Browsing Research Publications and Outputs by publication year
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Truth
Published 2006-05-24In this lecture, renowned philosopher Huw Price explores the concept of 'truth'. The Culture Wars have given way to the Truth Wars, but this is just a new name for an ancient conflict. From Plato to Nagel, Protagoras to ...Open AccessPresentation -
Death
Published 2006-06-08We don't like to think about death. In fact, we do everything we can to avoid it. Is it something to be feared? Why? Who does death harm? What kind of a loss is involved in the loss of a human life? Does the finitude of ...Open AccessRecording, oral -
Folk Physics, Intervention and the Concept of Cause
Published 2006-07-19Our interventions in the world are guided by our folk physical theories of how the world works. For example, we know that we can move an object by pushing it with a stick, but not by pushing it with a rope. Nothing could ...Open AccessRecording, oral -
Two bits of Nous from 1979
Published 2006-07-19Tram drivers know where their vehicles are bound, and don't have to decide to take them there, rather than somewhere else; the tramlines take care of it. Bus drivers know where their vehicles are headed, too, but without ...Open AccessPresentation -
Two Varieties of Causal Anti-Realism
Published 2006-07-19Agency theories of causation have often been criticised for not being sufficiently realist about causation. In my view recent agency theories have not been dialectically effective in addressing this charge. On the one hand ...Open AccessPresentation -
Elusive Causation
Published 2006-07-19David Lewis claimed that knowledge is elusive. "That is how knowledge is elusive. Examine it, and straightway it vanishes..." He argued that epistemology robs us of our knowledge: "Maybe epistemology is the culprit. Maybe ...Open AccessPresentation -
Causal Asymmetry and Culpability
Published 2006-07-20In developing an adequate explanation for causal asymmetry it is important to distinguish two importantly different applications of the concept of causation. One role for causation is in prediction. Knowledge of causal ...Open AccessRecording, oral -
Intervention and Contrastivity
Published 2006-07-20Jim Woodward has suggested that that interventionism presupposes a conception of causation that is contrastive for both cause and effect. I will discuss the extent to which contrastivity is presupposed in the notions of ...Open AccessRecording, oral -
Entropy, Interventions and Causation
Published 2006-07-20Possible connections between thermodynamics and the causal asymmetryOpen AccessPresentation -
Causation and Reductive Explanation
Published 2006-07-20One of the most powerful tools in science is the method of reductive explanation, where we explain the behaviour of a complex system in terms of the behaviour of the parts from which it is composed. In order to employ this ...Open AccessPresentation -
Nonlocal causation in Maxwell theory
Published 2006-07-21Maxwell's equations were the inspiration for special relativity and the principle of relativistic "causality", whereby spacelike-separated events are understood to be causally independent. In this talk, I will show that ...Open AccessPresentation -
Time is the Simplest (and Strongest) Thing
Published 2006-07-21What is the difference between time and space? This paper proposes an answer: the temporal direction is that direction on the manifold of events in which our best theories can tell the strongest, most informative "stories." ...Open AccessPresentation -
Art, Time and Consciousness
Published 2006-07-22Philosophical conceptions of time seem to fall into two groups, “flow” (river, arrow) and “block”: both of them spatialised. Kant was an important exception, and modern subjectivist thinking about time, or about the ...Open AccessRecording, oral -
Memory and Temporal Phenomenology
Published 2006-07-22In the general project of trying to reconcile the objective view of the world with the subjective view, analytic philosophy in recent years, has been almost solely focused on sensory phenomenology. But there is at least ...Open AccessRecording, oral -
Projectivism and Experiences of Temporal Properties
Published 2006-07-22Among the many ways in which, it seems, we can be conscious of time, there is the sensory perception of certain temporal properties. Many of perceptual experiences seem capable of representing properties such as (i) the ...Open AccessRecording, oral -
The Specious Present
Published 2006-07-22William James characterised the specious present as 'the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible'. The doctrine that our conscious awareness is not instantaneous, but rather spans a short ...Open AccessPresentation -
Roundtable discussion
Published 2006-07-23David Chalmers will chair a discussion of issues arising from the conference.Open AccessRecording, oral -
The Dimensionality of Time
Published 2006-07-23Many philosophers have concluded that Kant was wrong about space, the form of outer experience - that the space of our experience is not necessarily Euclidean. Be that as it may, one can nevertheless ask whether he was ...Open AccessRecording, oral -
The Subjectivity of the Present
Published 2006-07-23Perhaps the most compelling argument for the tensed theory of time ˜ and in particular the idea of a global monadic present or now ˜ has always been that it is the best explanation of temporal experience. Most detensers ...Open AccessPresentation -
Memory and Temporal Awareness
Published 2006-07-23Memories have content in that they can be correct or incorrect. In addition, memories have an interesting phenomenological feature: If a subject remembers some event, then that event is presented to her as taking place in ...Open AccessPresentation