•  350
    Nailed to Hume's cross?
    In Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne & Dean W. Zimmerman (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics, Blackwell. pp. 67--81. 2008.
    Some scientists try to discover and report laws of nature. And, they do so with success. There are many principles that were for a long time thought to be laws that turned out to be useful approximations, like Newton’s gravitational principle. There are others that were thought to be laws and still are considered laws, like Einstein’s principle that no signals travel faster than light. Laws of nature are not just important to scientists. They are also of great interest to us philosophers, though…Read more
  •  207
    Counterfactuals all the way down? Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9437-9 Authors Jim Woodward, History and Philosophy of Science, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Barry Loewer, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA John W. Carroll, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8103, USA Marc Lange, Department of Philosophy, University of Nor…Read more
  •  67
    Boundary in context
    Acta Analytica 20 (1): 43-54. 2005.
    A contextualist account of modal assertions is sketched that makes their truth sensitive to the presuppositions of the conversation. Support for the account is mustered by considering its application to the context-sensitivity of assertions of subjunctive conditional sentences, explanation sentences, and knowledge sentences.
  •  57
    Time Travel, Double Occupancy, and The Cheshire Cat
    with Daniel Ellis and Brandon Moore
    Philosophia 45 (2): 541-549. 2017.
    The possibility of continuous backwards time travel—time travel for which the traveler follows a continuous path through space between departure and arrival—gives rise to the double-occupancy problem. The trouble is that the time traveler seems bound to have to travel through his or her younger self as the trip begins. Dowe and Le Poidevin agree that this problem is solved by putting the traveler in motion for a gradual trip to the past. Le Poidevin goes on to argue, however, that the gradual tr…Read more
  •  223
    Self Visitation, Traveler Time, and Compatible Properties
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (3): 359-370. 2011.
    Ted Sider aptly and concisely states the self-visitation paradox thus: 'Suppose I travel back in time and stand in a room with my sitting 10-year-old self. I seem to be both sitting and standing, but how can that be?' (2001, 101). I will explore a relativist resolution of this paradox offered by, or on behalf of, endurantists.1 It maintains that the sitting and the standing are relative to the personal time or proper time of the time traveler and is intended to yield the result that Ted is sitti…Read more
  •  87
    Context, conditionals, fatalism, time travel, and freedom
    In Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & Harry Silverstein (eds.), Time and Identity, Mit Press. pp. 79. 2010.
    This chapter illustrates a theory that describes how certain modal statements, including counterfactual sentences, are dependent on context. Building on the work of Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis, its application to a familiar argument for fatalism and a recent exchange about time-traveler freedom between Kadri Vihvelin and Ted Sider is considered. This chapter presents a new perspective on the flaws and the seductiveness of both the fatalist argument and the freedom paradox. This new perspect…Read more
  •  2
    Variety of genotypes in males diagnosed as dichromatic on a conventional clinical anomaloscope
    with M. Neitz, A. Renner, H. Knau, J. S. Werner, and J. Neitz
    The hypothesis that dichromatic behavior on a clinical anomaloscope can be explained by the complement and arrangement of the long- and middle-wavelength pigment genes was tested. It was predicted that dichromacy is associated with an X-chromosome pigment gene array capable of producing only a single functional pigment type. The simplest case of this is when deletion has left only a single X-chromosome pigment gene. The production of a single L or M pigment type can also result from rearrangemen…Read more
  • Preparing for Law's Good Order
    Vera Lex 3 (1/2): 39-62. 2002.