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Articles & book
chapters
Unpublished preprints
Selected reviews

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This list includes my books
and edited collections, my journal article and book
chapters, a selection of my book reviews, and
some unpublished
preprints. Most of the articles,
reviews and preprints are accessible here
in electronic form. I am starting to make
various other things — opinion pieces,
assorted blog posts in various places,
etc. — accessible at this
blog.
Books and edited
volumes
- Facts and the
Function of Truth,
Blackwell, Oxford, 1988. (Second edition
forthcoming from Oxford University
Press.)
Many areas of philosophy employ a
distinction between factual and
nonfactual (descriptive/nondescriptive,
cognitive/ noncognitive, ...) uses of
language. This book examines the various
ways in which this distinction is
normally elucidated, argues that all are
unsatisfactory, and suggests that the
search for a sharp distinction is
misconceived. I develop an alternative
approach, based on a novel theory of the
function and origins of the concept of
truth. The central hypothesis is that
the main role of the normative notion of
truth is to encourage speakers to argue,
with long-run behavioural advantages.
This offers a fresh perspective on many
debates about realism in contemporary
philosophy. [Full
text of First Edition]
"This is ... a challenging book. The
challenge is not easy to meet and the
solution proposed not easy to dismiss.
The topic is central; the approach
novel; the execution skilful. The book
deserves a wide audience." — Mind.
[Full
review
at
JSTOR]
- Time's Arrow
and Archimedes' Point: New
Directions for the Physics of Time,
Oxford University Press, New York, 1996.
[Details
at OUP]
- Naturalism
Without Mirrors, Oxford
University Press, 2011. [Details
at OUP|Contents
and Introduction in PDF]
"Huw Price‘s new book amplifies and
elaborates themes from his quiet
masterpiece, Facts and the Function
of Truth. Those who know him
better as a philosopher of science will
be pleased to see that these
interlocking essays on the foundations
of language (and metaphysics) are every
bit as rich and incisive as his
celebrated work on Time’s Arrow."
— Alexis Burgess, Phil Review.
[Full review here.]
"This book deserves the attention of
anyone working in contemporary
metaphysics or philosophy of language.
... Price's views are tantalizing and
even inspiring to the pragmatically and
naturalistically inclined ..." — Willem
deVries, NDPR.
- (With Simon Blackburn, Robert Brandom,
Paul Horwich and Michael Williams) Expressivism,
Pragmatism and Representationalism.
Cambridge University Press, 2013. [Details
at CUP]
"A fascinating set of lectures,
commentaries, and replies. I have
learned much from the arguments that Huw
Price and the commentators advance." —
Allan Gibbard
"If I could make it required reading for
all first-year philosophy graduate
students, I would." — Joshua Gert,
review for MIND. [Full review here.]
- (Edited with Richard
Corry) Causation,
Physics, and the Constitution of
Reality: Russell's Republic
Revisited, Oxford
University Press, 2007.
Contributors: Arif Ahmed, Helen
Beebee, Richard Corry, Antony Eagle,
Adam Elga, Mathias Frisch, Christopher
Hitchcock, Douglas Kutach, Barry Loewer,
Peter Menzies, John D. Norton, Huw
Price, Jim Woodward. [Details
on OUP catalogue]
- (Edited with Helen Beebee and Chris
Hitchcock) Making
a Difference, Oxford
University Press, 2017.
Contributors: Helen Beebee,
Thomas Blanchard, David
Braddon-Mitchell, Rachael Briggs, Nancy
Cartwright, Chris Hitchcock, Christian
List, Cei Maslen, Peter Menzies, Daniel
Nolan, Philip Pettit, Huw Price,
Jonathan Schaffer, Brad Weslake, and Jim
Woodward. [Details
on OUP catalogue]
- (Edited with Cheryl Misak) The Practical Turn:
Pragmatism in Britain in the Long
Twentieth Century, Oxford
University Press, 2017. [Details
on OUP catalogue]
Contributors: David Bakhurst,
Simon Blackburn, Anna Boncompagni, Hanjo
Glock, Jane Heal, Hallvard Lillehammer,
Cheryl Misak, Huw Price, and Ian
Rumfitt.
- (Edited with Yang Liu and Stephan
Hartmann) Decision
Theory and the Future of AI, Springer,
2022; previously published as a Special
Issue of Synthese.
[Details
on Springer catalogue]
Contributors: Kenny Easwaran, Tom
Everitt, Marcus Hutter, Ramana Kumar,
Victoria Krakovna, Jens Kipper, Caspar
Oesterheld, Reuben Stern, Marco
Zaffalon, Enrique Miranda, Jiji Zhang,
Teddy Seidenfeld, Hailin Liu.
Articles in
journals and collections
[1983—1989|1990—1999|2000—2009|2010+]
- Sense,
assertion, Dummett and denial.
Mind 92(1983) 174—88. [JSTOR]
- "Could a
question be true?": Assent and the
basis of meaning. The
Philosophical Quarterly 33(1983)
354—64.
[JSTOR]
- Does "Probably"
modify sense? Australasian
Journal of Philosophy 61(1983)
396—408. [PDF]
- Mellor, chance
and the single case. British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science
35(1984) 11—23. [JSTOR]
- The philosophy
and physics of affecting the past. Synthese
16(1984) 299—323. [PDF]
- Against causal
decision theory. Synthese
67(1986) 195—212. [PDF]
- Conditional
credence. Mind 95(1986)
18—36. [JSTOR]
- Truth and the
nature of assertion. Mind
96(1987) 202—220. [JSTOR]
- Action
explanation and the nature of mind.
In Albury and Slezak, eds., Computers,
Brains and Minds: Papers in Cognitive
Science, Kluwer, 1988, 221—251. [PDF]
Argues against the Humean thesis that
beliefs are motivationally inert, by way
of criticism of arguments by Peacocke
and by Perry for the essential role of
demonstrative and indexical beliefs,
respectively, in the explanation of
action.
- Defending
desire-as-belief. Mind
98(1989) 119—127. [JSTOR]
- A point on the
arrow of time. Nature,
20 July 1989, 181—182. [PDF]
This is comment on Stephen Hawking's A
Brief History of Time. It was
discussed with responses from Hawking
and others in an editorial column in Scientific
American (October 1989).
- (With Philip Pettit) Bare functional
desire. Analysis 49(1989)
162—169. [JSTOR]
[1983—1989|1990—1999|2000—2009|2010+][top]
- Why "Not"?
Mind 99(1990) 221—238.
[JSTOR]
- Agency and
probabilistic causality. British
Journal
for the Philosophy of Science 42(1991)
157—176. [PDF][JSTOR]
- The asymmetry of
radiation: reinterpreting the
Wheeler-Feynman argument. Foundations
of Physics 21(1991)
959—975.
- Agency and
causal asymmetry. Mind
101(1992) 501—520. [JSTOR]
- Metaphysical
pluralism. Journal of
Philosophy 89(1992)
387—409. [JSTOR]
- Two paths to
pragmatism. In Peter Menzies
(ed.), Response-Dependent Concepts,
Canberra: Philosophy Program, RSSS, ANU,
46—82. [RTF|PDF
of revised version (see item 27 below)]
- (With Peter Menzies) Causation as a
secondary quality. British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science
44(1993) 187—203. [RTF][PDF][JSTOR]
- The direction of
causation: Ramsey's ultimate
contingency. In David Hull,
Micky Forbes and Kathleen Okruhlik
(eds.), PSA 1992, Volume 2 (East
Lansing, Michigan, Philosophy of Science
Association), 253—267. [PDF][JSTOR]
- Semantic
minimalism and the Frege point. In
Tsohatzidis, S.L.(ed.), Foundations
of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical
and Linguistic Perspectives,
Routledge, 1994, pp. 132-55.
