16 found
Order:
  1.  89
    Fundamental Causation: Physics, Metaphysics, and the Deep Structure of the World.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2018 - New York: Routledge.
    Fundamental Causation addresses issues in the metaphysics of deterministic singular causation, the metaphysics of events, property instances, facts, preventions, and omissions, as well as the debate between causal reductionists and causal anti-reductionists. The book also pays special attention to causation and causal structure in physics. Weaver argues that causation is a multigrade obtaining relation that is transitive, irreflexive, and asymmetric. When causation is singular, deterministic and such that it relates purely contingent events, the relation is also universal, intrinsic, and well-founded. (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  2. Evilism, moral rationalism, and reasons internalism.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2015 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 77 (1):3-24.
    I show that the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and essentially omnimalevolent being is impossible given only two metaethical assumptions (viz., moral rationalism and reasons internalism). I then argue (pace Stephen Law) that such an impossibility undercuts Law’s (Relig Stud 46(3):353–373, 2010) evil god challenge.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   10 citations  
  3. In Praise of Clausius Entropy: Reassessing the Foundations of Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2021 - Foundations of Physics 51 (3):1-64.
    I will argue, pace a great many of my contemporaries, that there's something right about Boltzmann's attempt to ground the second law of thermodynamics in a suitably amended deterministic time-reversal invariant classical dynamics, and that in order to appreciate what's right about (what was at least at one time) Boltzmann's explanatory project, one has to fully apprehend the nature of microphysical causal structure, time-reversal invariance, and the relationship between Boltzmann entropy and the work of Rudolf Clausius.
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  4. A Church–Fitch proof for the universality of causation.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2013 - Synthese 190 (14):2749-2772.
    In an attempt to improve upon Alexander Pruss’s work (The principle of sufficient reason: A reassessment, pp. 240–248, 2006), I (Weaver, Synthese 184(3):299–317, 2012) have argued that if all purely contingent events could be caused and something like a Lewisian analysis of causation is true (per, Lewis’s, Causation as influence, reprinted in: Collins, Hall and paul. Causation and counterfactuals, 2004), then all purely contingent events have causes. I dubbed the derivation of the universality of causation the “Lewisian argument”. The Lewisian (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  5. Why is There Anything?Joshua Rasmussen & Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2018 - In Jerry L. Walls Trent Dougherty (ed.), Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project. New York, New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 137-156.
    We argue that there exists a necessary causally potent being. We then argue that that being is God.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  6. What could be caused must actually be caused.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2012 - Synthese 184 (3):299-317.
    I give two arguments for the claim that all events which occur at the actual world and are such that they could be caused, are also such that they must actually be caused. The first argument is an improvement of a similar argument advanced by Alexander Pruss, which I show to be invalid. It uses Pruss’s Brouwer Analog for counterfactual logic, and, as a consequence, implies inconsistency with Lewis’s semantics for counterfactuals. While (I suggest) this consequence may not be objectionable, (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  7. Hamilton, Hamiltonian Mechanics, and Causation.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2023 - Foundations of Science:1-45.
    I show how Sir William Rowan Hamilton’s philosophical commitments led him to a causal interpretation of classical mechanics. I argue that Hamilton’s metaphysics of causation was injected into his dynamics by way of a causal interpretation of force. I then detail how forces are indispensable to both Hamilton’s formulation of classical mechanics and what we now call Hamiltonian mechanics (i.e., the modern formulation). On this point, my efforts primarily consist of showing that the contemporary orthodox interpretation of potential energy is (...)
    Direct download (8 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. Poincaré, Poincaré Recurrence, and the H-Theorem: A Continued Reassessment of Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2022 - International Journal of Modern Physics B 36 (23):2230005.
    In (Weaver 2021), I showed that Boltzmann’s H-theorem does not face a significant threat from the reversibility paradox. I argue that my defense of the H-theorem against that paradox can be used yet again for the purposes of resolving the recurrence paradox without having to endorse heavy-duty statistical assumptions outside of the hypothesis of molecular chaos. As in (Weaver 2021), lessons from the history and foundations of physics reveal precisely how such resolution is achieved.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. On the Argument from Physics and General Relativity.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2020 - Erkenntnis 85 (2):333-373.
    I argue that the best interpretation of the general theory of relativity has need of a causal entity, and causal structure that is not reducible to light cone structure. I suggest that this causal interpretation of GTR helps defeat a key premise in one of the most popular arguments for causal reductionism, viz., the argument from physics.
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Yet another new cosmological argument.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2016 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 80 (1):11-31.
    I argue that the existence of a necessary concrete being can be derived from an exceedingly weak causal principle coupled with two contingent truths one of which falls out of very popular positions in contemporary analytic metaphysics. I then show that the argument resists a great many objections commonly lodged against natural theological arguments of the cosmological variety.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  11. An Objection to Naturalism and Atheism from Logic.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2019 - In Graham Oppy (ed.), A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy. Hoboken: Blackwell. pp. 451-475.
    I proffer a success argument for classical logical consequence. I articulate in what sense that notion of consequence should be regarded as the privileged notion for metaphysical inquiry aimed at uncovering the fundamental nature of the world. Classical logic breeds necessitism. I use necessitism to produce problems for both ontological naturalism and atheism.
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12.  33
    Logical Objections to Atheism.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2019 - In Graham Oppy (ed.), A Companion to Atheism and Philosophy. Hoboken: Blackwell. pp. 449–475.
    In this chapter I proffer a success argument for classical logical consequence. I articulate in what sense that notion of consequence should be regarded as the privileged notion for metaphysical inquiry aimed at uncovering the fundamental nature of the world. Classical logic breeds necessitism. I use necessitism to produce problems for both ontological naturalism and atheism.
    Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13. (1 other version)On the Carroll–Chen Model.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2017 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 48 (1):97-124.
    I argue that the Carroll-Chen cosmogonic model does not provide a plausible scientific explanation of the past hypothesis (the thesis that our universe began in an extremely low-entropy state). I suggest that this counts as a welcomed result for those who adopt a Mill-Ramsey-Lewis best systems account of laws and maintain that the past hypothesis is a brute fact that is a non-dynamical law.
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. Why is there anything at all?Joshua Rasmussen & Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2018 - In Jerry L. Walls Trent Dougherty (ed.), Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project. New York, New York: Oxford University Press.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. Causation in Physics.Christopher Gregory Weaver - forthcoming - Cambridge University Press.
    Causation in Physics demonstrates the importance of causation in the physical world. It details why causal mastery of natural phenomena is an important part of the effective strategies of experimental physicists. It develops three novel arguments for the viewpoint that causation is indispensable to the ontology of some of our best physical theories. All three arguments make much of the successes of experimental physics.
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16.  81
    Erratum to: What could be caused must actually be caused.Christopher Gregory Weaver - 2011 - Synthese 183 (2):279-279.
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation