… there is widespread confusion about what ‘determinism’ means. Certainly the standard textbook definitions are wrong. Wrong in the way that definitions are wrong: they don’t capture what anyone really means by the term.
Philosophical treatments of the Trolley Problem ignore morally significant subtleties.
The direction of time is the direction of contingent counterfactual dependence and hence causation.
Presented at the “Free Will Physics and Metaphysics” conference. Rutgers University, May 12th,2022
The Simple Theory of Counterfactuals
The account of counterfactuals that most philosophers endorse is wrong. The correct theory is Johanthan Bennett’s Simple Theory.
The Computational Theory of the Laws of Nature
An alternative to the Best System Account of Laws based upon Algorithmic Information Theory.
Computation, Laws and Supervenience
The Computational Theory of Laws has implications for the Logic of Nomological Necessity and debates about Humean Supervenience.
Blackburn, Truth and other Hot Topics
Blackburn and Fodor fail to appreciate the threat incommensurability poses to our belief in objective truth.
Begin with the principle:
It is impermissible to harm others (other things being equal)…
The Good, The Bad and Peter Singer
Singer says that failing to donate money to help suffering from poverty and preventable diseases is as morally bad as standing by as a child drowns. But how bad is that I wonder?
The Retributive Theory of Property
Retributive ethics derives property rights from conventionally agreed to permissions to harm others.
The Origins of Property: A Parable with Morals
Once upon a time there was a primitive tribe that hunted and gathered in a verdant forest in a temperate clime.
The Retributive Theory of Rights
The theory analyses rights as permissions to harm others.