Reprinted with a new postscript in
Garrett, B. and Mulligan, K. (eds.), Themes
From Wittgenstein, Canberra:
Philosophy Program, RSSS, ANU, 1993,
15—44. [PDF
of latter version/PDF
with the title under which the paper is
sometimes wrongly cited]
- A neglected
route to realism about Quantum
Mechanics. Mind 103(1994)
303—336; reprinted in Grim, P., Mar, G.
& Williams, P. (eds.) The
Philosopher's Annual, XVII,
Ridgeview, 1996, 181—215. [Abstract
and
preprint at LANL archive][JSTOR]
- Psychology in
perspective. In Michael, M. and
O'Leary-Hawthorne, J. (eds), Philosophy
in Mind: The Place of Philosophy in
the Study of the Mind, Kluwer,
1994, 83—98. [RTF][PDF]
- Reinterpreting
the Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory:
Reply to Leeds. British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science
45(1994) 1023—1028. [JSTOR]
- Cosmology,
time's arrow and that old double
standard. In Savitt, S. (ed.),
Time's Arrows Today, Cambridge
University Press, 1995, 66-94. Reprinted
in Sklar , L (ed.), The Philosophy
of Physics, Garland, 2000,
392—420. [Abstract
and preprint at LANL archive]
- (With John O'Leary-Hawthorne) How to stand up for
non-cognitivists. Australasian
Journal of Philosophy 74(1996)
275—292. [PDF]
- Two paths to
pragmatism II. Casati, R. and
Tappolet, C., eds., European Review
of Philosophy 3(1998)
109—147. [RTF|PDF]
- Backward
causation and the direction of causal
processes: Reply to Dowe. Mind
105(1996) 467—474. [JSTOR]
- Naturalism
and the fate of the M-worlds. Proceedings
of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol.,
LXXI(1997) 247—267 [RTF][JSTOR].
Concepts such as those of morality,
modality, meaning and the mental are
difficult to "place" in a naturalistic
world view. This paper offers a novel
placement strategy, based on a
naturalistic pluralism about the
functions of descriptive discourse. It
is argued that this functional pluralism
is more attractive than familiar
alternatives, such as naturalistic
reductionism, nonnaturalism,
noncognitivism and eliminativism. The
strategy exploits Carnap's views about
the nature of ontological issues.
There is a reply
to this paper by Frank
Jackson [also in RTF].
- 'Chaos
theory and the difference between past
and future', paper presented to
the 9th Conference of the International
Society for the Study of Time,
Sainte-Adèle, Québec, 2—8 July, 1995. In
Fraser, J. T., Soulsby, M. P. and
Argyros, A. J. (eds.), Time, Order,
Chaos: The Study of Time, Vol. IX.
Madison, CT: International Universities
Press, 1998, 155—162. [RTF]
Contemporary writers often claim that
chaos theory explains the thermodynamic
arrow of time. This paper argues that
such claims are mistaken, on two levels.
First, they underestimate the difficulty
of extracting asymmetric conclusions
from symmetric theories. More important,
however, they misunderstand the nature
of the puzzle about the temporal
asymmetry of thermodynamics, and simply
address the wrong issue. Both of these
are old mistakes, but mistakes which are
poorly recognised, even today. This
paper aims to lay bare the mistakes in
their classical (pre-chaos theory)
manifestations, in order to make it
clear that chaos theory cannot possibly
do better.
- Time symmetry in
microphysics. Philosophy of
Science 64(1997) S235-244.
[JSTOR][HTML][RTF]
Physics normally takes for granted that
interacting physical systems with no
common history are independent, before
their interaction. This principle is
time-asymmetric, for no such restriction
applies after an interaction to systems
with no common future. The time
asymmetry is normally attributed to
boundary conditions. I argue that there
are two distinct independence principles
of this kind at work in contemporary
physics, one of which cannot be
attributed to boundary conditions, and
therefore conflicts with the assumed T
(or CPT) symmetry of microphysics. I
note that this may have interesting
ramifications in quantum mechanics.
- What should a
deflationist about truth say about
meaning? in Villanueva, E.
(ed.), Truth (Philosophical
Issues, Vol. 8), Ridgeview, 1997,
107—115. [RTF][JSTOR]
- The
role of history in microphysics.
In Sankey, H. (ed.), Causation and
Laws of Nature, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1999, 437—456. [Abstract]
- Carnap,
Quine
and
the
fate of metaphysics. In The
Electronic
Journal of Analytic Philosophy
Issue 5 (Spring, 1997). [PDF]
- Three norms of
assertibility, or how the MOA became
extinct. In Tomberlin, J., ed.,
Philosophical Perspectives 12(1998)
41—54. [JSTOR][PDF]
[1983—1989|1990—1999|2000—2009|2010+][top]
- Causation in the
special sciences: the case for
pragmatism. In Domenico
Costantini, Maria Carla Galavotti and
Patrick Suppes, eds., Stochastic
Causality, CSLI
Publications, 2001, 103—120. [PDF|Scan]
- Backward
causation, hidden variables, and the
meaning of completeness. PRAMANA
- Journal of Physics (Indian
Academy of Sciences), 56(2001)
199—209. [PDF]
Bell's Theorem requires the assumption
that hidden variables are independent of
future measurement settings. This
independence assumption rests on
surprisingly shaky ground. In
particular, it is puzzlingly
time-asymmetric. The paper begins with a
summary of the case for considering
hidden variable models which, in
abandoning this independence assumption,
allow a degree of 'backward causation'.
The remainder of the paper clarifies the
physical significance of such models, in
relation to the issue as to whether
quantum mechanics provides a complete
description of physical reality.
- Boltzmann's time
bomb. British Journal for
the Philosophy of Science, 53(2002)
83—119. [PDF][JSTOR]
Since the late nineteenth century,
physics has been puzzled by the
time-asymmetry of the thermodynamic
phenomena in the light of the apparent
T-symmetry of the underlying laws of
mechanics. However, a compelling
solution has proved elusive. In part, I
argue, this can be attributed to a
failure to distinguish two conceptions
of the problem. According to one, the
main focus of our attention is a
time-asymmetric law-like generalisation.
According to the other, it is a
particular fact about the early
universe. This paper aims (i) to
distinguish these two different
conceptions of the time-asymmetric
explanandum in thermodynamics; (ii) to
argue in favour of the latter; and (iii)
to show that whichever we choose, our
rational expectations about the
thermodynamic behaviour of the future
must depend on what we know about the
past -- contrary to the common view,
statistical arguments alone do not give
us good reason to expect that entropy
will always continue to increase.
- Burbury's last
case: the mystery of the entropic
arrow. In Craig Callender, ed.,
Time, Reality and Experience,
Cambridge University Press, 2002, 19—56.
[PDF]
"Does not the theory of a general
tendency of entropy to diminish [sic]
take too much for granted? To a certain
extent it is supported by experimental
evidence. We must accept such evidence
as far as it goes and no further. We
have no right to supplement it by a
large draft of the scientific
imagination." (Samuel Burbury, 1904)
- (With Richard
Holton) Ramsey
on saying and whistling: a discordant
note. Noûs 37:2(2003)
325—341. [PDF][JSTOR]
On Ramsey's late view of the
non-propositional status of
generalisation, and its connection to
the rule following considerations.
