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629Causation as a secondary qualityBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (2): 187-203. 1993.In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents.1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical approach to causation, often called the manipulability theory. In the interests of brevity and accuracy, we prefer to call it the agency theory.2 Thus the central thesis of an agency account of causation is something like this: an event A is a cause of a distinct event B…Read more
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614Facts and the function of truthBlackwell. 1988.Many areas of philosophy employ a distinction between factual and non-factual (descriptive/non-descriptive, cognitive/non-cognitive, etc) uses of language. This book examines the various ways in which this distinction is normally drawn, argues that all are unsatisfactory, and suggests that the search for a sharp distinction is misconceived. The book develops an alternative approach, based on a novel theory of the function and origins of the concept of truth. The central hypothesis is that the ma…Read more
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596Arntzenius on ‘Why ain’cha rich?’Erkenntnis 77 (1): 15-30. 2012.The best-known argument for Evidential Decision Theory (EDT) is the ‘Why ain’cha rich?’ challenge to rival Causal Decision Theory (CDT). The basis for this challenge is that in Newcomb-like situations, acts that conform to EDT may be known in advance to have the better return than acts that conform to CDT. Frank Arntzenius has recently proposed an ingenious counter argument, based on an example in which, he claims, it is predictable in advance that acts that conform to EDT will do less well than…Read more
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580Global expressivism and alethic pluralismSynthese 200 (5): 1-55. 2022.This paper discusses the relation between Crispin Wright’s alethic pluralism and my global expressivism. I argue that on many topics Wright’s own view counts as expressivism in my sense, but that truth itself is a striking exception. Unlike me, Wright never seems to countenance an expressivist account of truth, though the materials needed are available to him in his approaches to other topics.
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565The time-asymmetry of causationIn Helen Beebee, Peter Menzies & Christopher Hitchcock (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press. pp. 414-443. 2008.One of the most striking features of causation is that causes typically precede their effects – the causal arrow is strongly aligned with the temporal arrow. Why should this be so? We offer an opinionated guide to this problem, and to the solutions currently on offer. We conclude that the most promising strategy is to begin with the de facto asymmetry of human deliberation, characterised in epistemic terms, and to build out from there. More than any rival, this subjectivist approach promises to …Read more
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563"Click!" Bait for CausalistsIn Arif Ahmed (ed.), Newcomb's Problem, Cambridge University Press. pp. 160-179. 2018.Causalists and Evidentialists can agree about the right course of action in an (apparent) Newcomb problem, if the causal facts are not as initially they seem. If declining $1,000 causes the Predictor to have placed $1m in the opaque box, CDT agrees with EDT that one-boxing is rational. This creates a difficulty for Causalists. We explain the problem with reference to Dummett's work on backward causation and Lewis's on chance and crystal balls. We show that the possibility that the causal facts …Read more
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555In a famous paper in Noûs in 1979, John Perry points out that action depends on indexical beliefs. In addition to “third-person” information about her environment, an agent need “first-person” information about where, when and who she is. This conclusion is widely interpreted as a reason for thinking that tensed claims cannot be translated without loss into untensed language; but not as a reason for realism about tensed facts. In another famous paper in the same volume of Noûs, Nancy Cartwright a…Read more
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541Causation, Intervention and Agency—Woodward on Menzies and PriceIn Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Huw Price (eds.), Making a Difference, . pp. 73-98. 2017.In his influential book 'Making Things Happen' and in other places, Jim Woodward has noted some affinities between his own account of causation and that of Menzies and Price, but argued that the latter view is implausibly ‘subjective’. In this piece I discuss Woodward’s criticisms. I argue that the Menzies and Price view is not as different from Woodward’s own account as he believes, and that in so far as it is different, it has some advantages whose importance Woodward misses; but also that the…Read more
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499Ramsey and Joyce on Deliberation and PredictionSynthese 197 4365-4386. 2020.Can an agent deliberating about an action A hold a meaningful credence that she will do A? 'No', say some authors, for 'Deliberation Crowds Out Prediction' (DCOP). Others disagree, but we argue here that such disagreements are often terminological. We explain why DCOP holds in a Ramseyian operationalist model of credence, but show that it is trivial to extend this model so that DCOP fails. We then discuss a model due to Joyce, and show that Joyce's rejection of DCOP rests on terminological choic…Read more
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487Heart of DARCnessAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (1): 136-150. 2019.There is a long-standing disagreement in the philosophy of probability and Bayesian decision theory about whether an agent can hold a meaningful credence about an upcoming action, while she deliberates about what to do. Can she believe that it is, say, 70% probable that she will do A, while she chooses whether to do A? No, say some philosophers, for Deliberation Crowds Out Prediction (DCOP), but others disagree. In this paper, we propose a valid core for DCOP, and identify terminological causes …Read more
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440Toy Models for RetrocausalityStudies in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39 (4): 752-761. 2008.A number of writers have been attracted to the idea that some of the peculiarities of quantum theory might be manifestations of 'backward' or 'retro' causality, underlying the quantum description. This idea has been explored in the literature in two main ways: firstly in a variety of explicit models of quantum systems, and secondly at a conceptual level. This note introduces a third approach, intended to complement the other two. It describes a simple toy model, which, under a natural interpreta…Read more
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429Metaphysics after Carnap : the ghost who walks?In David Chalmers, David Manley & Ryan Wasserman (eds.), Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, Oxford University Press. pp. 320--46. 2007.To appear in David Chalmers, Ryan Wasserman and David Manley, eds., Metametaphysics (OUP, 2009).
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394What Makes Time Special?Philosophical Review 128 (2): 250-254. 2019.This is my review of Craig Callender's book What Makes Time Special?
