Abstract: I argue that, contrary to widespread philosophical opinion, phenomenal indiscriminability is transitive. For if it were not transitive, we would be precluded from accepting the truisms that if two…
Nonreductive physics
Abstract: This paper documents a wide range of nonreductive scientific treatments of phenomena in the domain of physics. These treatments strongly resist characterization as explanations of macrobehavior exclusively in terms…
Making Models Count
…biological sciences, namely idealized deductive ones with a causal interpretation. I argue that the two main existing accounts misrepresent how these models are actually used, and propose a new account….
Mathematics and Reality
…on arguing that mathematical assumptions can be dispensed with in formulating our empirical theories. Leng, by contrast, offers an account of the role of mathematics in empirical science according to…
“Algebraic” Approaches to Mathematics
Summary: Surveys the opposition between views of mathematics which take mathematics to represent a independent mathematical reality and views which take mathematical axioms to define or circumscribe their subject matter;…
Where Do Laws of Nature Come From?
Summary: Cartwright explains and defends the view that causal capacities are more fundamental than laws of nature. She does this by considering scientific practice: the kind of knowledge required to make…
The Problem of Evil
Abstract: This paper considers briefly the approach to the problem of evil by Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, and John Hick and argues that none of these approaches is entirely satisfactory….
The Ontological Argument and the Devil
Abstract: The ‘parody objection’ to the ontological argument for the existence of God advances parallel arguments apparently proving the existence of various absurd entities. I discuss recent versions of the…
Does Ethics Need God?
Abstract: This essay presents a moral argument for the rationality of theistic belief. If all I have to go on morally are my own moral intuitions and reasoning and those…
How Significant is the Liar?
Summary: Grover argues that one should be unconcerned about the liar paradox. In formal languages there are uniform ties between syntax and semantics: a term, in all its occurrences, carries…