Huw Price

Home

PUBLICATIONS & PREPRINTS

This list includes my books and philosophical articles, a selection of my book reviews, and some recent preprints. Most of the articles, reviews and preprints are accessible here in electronic form. I include links to JSTOR copies of published papers, where available. (If you are unable to access these papers, it is probably because your institution does not subscribe to JSTOR.)

Books

  1. Facts and the Function of Truth, Blackwell, Oxford, 1988. (Second edition forthcoming from Oxford University Press.)

    [Contents and Introduction in PDF]

    Many areas of philosophy employ a distinction between factual and nonfactual (descriptive/nondescriptive, cognitive/noncognitive, ...) uses of language. This book examines the various ways in which this distinction is normally elucidated, argues that all are unsatisfactory, and suggests that the search for a sharp distinction is misconceived. I develop an alternative approach, based on a novel theory of the function and origins of the concept of truth. The central hypothesis is that the main role of the normative notion of truth is to encourage speakers to argue, with long-run behavioural advantages. This offers a fresh perspective on many debates about realism in contemporary philosophy.

    "This is ... a challenging book. The challenge is not easy to meet and the solution proposed not easy to dismiss. The topic is central; the approach novel; the execution skilful. The book deserves a wide audience." — Mind. [Full review at JSTOR]

  2. Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996.

    [Home Page|Contents|Chapter 1|Reviews|Polish|Japanese] 

    "Lest you begin to think I’m a mass media whore with the attention span of a gnat, I’m a huge fan of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, love the poetry of John Donne and e.e. cummings, and occasionally peruse such weighty tomes as Huw Price’s Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point. So there." — Jennifer Ouellette [Link]

  3. (Edited with Richard Corry) Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited, Oxford University Press, 2007.

    Contributors: Arif Ahmed, Helen Beebee, Richard Corry, Antony Eagle, Adam Elga, Mathias Frisch, Christopher Hitchcock, Douglas Kutach, Barry Loewer, Peter Menzies, John D. Norton, Huw Price, Jim Woodward. [Details on OUP catalogue.]

  4. Naturalism Without Mirrors, Oxford University Press, 2009.

    A collection of old and new essays on pragmatism, pluralism and the placement problem. (The previously published essays include items 17, 18, 21, 26, 29, 34, 40, 41, 42, 43, 46 and 52 in the list below.)

Articles in journals and collections

  1. Sense, assertion, Dummett and denial. Mind 92(1983) 174—88. [JSTOR]

  2. "Could a question be true?": Assent and the basis of meaning. The Philosophical Quarterly 33(1983) 354—64. [JSTOR]

  3. Does "Probably" modify sense? Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61(1983) 396—408. [PDF]

  4. Mellor, chance and the single case. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 35(1984) 11—23. [JSTOR]

  5. The philosophy and physics of affecting the past. Synthese 16(1984) 299—323. [PDF]

  6. Against causal decision theory. Synthese 67(1986) 195—212. [PDF]

  7. Conditional credence. Mind 95(1986) 18—36. [JSTOR]

  8. Truth and the nature of assertion. Mind 96(1987) 202—220. [JSTOR]

  9. Action explanation and the nature of mind. In Albury and Slezak, eds., Computers, Brains and Minds: Papers in Cognitive Science, Kluwer, 1988, 221—251.

  10. Defending desire-as-belief. Mind 98(1989) 119—127. [JSTOR]

  11. A point on the arrow of time. Nature, 20 July 1989, 181—182. [PDF]

    This is comment on Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. It was discussed with responses from Hawking and others in an editorial column in Scientific American (October 1989).

