically at odds with the Humean conception of laws embodied by the Ramsey-Lewis view. In particular, the thought experiments presuppose that laws of nature gove…Read more
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595Reply to Huemer on the consequence argumentPhilosophical Review 111 (2): 235-241. 2002.In a recent paper, Michael Huemer provides a new interpretation for ‘N’, the operator that occurs in Peter van Inwagen’s Consequence Argument, and argues that, given that interpretation, the Consequence Argument is sound. I have no quarrel with Huemer’s claim that the Consequence Argument is valid. I shall argue instead that his defense of its premises—a defense that allegedly involves refuting David Lewis’s response to van Inwagen—is unsuccessful.
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590Probability as a guide to lifeIn David Papineau (ed.), The Roots of Reason, Oxford University Press. pp. 217-243. 2003.
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551The Two Definitions and the Doctrine of NecessityProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (1pt3): 413-431. 2007.
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539Causation and ObservationIn Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Peter Menzies (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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529Women and Deviance in PhilosophyIn K. Hutchison & F. Jenkins (eds.), Women in Philosophy: What Needs to Change?, Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 61--80. 2013.
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508Contingent laws rule: reply to BirdAnalysis 62 (3): 252-255. 2002.In a recent paper (Bird 2001), Alexander Bird argues that the law that common salt dissolves in water is metaphysically necessary - and he does so without presupposing dispositionalism about properties. If his argument were sound, it would thus show that at least one law of nature is meta- physically necessary, and it would do so without illicitly presupposing a position (dispositionalism) that is already committed to a necessitarian view of laws. I shall argue that Bird's argument is unsu…Read more
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465Seeing causingProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103 (3): 257-280. 2003.Singularists about causation often claim that we can have experiences as of causation. This paper argues that regularity theorists need not deny that claim; hence the possibility of causal experience is no objection to regularity theories of causation. The fact that, according to a regularity theorist, causal experience requires background theory does not provide grounds for denying that it is genuine experience. The regularity theorist need not even deny that non-inferential perceptual knowledg…Read more
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398Hume on CausationRoutledge. 2006.Hume is traditionally credited with inventing the ‘regularity theory’ of causation, according to which the causal relation between two events consists merely in the fact that events of the first kind are always followed by events of the second kind. Hume is also traditionally credited with two other, hugely influential positions: the view that the world appears to us as a world of unconnected events, and inductive scepticism: the view that the ‘problem of induction’, the problem of providing a j…Read more
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397Causation and necessary connectionIn Alan Bailey & Dan O'Brien (eds.), The Continuum Companion to Hume, Continuum. pp. 131. 2012.
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319The Presidential Address: Philosophical Scepticism and the Aims of PhilosophyProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 118 (1): 1-24. 2018.
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281The Oxford Handbook of Causation (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2009.Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of the will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how causal claims can be inferred from statistical data, and how causation is related to perception, knowledge and explanation. In the philosophy of mind, philosophers want to know whether and how the mind can be said to have causal efficacy, and in et…Read more
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239On the abuse of the necessary a posterioriIn Helen Beebee & Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (eds.), The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds, Routledge. pp. 159--79. 2010.
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230Causal Selection and EgalitarianismIn Shaun Nichols & Joshua Knobe (eds.), Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Volume 5, Oxford University Press. 2024.The chapter explores whether, or to what extent, recent work in experimental philosophy puts pressure on the idea that the concept of causation is ‘egalitarian’. Causal selection – where experimental subjects tend to rate the causal strength of (for example) a norm-violator more strongly than a non-norm-violator – is a well established phenomenon, and is in prima facie tension with an egalitarian conception of causation; it also, indirectly, puts prima facie pressure on the idea that causation i…Read more
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215Free will sans metaphysics?: Mark Balaguer: Free will as an open scientific problem. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010, 202pp, $35.00Metascience 21 (1): 77-81. 2011.Free will sans metaphysics? Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9525-5 Authors Helen Beebee, Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.
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196Review: Ellis, Scientific essentialism; The Philosophy of Nature (review)Mind 113 (450): 334-340. 2004.
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