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126Is semantics in the plan?In David Braddon-Mitchell & Robert Nola (eds.), Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism, Bradford. pp. 159--82. 2008.The so-called Canberra Plan is a grandchild of the Ramsey-Carnap treatment of theoretical terms. In its original form, the Ramsey-Carnap approach provided a method for analysing the meaning of scientific terms, such as “electron”, “gene” and “quark”—terms whose meanings could plausibly be delineated by their roles within scientific theories. But in the hands of David Lewis (1970, 1972), the original approach begat a more ambitious descendant, generalised and extended in two distinct ways: first,…Read more
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25Call for Papers for'SORITES'SORITES is a new refereed all-English electronic international quarterly of analytical philosophyAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 73 (2). 1995.
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2099My brain made me do it: The exclusion argument against free will, and what’s wrong with itIn Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Huw Price (eds.), Making a Difference: Essays on the Philosophy of Causation, Oxford University Press. 2017.We offer a critical assessment of the “exclusion argument” against free will, which may be summarized by the slogan: “My brain made me do it, therefore I couldn't have been free”. While the exclusion argument has received much attention in debates about mental causation (“could my mental states ever cause my actions?”), it is seldom discussed in relation to free will. However, the argument informally underlies many neuroscientific discussions of free will, especially the claim that advances in n…Read more
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918The Causal Autonomy of the Special SciencesIn Graham Macdonald & Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Emergence in mind, Oxford University Press. pp. 108-129. 2010.The systems studied in the special sciences are often said to be causally autonomous, in the sense that their higher-level properties have causal powers that are independent of the causal powers of their more basic physical properties. This view was espoused by the British emergentists, who claimed that systems achieving a certain level of organizational complexity have distinctive causal powers that emerge from their constituent elements but do not derive from them. More recently, non-reductive…Read more
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23Mental Causation in the Physical WorldIn Sophie Gibb, E. J. Lowe & Rögnvaldur Ingthorsson (eds.), Mental Causation and Ontology, Oxford University Press. pp. 58. 2013.
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168The Oxford Handbook of Causation (edited book)Oxford University Press UK. 2009.Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of the will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how causal claims can be inferred from statistical data, and how causation is related to perception, knowledge and explanation. In the philosophy of mind, philosophers want to know whether and how the mind can be said to have causal efficacy, and in et…Read more
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1256Nonreductive physicalism and the limits of the exclusion principleJournal of Philosophy 106 (9): 475-502. 2009.It is often argued that higher-level special-science properties cannot be causally efficacious since the lower-level physical properties on which they supervene are doing all the causal work. This claim is usually derived from an exclusion principle stating that if a higher-level property F supervenes on a physical property F* that is causally sufficient for a property G, then F cannot cause G. We employ an account of causation as difference-making to show that the truth or falsity of this princ…Read more
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445Causation as a secondary qualityBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (2): 187-203. 1993.In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents.1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical approach to causation, often called the manipulability theory. In the interests of brevity and accuracy, we prefer to call it the agency theory.2 Thus the central thesis of an agency account of causation is something like this: an event A is a cause of a distinct event B…Read more
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365The Two Envelope 'Paradox'Analysis 54 (1). 1994.This paper discusses the finite version of the two envelope paradox. (That is, we treat the paradox against the background assumption that there is only a finite amount of money in the world.)
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24IntroductionIn Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock & Peter Menzies (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Causation, Oxford University Press Uk. 2009.18 page
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The folk theory of colours and the causes of colour experienceIn Ian Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson, Oxford University Press. 2009.
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22Causing Actions (review)Mind and Language 18 (4): 440-446. 2003.Paul Pietroski presents an original philosophical theory of actions and their mental causes. We often act for reasons, deliberating and choosing among options, based on our beliefs and desires. But because bodily motions always have biochemical causes, it can seem that thinking and acting are biochemical processes. Pietroski argues that thoughts and deeds are in fact distinct from, though dependent on, underlying biochemical processes within persons
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20A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility, by D. M. Armstrong (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (3): 731-734. 1992.
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2CHAPTER ONE This thesis is a critical analysis of arguments which Michael Dummett has developed against realism. Dummett characterizes realism as the thesis that the meaning of sentences should be analyzed in terms of the notions oftruth and falsity which obey the classical principle of bivalence. Before examining Dummett's arguments against realism, I consider the two models Dummett proposes for analyzing the content of assertions and examine his thesis that the realist notion of truth is induc…Read more
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72The Causal Closure Argument is No Threat to Non-Reductive PhysicalismHumana Mente 8 (29). 2015.Non-reductive physicalism is the view that mental events cause other events in virtue of their mental properties and that mental properties supervene on, without being identical to, physical properties. Jaegwon Kim has presented several much-discussed arguments against this view. But the much simpler causal closure argument, which purports to establish that every mental property is identical to a physical property, has received less attention than Kim’s arguments. This paper aims to show how a n…Read more
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Newcomb Decision Problems and Causal Decision TheoryDissertation, Stanford University. 1984.Newcomb's problem, first presented by Robert Nozick in 1969, has aroused much interest among philosophers because it appears to involve a conflict between two intuitively attractive principles of decision: the Principle of Dominance and the decision-rule of Richard Jeffrey's decision theory, the Principle of Maximizing Conditional Expected Utility. I believe that the Principle of Dominance makes the rational prescription in Newcomb's problem and, consequently, that the problem constitutes a coun…Read more
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Laws, modality, and Humean supervenienceIn John Bacon, Keith Campbell & Lloyd Reinhardt (eds.), Ontology, Causality and Mind: Essays in Honour of D M Armstrong, Cambridge University Press. 1993.
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394Critical notice of Alexander Bird, Nature's Metaphysics: Laws and PropertiesAnalysis. forthcoming.This book advocates dispositional essentialism, the view that natural properties have dispositional essences.1 So, for example, the essence of the property of being negatively charged is to be disposed to attract positively charged objects. From this fact it follows that it is a law that all negatively charged objects will attract positively 10 charged objects; and indeed that this law is metaphysically necessary. Since the identity of the property of being negatively charged is determined by it…Read more
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The role of causation in philosophical naturalismIn D. Macarthur M. de Caro (ed.), The Claims of Naturalism, Harvard University Press. 2002.
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131A unified account of causal relataAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 67 (1). 1989.This Article does not have an abstract
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117Nature's metaphysicsAnalysis 69 (4): 769-778. 2009.This book advocates dispositional essentialism, the view that natural properties have dispositional essences. 1 So, for example, the essence of the property of being negatively charged is to be disposed to attract positively charged objects. From this fact it follows that it is a law that all negatively charged objects will attract positively charged objects; and indeed that this law is metaphysically necessary. Since the identity of the property of being negatively charged is determined by its …Read more
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151In Defence of Fictionalism about Possible WorldsAnalysis 54 (1). 1994.Modal functionalism is the view that talk about possible worlds should be construed as talk about fictional objects. The version of modal fictionalism originally presented by Gideon Rosen adopted a simple prefixing strategy for fictionalising possible worlds analyses of modal propositions. However, Stuart Brock and Rosen himself in a later article have independently advanced an objection that shows that the prefixing strategy cannot serve fictionalist purposes. In this paper we defend fictionali…Read more
Peter Menzies
(1953 - 2015)
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Mind |
General Philosophy of Science |
Areas of Interest
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of Mind |
General Philosophy of Science |