  12. (With Philip Pettit) Bare functional desire. Analysis 49(1989) 162—169. [JSTOR]

  13. Why "Not"? Mind 99(1990) 221—238. [JSTOR]

  14. Agency and probabilistic causality. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42(1991) 157—176. [PDF][JSTOR]

  15. The asymmetry of radiation: reinterpreting the Wheeler-Feynman argument. Foundations of Physics 21(1991) 959—975.

  16. Agency and causal asymmetry. Mind 101(1992) 501—520. [JSTOR]

  17. Metaphysical pluralism. Journal of Philosophy 89(1992) 387—409. [JSTOR]

  18. Two paths to pragmatism. In Peter Menzies (ed.), Response-Dependent Concepts, Canberra: Philosophy Program, RSSS, ANU, 46—82. [RTF of revised version (see item 27 below)]

  19. (With Peter Menzies) Causation as a secondary quality. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44(1993) 187—203. [RTF][PDF][JSTOR]

  20. The direction of causation: Ramsey's ultimate contingency. In David Hull, Micky Forbes and Kathleen Okruhlik (eds.), PSA 1992, Volume 2 (East Lansing, Michigan, Philosophy of Science Association), 253—267. [PDF][JSTOR]

  21. Semantic minimalism and the Frege point. In Tsohatzidis, S.L.(ed.), Foundations of Speech Act Theory: Philosophical and Linguistic Perspectives, Routledge, 1994, pp. 132-55. Reprinted with a new postscript in Garrett, B. and Mulligan, K. (eds.), Themes From Wittgenstein, Canberra: Philosophy Program, RSSS, ANU, 1993, 15—44. [RTF/PDF of latter version]

  22. A neglected route to realism about Quantum Mechanics. Mind 103(1994) 303—336; reprinted in Grim, P., Mar, G. & Williams, P. (eds.) The Philosopher's Annual, XVII, Ridgeview, 1996, 181—215. [Abstract and preprint at LANL archive][JSTOR]

  23. Psychology in perspective. In Michael, M. and O'Leary-Hawthorne, J. (eds), Philosophy in Mind: The Place of Philosophy in the Study of the Mind, Kluwer, 1994, 83—98. [RTF]

  24. Reinterpreting the Wheeler-Feynman Absorber Theory: Reply to Leeds. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45(1994) 1023—1028. [JSTOR]

  25. Cosmology, time's arrow and that old double standard. In Savitt, S. (ed.), Time's Arrows Today, Cambridge University Press, 1995, 66-94. Reprinted in Sklar , L (ed.), The Philosophy of Physics, Garland, 2000, 392—420. [Abstract and preprint at LANL archive]

  26. (With John O'Leary-Hawthorne) How to stand up for non-cognitivists. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74(1996) 275—292. [PDF]

  27. Two paths to pragmatism II. Casati, R. and Tappolet, C., eds., European Review of Philosophy 3(1998) 109—147. [RTF]

  28. Backward causation and the direction of causal processes: Reply to Dowe. Mind 105(1996) 467—474. [JSTOR]

  29. Naturalism and the fate of the M-worlds. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol., LXXI(1997) 247—267 [RTF][JSTOR].

    Concepts such as those of morality, modality, meaning and the mental are difficult to "place" in a naturalistic world view. This paper offers a novel placement strategy, based on a naturalistic pluralism about the functions of descriptive discourse. It is argued that this functional pluralism is more attractive than familiar alternatives, such as naturalistic reductionism, nonnaturalism, noncognitivism and eliminativism. The strategy exploits Carnap's views about the nature of ontological issues.

    There is a reply to this paper by Frank Jackson [also in RTF].

  30. 'Chaos theory and the difference between past and future', paper presented to the 9th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Time, Sainte-Adèle, Québec, 2—8 July, 1995. In Fraser, J. T., Soulsby, M. P. and Argyros, A. J. (eds.), Time, Order, Chaos: The Study of Time, Vol. IX. Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 1998, 155—162. [RTF]

    Contemporary writers often claim that chaos theory explains the thermodynamic arrow of time. This paper argues that such claims are mistaken, on two levels. First, they underestimate the difficulty of extracting asymmetric conclusions from symmetric theories. More important, however, they misunderstand the nature of the puzzle about the temporal asymmetry of thermodynamics, and simply address the wrong issue. Both of these are old mistakes, but mistakes which are poorly recognised, even today. This paper aims to lay bare the mistakes in their classical (pre-chaos theory) manifestations, in order to make it clear that chaos theory cannot possibly do better.

