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6Musical NotationErgo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 11. 2024.The main goal of this essay is to propose and make plausible a framework for developing a philosophical account of musical notation. The proposed framework countenances four elements of notation: symbols (abstract objects that collectively constitute the backbone of a ‘system’ of notation), their characteristic ‘forms’ (for example, shapes, understood abstractly), the concrete instances, or ‘engravings’, of those forms, and the meanings of the symbols. It is argued that these elements are distin…Read more
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134Discourse on a New Method: Reinvigorating the Marriage of History and Philosophy of Science (edited book)Open Court. 2010.Addressing a wide range of topics, from Newton to Post-Kuhnian philosophy of science, these essays critically examine themes that have been central to the influential work of philosopher Michael Friedman.
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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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10The Imago Dei and the Imago MundiIn Steve Donaldson & Ron Cole-Turner (eds.), Christian Perspectives on Transhumanism and the Church: Chips in the Brain, Immortality, and the World of Tomorrow, Springer Verlag. pp. 97-115. 2018.This chapter reflects on transhumanism from a Christian perspective, specifically with reference to the Biblical teaching that human beings are made in the “image” and “likeness” of God. It considers a version of that teaching that is seemingly as permissive as could be about “transhumanist technologies,” and concludes that even that version places significant limits on the pursuit and adoption of such technologies. Those limits are far more restrictive than the limits acknowledged by prominent …Read more
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120Intuition in MetaphysicsPhilosophical Topics 35 (1-2): 43-65. 2007.‘Seeing is believing’ perhaps means that some visual experience provides good evidence for some claims that go beyond the content of the experience. Intuition—intellectual ‘seeming’—does not provide similarly good evidence, at least not for metaphysical claims, or so I shall argue. In §2, I sketch the conception of ‘metaphysics’ that is in use here, a conception that leads naturally to a problem about what counts as evidence in metaphysics. Some have suggested that intuition counts. In §3 I rais…Read more
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6Review of Jeremy Butterfield and Constantine Pagonis: From Physics to Philosophy (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (2): 397-399. 2001.
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131Michael Dickson, Review of Quantum Non-Locality and Relativity: Metaphysical Intimations of Modern Physics by Tim Maudlin (review)Philosophy of Science 64 (3): 516-517. 1997.
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40Stapp's theorem without counterfactual commitments: Why it fails nonethelessStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 24 (5): 791-814. 1993.Stapp's attempt to derive Bell's Inequality from a weak locality condition while retaining indeterminism, requires careful scrutiny to ensure unambiguous definitions and valid reasoning. Such scrutiny reveals that the argument is fallacious. This result is obtained without commitment to any particular formal analysis of truth conditions for counterfactuals nor to conditions for world similarity.
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23Reply to H. Stapp's commentStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 25 (6): 965-966. 1994.
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Discourse on a new method, or a manifesto for a synthetic approach to history and philosophy of scienceIn 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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15Book ReviewMiklós Rédei and Michael Stölzner , John von Neumann and the Foundations of Physics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers , ix + 371 pp., $119.00 (review)Philosophy of Science 70 (4): 855-859. 2003.
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81Aspects of Probability in Quantum TheoryIn Claus Beisbart & Stephan Hartmann (eds.), Probabilities in Physics, Oxford University Press. pp. 171. 2011.
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73Wavefunction Tails in the Modal InterpretationPSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1994. 1994.I review the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics, some versions of which rely on the biorthonormal decomposition of a statevector to determine which properties are physically possessed. Some have suggested that these versions fail in the case of inaccurate measurements, i.e., when one takes tails of the wavefunction into account. I show that these versions of the modal interpretation are satisfactory in such cases. I further suggest that a more general result is possible, namely, that thes…Read more
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42Reconstruction and Reinvention in Quantum TheoryFoundations of Physics 45 (10): 1330-1340. 2015.I consider the fact that there are a number of interesting ways to ‘reconstruct’ quantum theory, and suggest that, very broadly speaking, a form of ‘instrumentalism’ makes good sense of the situation. This view runs against some common wisdom, which dismisses instrumentalism as ‘cheap’. In contrast, I consider how an instrumentalist might think about the reconstruction theorems, and, having made a distinction between ‘reconstructing’ quantum theory and ‘reinventing’ quantum theory, I suggest tha…Read more
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58Partha Ghose testing quantum mechanics on new groundBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (1): 207-209. 2001.
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21James T. Cushing, 1937–2002Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 33 (3): 601-603. 2002.
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86Quantum Logic Is Alive [Logical And] (It Is True [Logical Or] It Is False)Philosophy of Science 68 (S1). 2001.Is the quantum-logic interpretation dead? Its near total absence from current discussions about the interpretation of quantum theory suggests so. While mathematical work on quantum logic continues largely unabated, interest in the quantum-logic interpretation seems to be almost nil, at least in Anglo-American philosophy of physics. This paper has the immodest purpose of changing that fact. I shall argue that while the quantum-logic interpretation faces challenges, it remains a live option. The u…Read more
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20We consider an extension of signaling games to the case of prediction, where one agent perceives the current state of the world and sends a signal. The second agent perceives this signal, and makes a prediction about the next state of the world. We suggest that such games may be the basis of a model for the evolution of successful theorizing about the world.
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92The light at the end of the tunneling: Observation and underdeterminationPhilosophy of Science 66 (3): 58. 1999.If observation is 'theory-laden', how can there be 'observationally equivalent theories'? How can the observations 'laden' by one theory be 'the same as' those 'laden' by another? The answer might lie in the expressibility of observationally equivalent theories in a common mathematical formalism
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21Quantum Logic Is Alive ∧Philosophy of Science 68 (3): 274-287. 2001.Is the quantum-logic interpretation dead? Its near total absence from current discussions about the interpretation of quantum theory suggests so. While mathematical work on quantum logic continues largely unabated, interest in the quantum-logic interpretation seems to be almost nil, at least in Anglo-American philosophy of physics. This paper has the immodest purpose of changing that fact. I shall argue that while the quantum-logic interpretation faces challenges, it remains a live option. The u…Read more
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49From physics to philosophy Jeremy Butterfield, Constantine PagonisBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (2): 397-399. 2001.
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92Antidote or Theory?Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 27 (2): 229-238. 1996.
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14Review of Partha Ghose: Testing Quantum Mechanics on New Ground (review)British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52 (1): 207-209. 2001.
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125Review of Tomasz F. Bigaj, Non-Locality and Possible Worlds: A Counterfactual Perspective on Quantum Entanglement (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2007 (7). 2007.
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27Quantum dialogue: The making of a revolution - Mara beller; the university of chicago press, chicago, 1999, XV + 365 pp., US $35.00, ISBN 0-226-04181- (review)Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 33 (3): 565-569. 2002.
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50Logical foundations for modal interpretations of quantum mechanicsPhilosophy of Science 63 (3): 329. 1996.This paper proposes a logic, motivated by modal interpretations, in which every quantum mechanics propositions has a truth-value. This logic is completely classical, hence violates the conditions of the Kochen-Specker theorem. It is shown how the violation occurs, and it is argued that this violation is a natural and acceptable consequence of modal interpretations. It is shown that despite its classicality, the proposed logic is empirically indistinguishable from quantum logic
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147A view from nowhere: quantum reference frames and uncertaintyStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35 (2): 195-220. 2004.
Columbia, South Carolina, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Music |
Aesthetic Representation |
Areas of Interest
Medieval Philosophy: Topics |