DRAFT of my book on Realistic Empiricism. The book revives the neutral monism of Mach, James, and Russell and applies the updated view to the problem of redefining physicalism, explaining the origins of sensation, and the problem of deriving extended physical objects and systems from an ontology of events.

A 2012 survey article for Metascience which explains Mach's realistic brand of empiricism, contrasting it with the common phenomenalist reading of Mach by John Blackmore in two recent books.

A 2012 review article for Metascience which explains Mach's realistic brand of empiricism, contrasting it with the common phenomenalist reading of Mach by John Blackmore in two recent books.

Radical empiricism is the view that a person's experiences (sensory and introspective), or a person's observations, constitute the person's evidence. This view leads to epistemic self-defeat. There are three arguments, concerning respectively: (1) epistemic starting points; (2) epistemic norms; (3) terms of epistemic appraisal. The source of self-defeat is traced to the fact that empiricism does not count a priori intuition as evidence (where a priori intuition is not a form of belief but rather a form of seeming, specifically intellectual (...) as opposed to sensory). Moderate rationalism, by contrast, avoids self-defeat. (shrink)

After summarizing the essential details of Anil Gupta’s account of perceptual justification in his book _Empiricism and Experience_, I argue for three claims: (1) Gupta’s proposal is closer to rationalism than advertised; (2) there is a major lacuna in Gupta’s account of how convergence in light of experience yields absolute entitlements to form beliefs; and (3) Gupta has not adequately explained how ordinary courses of experience can lead to convergence on a commonsense view of the world.

This essay focuses on the extent to which the methods of analytic philosophy can be useful to feminist philosophers. I pose nine general questions feminist philosophers might ask to determine the suitability of a philosophical method. Examples include: Do its typical ways of formulating problems or issues encourage the inclusion of a wide variety of women's points of view? Are its central concepts gender-biased, not merely in their origin, but in very deep, continuing ways? Does it facilitate uncovering roles that (...) gender, politics, power, and social context play in philosophy as well as in other facets of life? (shrink)

Intended for philosophically minded psychologists and psychologically minded philosophers, this book identifies the ways that psychology has hobbled itself by adhering too strictly to empiricism, this being the doctrine that all knowledge is observation-based. In the first part of this two-part work, we show that empiricism is false. In the second part, we identify the psychology-relevant consequences of this fact. Five of these are of special importance. First, whereas some psychopathologies (e.g. obsessive-compulsive disorder) corrupt the activity mediated by one’s psychological (...) architecture, others (e.g. sociopathy) corrupt that architecture itself. Second, the basic tenets of psychoanalysis are coherent. Third, all propositional attitudes are beliefs. Fourth, selves are minds that self-evaluate. Fifth, it is by giving our thoughts a perceptible form that we enable ourselves to evaluate them, and it is by expressing ourselves in language and art that we give our thoughts a perceptible form. (shrink)

I sketch a philosophical program called ‘Empirical Fundamentalism,’ whose signature feature is the extensive use of a distinction between fundamental and derivative reality. Within the framework of Empirical Fundamentalism, derivative reality is treated as an abstraction from fundamental reality. I show how one can understand reduction and supervenience in terms of abstraction, and then I apply the introduced machinery to understand the relation between water and H2O, mental states and brain states, and so on. The conclusion is that such relations (...) can be understood either as metaphysical contingencies or as necessary type-identities. (shrink)

Conceptual analyses can be subdivided into two classes, good and evil. Em- pirical analysis is the good kind, routinely practiced in the sciences. Orthodox analysis is the malevolent version that plagues philosophical discourse. In this paper, I will clarify the difference between them, provide some reasons to prefer good over evil, and illustrate their consequences for the metaphysics of causation. By conducting an empirical analysis of causation rather than an orthodox analysis, one can segregate the genuine metaphysical problems that need (...) to be addressed from the many pseudo-problems that have long dogged traditional accounts of causation. (shrink)

This paper constitutes one extended argument, which touches on various topics of Critical Rationalism as it was initiated by Karl Popper and further developed (although into different directions) in his aftermath. The result of the argument will be that critical rationalism either offers no solution to the problem of induction at all , or that it amounts, in the last resort, to a kind of Critical Rationalist Inductivism as it were, a version of what I call Good Old Induction. One (...) may think of David Miller as a contemporary representative of what I consider as the ‘no solution’ version of critical rationalism, while Alan Musgrave stands for the version of ‘critical rationalist induction’. Popper’s own writings admit of either interpretation. (shrink)

‘What am I’ is the question which is generally asked and answered differently , since the history of thought. It is related to one’s identity, so everyone gives different answer according to their personal history, physical features and circumstances. For Hume self is neither a body, nor a mind, nor a combination of both, nor an unknown substance as some thinkers generally say and defend. It is only a series of experiences, a strew of feelings, sensations, desires, thoughts, beliefs etc (...) After that he considers the problem of personal identity by adopting the classical exposition of the positivist’s theory of personal identity. It is the view of those thinkers, who adopted sceptical view and also think that the idea of self can be described in the empirical or linguistic formula. It is common to all positivist that they think self is an abstraction from the facts with no ontological status of its own. (shrink)