Contents

• Philosophical Writings Available on the Web
  
  
  • Books
  • Articles in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Journal Articles and Book Chapters
  • Lectures and Class Notes
  • Book Reviews, Critical Notices and Notes
  
  
• Opinions and Miscellaneous Writings
  
  
• Transfer to Philosophical Clippings (material written by other persons)

Philosophical Writings Available on the Web

Books

• Possible Worlds: An Introduction to Logic and Its Philosophy, co-authored with Raymond Bradley, electronic edition, 2010. (The complete book, free of charge, 391pp + xxi.)  Available in PDF format.
  
  
• The Concept of Physical Law, second edition, 2003. (The complete book, free of charge, 220pp + viii.) Available in PDF format.
  
  
• Beyond Experience: Metaphysical Theories and Philosophical Constraints, second edition, 2001. (The complete book, free of charge, 449pp + xii.) Available in both HTML and PDF formats.

Articles in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• Laws of Nature
  
  
• Truth, co-authored with Bradley Dowden
  
  
• Foreknowledge and Free Will

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• Absolute Probability in Small Worlds: A New Paradox in Probability Theory – In possible worlds of few individuals, it is more probable that all P's are Q's than some P's are Q's.
  
  
• A Neo-Humean Perspective: Laws as Regularities – A defence of a strong version of the thesis that Laws of Nature are not physically necessary. They are nothing more than regularities.
  
  
• Getting from P to Q: Valid Inferences and Heuristics – Nondemonstrative (inductively valid) inferences have long been known to harbor puzzling difficulties; but so too do demonstrative (deductively valid) inferences.
  
  
• Can Existence and Nomicity Devolve from Axiological Principles?  – An examination of Nicolas Rescher's attempt to answer the question, "Why is there anything?"
  
  
• Emergence and Materialist Theories of Sentience  – New properties (phenomenological states) in a system (the brain) may arise simply as a function of the sheer size of that system.

Lectures and Class Notes

• Free Will and Determinism
  
  
• 'The' Modal Fallacy – as it occurs in ordinary speech, and in discussions of inference, epistemology, theology, etc.
  
  
• Time Travel to the Past – a discussion with Bradley Dowden, November 1993
  
  
• Possible Worlds
  
  
• Presuppositions in Empirical Research
  
  
• The Obdurate Persistence of Rationalism
  
  
• The Concepts of Necessary Conditions and Sufficient Conditions
  
  
  • Introduction
  • Exercises #1
  • Answers to Exercises #1
  • Exercises #2
  • Answers to Exercises #2
  
  
• Definitions, Dictionaries, and Meanings
  
  
• Knowledge
  
  
  • An overly strong analysis
    
  • The standard analysis of knowledge
    
  • Under what conditions is one justified in saying "I know that P"?
    
  • Skepticism
    
  • Case study: Am I dreaming?
  • Is knowledge of the future possible?
    
  • The strong sense of "knows" and the weak sense of "knows"
    
  • "Knows" and "knows for certain"
    
  
  
• Epistemic Modes (a priori, a posteriori, etc.)
  
  
• The Bearers of Truth Values
  
  
• Checklist for Writing Philosophy Papers

Book Reviews, Critical Notices and Notes

• 1974 – Note: On Reducing the Number of Possible Worlds
  
  
• 1986 – Book Review: Explanation, Causation and Deduction by Fred Wilson
  
  
• 1988 – Book Review: Contemporary Science and Natural Explanation: Commonsense Conceptions of Causality edited by Denis J. Hilton
  
  
• 1991 – Critical Notice: Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation by Douglas Walton
  
  
• 1993 – Critical Notice: Baffling Phenomena and Other Studies in the Philosophy of Knowledge and Valuation by Nicholas Rescher
  
  
• 1993 – Book Review: The Norm of Truth by Pascal Engel
  
  
• 1995 – Critical Notice: Slippery Slopes by Douglas Walton and Ways of Thinking by James Davies
  
  
• 1995 – Book Review: Logical Reasoning by Bradley H. Dowden
  
  
• 1997 – Critical Notice: Laws of Nature by John W. Carroll

Opinions and Miscellaneous Writings

• Philosophy as a Blood Sport Since 1998, more than fifteen thousand persons have visited (and read?) this paper.
  
  
• Alphabetizing Data It is far trickier to program a computer to alphabetize data than it is to sort numbers. Here are some techniques for alphabetizing data. (Note: PDF file. Requires Adobe®  Acrobat®  Reader®™)
  
  
• Please Loiter (an essay lamenting the insufficiency of social space for students on the campus of Simon Fraser University.)
  
  
• Improving the Vitality of Campus Life (a reply, by Lee Gavel, to "Please Loiter".)

Material written by others

• Philosophical Clippings