Profile

Before coming to Birmingham in 2005, I was Lecturer (1999-2003), Senior Lecturer (2003-5) and then Professor of Philosophy in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Manchester . Before that, I taught at Edinburgh University (1994-5), St Andrews University (1995-6) and University College London (1996-7), and spent two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Philosophy Program at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (1997-9).

I am Director of  the British Philosophical Association. I'm on research leave with a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship for two years from September 2008. In September/October 2008, I was William Evans Visiting Fellow at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

Research Interests

My main research area is contemporary analytic metaphysics. I'm mostly interested in causation and laws of nature, and in particular in defending a 'Humean' conception of causes and laws, but am also interested in the connection between the metaphysics of causes and laws and other areas - for example the free will debate and the problem of induction. I also have an interest in (and a book on) Hume.

From 2006-9, I was part of the AHRC-funded  project, 'Metaphysics of Science: Causes, laws, kinds, and dispositions', with Alexander Bird and Emma Tobin (Bristol), Stephen Mumford, Markus Schrenk and Matt Tugby (Nottingham), and Francis Longworth and Nigel Leary (Birmingham).

Research in Progress:

• Metaphysics, a book aimed at undergraduates (Palgrave Macmillan)

• 'Agent probabilities and free will', which argues (a) that evidential decision theorists ought to adopt a 'perspectival' account of agent probabilities, and (b) that such an account can be used to serve the cause of compatibilism.
• 'What can we learn from the phenomenology of free will?' Not a lot, I argue.
• 'Hume's Two Definitions', for a collection edited by Peter Kail and Marina Frasca-Spada
• 'Is causation scalar?' No. Or at least, not in a way that would be of any use to lawyers (contrary to what Michael Moore claims in his book, Causation and Responsibility).

Postgraduate Supervision

Select Publications

Forthcoming

• 'Hume' in S. Bernecker and D. Pritchard (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (Routledge)
• 'Necessary Connections and the Problem of Induction', Nous
• Chapter in Metaphysics: 5 Questions, ed. A.Steglich-Peterson, Automatic Press
• Key Concepts in Metaphysics, with Nikk Effingham and Philip Goff (Routledge)
• Special issue of Logical Analysis and the History of Philosophy, on Hume (co-edited with Markus Schrenk)
• 'Causation and necessary connection', chapter in the Continuum Companion to Hume, eds. Alan Bailey & Dan O'Brien
•  'Are psychiatric kinds real?' (with Nigel Sabbarton Leary), in a special issue of the European Journal of Applied Philosophy, eds. Lisa Bortolotti & Luca Malatesti

Articles

2010

•  The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds, co-edited with Nigel Sabbarton-Leary (Routledge)
•  'On the abuse of the necessary a posteriori' (with Nigel Sabbarton-Leary) in The Semantics and Metaphysics of Natural Kinds

2009

• Oxford Handbook of Causation, co-edited with Peter Menzies and Chris Hitchcock, for OUP. Contributors include Frank Jackson, Clark Glymour, Sarah Broadie, Huw Price, Michael Tooley, Phil Dowe, John Carroll, Terry Horgan, Doug Ehring, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Larry Sklar, Marc Lange, and about 25 others.
• Chapter introduction in Stephen W Smith and Ronan Deazley (eds), The Legal, Medical and Cultural Regulation of the Body: Transformation and Trasngression (Ashgate)

2008

• Smilansky's 'refutation' of compatibilism', Analysis 68, 258-60

2007

• 'Humes Old and New: The Two Definitions and the Doctrine of Necessity', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society CVII, 413-31

• Reading Metaphysics, with Julian Dodd (Blackwell)
• ‘Hume on Causation: A Projectivist Interpretation’, in R. Corry and H. Price, eds., Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited (Oxford: OUP), 224-49

2006

• Hume on Causation (Routledge)
• ‘Does Anything Hold the Universe Together?’, Synthese 149, 509-33

2005

• Truthmakers: The Contemporary Debate, co-edited with Julian Dodd (OUP). Contributors: Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Jen Hornsby, Michael Morris, Joseph Melia, Chris Daly, David Liggins, Fraser MacBride, Marian David, Josh Parsons. Review by Richard Fumerton here.

2004

• 'Causing and Nothingness', in L.A. Paul, E.J. Hall and J. Collins, eds., Causation and Counterfactuals (Cambridge , Mass.: MIT Press), 291-308
•  'Chance-Changing Causal Processes' in P. Dowe and P. Noordhof, eds., Cause and Chance (London: Routledge) 39-57

2003

• 'Local Miracle Compatibilism', Nous 37, pp. 258-77
• 'Seeing Causing', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103, pp. 257-80
• 'Non-paradoxical Multi-location', with Michael Rush, Analysis 63, pp. 311-17.
• ‘Introductory formal logic: Why do we do it?’, Discourse: Learning and Teaching in Philosophical and Religious Studies 3.

2002

• 'Humean Compatibilism', with Alfred Mele, Mind 111, pp. 201-23
• 'Contingent Laws Rule: Reply to Bird', Analysis 62, pp. 252-55
• 'Reply to Huemer on the Consequence Argument', Philosophical Review 111, pp. 235-41

2001

• 'Causes & Laws', International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. N. J. Smelser & P. B. Baltes (Elsevier)
• 'Transfer of Warrant, Begging the Question, and Semantic Externalism', Philosophical Quarterly 51, pp. 356-74
• 'Recent Work on Causation', Philosophical Books 42, pp. 33-45

2000

• The Non-Governing Conception of Laws of Nature', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56, pp. 571-94. Reprinted in J.W. Carroll (ed.), Readings in Laws of Nature (Pittsburgh: Pittsburg University Press 2004), pp.250-76.

1998

• 'Do Causes Raise the Chances of Effects?', Analysis 58, pp.182-90

1997

• 'Probability as a Guide to Life' (with David Papineau), Journal of Philosophy XCIV, pp.217-43. Reprinted in D. Papineau, The Roots of Reason (OUP 2003), pp.130-66
• 'Taking Hindrance Seriously', Philosophical Studies 88, pp.59-79
• 'Counterfactual Dependence & Broken Barometers', Critica XXIX, pp.107-17

Book reviews

• John Foster, The Divine Lawmaker, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 60 (2009), 453-7
• James Woodward, Making Things Happen, Philosophical Books 47 (2006), 80-81
• George Molnar (ed. Stephen Mumford), Powers, Philosophical Quarterly 55 (2005)
• Brian Ellis, Scientific Essentialism and The Philosophy of Nature, Mind 113 (2004), pp.334-40
• Dan Hausman, Causal Asymmetries. Mind 109 (2000), pp.933-7
• Probabilities and Conditionals edited by Ellery Eells and Brian Skyrms, Philosophical Quarterly 48 (1998), pp.412-15
• Douglas Ehring, Causation & Persistence. BJPS 49 (1998), pp.181-4