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John Bigelow [78]John C. Bigelow [15]
  1. The reality of numbers: a physicalist's philosophy of mathematics.John Bigelow - 1988 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Challenging the myth that mathematical objects can be defined into existence, Bigelow here employs Armstrong's metaphysical materialism to cast new light on mathematics. He identifies natural, real, and imaginary numbers and sets with specified physical properties and relations and, by so doing, draws mathematics back from its sterile, abstract exile into the midst of the physical world.
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  2. Presentism and properties.John Bigelow - 1996 - Philosophical Perspectives 10:35-52.
  3. Functions.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1987 - Journal of Philosophy 84 (4):181-196.
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  4.  23
    Science and Necessity.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1990 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Robert Pargetter.
    This book espouses a theory of scientific realism in which due weight is given to mathematics and logic. The authors argue that mathematics can be understood realistically if it is seen to be the study of universals, of properties and relations, of patterns and structures, the kinds of things which can be in several places at once. Taking this kind of scientific platonism as their point of departure, they show how the theory of universals can account for probability, laws of (...)
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  5. The world as one of a kind: Natural necessity and laws of nature.John Bigelow, Brian Ellis & Caroline Lierse - 1992 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (3):371-388.
  6. The big bad bug: What are the humean's chances?John Bigelow, John Collins & Robert Pargetter - 1993 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (3):443-462.
    Humean supervenience is the doctrine that there are no necessary connections in the world. David Lewis identifies one big bad bug to the programme of providing Humean analyses for apparently non-Humean features of the world. The bug is chance. We put the bug under the microscope, and conclude that chance is no special problem for the Humean.
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  7. Forces.John Bigelow, Brian Ellis & Robert Pargetter - 1988 - Philosophy of Science 55 (4):614-630.
    Traditionally, forces are causes of a special sort. Forces have been conceived to be the direct or immediate causes of things. Other sorts of causes act indirectly by producing forces which are transmitted in various ways to produce various effects. However, forces are supposed to act directly without the mediation of anything else. But forces, so conceived, appear to be occult. They are mysterious, because we have no clear conception of what they are, as opposed to what they are postulated (...)
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  8. Presentism, and speaking of the dead.Neil McKinnon & John Bigelow - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 160 (2):253-263.
    Presentists standardly conform to the eternalist’s paradigm of treating all cases of property-exemplification as involving a single relation of instantiation. This, we argue, results in a much less parsimonious and philosophically explanatory picture than is possible if other alternatives are considered. We argue that by committing to primitive past and future tensed instantiation ties, presentists can make gains in both economy and explanatory power. We show how this metaphysical picture plays out in cases where an individual exists to partake in (...)
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  9. Quantities.John Bigelow, Robert Pargetter & D. M. Armstrong - 1988 - Philosophical Studies 54 (3):287 - 304.
  10. A theory of structural universals.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1989 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 67 (1):1 – 11.
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  11. Worlds enough for time.John Bigelow - 1991 - Noûs 25 (1):1-19.
  12. Metaphysics of causation.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1990 - Erkenntnis 33 (1):89 - 119.
    The world contains not only causes and effects, but also causal relations holding between causes and effects. Because causal relations enter into the structure of the world, their presence has various modal and probabilistic consequences. Causation and “necessary and sufficient conditions” do often go hand in hand. Causation, however, is a robust ingredient within the world itself, whereas modalities and probabilities supervene on the nature of the world as a whole, and on the resulting relations between one possible world and (...)
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  13. Jackson’s classical model of meaning.Laura Schroeter & John Bigelow - 2009 - In Ian Ravenscroft (ed.), Minds, Ethics, and Conditionals: Themes from the Philosophy of Frank Jackson. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
    Frank Jackson often writes as if his descriptivist account of public language meanings were just plain common sense. How else are we to explain how different speakers manage to communicate using a public language? And how else can we explain how individuals arrive at confident judgments about the reference of their words in hypothetical scenarios? Our aim in this paper is to show just how controversial the psychological assumptions behind in Jackson’s semantic theory really are. First, we explain how Jackson’s (...)
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  14. Possible worlds foundations for probability.John C. Bigelow - 1976 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 5 (3):299--320.
  15.  90
    If-then meets the possible worlds.John C. Bigelow - 1976 - Philosophia 6 (2):215-235.
