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John T. Roberts [26]John Thomas Roberts [1]
  1. The Law Governed Universe.John T. Roberts - 2008 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    The law-governed world-picture -- A remarkable idea about the way the universe is cosmos and compulsion -- The laws as the cosmic order : the best-system approach -- The three ways : no-laws, non-governing-laws, governing-laws -- Work that laws do in science -- An important difference between the laws of nature and the cosmic order -- The picture in four theses -- The strategy of this book -- The meta-theoretic conception of laws -- The measurability approach to laws -- What (...)
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  2. "Ceteris Paribus", There Is No Problem of Provisos.John Earman & John T. Roberts - 1999 - Synthese 118 (3):439 - 478.
    Much of the literature on "ceteris paribus" laws is based on a misguided egalitarianism about the sciences. For example, it is commonly held that the special sciences are riddled with ceteris paribus laws; from this many commentators conclude that if the special sciences are not to be accorded a second class status, it must be ceteris paribus all the way down to fundamental physics. We argue that the (purported) laws of fundamental physics are not hedged by ceteris paribus clauses and (...)
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  3.  79
    Ceteris Paribus Lost.John Earman, John T. Roberts & Sheldon Smith - 2002 - Erkenntnis 57 (3):281-301.
    Many have claimed that ceteris paribus (CP) laws are a quite legitimate feature of scientific theories, some even going so far as to claim that laws of all scientific theories currently on offer are merely CP. We argue here that one of the common props of such a thesis, that there are numerous examples of CP laws in physics, is false. Moreover, besides the absence of genuine examples from physics, we suggest that otherwise unproblematic claims are rendered untestable by the (...)
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  4. (2 other versions)Contact with the nomic: A challenge for deniers of Humean supervenience about laws of nature part I: Humean supervenience.John Earman & John T. Roberts - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (1):1–22.
    This is the first part of a two-part article in which we defend the thesis of Humean Supervenience about Laws of Nature (HS). According to this thesis, two possible worlds cannot differ on what is a law of nature unless they also differ on the Humean base. The Humean base is easy to characterize intuitively, but there is no consensus on how, precisely, it should be defined. Here in Part I, we present and motivate a characterization of the Humean base (...)
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  5. A puzzle about laws, symmetries and measurability.John T. Roberts - 2008 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (2):143-168.
    I describe a problem about the relations among symmetries, laws and measurable quantities. I explain why several ways of trying to solve it will not work, and I sketch a solution that might work. I discuss this problem in the context of Newtonian theories, but it also arises for many other physical theories. The problem is that there are two ways of defining the space-time symmetries of a physical theory: as its dynamical symmetries or as its empirical symmetries. The two (...)
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  6. Contact with the nomic: A challenge for deniers of Humean supervenience about laws of nature part II: The epistemological argument for Humean supervenience.John Earman & John T. Roberts - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (2):253–286.
    In Part I, we presented and motivated a new formulation of Humean Supervenience about Laws of Nature (HS). Here in Part II, we present an epistemological argument in defense of HS, thus formulated. Our contention is that one can combine a modest realism about laws of nature with a proper recognition of the importance of empirical testability in the epistemology of science only if one accepts HS.
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  7. Contact with the Nomic.John T. Roberts - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 71 (1):1-22.
    This is the first part of a two-part article in which we defend the thesis of Humean Supervenience about Laws of Nature (HS). According to this thesis, two possible worlds cannot differ on what is a law of nature unless they also differ on the Humean base. The Humean base is easy to characterize intuitively, but there is no consensus on how, precisely, it should be defined. Here in Part I, we present and motivate a characteriza- tion of the Humean (...)
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  8. (1 other version)Undermining undermined: Why Humean supervenience never needed to be debugged (even if it's a necessary truth).John T. Roberts - 2001 - Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 2001 (3):S98-.
    The existence of "undermining futures" appears to show that a contradiction can be deduced from the conjunction of Humean supervenience (HS) about chance and the Principal Principle. A number of strategies for rescuing HS from this problem have been proposed recently. In this paper, a novel way of defending HS from the threat is presented, and it is argued that this defense has advantages not shared by others. In particular, it requires no revisionism about chance, and it is equally available (...)
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  9. Leibniz on force and absolute motion.John T. Roberts - 2003 - Philosophy of Science 70 (3):553-573.
    I elaborate and defend an interpretation of Leibniz on which he is committed to a stronger space-time structure than so-called Leibnizian space-time, with absolute speeds grounded in his concept of force rather than in substantival space and time. I argue that this interpretation is well-motivated by Leibniz's mature writings, that it renders his views on space, time, motion, and force consistent with his metaphysics, and that it makes better sense of his replies to Clarke than does the standard interpretation. Further, (...)
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  10. Fine-tuning and the infrared bull’s-eye.John T. Roberts - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 160 (2):287-303.