- Truth as
convenient friction. Journal
of
Philosophy 100(2003)
167—190. Reprinted in Grim, P., Mar, G.
& Williams, P. (eds.) The
Philosopher's Annual, XXVI
(2003); in Mario De Caro and David
Macarthur, eds., Naturalism
and Normativity (Columbia
University Press, 2010), 229—252; and in
Robert B. Talisse and Scott F. Aikin, The Pragmatism
Reader: From Peirce through the
Present (Princeton
University Press, 2011), 451—470. [Abstract]
[PDF][JSTOR]
- Naturalism
without representationalism. In
David Macarthur and Mario de Caro (eds),
Naturalism
in
Question (Harvard
University Press, 2004), 71—88.
Reprinted in Italian as 'Naturalismo
senza rappresentazionalismo', in La
Mente e La Natura, (Fazi
Editore, Rome, 2005), 58—77; and in
Spanish as 'Naturalismo sin
representacionalismo' in Análisis.
Revista de investigación filosófica,
1:1(2014). Also reprinted in
Marcin Milkowski and Konrad
Talmont-Kaminsk, eds., Beyond
Description: Naturalism and
Normativity (College Publications,
2010). [PDF]
I begin with a distinction between two
ways of taking science to be relevant to
philosophy. The first ("object
naturalism") is a ontological thesis --
it holds that what exists, what we
should be realists about, is the world
as revealed by science. The second
("subject naturalism") is a prescription
for philosophy, based on the belief that
we humans (and in particular, our
thought and talk) are part of the
natural world. What is the relationship
between these two kinds of naturalism?
Contemporary naturalists are apt to
think that the latter view is a mere
corollary of the former. I argue that
there is an important sense in which the
priority is the other way around: object
naturalism depends on "validation" from
a subject naturalist perspective -- in
particular, on confirmation of certain
"representationalist" assumptions about
the functions of human language.
Moreover, I maintain, there are good
reasons for doubting whether object
naturalism deserves to be validated, in
this sense. Thus, an adequate
naturalistic philosophy threatens to
undermine what most contemporary
philosophers have in mind, when they
call themselves philosophical
naturalists.
- Immodesty
without mirrors — making sense of
Wittgenstein's linguistic pluralism.
In Max Kölbel and Bernhard Weiss (eds),
Wittgenstein's
Lasting
Significance (Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 2004), 179—205. [PDF]
- On the origins
of the arrow of time: why there is
still a puzzle about the low entropy
past. In Christopher Hitchcock,
ed., Contemporary
Debates
in
the
Philosophy of Science
(Blackwell, 2004), 219—239. [PDF]
- Models and
modals. In Donald Gillies, ed.,
Laws and Models in Science
(King's College Publications, 2004),
49—69. [PDF]
Pragmatists recommend that in
approaching a problematic concept in
philosophy, we should begin by examining
the role it plays in the practical,
cognitive and linguistic lives of the
creatures who use it. This paper stems
from an interest in pragmatic accounts,
in this sense, of the various modal
notions we encounter in science. I
propose that pragmatists about these
notions should avail themselves of the
vocabulary of theoretical models. This
vocabulary brings to the foreground the
issues of function, use and role in
practice, on which pragmatists want to
focus; while downplaying the naive
representationalism that pragmatists see
as an impediment to good philosophy. I
show how this framework may be used to
delineate a kind of pragmatic
perspectivalism about probability, and
argue that the same template offers a
promising way to make sense of the link
between causation and manipulability.
- The
thermodynamic arrow: puzzles and
pseudo-puzzles. In Ikaros Bigi
and Martin Faessler, eds., Time and
Matter (World Scientific, 2006),
209—224. [Abstract][PDF]
- Recent work on
the arrow of radiation. In Studies
in History and Philosophy of Modern
Physics 37(2006), 498—527.
[Abstract]
[PDF
at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]
- Einstein and the
quantum spooks. In C. Stewart
& R Hewitt (eds), Waves of the
Future (Science Foundation for
Physics, 2005), 221—233. [PDF
courtesy of the Science
Foundation for Physics.]
- Time's arrow,
time's fly-bottle. In Friedrich
Stadler and Michael Stöltzner, eds., Time
and History, Frankfurt: Ontos
Verlag, 2006, 253—273.
- Causal
perspectivalism. In Huw Price
and Richard Corry, eds., Causation,
Physics and the Constitution of
Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited
(OUP, 2007), 250—292. [PDF]
Concepts employed in folk descriptions
of the world often turn out to be more
perspectival than they seem at first
sight, involving previously unrecognised
sensitivity to the viewpoint or
'situation' of the user of the concept
in question. Often, it is progress in
science that reveals such perspectivity,
and the deciding factor is that we
realise that other creatures would apply
the same concepts with different
extension, in virtue of differences
between their circumstances and ours. In
this paper I argue that causal concepts
are perspectival in this way, and
describe the 'situation' on which they
depend in terms of an abstract
characterisation of the viewpoint of a
deliberating agent. I argue that this
approach makes better sense than rivals
of the apparent asymmetry and temporal
orientation of the causal relation.
- (With David Macarthur) Pragmatism,
quasi-realism and the global
challenge. In Cheryl Misak,
ed., The New Pragmatists (OUP,
2007), 91—120. [Abstract]
[PDF]
- Quining
naturalism. Journal of
Philosophy 104(2007)
375—405. [Abstract]
[PDF]
- Brandom and Hume
on the genealogy of modals. In
Philosophical Topics 36(2008),
87—97 [PDF]
This is a lightly edited version of my
comments on Lecture 4 of Bob Brandom’s
Locke Lectures, as repeated in Prague in
April 2007. Recordings of the Prague
lectures, including commentaries and
discussions, are available here.
The slides that accompanied my talk are
available here.
- Toy models for
retrocausality. In Studies
in History and Philosophy of Modern
Physics 39(2008), 752—761.
[Abstract
and PDF at
ArXiv.org]
- (With Peter Menzies) Is semantics in the
plan? In D. Braddon-Mitchell
& R. Nola, eds., Conceptual
Analysis
and
Philosophical
Naturalism (MIT, 2009),
183—200. [Abstract]
[PDF]
- Metaphysics
after Carnap: the ghost who walks?
In David Chalmers, Ryan Wasserman and
David Manley, eds., Metametaphysics
(OUP, 2009), 320—346. [PDF]
- The semantic
foundations of metaphysics. In
Ian Ravenscroft, ed., Minds, Worlds
and Conditionals: Essays in Honour of
Frank Jackson (OUP, 2009),
111—140. [PDF]
[1983—1989|1990—1999|2000—2009|2010+][top]
- (With Brad
Weslake) The time-asymmetry
of causation. In
Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock and
Peter Menzies (eds), The Oxford
Handbook of Causation (OUP, 2010),
414—443. [PDF
at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]
One of the most
striking features of causation is that
causes typically precede their effects
— the causal arrow is
strongly aligned with the temporal
arrow. Why should this be so? We offer
an opinionated guide to this problem,
and to the solutions currently on
offer. We conclude that the most
promising strategy is to begin with
the de facto asymmetry of human
deliberation, characterised in
epistemic terms, and to build out from
there. More than any rival, this
subjectivist approach promises to
demystify the asymmetry, temporal
orientation, and deliberative
relevance of causal judgements.