  31. Time symmetry in microphysics. Philosophy of Science 64(1997) S235-244. [JSTOR][HTML][RTF]

    Physics normally takes for granted that interacting physical systems with no common history are independent, before their interaction. This principle is time-asymmetric, for no such restriction applies after an interaction to systems with no common future. The time asymmetry is normally attributed to boundary conditions. I argue that there are two distinct independence principles of this kind at work in contemporary physics, one of which cannot be attributed to boundary conditions, and therefore conflicts with the assumed T (or CPT) symmetry of microphysics. I note that this may have interesting ramifications in quantum mechanics.

  32. What should a deflationist about truth say about meaning? in Villanueva, E. (ed.), Truth (Philosophical Issues, Vol. 8), Ridgeview, 1997, 107—115. [RTF][JSTOR]

  33. The role of history in microphysics. In Sankey, H. (ed.), Causation and Laws of Nature, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999, 437—456. [Abstract]

  34. Carnap, Quine and the fate of metaphysics. In The Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy Issue 5 (Spring, 1997). [PDF]

  35. Three norms of assertibility, or how the MOA became extinct. In Tomberlin, J., ed., Philosophical Perspectives 12(1998) 41—54. [JSTOR][PDF]

  36. Causation in the special sciences: the case for pragmatism. In Domenico Costantini, Maria Carla Galavotti and Patrick Suppes, eds., Stochastic Causality, CSLI Publications, 2001, 103—120. [PDF]

  37. Backward causation, hidden variables, and the meaning of completeness. PRAMANA - Journal of Physics (Indian Academy of Sciences), 56(2001) 199—209. [PDF]

    Bell's Theorem requires the assumption that hidden variables are independent of future measurement settings. This independence assumption rests on surprisingly shaky ground. In particular, it is puzzlingly time-asymmetric. The paper begins with a summary of the case for considering hidden variable models which, in abandoning this independence assumption, allow a degree of 'backward causation'. The remainder of the paper clarifies the physical significance of such models, in relation to the issue as to whether quantum mechanics provides a complete description of physical reality.

  38. Boltzmann's time bomb. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 53(2002) 83—119. [PDF][JSTOR] 

    Since the late nineteenth century, physics has been puzzled by the time-asymmetry of the thermodynamic phenomena in the light of the apparent T-symmetry of the underlying laws of mechanics. However, a compelling solution has proved elusive. In part, I argue, this can be attributed to a failure to distinguish two conceptions of the problem. According to one, the main focus of our attention is a time-asymmetric law-like generalisation. According to the other, it is a particular fact about the early universe. This paper aims (i) to distinguish these two different conceptions of the time-asymmetric explanandum in thermodynamics; (ii) to argue in favour of the latter; and (iii) to show that whichever we choose, our rational expectations about the thermodynamic behaviour of the future must depend on what we know about the past -- contrary to the common view, statistical arguments alone do not give us good reason to expect that entropy will always continue to increase.

  39. Burbury's last case: the mystery of the entropic arrow. In Craig Callender, ed., Time, Reality and Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2002, 19—56. [PDF]

    "Does not the theory of a general tendency of entropy to diminish [sic] take too much for granted? To a certain extent it is supported by experimental evidence. We must accept such evidence as far as it goes and no further. We have no right to supplement it by a large draft of the scientific imagination." (Samuel Burbury, 1904)

  40. (With Richard Holton) Ramsey on saying and whistling: a discordant note. Noûs 37:2(2003) 325—341. [PDF][JSTOR]

    On Ramsey's late view of the non-propositional status of generalisation, and its connection to the rule following considerations.

