Which Curie's Principle

Is there more that one "Curie's principle"? How far are different formulations legitimate? What are the aspects that make it so scientifically fruitful, independently of how it is formulated? The paper is devoted to exploring these questions. We start with illustrating Curie's original 1894 article and his focus. Then, we consider the way that the discussion of the principle took shape from early commentators to its modern form. We say why we think that the modern focus on the inter-state version of the principle loses sight of some of the most interesting significant applications of the principle. Finally, we address criticism of the principle put forward by Norton (2014) and purported counterexamples due to Roberts (2013, 2014)

The Difference Between Buses and Trams

Tram drivers know where their vehicles are bound, and don't have to decide to take them there, rather than somewhere else; the tramlines take care of it. Bus drivers know where their vehicles are headed, too, but without the benefit of the rails. In this talk we explain how this difference offers both bad news and good for bus drivers. It make them less noble, less god-like creatures than their tram-driving cousins, for their epistemic perspective is necessarily degenerate in comparison; but degeneracy sets them free. We propose that this discursion on public transport throws important new light on the foundations of interventionist causation: roughly, it suggests that the causal perspective is an inevitable by-product of an epistemic degeneracy

An Empiricist’s Guide to Objective Modality

In this paper, I defend an empiricist account of modality that keeps a substantive account of modal commitment, but throws out the metaphysics. I suggest that if we pair a deflationary attitude toward representation with a substantive account of how scientific models are constructed and put to use, the result is an account that deflates the metaphysics of modal commitment without deflating the content of modal claims

Book Symposium: David Albert, After Physics

On April 1, 2016, at the Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, a book symposium, organized by Alyssa Ney, was held in honor of David Albert’s After Physics (Harvard University Press, 2015). All participants agreed that it was a valuable and enlightening session. We have decided that it would be useful, for those who weren’t present, to make our remarks publicly available. Please bear in mind that what follows are remarks prepared for the session, and that on some points participants may have changed their minds in light of the ensuing discussion

Book Symposium: David Albert, After Physics

On April 1, 2016, at the Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association, a book symposium, organized by Alyssa Ney, was held in honor of David Albert’s After Physics (Harvard University Press, 2015). All participants agreed that it was a valuable and enlightening session. We have decided that it would be useful, for those who weren’t present, to make our remarks publicly available. Please bear in mind that what follows are remarks prepared for the session, and that on some points participants may have changed their minds in light of the ensuing discussion

Levels: Descriptive, Explanatory, and Ontological

Scientists and philosophers frequently speak about levels of description, levels of explanation, and ontological levels. In this paper, I propose a unified framework for modelling levels. I give a general definition of a system of levels and show that it can accommodate descriptive, explanatory, and ontological notions of levels. I further illustrate the usefulness of this framework by applying it to some salient philosophical questions: (1) Is there a linear hierarchy of levels, with a fundamental level at the bottom? And what does the answer to this question imply for physicalism, the thesis that everything supervenes on the physical? (2) Are there emergent properties? (3) Are higher-level descriptions reducible to lower-level ones? (4) Can the relationship between normative and non-normative domains be viewed as one involving levels? Although I use the terminology of “levels”, the proposed framework can also represent “scales”, “domains”, or “subject matters”, where these are not linearly but only partially ordered by relations of supervenience or inclusion

Relativism, Coherence, and the Problems of Philosophy *

The eventual topic of this paper is the perhaps grandiose question of whether we have any reason to think that philosophical problems can be solved. Philosophy has been around for quite some time, and its record is cause for pessimism: it is not, exactly, that there are no established results, but that what results there are, are negative (such-and-such is false, or won't work), or conditional (as Ernest Nagel used to say, "If we had ham, and if we had eggs, then we'd have ham and eggs"). 1 I hope in what follows first of all to explain the record. My explanation will naturally suggest a way of turning over a new leaf, and I will wrap up the paper by laying out that proposal and critically assessing its prospects. However, the approach to my topic will have to be roundabout. Along the way, I will detour to consider how the problems of philosophy can be * I'm grateful t

Essay Review: David Wallace, The Emergent Multiverse

We review and discuss the recent monograph by David Wallace on Everettian Quantum Mechanics. This book is a high point of two decades of work on Everett in both physics and philosophy. It is also a beautiful and welcome exemplar of a modern way of doing metaphysics. We discuss certain aspects more critically, and take the opportunity to sketch an alternative pragmatist approach to probability in Everett, to be fully developed elsewhere

Memory and Temporal Phenomenology

In the general project of trying to reconcile the objective view of the world with the subjective view, analytic philosophy in recent years, has been almost solely focused on sensory phenomenology. But there is at least as a big a gap between the view of time presented in physics and the view of time presented in the experience of the subject. In physics, there is an almost complete assimilation of time to space. Time is just one dimension in a four-dimensional manifold of events. We experience time, however, as something dynamic. I'll be exploring prospects for understanding of the phenomenology of flow without falling into the incoherent idea that time itself moves.Centre for Consciousness, Australian National Universit