  16. Real possibilities.John C. Bigelow - 1988 - Philosophical Studies 53 (1):37 - 64.
  17.  16
    Subjunctive Reasoning.John Bigelow - 1980 - Linguistics and Philosophy 4 (1):129-139.
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  18. Believing in semantics.John C. Bigelow - 1978 - Linguistics and Philosophy 2 (1):101--144.
    This paper concerns the semantics of belief-sentences. I pass over ontologically lavish theories which appeal to impossible worlds, or other points of reference which contain more than possible worlds. I then refute ontologically stingy, quotational theories. My own theory employs the techniques of possible worlds semantics to elaborate a Fregean analysis of belief-sentences. In a belief-sentence, the embedded clause does not have its usual reference, but refers rather to its own semantic structure. I show how this theory can accommodate quantification (...)
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  19.  92
    Vectors and change.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1989 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40 (3):289-306.
    Vectors, we will argue, are not just mathematical abstractions. They are also physical properties--universals. What make them distinctive are the rich and varied essences of these universals, and the complex pattern of internal relations which hold amongst them.
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  20.  17
    (1 other version)Acquaintance with qualia.Robert Pargetter & John Bigelow - 1990 - Theoria 56 (3):129-147.
  21. Beyond the blank stare.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1987 - Theoria 53 (2-3):97-114.
  22. Semantics of probability.John C. Bigelow - 1977 - Synthese 36 (4):459--72.
  23.  85
    Morality, Potential Persons and Abortion.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1988 - American Philosophical Quarterly 25 (2):173 - 181.
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  24.  73
    Towards structural universals.John Bigelow - 1986 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 64 (1):94 – 96.
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  25.  26
    Death and Well-Being.John Bigelow, John Campbell & Robert Pargetter - 1990 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 71 (2):119-40.
  26.  98
    Temptation and the Will.John Bigelow, Susan M. Dodds & Robert Pargetter - 1990 - American Philosophical Quarterly 27 (1):39-49.
    The authors argue, against Frank Jackson, that weakness (and strength) of will involves higher-order mental states. The authors hold that this is compatible with a decision-theoretic belief-desire psychology of human action.
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  27.  67
    Colouring in the world.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1990 - Mind 99 (394):279-88.
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  28.  94
    Integrity and Autonomy.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 2007 - American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (1):39-49.
  29. Scientific ellisianism.John Bigelow - 1999 - In Howard Sankey (ed.), Causation and Laws of Nature. Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 45--59.
  30.  59
    Parental Autonomy.John Bigelow, John Campbell, Susan M. Dodds, Robert Pargetter, Elizabeth W. Prior & Robert Young - 1988 - Journal of Applied Philosophy 5 (2):183-196.
    ABSTRACT We argue that in societies like our own the prevailing view that parents have both special responsibilities for and special rights over their children fails to give a proper understanding of the autonomy both of parents and of children. It is our claim that there is a logical priority of the separable interests of a child over the autonomy of its parents in the fulfilment of their special responsibilities for and the exercise of their special rights over their children. (...)
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  31.  25
    Omnificence.John Bigelow - 2005 - Analysis 65 (3):187-196.
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  32. Gettier's Theorem.John Bigelow - 2006 - In Stephen Cade Hetherington (ed.), Aspects of Knowing: Epistemological Essays. Elsevier Science. pp. 203--218.
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  33. The validation of induction.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1997 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (1):62 – 76.
  34. Truth-makers and truth-bearers.John Bigelow - 2009 - In Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics. New York: Routledge.
     
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  35.  83
    Skeptical Realism.John Bigelow - 1994 - The Monist 77 (1):3-26.
    There is an important family of philosophical positions which deserve the name “realism”, and there is a natural diagnosis of what all these positions share in common. There is also an important family of philosophical positions which deserve the name “antirealism”, and there is a natural diagnosis of what all these positions share in common. These two families are feuding, but the nature of the conflict between them is far from clear. When we extract the definition which realists would give (...)
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  36. Quine, mereology, and inference to the best explanation.John Bigelow - 2010 - Logique Et Analyse 53 (212):465.