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365Truth as convenient frictionJournal of Philosophy 100 (4): 167--190. 2003.In a recent paper, Richard Rorty begins by telling us why pragmatists such as himself are inclined to identify truth with justification: ‘Pragmatists think that if something makes no difference to practice, it should make no difference to philosophy. This conviction makes them suspicious of the distinction between justification and truth, for that distinction makes no difference to my decisions about what to do.’ (1995, p. 19) Rorty goes on to discuss the claim, defended by Crispin Wright, that …Read more
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365Pragmatism, quasi-realism, and the global challengeIn Cheryl Misak (ed.), New pragmatists, Oxford University Press. pp. 91-121. 2007.William James said that sometimes detailed philosophical argument is irrelevant. Once a current of thought is really under way, trying to oppose it with argument is like planting a stick in a river to try to alter its course: “round your obstacle flows the water and ‘gets there just the same’”. He thought pragmatism was such a river. There is a contemporary river that sometimes calls itself pragmatism, although other titles are probably better. At any rate it is the denial of differences, the ce…Read more
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351New Slant on the EPR-Bell ExperimentBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (2): 297-324. 2013.The best case for thinking that quantum mechanics is nonlocal rests on Bell's Theorem, and later results of the same kind. However, the correlations characteristic of Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR)–Bell (EPRB) experiments also arise in familiar cases elsewhere in quantum mechanics (QM), where the two measurements involved are timelike rather than spacelike separated; and in which the correlations are usually assumed to have a local causal explanation, requiring no action-at-a-distance (AAD). It i…Read more
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340The Flow of TimeIn Craig Callender (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Time, Oxford University Press. 2009.I distinguish three views, a defence of any one of which would go some way towards vindicating the view that there is something objective about the passage of time: the view that the present moment is objectively distinguished; the view that time has an objective direction – that it is an objective matter which of two non-simultaneous events is the earlier and which the later; the view that there is something objectively dynamic, flux-like, or "flow-like" about time. I argue that each of these vie…Read more
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329Gibbard on Quasi-realism and Global ExpressivismTopoi 42 (3): 683-697. 2023.In recent work Allan Gibbard claims to be both a local quasi-realist, in Blackburn’s sense, and a global expressivist. His local quasi-realism rests on an argument that for naturalistic discourse but not ethical discourse, the semantic relation of denotation and the causal relation of tracking can and should be identified; that denoting simply is tracking, for naturalistic vocabulary. I argue that Gibbard’s case for this conclusion is unconvincing, and poorly motivated by his own expressivist st…Read more
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320Naturalism without representationalismIn Mario De Caro & David Macarthur (eds.), Naturalism in question, Harvard University Press. pp. 71--88. 2004.
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309Boltzmann’s Time BombBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (1): 83-119. 2002.Since the late nineteenth century, physics has been puzzled by the time-asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena in the light of the apparent T-symmetry of the underlying laws of mechanics. However, a compelling solution to this puzzle has proved elusive. In part, I argue, this can be attributed to a failure to distinguish two conceptions of the problem. According to one, the main focus of our attention is a time-asymmetric lawlike generalisation. According to the other, it is a particular fact abou…Read more
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308Mind and WorldPhilosophical Books 38 (3): 169-181. 1994.How do rational minds make contact with the world? The empiricist tradition sees a gap between mind and world, and takes sensory experience, fallible as it is, to provide our only bridge across that gap. In its crudest form, for example, the traditional idea is that our minds consult an inner realm of sensory experience, which provides us with evidence about the nature of external reality. Notoriously, however, it turns out to be far from clear that there is any viable conception of experience w…Read more
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293Naturalism Without MirrorsOup Usa. 2011.This volume brings together fourteen major essays by one of contemporary philosophy's most challenging thinkers. Huw Price links themes from Quine, Carnap, Wittgenstein and Rorty, to craft a powerful critique of contemporary naturalistic metaphysics. He offers a new positive program for philosophy, cast from a pragmatist mould.
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291This is an unpublished piece from July 1998. It discusses the use of semantic notions such as reference in the Canberra Plan, the question whether this use creates a problematic circularity if the Canberra Plan is applied to the semantic notions themselves, and the relation of this question to Putnam’s model-theoretic argument. I used some of the ideas in later papers such as (Price 2004, 2009) and (Menzies & Price, 2009), but the bulk of discussion of the relation of my concern to Putnam’s argu…Read more
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290The Practical ArrowAustralasian Philosophical Review. forthcoming.Ismael traces our sense that the past is fixed and the future open to what she calls ‘the practical arrow’ – ‘the sense that we can affect the future but not the past.’ In this piece I draw a sharper distinction than Ismael herself does between agents and mere observers, even self-referential observers; and I use it to argue that Ismael’s explanation of the practical arrow is incomplete. To explain our inability to affect the past we need to appeal to our own temporal orientation as agents, and …Read more
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275Carnap, Quine and the Fate of MetaphysicsElectronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 5 (1). 1997.[1] Imagine a well-trained mid-century American philosopher, caught in a rare traffic jam on the New Jersey Turnpike one warm summer afternoon in the early 1950s. He dozes in his warm car ... and awakes in the same spot on a chill Fall evening in the late 1990s, remembering nothing of the intervening years. It is as if he has been asleep at the wheel for almost half a century!
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272Review of Zalabardo, Pragmatist Semantics (OUP, 2023) (review)Mind. forthcoming.This is a review of Zalabardo's Pragmatist Semantics (OUP, 2023), forthcoming in Mind.
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271Reinterpreting the Wheeler—Feynman Absorber Theory: Reply to LeedsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (4): 1023-1028. 1994.