- Decisions,
decisions, decisions: can Savage
salvage Everettian probability? In
Simon Saunders, Jonathan Barrett, Adrian
Kent & David Wallace, eds., Many
Worlds? Everett, Quantum Theory &
Reality (OUP, 2010), 369—390. [Abstract
and PDF at the
Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]
Based on a talk at
the Many Worlds@50 meeting at
the Perimeter Institute in September
2007 (audio, video and slides
accessible here).
- One cheer for
representationalism? In R.
Auxier, ed., The Philosophy of
Richard Rorty (Open Court, Library
of Living Philosophers XXXII, 2010),
269—289. [PDF]
- (With Richard Rorty) Exchange on “Truth as
Convenient Friction”. In Mario
De Caro and David Macarthur, eds., Naturalism
and Normativity (Columbia
University Press, 2010), 253—262. [PDF]
- Time's Arrow and
Eddington's Challenge. Séminaire
Poincaré XV, Le Temps (2010),
115—140. [PDF
at Séminaire Poincaré]
When Sir Arthur Eddington died in 1944,
TIME magazine noted that "one of
mankind’s most reassuring cosmic
thinkers" had passed away: "Sir
Arthur," TIME said, had "discoursed on
his cosmic subject with a wit and
clarity rare among scientists."
One of Eddington's favorite cosmic
subjects was "Time's Arrow", a term he
himself introduced to the literature in
his 1928 book, The Nature of the
Physical World -- though without his
celebrated clarity about what it
actually means, as Grunbaum was later to
note. What is clear is that Eddington
thought that there is something
essential about time that physics is
liable to neglect: the fact that it
"goes on", as he often puts it. Despite
the best efforts of Grunbaum, Smart and
others to pour cold water on this idea,
similar claims are still made today, in
physics as well as in philosophy. All
sides in these debates can profit, in my
view, by going back to Eddington.
Eddington appreciates some of the
pitfalls of these claims with greater
clarity than most of their contemporary
proponents; and also issues a
challenge to rival views that
deserves to be better known.
- The flow of time.
In Craig Callender (ed), The
Oxford Handbook of Time (OUP,
2011), 276—311. [PDF
at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]
I distinguish
three views, a defence of any one of
which would go some way towards
vindicating the view that there is
something objective about the passage
of time: (i) the view that the present
moment is objectively distinguished;
(ii) the view that time has an
objective direction — that it is an
objective matter which of two
nonsimultaneous events is the earlier
and which the later; (iii) the view
that there is something objectively
dynamic, fluxlike, or “flowlike” about
time. I argue that each of these views
is not so much false as doubtfully
coherent. In each case, it turns out
to be hard to make sense of what the
view could be, at least if it is to be
nontrivial, and of use to a friend of
objective passage. I conclude with
some remarks about avenues that seem
worth exploring in the philosophy of
time, when we are done with trying to
make sense of passage.
- Expressivism
for two voices. In J.
Knowles & H. Rydenfelt, eds., Pragmatism,
Science and Naturalism
(Peter Lang, Zürich, Zürich,
2011), 87—113. [PDF/Scan]
I discuss the
relationship between the two forms of
expressivism defended by Robert
Brandom, on one hand, and philosophers
in the Humean tradition, such as Simon
Blackburn and Allan Gibbard, on the
other. I identify three apparent
points of difference between the two
programs, but argue that all three are
superficial. Both projects benefit
from the insights of the other, and
the combination is in a natural sense
a global expressivism.
- (With
Ken Wharton and David Miller) Action Duality: A
Constructive Principle for Quantum
Foundations. In Symmetry
3:3(2011), 524—540. [PDF
at arXiv.org: open
access at Symmetry]
An analysis of the path-integral
approach to quantum theory motivates the
hypothesis that two experiments with the
same classical action should have dual
ontological descriptions. If correct,
this hypothesis would not only constrain
realistic interpretations of quantum
theory, but would also act as a
constructive principle, allowing any
realistic model of one experiment to
generate a corresponding model for its
action-dual. Two pairs of action-dual
experiments are presented, including one
experiment that violates the Bell
inequality and yet is action-dual to a
single particle. The implications
generally support retrodictive and
retrocausal interpretations.
- (With Arif Ahmed) Arntzenius on “Why
ain’cha rich?”. In Erkenntnis
(2012). [PDF
at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive; Online First at Erkenntnis]
The best-known argument for Evidential
Decision Theory (EDT) is the “Why
ain'cha rich?” challenge to rival Causal
Decision Theory (CDT). The basis for
this challenge is that in Newcomb-like
situations, acts that conform to EDT may
be known in advance to have the better
return than acts that conform to CDT.
Frank Arntzenius has recently proposed
an ingenious counter argument, based on
an example in which, he claims, it is
predictable in advance that acts that
conform to EDT will do less well than
acts that conform to CDT. We raise two
objections to Arntzenius's example. We
argue, first, that the example is subtly
incoherent, in a way that undermines its
effectiveness against EDT (here we rely
on the lessons of Dummett's famous
discussion of the conditions for the
coherence of a belief in
retrocausality); and, second, that the
example relies on calculating the
average return over an inappropriate
population of acts.
- (With Peter Evans and Ken Wharton) New slant on the
EPR-Bell experiment. In British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science,
64(2013), 297—324. [PDF
at arXiv.org]
The best case for
thinking that quantum mechanics is
nonlocal rests on Bell's Theorem, and
later results of the same kind.
However, the correlations
characteristic of EPR-Bell (EPRB)
experiments also arise in familiar
cases elsewhere in QM, where the two
measurements involved are timelike
rather than spacelike separated; and
in which the correlations are usually
assumed to have a local causal
explanation, requiring no
action-at-a-distance. It is
interesting to ask how this is
possible, in the light of Bell's
Theorem. We investigate this question,
and present two options. Either (i)
the new cases are nonlocal, too, in
which case action-at-a-distance is
more widespread in QM than has
previously been appreciated (and does
not depend on entanglement, as usually
construed); or (ii) the means of
avoiding action-at-a-distance in the
new cases extends in an obvious way to
EPRB, removing action-at-a-distance in
these cases, too. There is a third
option, viz., to argue that the new
cases are strongly disanalogous to
EPRB. But we show that there is a
large price to be paid for this
choice, in symmetry terms. Unless one
pays this price, the standard
combination of views --
action-at-a-distance in EPRB, but
local causality in its timelike
analogue -- turns out to be untenable.
- Does
time-symmetry imply retrocausality?
How the quantum world says "maybe".
In Studies in History and Philosophy
of Modern Physics, 43(2012),
75—83. [PDF
at arXiv.org]
It has often been suggested that
retrocausality offers a solution to some
of the puzzles of quantum mechanics:
e.g., that it allows a Lorentz-invariant
explanation of Bell correlations, and
other manifestations of quantum
nonlocality, without
action-at-a-distance. Some writers have
argued that time-symmetry counts in
favour of such a view, in the sense that
retrocausality would be a natural
consequence of a truly time-symmetric
theory of the quantum world. Critics
object that there is complete
time-symmetry in classical physics, and
yet no apparent retrocausality. Why
should the quantum world be any
different? This note aims to throw some
new light on these matters. I call
attention to a respect in which quantum
mechanics is different, under some
assumptions about quantum ontology.
Under these assumptions, the combination
of time-symmetry without retrocausality
is unavailable in quantum mechanics, for
reasons intimately connected with the
differences between classical and
quantum physics (especially the role of
discreteness in the latter). Not all
interpretations of quantum mechanics
share these assumptions, however, and in
those that do not, time-symmetry does
not entail retrocausality.
- Causation,
chance and the rational significance
of supernatural evidence. In Philosophical
Review 121:4(2012), 483—538.