  41. Truth as convenient friction. Journal of Philosophy 100(2003) 167—190. Also to appear in Grim, P., Mar, G. & Williams, P. (eds.) The Philosopher's Annual, XXVI (2003). [Abstract] [PDF][JSTOR] 

  42. Naturalism without representationalism. In David Macarthur and Mario de Caro (eds), Naturalism in Question (Harvard University Press, 2004), 71—88. Reprinted in Italian as 'Naturalismo senza rappresentazionalismo', in La Mente e La Natura (Fazi Editore, Rome, 2005), 58—77. [PDF]

    I begin with a distinction between two ways of taking science to be relevant to philosophy. The first ("object naturalism") is a ontological thesis -- it holds that what exists, what we should be realists about, is the world as revealed by science. The second ("subject naturalism") is a prescription for philosophy, based on the belief that we humans (and in particular, our thought and talk) are part of the natural world. What is the relationship between these two kinds of naturalism? Contemporary naturalists are apt to think that the latter view is a mere corollary of the former. I argue that there is an important sense in which the priority is the other way around: object naturalism depends on "validation" from a subject naturalist perspective -- in particular, on confirmation of certain "representationalist" assumptions about the functions of human language. Moreover, I maintain, there are good reasons for doubting whether object naturalism deserves to be validated, in this sense. Thus, an adequate naturalistic philosophy threatens to undermine what most contemporary philosophers have in mind, when they call themselves philosophical naturalists.

  43. Immodesty without mirrors — making sense of Wittgenstein's linguistic pluralism. In Max Kölbel and Bernhard Weiss (eds), Wittgenstein's Lasting Significance (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 2004), 179—205. [PDF]

  44. On the origins of the arrow of time: why there is still a puzzle about the low entropy past. In Christopher Hitchcock, ed., Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Science (Blackwell, 2004), 219—239. [PDF]

  45. Models and modals. In Donald Gillies, ed., Laws and Models in Science (King's College Publications, 2004), 49—69. [PDF]

    Pragmatists recommend that in approaching a problematic concept in philosophy, we should begin by examining the role it plays in the practical, cognitive and linguistic lives of the creatures who use it. This paper stems from an interest in pragmatic accounts, in this sense, of the various modal notions we encounter in science. I propose that pragmatists about these notions should avail themselves of the vocabulary of theoretical models. This vocabulary brings to the foreground the issues of function, use and role in practice, on which pragmatists want to focus; while downplaying the naive representationalism that pragmatists see as an impediment to good philosophy. I show how this framework may be used to delineate a kind of pragmatic perspectivalism about probability, and argue that the same template offers a promising way to make sense of the link between causation and manipulability.

  46. The thermodynamic arrow: puzzles and pseudo-puzzles. In Ikaros Bigi and Martin Faessler, eds., Time and Matter (World Scientific, 2006), 209—224. [Abstract][PDF]

  47. Causal perspectivalism. In Huw Price and Richard Corry, eds., Causation, Physics and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited (OUP, 2007), 250—292. [PDF]

    Concepts employed in folk descriptions of the world often turn out to be more perspectival than they seem at first sight, involving previously unrecognised sensitivity to the viewpoint or 'situation' of the user of the concept in question. Often, it is progress in science that reveals such perspectivity, and the deciding factor is that we realise that other creatures would apply the same concepts with different extension, in virtue of differences between their circumstances and ours. In this paper I argue that causal concepts are perspectival in this way, and describe the 'situation' on which they depend in terms of an abstract characterisation of the viewpoint of a deliberating agent. I argue that this approach makes better sense than rivals of the apparent asymmetry and temporal orientation of the causal relation.

  48. Recent work on the arrow of radiation. In Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 37(2006), 498—527. [Abstract] [PDF at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]

  49. Einstein and the quantum spooks. In C. Stewart & R Hewitt (eds), Waves of the Future (Science Foundation for Physics, 2005), 221—233. [PDF courtesy of the Science Foundation for Physics.]

  50. Time's arrow, time's fly-bottle. In Friedrich Stadler and Michael Stöltzner, eds., Time and History, Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2006, 253—273.

