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923Jackson’s classical model of meaningIn Ian Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson, Oxford University Press. 2009.Frank Jackson often writes as if his descriptivist account of public language meanings were just plain common sense. How else are we to explain how different speakers manage to communicate using a public language? And how else can we explain how individuals arrive at confident judgments about the reference of their words in hypothetical scenarios? Our aim in this paper is to show just how controversial the psychological assumptions behind in Jackson’s semantic theory really are. First, we explai…Read more
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491The big bad bug: What are the humean's chances?British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (3): 443-462. 1993.Humean supervenience is the doctrine that there are no necessary connections in the world. David Lewis identifies one big bad bug to the programme of providing Humean analyses for apparently non-Humean features of the world. The bug is chance. We put the bug under the microscope, and conclude that chance is no special problem for the Humean.
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477The world as one of a kind: Natural necessity and laws of natureBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (3): 371-388. 1992.
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442The reality of numbers: a physicalist's philosophy of mathematicsOxford University Press. 1988.Challenging the myth that mathematical objects can be defined into existence, Bigelow here employs Armstrong's metaphysical materialism to cast new light on mathematics. He identifies natural, real, and imaginary numbers and sets with specified physical properties and relations and, by so doing, draws mathematics back from its sterile, abstract exile into the midst of the physical world.
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371ForcesPhilosophy of Science 55 (4): 614-630. 1988.Traditionally, forces are causes of a special sort. Forces have been conceived to be the direct or immediate causes of things. Other sorts of causes act indirectly by producing forces which are transmitted in various ways to produce various effects. However, forces are supposed to act directly without the mediation of anything else. But forces, so conceived, appear to be occult. They are mysterious, because we have no clear conception of what they are, as opposed to what they are postulated to d…Read more
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217Re-acquaintance with qualiaAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 84 (3). 2006.Frank Jackson argued, in an astronomically frequently cited paper on 'Epiphenomenal qualia '[Jackson 1982 that materialism must be mistaken. His argument is called the knowledge argument. Over the years since he published that paper, he gradually came to the conviction that the conclusion of the knowledge argument must be mistaken. Yet he long remained totally unconvinced by any of the very numerous published attempts to explain where his knowledge argument had gone astray. Eventually, Jackson d…Read more
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201Time Travel FictionIn Gerhard Preyer & Frank Siebelt (eds.), Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David Lewis, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 57--91. 2001.
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191Presentism, and speaking of the deadPhilosophical Studies 160 (2): 253-263. 2012.Presentists standardly conform to the eternalist’s paradigm of treating all cases of property-exemplification as involving a single relation of instantiation. This, we argue, results in a much less parsimonious and philosophically explanatory picture than is possible if other alternatives are considered. We argue that by committing to primitive past and future tensed instantiation ties, presentists can make gains in both economy and explanatory power. We show how this metaphysical picture plays …Read more
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172Possible worlds foundations for probabilityJournal of Philosophical Logic 5 (3): 299--320. 1976.
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138A theory of structural universalsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 67 (1). 1989.This Article does not have an abstract
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125Scientific ellisianismIn Howard Sankey (ed.), Causation and Laws of Nature, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 45--59. 1999.
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108Believing in semanticsLinguistics and Philosophy 2 (1): 101--144. 1978.This paper concerns the semantics of belief-sentences. I pass over ontologically lavish theories which appeal to impossible worlds, or other points of reference which contain more than possible worlds. I then refute ontologically stingy, quotational theories. My own theory employs the techniques of possible worlds semantics to elaborate a Fregean analysis of belief-sentences. In a belief-sentence, the embedded clause does not have its usual reference, but refers rather to its own semantic struct…Read more
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100Metaphysics of causationErkenntnis 33 (1). 1990.The world contains not only causes and effects, but also causal relations holding between causes and effects. Because causal relations enter into the structure of the world, their presence has various modal and probabilistic consequences. Causation and “necessary and sufficient conditions” do often go hand in hand. Causation, however, is a robust ingredient within the world itself, whereas modalities and probabilities supervene on the nature of the world as a whole, and on the resulting relation…Read more
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89Science and necessityCambridge University Press. 1990.This book espouses an innovative theory of scientific realism in which due weight is given to mathematics and logic. The authors argue that mathematics can be understood realistically if it is seen to be the study of universals, of properties and relations, of patterns and structures, the kinds of things which can be in several places at once. Taking this kind of scientific platonism as their point of departure, they show how the theory of universals can account for probability, laws of nature, …Read more
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85How not to be muddled by a meddlesome muggletonianAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (4). 1997.Holton, we acknowledge, has given a good counter-example to a theory, and that theory is interesting and worth refuting. The theory we have in mind is like Smith's, but is more reductionist in spirit. It is a theory that ties value to Reason and to processes of reasoning, or inference - not to the recognition of reasons and acting on reasons. Such a theory overestimates the importance of logic, truth, inference, and thinking things through for yourself independently of any ideas about where you …Read more
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82An analysis of indefinite probability statementsSynthese 73 (2). 1987.An analysis of indefinite probability statements has been offered by Jackson and Pargetter (1973). We accept that this analysis will assign the correct probability values for indefinite probability claims. But it does so in a way which fails to reflect the epistemic state of a person who makes such a claim. We offer two alternative analyses: one employing de re (epistemic) probabilities, and the other employing de dicto (epistemic) probabilities. These two analyses appeal only to probabilities w…Read more
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66Believing in sentencesAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 58 (1). 1980.This Article does not have an abstract
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64The World EssenceDialogue 29 (2): 205-. 1990.Recently, Brian Ellis came up with a neat and novel idea about laws of nature, which at first I misunderstood. Then I participated, with Brian Ellis and Caroline Lierse, in writing a joint paper, “The World as One of a Kind: Natural Necessity and Laws of Nature” (Ellis, Bigelow and Lierse, forthcoming). In this paper, the Ellis idea was formulated in a different way from that in which I had originally interpreted it. Little weight was placed on possible worlds or individual essences. Much weight…Read more
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63Towards structural universalsAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (1). 1986.This Article does not have an abstract