[PDF
at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]
In 'A Subjectivist's Guide to Objective
Chance,' David Lewis says that he is
"led to wonder whether anyone but
a subjectivist is in a position to
understand objective chance." This paper
aims to motivate this same Lewisean
attitude, and a similar degree of modest
subjectivism, with respect to objective
causation. The paper begins with Newcomb
problems, which turn on an apparent
tension between two principles of
choice: roughly, a principle sensitive
to the causal features of the relevant
situation, and a principle sensitive
only to evidential factors. Two-boxers
give priority to causal beliefs, and
one-boxers to evidential beliefs. I note
that a similar issue can arise when the
modality in question is chance, rather
than causation. In this case, the
conflict is between decision rules based
on credences guided solely by chances,
and rules based on credences guided by
other sorts of probabilistic evidence.
Far from excluding cases of the latter
kind, Lewis's Principal Principle
explicitly allows for them, in the form
of the caveat that credences should only
follow beliefs about chances in the
absence of "inadmissible evidence." I
then exhibit a tension in Lewis's views
on these two matters, by presenting a
class of decision problems — some of
them themselves Newcomb problems — in
which Lewis's view of the relevance of
inadmissible evidence seems in tension
with his causal decision theory. I offer
a diagnosis for this dilemma, and
propose a remedy, based on an extension
of a proposal due to Ned Hall and others
from the case of chance to that of
causation. The remedy suggests a new
view of the relation between causal
decision theory and evidential decision
theory, viz., that they stand to each
other much as chance stands to credence,
being objective and subjective faces of
the same practical coin. This has much
the same metaphysical benefits as
Lewis's own view of chance, and also
throws interesting new light on Newcomb
problems, providing an irenic resolution
of the apparent disagreement between
causal and evidential decision rules.
- Where would we
be without counterfactuals? In
Galavotti, M. C., Dieks, D., Gonzalez,
W., Hartmann, S., Uebel, T., and Weber,
W. (eds), New Directions in the
Philosophy of Science (Springer,
2014), 589—607. [PDF]
Bertrand Russell’s celebrated essay “On
the Notion of Cause” was first delivered
to the Aristotelian Society on 4
November 1912, as Russell’s Presidential
Address. The piece is best known for a
passage in which its author deftly
positions himself between the
traditional metaphysics of causation and
the British crown, firing broadsides in
both directions: “The law of causality”,
Russell declares, “Like much that passes
muster in philosophy, is a relic of a
bygone age, surviving, like the
monarchy, only because it is erroneously
supposed to do no harm.” To mark the
lecture’s centenary, I offer a
contemporary view of the issues Russell
here puts on the table, and of the
health or otherwise, at the end of the
essay’s first century, of his notorious
conclusion.
- Representationalism
revisited. In Análisis.
Revista de investigación filosfófica,
1:1(2014), 87—99. [PDF]
A reply to commentaries on a Spanish
translation of 'Naturalism without
representationalism'.
- From
quasirealism to global expressivism — and back again?
In R. Johnson and M. Smith (eds), Passions
and Projections: Themes from the
Philosophy of Simon Blackburn
(OUP, 2015), 134—152. [PDF]
Simon Blackburn's expressivism is
distinctive in at least two ways. The
first —
sometimes overlooked by those who
encounter his work only in meta-ethics — is reflected
in his repeated insistence that Humean
expressivism is not simply an option in
the ethical case: it is an attractive
option in many other domains, as well.
The second —
widely known even in the most cloistered
corners of meta-ethics — is his
identification and defense of the
distinctive version of the expressivism
that he calls ‘quasirealism’. In this
paper I consider an issue that arises at
the intersection of these two
distinctive themes in Blackburn’s work:
the question whether quasirealism has
even wider application than Blackburn
himself envisages —
whether it should be ‘globalised,’ so as
to become an appropriately universal
stance for theorising about the
character of declarative uses of
language. I argue that this is indeed
the case. Expressivism of the kind that
Blackburn favours, or at any rate a
variety of pragmatism recognisably
descended from it, does have good claim
to be a global view. As I also argue,
however, this turns out to be compatible
with a sympathetic reinterpretation of
the intuitions that seemed to favour a
more local view.
- Idling and sidling
toward philosophical peace. In
Steven Gross, Nicholas Tebben, and
Michael Williams (eds), Meaning
Without Representation: Essays on
Truth, Expression, Normativity, and
Naturalism (OUP, 2015), 307—330. [PDF]
On John McDowell's recipe for
philosophical quietism.
- (With Ken Wharton) Disentangling the
quantum world. Entropy
17:11(2015), 7752—7767.
[Accessible online at doi:10.3390/e17117752
or as
PDF
on ArXiv]
Correlations related to quantum
entanglement have convinced many
physicists that there must be some
at-a-distance connection between
separated events, at the quantum level.
In the late 1940s, however, O. Costa de
Beauregard proposed that such
correlations can be explained without
action at a distance, so long as the
influence takes a zigzag path, via the
intersecting past lightcones of the
events in question. Costa de
Beauregard’s proposal is related to what
has come to be called the retrocausal
loophole in Bell’s Theorem, but—like
that loophole—it receives little
attention, and remains poorly
understood. Here we propose a new way to
explain and motivate the idea. We
exploit some simple symmetries to show
how Costa de Beauregard’s zigzag needs
to work, to explain the correlations at
the core of Bell’s Theorem. As a bonus,
the explanation shows how entanglement
might be a much simpler matter than the
orthodox view assumes—not a puzzling
feature of quantum reality itself, but
an entirely unpuzzling feature of our
knowledge of reality, once zigzags are
in play.
- Causation,
intervention and agency—Woodward on
Menzies and Price. In Helen
Beebee, Chris Hitchcock, and Huw Price
(eds), Making a Difference
(Oxford University Press, 2017), 73—98.
[PDF|Uncorrected
proof]
In his influential book 'Making Things
Happen' (Oxford, 2003) and in other
places, Jim Woodward has noted some
affinities between his own account of
causation and that of Menzies and Price
(‘Causation as a secondary quality’,
BJPS, 1993), but argued that the latter
view is implausibly ‘subjective’. In
this piece I discuss Woodward’s
criticisms. I argue that the Menzies and
Price view is not as different from
Woodward’s own account as he believes,
and that in so far as it is different,
it has some advantages whose importance
Woodward misses; but also that the
Menzies and Price view lacks some
elements whose importance Woodward
rightly stresses. When properly
characterized, however, the
‘subjectivity’ survives unscathed.
- (With
Ken Wharton) Dispelling
the quantum spooks: a clue that Einstein
missed? In Christophe Bouton
and Philippe Huneman (eds), Time of
Nature and the Nature of Time, Boston
Studies in the Philosophy and History
of Science 326 (Springer, 2017),
123—137.
[PDF
on ArXiv]
It is well-known that Bell's Theorem and
other No Hidden Variable theorems have a
"retrocausal loophole", because they
assume that the values of pre-existing
hidden variables are independent of
future measurement settings. (This is
often referred to, misleadingly, as the
assumption of "free will".) However, it
seems to have gone unnoticed until
recently that a violation of this
assumption is a straightforward
consequence of time-symmetry, given an
understanding of the quantization of
light that would have seemed natural to
Einstein after 1905. The new argument
shows precisely why quantization makes a
difference, and why time-symmetry alone
does not imply retrocausality, in the
classical context. It is true that later
developments in quantum theory provide a
way to avoid retrocausality, without
violating time-symmetry; but this escape
route relies on the "ontic" conception
of the wave function that Einstein
rejected. Had this new argument been
noticed much sooner, then, it seems
likely that retrocausality would have
been regarded as the default option for
hidden variables theories (a fact that
would then have seemed confirmed by
Bell's Theorem and the No Hidden
Variable theorems). This paper presents
these ideas at a level intended to be
accessible to general readers.