  51. (With David Macarthur) Pragmatism, quasi-realism and the global challenge. In Cheryl Misak, ed., The New Pragmatists (OUP, 2007), 91—120. [Abstract] [PDF]

  52. (With Peter Menzies) Is semantics in the plan? In D. Braddon-Mitchell & R. Nola, eds., Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism (MIT, 2009), 183—200. [Abstract] [PDF]

  53. One cheer for representationalism? To appear in R. Auxier, ed., The Philosophy of Richard Rorty (Open Court, Library of Living Philosophers XXXII, 2009). [PDF]

  54. Quining naturalism. Journal of Philosophy 104(2007) 375—405. [Abstract] [PDF]

  55. Brandom and Hume on the genealogy of modals. To appear in Philosophical Topics. [PDF]

    This is a lightly edited version of my comments on Lecture 4 of Bob Brandom’s Locke Lectures, as repeated in Prague in April 2007. Recordings of the Prague lectures, including commentaries and discussions, are available here. The slides that accompanied my talk are available here.

  56. Decisions, decisions, decisions: can Savage salvage Everettian probability? [Abstract and PDF at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]

    A slightly shorter version of this paper is to appear in a volume edited by Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent, David Wallace and Simon Saunders, containing papers presented at the Everett@50 conference in Oxford in July 2007, and the Many Worlds@50 meeting at the Perimeter Institute in September 2007. The paper is based on my talk at the latter meeting (audio, video and slides of which are accessible here).

  57. Toy models for retrocausality. In Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 39(2008), 752—761. [Abstract and PDF at ArXiv.org]

  58. Metaphysics after Carnap: the ghost who walks? In David Chalmers, Ryan Wasserman and David Manley, eds., Metametaphysics (OUP, 2009), 320—346. [PDF]

  59. The semantic foundations of metaphysics. In Ian Ravenscroft, ed., Minds, Worlds and Conditionals: Essays in Honour of Frank Jackson (OUP, 2009), 111—140. [PDF]

  60. (With Brad Weslake) The time-asymmetry of causation. Forthcoming in Helen Beebee, Christopher Hitchcock and Peter Menzies (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Causation (OUP). [PDF at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]

    One of the most striking features of causation is that causes typically precede their effects — the causal arrow is strongly aligned with the temporal arrow. Why should this be so? We offer an opinionated guide to this problem, and to the solutions currently on offer. We conclude that the most promising strategy is to begin with the de facto asymmetry of human deliberation, characterised in epistemic terms, and to build out from there. More than any rival, this subjectivist approach promises to demystify the asymmetry, temporal orientation, and deliberative relevance of causal judgements.

  61. The flow of time. Forthcoming in Craig Callender (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Time (OUP). [PDF at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]

    I distinguish three views, a defence of any one of which would go some way towards vindicating the view that there is something objective about the passage of time: (i) the view that the present moment is objectively distinguished; (ii) the view that time has an objective direction — that it is an objective matter which of two nonsimultaneous events is the earlier and which the later; (iii) the view that there is something objectively dynamic, fluxlike, or “flowlike” about time. I argue that each of these views is not so much false as doubtfully coherent. In each case, it turns out to be hard to make sense of what the view could be, at least if it is to be nontrivial, and of use to a friend of objective passage. I conclude with some remarks about avenues that seem worth exploring in the philosophy of time, when we are done with trying to make sense of passage.

    [Top]


Recent preprints

  1. 'Not' again. [Abstract] [PDF]

  2. Probability in the Everett world: comments on Wallace and Greaves. [PDF at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]

    It is often objected that the Everett interpretation of QM cannot make sense of quantum probabilities, in one or both of two ways: either it can’t make sense of probability at all, or it can’t explain why probability should be governed by the Born rule. David Deutsch has attempted to meet these objections. He argues not only that rational decision under uncertainty makes sense in the Everett interpretation, but also that under reasonable assumptions, the credences of a rational agent in an Everett world should be constrained by the Born rule. David Wallace has developed and defended Deutsch’s proposal, and greatly clarified its conceptual basis. In particular, he has stressed its reliance on the distinguishing symmetry of the Everett view, viz., that all possible outcomes of a quantum measurement are treated as equally real. The argument thus tries to make a virtue of what has usually been seen as the main obstacle to making sense of probability in the Everett world. In this note I outline some objections to the Deutsch-Wallace argument, and to related proposals by Hilary Greaves about the epistemology of Everettian QM. (In the latter case, my arguments include an appeal to an Everettian analogue of the Sleeping Beauty problem.) The common thread to these objections is that the symmetry in question remains a very significant obstacle to making sense of probability in the Everett interpretation.

