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30Machine agency and representationAI and Society 39 (1): 345-352. 2024.Theories of action tend to require agents to have mental representations. A common trope in discussions of artificial intelligence (AI) is that they do not, and so cannot be agents. Properly understood there may be something to the requirement, but the trope is badly misguided. Here we provide an account of representation for AI that is sufficient to underwrite attributions to these systems of ownership, action, and responsibility. Existing accounts of mental representation tend to be too demand…Read more
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16Empiricism and Natural PhilosophyProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. forthcoming.
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23The Information-Theoretic Account of Knowledge, Closure and the KK ThesisDisputatio 14 (65): 105-132. 2022.One common objection to Dretske’s Information Theoretic Account of Knowledge (ITAK) is that it violates closure. I show that it does not, and that extant arguments attempting to establish that it does rely instead on the KK thesis. That thesis does fail for ITAK. I show moreover that an interesting consequence of ITAK obeying the closure principle after all is that on this view if skepticism is false, we can have a great deal of empirical knowledge, but it is in principle impossible to know that…Read more
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17Information and Experimental KnowledgeUniversity of Chicago Press. 2021.An ambitious new model of experimentation that will reorient our understanding of the key features of experimental practice. What is experimental knowledge, and how do we get it? While there is general agreement that experiment is a crucial source of scientific knowledge, how experiment generates that knowledge is far more contentious. In this book, philosopher of science James Mattingly explains how experiments function. Specifically, he discusses what it is about experimental practice that tra…Read more
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191Classical fields and quantum time-evolution in the Aharonov–Bohm effectStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (4): 888-905. 2007.
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1Semiclassical Gravitation Theory: Why Transitional Scientific Theories Are TheoriesDissertation, Indiana University. 2002.The foundations of quantum gravity are considered. A challenge is made to the assumption that the gravitational field is quantized. The semiclassical theory of gravity, particularly its relation to classical general relativity, is examined. The status of energy conditions in classical and semiclassical gravity is assessed. It is concluded that, as currently understood, the energy conditions required for proving singularity theorems do not hold. General issues in the philosophy of science are rai…Read more
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129Projectible predicates in analogue and simulated systemsSynthese 169 (3). 2009.We investigate the relationship between two approaches to modeling physical systems. On the first approach, simplifying assumptions are made about the level of detail we choose to represent in a computational simulation with an eye toward tractability. On the second approach simpler, analogue physical systems are considered that have more or less well-defined connections to systems of interest that are themselves too difficult to probe experimentally. Our interest here is in the connections betw…Read more
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The paracletes of quantum gravityIn Michael Friedman, Mary Domski & Michael Dickson (eds.), Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science, Open Court. 2010.
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24Emergence of spacetime in stochastic gravityStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 44 (3): 329-337. 2013.I focus on the stochastic gravity program, a program that conceptualizes spacetime as the hydrodynamic limit of the correlation hierarchy of an underlying quantum theory, that is, a theory of the microscopic theory of gravity. This approach is relatively obscure, and so I begin by outlining the stochastic gravity program in enough detail to make clear the basic sense in which, on this approach, spacetime emerges from more fundamental physical structures. The theory, insofar as it is a univocal t…Read more
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22The Replication of Hertz's Cathode Ray ExperimentsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 32 (1): 53-75. 2001.I reappraise in detail Hertz's cathode ray experiments. I show that, contrary to Buchwald 's evaluation, the core experiment establishing the electrostatic properties of the rays was successfully replicated by Perrin and Thomson. Buchwald 's discussion of 'current purification' is shown to be a red herring. My investigation of the origin of Buchwald 's misinterpretation of this episode reveals that he was led astray by a focus on what Hertz 'could do'-his experimental resources. I argue that one…Read more
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17Reply to BuchwaldStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 32 (1): 81-82. 2001.
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31Unprincipled microgravityStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 46 (2): 179-185. 2014.I argue that the key principle of microgravity is what I have called elsewhere the Lorentzian strategy. This strategy may be seen as either a reverse-engineering approach or a descent with modification approach, but however one sees if the method works neither by attempting to propound a theory that is the quantum version of either an extant or generalized gravitation theory nor by attempting to propound a theory that is the final version of quantum mechanics and finding gravity within it. Inste…Read more
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121. From the New Editor From the New Editor (p. iii)Philosophy of Science 72 (2): 334-341. 2005.Since the fundamental challenge that I laid at the doorstep of the pluralists was to defend, with nonderivative models, a strong notion of genic cause, it is fatal that Waters has failed to meet that challenge. Waters agrees with me that there is only a single cause operating in these models, but he argues for a notion of causal ‘parsing’ to sustain the viability of some form of pluralism. Waters and his colleagues have some very interesting and important ideas about the sciences, involving plur…Read more
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68Singularities and scalar fields: Matter theory and general relativityProceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2001 (3). 2001.Philosophers of physics should be more attentive to the role energy conditions play in General Relativity. I review the changing status of energy conditions for quantum fields-presently there are no singularity theorems for semiclassical General Relativity. So we must reevaluate how we understand the relationship between General Relativity, Quantum Field Theory, and singularities. Moreover, on our present understanding of what it is to be a physically reasonable field, the standard energy condit…Read more
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67Which gauge matters?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 37 (2): 243-262. 2006.
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81The Structure of Scientific Theory Change: Models versus Privileged FormulationsPhilosophy of Science 72 (2): 365-389. 2005.Two views of scientific theories dominated the philosophy of science during the twentieth century, the syntactic view of the logical empiricists and the semantic view of their successors. I show that neither view is adequate to provide a proper understanding of the connections that exist between theories at different times. I outline a new approach, a hybrid of the two, that provides the right structural connection between earlier and later theories, and that takes due account of the importance …Read more