John
T. Roberts, Research Page
My
research focuses on topics in the itnersection of philosophy of science
and metaphysics---especially laws of nature and scientific realism.
Some Papers:
Contact 1: "Contact with the
Nomic: A Challenge for Deniers of Humean Supervenience.
Part 1," by John Earman and John T. Roberts. In Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research,
Volume 71, No, 2 (2005).
Contact 2: "Conact with the
Nomic: A Challenge for Deniers of Humean Supervenience.
Part 2," by John
Earman and John T. Roberts. Forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research,
Volume 71, No, 3 (2005).
Leibniz:
"Leibniz on Force and Absolute Motion." Philosophy of Science 70"
553-573. (2003).
Some Works in
Progress:
(All comments welcome but please do not quote or cite any of the
following without permission.)
A Puzzle About Laws, Symmetries, and
Measurable
Quantities (MS WORD FILE)
Beyond Humean and
Non-Humean:
The Measurability Account of Laws of Nature (MS WORD FILE)
In this paper I distinguish a few different dimensions of the
"Humean"/"Non-Humean"
debate concerning laws of nature -- that is, four distinct debates that
often lumped together under the heading "the dispure between Humeans
and
Non-Humeans.". I argue that it is possible to be a "Humean" in
some
of these debates and a "Non-Humean" in others. In particular, I
argue
that the best way (perhaps the only way) to mount a successful defense
of "Non-Humeanism" about the relation between laws and counterfactuals
is to adopt a view that commits one to "Humeanism" about the
supervenience
of the laws on the non-nomic facts. Moreover, it turns out that
it
involves commitment to a particular philosophical theory of laws of
nature
that I call "the Measurability Account of Laws." I defended an
earlier
(and, I think, slightly inferior) version of the MAL in my
"Measurability
and Physical Law" (which is forthcoming in Synthese).
The Semantic Novelty of Theoretical
Terms (MS WORD FILE)
In this paper I take on David Lewis's claim that theoretical terms can
always be explicitly defined. I argue that, on the contrary, it
is
possible for a new theory to introduce new terms that are semantically
novel -- that, is, terms that do not share their intensions with
any
expressions that could have been formulated in our language prior to
the
introduction of that theory. Furthermore, some of the most
interesting
and influential physical theories have done just that. I argue
that
the way in which theoretical terms can be semantically novel cannot be
adequately represented by either a Ramsey-Lewis approach ot theoretical
terms or a causal-historical account of reference. A new approach
to the semantics of theoretical terms is needed. The needed new
approach
does not provoke the demons of incommensurability. It does,
however,
have interesting implications for scientific realism and theoretical
identifications.