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Realism, Relativism, Pluralism: Themes in Paul Feyerabend's Model for the Acquisition of KnowledgeDissertation, University of Oxford (United Kingdom). 1987.Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;My aim has been to present an abstract model for the acquisition of knowledge, to develop its consequences, and to compare these consequences with science$\sp1$. ;My intention has been to take this remark seriously. I hope to demonstrate that the papers which Feyerabend wrote between 1955 and the mid-1960's can most profitably be understood as a contribution to this project. The first three chapters lay the groundw…Read more
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1Knowledge, Science and Relativism. Philosophical Papers, Volume 3Philosophy 76 (295): 158-161. 2001.
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Jack Copeland, "Artifical Intelligence" (review)International Journal of Philosophical Studies 3 (2): 355. 1995.
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Clark, A. and Millican, P.(eds.)-The Legacy of Alan Turing, vols. I and IIPhilosophical Books 39 193-195. 1998.
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For and Against Method, including Lakatos' Lectures on Scientific Method, and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence. By Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend (review)The European Legacy 7 (2): 258-258. 2002.
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Wittgenstein and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind. Edited by Severin SchroederThe European Legacy 9 (1): 124-124. 2004.
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22What Are Computers (If They're not Thinking Things)?In S. Barry Cooper (ed.), How the World Computes, . pp. 609--615. 2012.
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3Methodology, Epistemology and Conventions: Popper's Bad StartPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994. 1994.Popper's conception of methodology and its relationship to epistemology is examined, and found wanting. Popper argues that positivist criteria of demarcation fail because they are attempts to discover a difference in the natures of empirical science and metaphysics. His alternative to naturalism is that a plausible criterion of demarcation is a proposal for an agreement, or convention. But this conventionalism about methodology is misplaced. Methodological rules are conventions, but which method…Read more
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23Introduction: a new Mach for a new millenniumIn J. Preston (ed.), Interpreting Ernst Mach: Critical Essays. 2020.
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39Phenomenalism, or neutral monism, in Mach’s analysis of sensations?In J. Preston (ed.), Interpreting Ernst Mach: Critical Essays. 2020.I set out the factors which tempt people into reading Ernst Mach's book The Analysis of Sensations as putting forward either a version of phenomenalism or a version of neutral monism, and then assess the strengths and weaknesses of these two readings. I present an ‘internal’ view of that text, showing that it by no means mandates the phenomenalist reading, and that a case for something more like the neutral monist reading can be made from within that book, indeed largely from within its famous f…Read more
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44Explication, description and enlightenmentHistory of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 22 106-120. 2019.Rudolf Carnap introduced and endorsed a philosophical methodology which he called the method of ‘explication’. P.F. Strawson took issue with this methodology, but it is currently undergoing a revival. In a series of articles, Patrick Maher has recently argued that explication is an appropriate method for ‘formal epistemology’, has defended it against Strawson’s objection, and has himself put it to work in the philosophy of science in further clarification of the very concepts on which Carnap ori…Read more
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1In Science, Faith and Society, Michael Polanyi speaks about various ‘interpretations of nature’. I discuss the items that he has in mind, identify two of his major theses about them, and investigate the extent to which he treated science as resting on different ‘ultimate suppositions’ at different times in its history.I then consider what he says about how to decide between science and rival ‘interpretations of nature’, arguing that the idea of such a choice or decision is dubious, and that ther…Read more
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6Thought and LanguageCambridge University Press. 1998.The relationship between thought and language has been of central importance to philosophy ever since Plato characterised thinking as 'a dialogue the soul has with itself'. In this volume, several major twentieth-century philosophers of mind and language make further contributions to the debate. Among the questions addressed are: is language conceptually prior to thought, or vice versa? Must thought take place 'in' a medium? To what extent can creatures without language be credited with thoughts…Read more
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7Competence Based Education and Training (CBET) and the End of Human Learning: The Existential Threat of CompetencyImprint: Palgrave Macmillan. 2017.This book radically counters the optimism sparked by Competence Based Education and Training, an educational philosophy that has re-emerged in Schooling, Vocational and Higher Education in the last decade. CBET supposedly offers a new type of learning that will lead to skilled employment; here, Preston instead presents the competency movement as one which makes the concept of human learning redundant. Starting with its origins in Taylorism, the slaughterhouse and radical behaviourism, the book c…Read more
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18FeyerabendIn W. Newton-Smith (ed.), A companion to the philosophy of science, Blackwell. 2000.Paul K. Feyerabend (1924–94) was an imaginative maverick philosopher of science, a critic of positivism, as well as, more recently, falsificationism, philosophy of science itself, and of “rationalist” attempts to lay down or discover rules of scientific method.
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4Wittgenstein and Reason (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2008.This volume discusses Wittgenstein’s work, as well as his oeuvre in general, and its implications for the nature of reason. Investigates the nature of reason which has always been a topic at the very heart of Western philosophy Analyses how Wittgenstein raised crucial questions about the subject - most notably in his critique of Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, his discussions of various philosophical aspects of religion, and the famous ‘rule-following considerations’ from his _Philosophical Investigati…Read more
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15Many commentators agree that Wittgenstein took the idea that propositions are Bilder, or at least the terminology of Bilder, from Heinrich Hertz, or from Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann. Boltzmann, the great Viennese theoretical physicist, was the founder of statistical thermodynamics, the modern theory of heat. The context within which Hertz and Boltzmann worked was one in which many prominent theoretical physicists accepted the Kantian restriction that our thought cannot access 'things in themselve…Read more
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14The Worst Enemy of Science?: Essays in Memory of Paul Feyerabend (edited book)Oup Usa. 2000.This stimulating collection is devoted to the life and work of the most flamboyant of twentieth-century philosophers, Paul Feyerabend. Feyerabend's radical epistemological claims, and his stunning argument that there is no such thing as scientific method, were highly influential during his life and have only gained attention since his death in 1994. The essays that make up this volume, written by some of today's most respected philosophers of science, many of whom knew Feyerabend as students and…Read more
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5I summarise certain aspects of Paul Feyerabend’s account of the development of Western rationalism, show the ways in which that account is supposed to run up against an alternative, that of Karl Popper, and then try to give a preliminary comparison of the two. My interest is primarily in whether what Feyerabend called his ‘story’ constitutes a possible history of our epistemic concepts and their trajectory. I express some grave reservations about that story, and about Feyerabend’s framework, fin…Read more
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84The idea of a pseudo-problem in Mach, Hertz, and BoltzmannJournal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 54 (1): 55-77. 2023.Identifications, diagnoses, and treatments of pseudo-problems form a family of classic methodologies in later nineteenth century philosophy and at least partly, as I shall argue, in the philosophy of science. They were devised, not by academic philosophers, but by three of the greatest of the philosopher-scientists. (Later, the idea was taken up by academic philosophers, of course. But I will not discuss that development). Here I show how Ernst Mach, Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann each depl…Read more
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23The Instrument of Science: Scientific Anti-realism Revitalised, by Darrell P. RowbottomMind 130 (519): 1028-1032. 2021.The Instrument of Science: Scientific Anti-realism Revitalised, by RowbottomDarrell P.. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. Pp. 216.
Areas of Interest
Epistemology |
Metaphilosophy |
Philosophy of Social Science |
Philosophy of Physical Science |