    I argue that the standard way of formalizing the fine-tuning argument for design is flawed, and I present an alternative formalization. On the alternative formalization, the existence of life is not treated as the evidence that confirms design; instead it is treated as part of the background knowledge, while the fact that fine tuning is required for life serves as the evidence. I argue that the alternative better captures the informal line of thought that gives the fine-tuning argument its intuitive (...)
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  11.  59
    CP-Law Statements as Vague, Self-Referential, Self-Locating, Statistical, and Perfectly in Order.John T. Roberts - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (S10):1775-1786.
    I propose understanding CP-law statements as statements that assert the existence of vague statistical laws, not by fully specifying the contents of those laws, but by picking them out via a description that is both self-referential and self-locating. I argue that this proposal validates many common assumptions about CP-laws and correctly classifies many examples of putative CP-laws. It does this while avoiding the most serious worries that motivate some philosophers to be skeptical of CP-laws, namely the worry that they lack (...)
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  12. Some Laws of Nature are Metaphysically Contingent.John T. Roberts - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (3):445-457.
    Laws of nature are puzzling because they have a 'modal character'—they seem to be 'necessary-ish'—even though they also seem to be metaphysically contingent. And it is hard to understand how contingent truths could have such a modal character. Scientific essentialism is a doctrine that seems to dissolve this puzzle, by showing that laws of nature are actually metaphysically necessary. I argue that even if the metaphysics of natural kinds and properties offered by scientific essentialism is correct, there are still some (...)
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  13.  48
    The Range Conception of Probability and the Input Problem.John T. Roberts - 2016 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 47 (1):171-188.
    Abrams, Rosenthal, and Strevens have recently presented interpretations of the objective probabilities posited by some scientific theories that build on von Kries’s idea of identifying probabilities with ranges of values in a space of possible states. These interpretations face a problem, forcefully pointed out by Rosenthal, about how to determine ‘input probabilities.’ I argue here that Abrams’s and Strevens’s attempts to solve this problem do not succeed. I also argue that the problem can be solved by recognizing the possibility of (...)
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  14. Laws about frequencies.John T. Roberts - unknown
    A law about frequencies would be a law of nature that imposes a constraint on one or more (actual, global) frequencies. On any of the leading philosophical approaches to laws of nature, there could be laws about frequencies. Hypotheses that posit laws about frequencies turn out to behave very similarly to hypotheses that posit corresponding laws about probabilities or chances -- they make the same predictions, provide similar explanations, and are confirmed or disconfirmed by empirical evidence in the same ways. (...)
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  15. Chance without Credence.John T. Roberts - 2013 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (1):33-59.
    It is a standard view that the concept of chance is inextricably related to the technical concept of credence . One influential version of this view is that the chance role is specified by (something in the neighborhood of) David Lewis's Principal Principle, which asserts a certain definite relation between chance and credence. If this view is right, then one cannot coherently affirm that there are chance processes in the physical world while rejecting the theoretical framework in which credence is (...)
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  16. Determinism.John T. Roberts - 2005 - In Sahotra Sarkar & Jessica Pfeifer (eds.), The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge. pp. 1.
  17.  55
    Measurability And Physical Laws.John T. Roberts - 2005 - Synthese 144 (3):433-447.
    I propose and motivate a new account of fundamental physical laws, the Measurability Account of Laws (MAL). This account has a distinctive logical form, in that it takes the primary nomological concept to be that of a law relative to a given theory, and defines a law simpliciter as a law relative to some true theory. What makes a proposition a law relative to a theory is that it plays an indispensable role in demonstrating that some quantity posited by that (...)
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  18.  31
    Measurements, laws, and counterfactuals.John T. Roberts - 2013 - In Stephen Mumford & Matthew Tugby (eds.), Metaphysics and Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 29.
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  19.  23
    And counterfactuals.John T. Roberts - 2013 - In Stephen Mumford & Matthew Tugby (eds.), Metaphysics and Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 29.
  20.  77
    Extra-Physical Structure in a Physical World? or, Is the Study of Life Provincial?John T. Roberts - 2011 - The Monist 94 (2):221-243.
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  21.  72
    Reply to Skow.John T. Roberts - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (1):163-167.
    We have argued against a standard way of defining Humean supervenience about laws, and in favor of an alternative definition. Skow says that our argument against the standard definition makes a big mistake. He is right about this. But that mistake is correctable. Skow also argues that our alternative definition is seriously flawed. We think he is wrong about this.
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  22. The Semantic Novelty of Theoretical Terms.John T. Roberts - unknown
    Often when a new scientific theory is introduced, new terms are introduced along with it. Some of these new terms might be given explicit definitions using only terms that were in currency prior to the introduction of the theory. Some of them might be defined using other new terms introduced with the theory. But it frequently happens that the standard formulations of a theory do not define some of the new terms at all; these terms are adopted as primitives. The (...)
     
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  23.  34
    Belot, Gordon. Geometric Possibility. [REVIEW]John T. Roberts - 2012 - Review of Metaphysics 65 (4):863-864.
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