Publications
3.
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Plumbing Metaphysical Explanatory Depth
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Philosophical Studies (forthcoming)
I motivate an interventionist analysis of depth in metaphysical explanation. Following Hitchcock & Woodward (2003b), I argue that metaphysical explanatory depth is connected to the range of testing interventions under which an explanatory generalization remains invariant. What's more, I show that the addition of such a notion to our metaphysical toolkit has some interesting ramifications. |
2.
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Understanding and Scientific Progress: Lessons from Epistemology
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Synthese (2022)
I argue, contra Dellsén (2016, 2017, 2018), that an analysis of the role of justification in scientific practice reveals that understanding and knowledge are not separable. Consequently, I maintain that there is little motivation for the claim that science progresses through increasing understanding rather than the accumulation of knoweldge. |
1.
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A Defence of Manipulationist Noncausal Explanation: The Case for Intervention-liberalism.
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Erkenntnis (2021)
I argue against the idea that interventions carve nature at its causal joints; a popular dogma which I label "intervention-puritanism". Instead, I trace a more liberal attitude towards the role of interventions back to the work of Jaegwon Kim (1974), and mount the first sustained defence of the idea that there are distinctively noncausal explanations which can be characterized in terms of possible interventions. I call the resulting position "intervention liberalism". |