- Epilogue:
Ramsey's ubiquitous pragmatism. In
Cheryl Misak and Huw Price (eds), The
Practical Turn: Pragmatism in the
British Long Twentieth Century (Oxford
University Press, 2017), 149—162. [Preprint|Proof]
Ramsey’s late piece ‘General
Propositions and Causality’ begins with
a discussion of the logical status of
unrestricted generalizations — claims of
the form ‘(x)F(x)’. Ramsey argues
against his own earlier view that a
sentence of this form should be treated
as an infinite conjunction. However, as
he puts it, “if it isn’t a conjunction,
it isn’t a proposition at all.” He goes
on to put causal judgements in the same
non-propositional box, noting that what
he has offered is a "psychological
analysis" of causal judgement, not a
metaphysics of causation — the latter,
he thinks, turns out to be the wrong
mode of enquiry in this case. In modern
terms, what Ramsey has sketched is a
pragmatist or expressivist view of
causation. In this paper I relate Ramsey
to later manifestations of the same
pragmatist move, in Cambridge and
elsewhere; and discuss the question
whether Ramsey himself does or should
think that this pragmatism is a 'global'
view, applicable to all our judgements.
- Wilfrid Sellars
meets Cambridge Pragmatism. In
David Pereplyotchik and Deborah R.
Barnbaum (eds), Sellars and
Contemporary Philosophy (Routledge,
2017), 123—140. [Proof]
I begin by noting some affinities
between Sellars, on the one hand, and
pragmatists and expressivists in the
Cambridge tradition, such as Ramsey,
Wittgenstein, Blackburn, and myself, on
the other. I argue that Sellars' clear
distinction between two notions of truth
— notions that, as Sellars says, 'belong
in different boxes' — turns out to
answer a need that has existed in the
Cambridge tradition since 1929. In the
Cambridge tradition it has not received
the attention that it deserves, in my
view. By understanding why Sellars needs
this distinction, we can see why
Cambridge pragmatists need it too.
- (With Yang Liu) Heart
of DARCness. Australasian
Journal of Philosophy, 97(2019),136—150.
[doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2018.1427119|PDF]
We propose a valid core for the
much-disputed thesis that Deliberation
Crowds Out Prediction, and identify
terminological causes for some of the
apparent disputes.
- (With Yang Liu) "Click!"
Bait for Causalists. In
Arif Ahmed (ed), Newcomb’s Problem (CUP,
2018), 160—179. [PDF
at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive|Uncorrected
proof]
Causalists and Evidentialists can agree
about the right course of action in an
(apparent) Newcomb problem, if the
causal facts are not as initially they
seem. If declining $1,000 causes the
Predictor to have placed $1m in the
opaque box, CDT agrees with EDT that
one-boxing is rational. This creates a
difficulty for Causalists. We explain
the problem with reference to Dummett's
work on backward causation and Lewis's
on chance and crystal balls. We show
that the possibility that the causal
facts might be properly judged to be
non-standard in Newcomb problems leads
to a dilemma for Causalism. One horn
embraces a subjectivist understanding of
causation, in a sense analogous to
Lewis's own subjectivist conception of
objective chance. In this case the
analogy with chance reveals a
terminological choice point, such that
either (i) CDT is completely reconciled
with EDT, or (ii) EDT takes precedence
in the cases in which the two theories
give different recommendations. The
other horn of the dilemma rejects
subjectivism, but now the analogy with
chance suggests that it is simply
mysterious why causation so construed
should constrain rational action.
- (With Yang Liu) Ramsey
and Joyce on deliberation and
prediction. Synthese,
online 17.09.2018. [doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01926-8|PDF at
the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]
Can an agent deliberating about an
action A hold a meaningful credence that
she will do A? ‘No’, say some authors,
for ‘Deliberation Crowds Out Prediction’
(DCOP). Others disagree, but we argue
here that such disagreements are often
terminological. We explain why DCOP
holds in a Ramseyian operationalist
model of credence, but show that it is
trivial to extend this model so that
DCOP fails. We then discuss a model due
to Joyce, and show that Joyce’s
rejection of DCOP rests on
terminological choices about terms such
as ‘intention’, ‘prediction’, and
‘belief’. Once these choices are in
view, they reveal underlying agreement
between Joyce and the DCOP-favouring
tradition that descends from Ramsey.
Joyce’s Evidential Autonomy Thesis (EAT)
is effectively DCOP, in different
terminological clothing. Both principles
rest on the so-called ‘transparency’ of
first-person present-tensed reflection
on one’s own mental states.
- Carnapian
voluntarism and global expressivism:
reply to Carus. The
Monist, 101:4(2018),
468—474. [PDF|Proof
copy including Carus's paper|Published
version online]
In defending so-called global
expressivism I have often seen Carnap as
an ally. Both Carnap’s rejection of
“externalist” metaphysics and his
implicit pluralism about linguistic
frameworks seem grist for the global
expressivist’s mill. André Carus argues
for a third point of connection, via
Carnap’s voluntarism. I note two reasons
for thinking that this connection is not
as close as Carus contends.
- Global
expressivism by the method of
differences. Royal
Institute of Philosophy Supplements,
86(2019), 133—154. [PDF|Uncorrected
proof|Published
online version]
In this piece I characterise global
expressivism, as I understand it, by
contrasting it with five other views:
the so-called Canberra Plan; Moorean
non-naturalism and platonism; ‘relaxed
realism’ and quietism; local
expressivism; and response-dependent
realism. Some other familiar positions,
including fictionalism, error theories,
and idealism, are also mentioned, but as
sub-cases to one of these five.
- (With Ken Wharton) A live alternative to
quantum spooks. International
Journal of Quantum Foundations, 6(2020),
1—8.
[PDF
on ArXiv|Published
online version]
Quantum weirdness has been in the news
recently, thanks to an ingenious new
experiment by a team led by Roland
Hanson, at the Delft University of
Technology. Much of the coverage
presents the experiment as good (even
conclusive) news for spooky
action-at-a-distance, and bad news for
local realism. We point out that this
interpretation ignores an alternative,
namely that the quantum world is
retrocausal. We conjecture that this
loophole is missed because it is
confused for superdeterminism on one
side, or action-at-a-distance itself on
the other. We explain why it is
different from these options, and why it
has clear advantages, in both cases.
- (With Travis Norsen) Lapsing quickly into
fatalism: Bell on backward causation. Entropy,
23(2021), 251.
[PDF
on ArXiv|Published
online version]
This is a dialogue with Travis Norsen,
loosely inspired by a letter that I
received from J. S. Bell in 1988. The
main topic of discussion is Bell’s views
about retrocausal approaches to quantum
theory and their relevance to
contemporary issues.
- (With Ken Wharton) Entanglement swapping
and action at a distance. Foundations
of Physics (2021) 51:105.