    Given Quine's views on philosophical methodology, he should not have taken the axioms of classical mereology to be "self-evident", or "analytic"; but rather, he should have set out to justify them by what might be broadly called an "inference to the best explanation". He does very little to this end. In particular, he does little to examine alternative theories, to see if there might be anything they could explain better than classical mereology can. I argue that there is something important (...)
     
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  37. Time Travel Fiction.John Bigelow - 2001 - In Gerhard Preyer & Frank Siebelt (eds.), Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David Lewis. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. pp. 57--91.
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  38.  66
    Does science persecute women? The case of the 16th–17th century witch-Hunts.Karen Green & John Bigelow - 1998 - Philosophy 73 (2):195-217.
    I. Logic, rationality and ideology Herbert Marcuse once claimed that the ‘“rational” is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.’ He echoed a widespread folk belief that a world in which people were rational would be a better world. This could be taken as an optimistic empirical conjecture: if people were more rational then probably the world would be a better place (a trust that ‘virtue will be rewarded’, so to speak). (...)
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  39.  69
    Believing in sentences.John Bigelow - 1980 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 58 (1):11 – 18.
  40.  49
    From extroverted realism to correspondence: A modest proposal.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1990 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50 (3):435-460.
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  41.  51
    Semantic nominalism.John Bigelow - 1981 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 59 (4):403 – 421.
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  42. The Necessitarian Perspective: Laws as Natural Entailments.Martin Leckey & John Bigelow - 2018 - In Walter R. Ott & Lydia Patton (eds.), Laws of Nature. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. pp. 92-119.
    We maintain that there is something called natural necessity that is involved in the laws of nature -laws are concerned with what must happen, and what could not possibly happen. rather than merely what does and does not happen. Some recent believers in natural necessity, such as Dretske [1977], Tooley [1977,1987] and Armstrong [1978, 1983], have argued that this natural necessity arises from certain relations among the properties of things in our world - they argue that there are relations of (...)
     
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  43. God and the new math.John Bigelow - 1996 - Philosophical Studies 84 (2-3):127 - 154.
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  44.  91
    How not to be muddled by a meddlesome muggletonian.John Bigelow & Michael Smith - 1997 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 75 (4):511 – 527.
    Holton, we acknowledge, has given a good counter-example to a theory, and that theory is interesting and worth refuting. The theory we have in mind is like Smith's, but is more reductionist in spirit. It is a theory that ties value to Reason and to processes of reasoning, or inference - not to the recognition of reasons and acting on reasons. Such a theory overestimates the importance of logic, truth, inference, and thinking things through for yourself independently of any ideas (...)
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  45.  32
    No logic of cogency: Reply to Oakley.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1998 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (3):464 – 472.
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  46. Semantics of thinking, speaking and translation.John Bigelow - 1978 - In Franz Guenthner & M. Guenthner-Reutter (eds.), Meaning and Translation: Philosophical and Linguistic Approaches. Duckworth. pp. 109--135.
     
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  47.  95
    Parfit, causation and survival.Neil McKinnon & John Bigelow - 2001 - Philosophia 28 (1-4):467-476.
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  48. Review Article: An Octave of Straw.John Bigelow & Dirk Baltzly - 2012 - Polis 29 (2):321-331.
    Lengthy critical notice of J. B. Kennedy, The Musical Structure of Plato's Dialogues (Acumen, 2011). -/- We approached the prospect of reviewing Kennedy’s book with excitement and optimism, but we’ve left rather disappointed. The case doesn’t hang together, we think, because it requires us to suppose that Plato composed to a pattern that his readers wouldn’t be looking for. They wouldn’t be looking for it musically, because it is not musically significant. Moreover, if he expected them to be looking for (...)
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  49.  16
    II. Land, well-being and compensation.John Bigelow - 1990 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 68 (3):330-346.
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  50.  65
    The World Essence.John Bigelow - 1990 - Dialogue 29 (2):205-.
    Recently, Brian Ellis came up with a neat and novel idea about laws of nature, which at first I misunderstood. Then I participated, with Brian Ellis and Caroline Lierse, in writing a joint paper, “The World as One of a Kind: Natural Necessity and Laws of Nature” (Ellis, Bigelow and Lierse, forthcoming). In this paper, the Ellis idea was formulated in a different way from that in which I had originally interpreted it. Little weight was placed on possible worlds or (...)
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