  3. The effective indexical. [PDF at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]

    In a famous paper in Noûs in 1979, John Perry points out that action depends on indexical beliefs. In addition to “third-person” information about her environment, an agent need “first-person” information about where, when and who she is. This conclusion is widely interpreted as a reason for thinking that tensed claims cannot be translated without loss into untensed language; but not as a reason for realism about tensed facts. In another famous paper in the same volume of Noûs, Nancy Cartwright argues that action requires that agents represent their world in causal terms, rather than merely probabilistic terms: for, Cartwright argues, there’s a distinction between effective and ineffective strategies, that otherwise goes missing. This is widely taken as a reason for thinking that causal claims cannot be translated without loss into merely probabilistic claims; and also – in contrast to Perry’s case – widely regarded as a reason for realism about causation. In this paper I ask whether the latter conclusion is compulsory, or whether, as in Perry’s case, the need for causal beliefs might merely reflect some “situated” aspect of a decision-maker’s perspective.

  4. Three themes in contemporary pragmatism — René Descartes Lectures, Tilburg, 2008. [Abstract and PDF at the Pittsburgh PhilSci Archive]

    [Top]


Review articles

  1. Review of K.G. & J.S. Denbigh, Entropy in Relation to Incomplete Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, 1985, and H.D. Zeh, The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1989; British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42(1991) 111—144. [JSTOR]

  2. Discussion review of Philip Pettit, The Common Mind: An Essay on Psychology, Society and Politics, Oxford University Press, 1992, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55(1995) 689—699. [JSTOR]

  3. Review of John McDowell, Mind and World, Harvard University Press, 1994. In Philosophical Books 38(1997) 169—177, with reply by McDowell.

  4. Starving the theological cuckoo. A review of John Leslie, Infinite Minds: A Philosophical Cosmology (OUP, 2001). In Spontaneous Generations, A Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science 1(2007) 136—145. [PDF available here]

    This review was commissioned by the London Review of Books in 2002, but rejected by the commissioning editor, John Sturrock, apparently because he disliked its anti-theological stance; see the Author's Note at the end of the present version for more details. 

  5. Blackburn and the War on Error. A discussion review of Simon Blackburn's Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Allen Lane, 2005. In Australasian Journal of Philosophy 84(2006) 603—614. [PDF]

    [Top]


Selected minor reviews

  1. Review of Peter Coveney and Roger Highfield, The Arrow of Time (W.H.Allen, 1990) and Paul Halpern, Time Journeys (McGraw-Hill, 1990), from Nature 348 (22 November, 1990), 356.

  2. 'Brains in Spain', a review of J. J. Halliwell, J. Pérez-Mercader and W. H. Zurek (eds.), Physical Origins of Time Asymmetry, Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xx + 515. $190.00 HB. From Metascience 7:1995, 179—182.

  3. 'No Direction Known', a review of Ilya Prigogine, The End of Certainty (Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 1997) and Derek York, In Search of Lost Time (IOP Publishing, 1997), for Nature, 6 November, 1997, 42.

  4. Review of L. S. Schulman, Time's Arrows and Quantum Measurement, Cambridge University Press, 1997. In The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 49(1998) 522—525. [JSTOR]

  5. Review of David Albert, Time and Chance, Harvard University Press, 2000. In The Times Literary Supplement, 14 April, 2002.



 

Home|Top|Books|Articles|Recent preprints|Reviews


Last updated: 02.09.2009