[PDF
of longer version on ArXiv|Published
online version]
A 2015 experiment by Hanson and Delft
colleagues provided further confirmation
that the quantum world violates the Bell
inequalities, being the first Bell test
to close two known experimental
loopholes simultaneously. The experiment
was also taken to provide new evidence
of ‘spooky action at a distance’. Here
we argue for caution about the latter
claim. The Delft experiment relies on
entanglement swapping, and our main
claim is that this geometry introduces
an additional loophole in the argument
from violation of the Bell inequalities
to action at a distance: the apparent
action at a distance may be an artifact
of ‘collider bias’. In the absence of
retrocausality, the sensitivity of such
experiments to this ‘Collider Loophole’
(CL) depends on the temporal relation
between the entanglement swapping
measurement C and the two measurements A
and B between which we seek to infer a
causal connection. CL looms large if the
C is in the future of A and B, but not
if C is in the past. The Delft
experiment itself is the intermediate
case, in which the separation is
spacelike. We argue that this leaves it
vulnerable to CL, unable to establish
conclusively that it avoids it. [NB:
The Arxiv version includes an Appendix
discussing implications of
retrocausality for the issues under
discussion.]
- Family feuds?
Relativism, expressivism, and
disagreements about disagreement. Philosophical
Topics, 50(2022), 293—394.
[PDF][
https://www.jstor.org/stable/48681557]
In Expressing Our Attitudes
(OUP, 2015) Mark Schroeder speculates
about the relation between expressivism
and relativism. Noting that 'John
MacFarlane has wondered whether
relativism is expressivism done right',
he suggests that this may get things
back to front: 'it is worth taking
seriously the idea that expressivism is
relativism done right' (Schroeder 2015,
25). In this piece, motivated both by
Schroeder's suggestion and by recent
work from Lionel Shapiro, I compare and
contrast my version of expressivism with
MacFarlane's version of relativism. I
identify some significant differences
concerning the treatment of linguistic
disagreement, but conclude that despite
these differences, MacFarlane's version
of relativism counts as a version of
expressivism in my sense, in most of the
respects that matter.
- Risk and
scientific reputation: lessons from
cold fusion. Forthcoming
in Catherine Rhodes, ed., Managing
Extreme Technological Risk (World
Scientific).
[PDF
on ArXiv]
Many scientists have expressed concerns
about potential catastrophic risks
associated with new technologies. But
expressing concern is one thing,
identifying serious candidates another.
Such risks are likely to be novel, rare,
and difficult to study; data will be
scarce, making speculation necessary.
Scientists who raise such concerns may
face disapproval not only as doomsayers,
but also for their unconventional views.
Yet the costs of false negatives in
these cases – of wrongly dismissing
warnings about catastrophic risks – are
by definition very high. For these
reasons, aspects of the methodology and
culture of science, such as its attitude
to epistemic risk and to unconventional
views, are relevant to the challenges of
managing extreme technological risks. In
this piece I discuss these issues with
reference to a real-world example that
shares many of the same features, that
of so-called ‘cold fusion’.
- Global
expressivism and alethic pluralism. Synthese,
forthcoming in a Special Issue on
Alethic Pluralism. [PDF
at PhilPapers][https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-022-03874-w]
This paper discusses the relation
between Crispin Wright's alethic
pluralism and my global expressivism. I
argue that on many topics Wright's own
view counts as expressivism in my sense,
but that truth itself is a striking
exception. Unlike me, Wright never seems
to countenance an expressivist account
of truth, though the materials needed
are available to him in his approaches
to other topics.
- Time for
pragmatism. Forthcoming
in Joshua Gert, ed., Neopragmatism
(OUP).
[PDF
at the Pitt PhilSci Archive]
Are the distinctions between past,
present and future, and the apparent
‘passage’ of time, features of the world
in itself, or manifestations of the
human perspective? Questions of this
kind have been at the heart of
metaphysics of time since antiquity. The
latter view has much in common with
pragmatism, though few in these debates
are aware of that connection, and few of
the view’s proponents think of
themselves as pragmatists. For their
part, pragmatists are often unaware of
this congenial application of their
methodology; some associate pragmatism
with the other side of the old debate in
the metaphysics of time. In my view,
this link between time and pragmatism
only scratches the surface of the deep
two-way dependencies between these two
topics. The human temporal perspective
turns out to be deeply implicated not
merely in our temporal notions
themselves, but in many other conceptual
categories—arguably,
in fact, in all of them, and in the
nature of language and thought. In this
way, reflection on our own temporal
character vindicates James’ famous
slogan for global pragmatism: ‘The trail
of the human serpent is thus over
everything.’
- Gibbard on
quasi-realism and global expressivism.
Topoi (2023).
[Open access at doi.org/10.1007/s11245-022-09873-3]
In recent work Allan Gibbard claims to
be both a local quasi-realist, in
Blackburn’s sense, and a global
expressivist. His local quasi-realism
rests on an argument that for
naturalistic discourse but not ethical
discourse, the semantic relation
of denotation and the causal
relation of tracking can and should be
identified; that denoting simply is
tracking, for naturalistic vocabulary. I
argue that Gibbard’s case for this
conclusion is unconvincing, and poorly
motivated by his own expressivist
standards. I also argue that even if it
were successful, it is doubtful whether
the resulting position would count as
global expressivism, as Gibbard and I
both use that term.
- The practical
arrow. Australasian
Philosophical Review,
forthcoming as a commentary on Jenann
Ismael, ‘The open universe: totality,
self-reference and time.’
[PDF
at PhilPapers]
Ismael traces our sense that the past is
fixed and the future open to what she
calls ‘the practical arrow’ – ‘the sense
that we can affect the future but not
the past.’ In this piece I draw a
sharper distinction than Ismael herself
does between agents and mere observers,
even self-referential observers; and I
use it to argue that Ismael’s
explanation of the practical arrow is
incomplete. To explain our inability to
affect the past we need to appeal to our
own temporal orientation as agents, and
not merely to the ingredients from
physics that allow us to predict the
consequences of our actions.
- From
non-cognitivism to global
expressivism: Carnap’s unfinished
journey? Forthcoming in
Christian Dambock & Georg Schiemer
(eds.), Carnap Handbuch.
Stuttgart: Metzler Verlag.
[PDF
at PhilPapers]
Carnap was one of the first to use the
term 'non-cognitivism'. His linguistic
pluralism and voluntarism, and his
deflationary views of ontology and
semantics, are highly congenial to those
of us who want to take non-cognitivism
in the direction of global expressivism.
In his own case, however, this move is
in tension with his continued
endorsement of what he calls 'the
general thesis of logical empiricism',
that 'there is no third kind of
knowledge besides empirical and logical
knowledge.’ So while Carnap clears a
path towards global expressivism, he
doesn't seem to appreciate what it
requires him to leave behind.
[Top]
Some
unpublished preprints
- 'Not' again.
[Abstract]
[PDF]
- Probability in
the Everett world: comments on Wallace
and Greaves. [PDF
at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]
It is often objected that the Everett
interpretation of QM cannot make sense
of quantum probabilities, in one or both
of two ways: either it can’t make sense
of probability at all, or it can’t
explain why probability should be
governed by the Born rule. David Deutsch
has attempted to meet these objections.
He argues not only that rational
decision under uncertainty makes sense
in the Everett interpretation, but also
that under reasonable assumptions, the
credences of a rational agent in an
Everett world should be constrained by
the Born rule. David Wallace has
developed and defended Deutsch’s
proposal, and greatly clarified its
conceptual basis. In particular, he has
stressed its reliance on the
distinguishing symmetry of the Everett
view, viz., that all possible outcomes
of a quantum measurement are treated as
equally real. The argument thus tries to
make a virtue of what has usually been
seen as the main obstacle to making
sense of probability in the Everett
world. In this note I outline some
objections to the Deutsch-Wallace
argument, and to related proposals by
Hilary Greaves about the epistemology of
Everettian QM. (In the latter case, my
arguments include an appeal to an
Everettian analogue of the Sleeping
Beauty problem.) The common thread to
these objections is that the symmetry in
question remains a very significant
obstacle to making sense of probability
in the Everett interpretation.
- The effective
indexical. [PDF
at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]
In a famous paper
in Noûs in 1979, John Perry
points out that action depends on
indexical beliefs. In addition to
“third-person” information about her
environment, an agent need
“first-person” information about where,
when and who she is. This conclusion
is widely interpreted as a reason for
thinking that tensed claims cannot be
translated without loss into untensed
language; but not as a reason for
realism about tensed facts. In another
famous paper in the same volume of Noûs,
Nancy Cartwright argues that action
requires that agents represent their
world in causal terms, rather than
merely probabilistic terms: for,
Cartwright argues, there’s a
distinction between effective and
ineffective strategies, that otherwise
goes missing. This is widely taken as
a reason for thinking that causal
claims cannot be translated without
loss into merely probabilistic claims;
and also – in contrast to Perry’s case
– widely regarded as a reason for
realism about causation. In this paper
I ask whether the latter conclusion is
compulsory, or whether, as in Perry’s
case, the need for causal beliefs
might merely reflect some “situated”
aspect of a decision-maker’s
perspective.
- Semantic
deflationism and the Frege point.
[PDF]
This is a my old
paper 'Semantic Minimalism and the
Frege Point' (see #21 on the list
above), included here for search
engines with the alternative title
under which it is sometimes cited.
- An assumption in
the interpretation of quantum
mechanics. [PDF
at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]
‘In the
ontological models framework, it is
assumed that the probability measure
representing a quantum state is
independent of the choice of future
measurement setting.' (Leifer
2014) In this recently-unearthed piece
(written in 1978,
while I was a graduate student in
Cambridge) I discuss a
version of the above assumption,
concluding that it is 'very difficult
to justify on metaphysical grounds'. I
note that abandoning it has an
interesting potential payoff, given
its crucial role in the no-go theorems
of Bell and of Kochen & Specker.
The piece may be of interest to
diligent historians of the retrocausal
approach to QM.
- The use of force
in a theory of meaning. [PDF
at PhilPapers]
This piece was
written circa 1982—83, drawing in part
on material from my PhD thesis (The
Problem of the Single Case, Cambridge,
1981). In the thesis I proposed what
would now be called an expressivist
account of judgements of the form ‘It
is probable that p’. One
chapter, on which this paper builds,
tried to defend the view against the
Frege-Geach argument. This piece
earned a revise and resubmit from Philosophical
Review, but was never
resubmitted. Parts of it made their
way into my ‘Semantic Minimalism and
the Frege Point’, in Tsohatzidis,
S.L.(ed.), Foundations of Speech
Act Theory: Philosophical and
Linguistic Perspectives,
Routledge, 1994, 132—55 (reprinted in Naturalism
without Mirrors, Oxford, 2011,
ch. 3) —
though that paper favours a different
approach to the Frege-Geach argument,
leaning more heavily on semantic
minimalism. I have put this piece
online to facilitate self-citation.
- Ramsey,
reference and reduction. [PDF
at PhilPapers]
This is an
unpublished piece from July 1998. It
discusses the use of semantic notions
such as reference in the Canberra
Plan, the question whether this use
creates a problematic circularity if
the Canberra Plan is applied to the
semantic notions themselves, and the
relation of this question to Putnam’s
model-theoretic argument. I used some
of the ideas in later papers such as
(Price 2004, 2009) and (Menzies &
Price, 2009), but the bulk of
discussion of the relation of my
concern to Putnam’s argument (and to
responses to Putnam by others) never
made it into print.
- Location,
location, location. [PDF
at PhilPapers]
This piece was
written as my Presidential Address at
the Annual Conference of the
Australasian Association of
Philosophy, held at Melbourne
University in July 1999. I discuss the
view ‘that we can’t describe or
theorise about the world from outside
language.’ I call this idea
‘linguistic imprisonment’, and take it
to be a platitude, although one that
is interpreted very differently by
different philosophers. In so far as
language does depend on contingencies
of our own ‘location’, how should we
theorise about such matters? I
distinguish two approaches, called
‘backgrounding’ and ‘foregrounding’.
Roughly, the latter seeks to
incorporate the contingencies into the
content of claims that depend on them,
whereas the former treats them as use
conditions. I argue that linguistic
imprisonment implies that not
everything can be foregrounded, and
apply the framework to a then-recent
objection to expressivism by Jackson
and Pettit.
[Top]
Review articles
- Review of K.G. & J.S. Denbigh, Entropy
in Relation to Incomplete Knowledge,
Cambridge University Press, 1985, and
H.D. Zeh, The Physical Basis of the
Direction of Time,
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1989; British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science
42(1991) 111—144. [JSTOR]
- Discussion review of Philip Pettit, The
Common Mind: An Essay on Psychology,
Society and Politics, Oxford
University Press, 1992, Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 55(1995)
689—699.
[JSTOR]
- Review
of John McDowell, Mind and World,
Harvard University Press, 1994. In Philosophical
Books 38(1997) 169—177,
with reply by McDowell.
- Starving the
theological cuckoo. A review
of John Leslie, Infinite Minds: A
Philosophical Cosmology (OUP,
2001). In Spontaneous
Generations, A Journal for
the History and Philosophy of
Science 1(2007)
136—145. [PDF available here]
This review was commissioned by the London
Review of Books in 2002, but
rejected by the commissioning editor,
John Sturrock, apparently because he
disliked its anti-theological stance;
see the Author's Note at the end of the
present version for more details.
- Blackburn and
the War on Error. A discussion
review of Simon Blackburn's Truth: A
Guide for the Perplexed, London:
Allen Lane, 2005. In Australasian
Journal of Philosophy 84(2006)
603—614. [PDF]
- Abusing one’s
position. Commentary on Jenann
Ismael, The Situated Self,
Oxford University Press, 2006. In a review
symposium in Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 82(2011)
772—779. [PDF]
- Accidents and
contingencies. Review of
Cheryl Misak, Frank Ramsey: A Sheer
Excess of Powers, Oxford
University Press, 2020. In Society
(2022) 59:52—55. [PDF][Published
version]
[Top]
Selected minor reviews
- Review
of Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, The
Arrow of Time (W.H.Allen, 1990)
and Paul Halpern, Time Journeys
(McGraw-Hill, 1990), from Nature
348 (22 November 1990), 356.
- 'Brains
in Spain', a review of J. J.
Halliwell, J. Pérez-Mercader and W. H.
Zurek (eds.), Physical Origins of
Time Asymmetry, Cambridge
University Press, 1994. Pp. xx + 515.
$190.00 HB. From Metascience
7:1995, 179—182.
- Review of Simon Blackburn, Essays
in Quasi-realism, Oxford
University Press, 1993. In Philosophy
and Phenomenological Research 56(1996)
965—968. [PDF|JSTOR]
- 'No
Direction Known', a review of Ilya
Prigogine, The End of Certainty
(Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 1997)
and Derek York, In Search of Lost
Time (IOP Publishing, 1997), for Nature,
6 November 1997, 42.
- Review of L. S. Schulman, Time's
Arrows and Quantum Measurement,
Cambridge University Press, 1997. In The
British Journal for the Philosophy of
Science, 49(1998) 522—525.
[JSTOR]
- Review
of David Albert, Time and Chance,
Harvard University Press, 2000. In The
Times Literary Supplement, 14
April 2002.
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