H Price
Biographic Data
| ID | 11580 |
|---|---|
| NAME | H Price |
| GIVEN NAMES | H |
| FAMILY NAME | Price |
| SIGNATURE | PRICE H |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9091-760X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 112 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1938 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Family Feuds? Relativism, Expressivism, and Disagreements about Disagreement
In Expressing Our Attitudes (OUP, 2015), Mark Schroeder speculates about the relation between expressivism and relativism. Noting that “John MacFarlane has wondered whether relativism is expressivism done right,” he suggests that this may get things back to front: “it is worth taking seriously the idea that expressivism is relativism done right” (Schroeder 2015, 25). In this piece, motivated both by Schroeder’s suggestion and by recent work from …
Global expressivism and alethic pluralism
This paper discusses the relation between Crispin Wright’s alethic pluralism and my global expressivism. I argue that on many topics Wright’s own view counts as expressivism in my sense, but that truth itself is a striking exception. Unlike me, Wright never seems to countenance an expressivist account of truth, though the materials needed are available to him in his approaches to other topics
Ramsey and Joyce on deliberation and prediction
Can an agent deliberating about an action A hold a meaningful credence that she will do A ? ‘No’, say some authors, for ‘deliberation crowds out prediction’ (DCOP). Others disagree, but we argue here that such disagreements are often terminological. We explain why DCOP holds in a Ramseyian operationalist model of credence, but show that it is trivial to extend this model so that DCOP fails. We then discuss a model due to Joyce, and show that Joyc…
What Makes Time Special
Craig Callender's What Makes Time Special? is a special book in at least four dimensions. It is the most original work on the philosophy of time for many years. It has a good claim to be the best recent book on the physics of time, too, if we read the phrase to stress Callender's title question: What is it in physics that distinguishes time from space? It is wonderfully clear. And—most remarkable of all, given the subject matter—it is often fun. …
From Quasi-Realism to Global Expressivism—and Back Again?
Philosophy, like modern agriculture, is a little too prone to monoculture. True, unpopular philosophical traditions are less in danger of complete extinction than varieties of apple, or breeds of pig. For this difference, however, the subject is often indebted to a few far-sighted scholars who appreciate the value of unfashionable ideas; who stand ready to reinvigorate the gene pool, when popular approaches succumb to mould and inbreeding. Like t…
Naturalism without representationalism
What is philosophical naturalism? Most fundamentally, presumably, it is the view that natural science properly constrains philosophy, in the following sense. The concerns of the two disciplines are not simply disjointed, and science takes the lead where the two overlap. At the very least, then, to be a philosophical naturalist is to believe that philosophy is not simply a different enterprise from science, and that philosophy should defer to scie…
Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism
Pragmatists have traditionally been enemies of representationalism but friends of naturalism, when naturalism is understood to pertain to human subjects, in the sense of Hume and Nietzsche. In this volume Huw Price presents his distinctive version of this traditional combination, as delivered in his René Descartes Lectures at Tilburg University in 2008. Price contrasts his view with other contemporary forms of philosophical naturalism, comparing …
New Slant on the EPR-Bell Experiment
The best case for thinking that quantum mechanics is nonlocal rests on Bell's Theorem, and later results of the same kind. However, the correlations characteristic of Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR)–Bell (EPRB) experiments also arise in familiar cases elsewhere in quantum mechanics (QM), where the two measurements involved are timelike rather than spacelike separated; and in which the correlations are usually assumed to have a local causal explanat…
Does time-symmetry imply retrocausality? How the quantum world says “Maybe”
Causation, Chance, and the Rational Significance of Supernatural Evidence
In “A Subjectivist’s Guide to Objective Chance,” David Lewis says that he is “led to wonder whether anyone but a subjectivist is in a position to understand objective chance.” The present essay aims to motivate this same Lewisean attitude, and a similar degree of modest subjectivism, with respect to objective causation. The essay begins with Newcomb problems, which turn on an apparent tension between two principles of choice: roughly, a principle…
Abusing One’s Position
Naturalism in Question
Toy models for retrocausality
Recent work on the arrow of radiation
Time, Reality & Experience
Why does time seem to flow in one direction? Can we influence the past? Is only the present real? Does relativity conflict with our common understanding of time? How does time relate to free will? Could science do away with time? These questions and others about time are among the most puzzling problems in philosophy and science. In this exciting collection of original articles, eminent philosophers propose novel answers to these and other questi…
Boltzmann's Time Bomb
Since the late nineteenth century, physics has been puzzled by the time‐asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena in the light of the apparent T‐symmetry of the underlying laws of mechanics. However, a compelling solution to this puzzle 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 lawlike generalisation. Ac…
A Realist Conception of Truth
Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time
What Should a Deflationist about Truth Say about Meaning?
Paul Horwich aims to apply some the lessons of deflationism about truth to the debate about the nature of a theory of meaning. Having pacified the philosophical debate about truth to his satisfaction, he wants to use a bridge between truth and meaning to extend the same peace-making techniques into new territory. His goal is to make the debate about meaning more hospitable for an account based on use, by showing that certain apparent obstacles to…
The place of function in a world of mechanisms
Time Symmetry in Microphysics
Physics takes for granted that interacting systems without common history are independent, before interaction. This principle is time asymmetric, for no such restriction applies to systems without common future, after interaction. The time asymmetry is normally attributed to boundary conditions. I argue that there are two such independence principles at work in contemporary physics, one of which cannot be attributed to boundary conditions, and th…
Essays in Quasi-Realism
Reinterpreting the Wheeler—Feynman Absorber Theory: Reply to Leeds
Causation as a Secondary Quality
Introduction. 2. The agency theory: a probabilistic version outlined. 3. Metaphysics confused with epistemology? 4. Unavoidable circularity? 5. Unmanipulable causes? 6. Unacceptable anthropocentricity? 1 INTRODUCTION In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents. 1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical app…
Metaphysical Pluralism
Causation as a Secondary Quality
Introduction. 2. The agency theory: a probabilistic version outlined. 3. Metaphysics confused with epistemology? 4. Unavoidable circularity? 5. Unmanipulable causes? 6. Unacceptable anthropocentricity? 1 INTRODUCTION In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents. 1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical app…
Agency and Probabilistic Causality
Probabilistic accounts of causality have long had trouble with ‘spurious’ evidential correlations. Such correlations are also central to the case for causal decision theory—the argument that evidential decision theory is inadequate to cope with certain sorts of decision problem. However, there are now several strong defences of the evidential theory. Here I present what I regard as the best defence, and apply it to the probabilistic approach to c…
Against causal decision theory
Causation, Chance, and the Rational Significance of Supernatural Evidence
In “A Subjectivist’s Guide to Objective Chance,” David Lewis says that he is “led to wonder whether anyone but a subjectivist is in a position to understand objective chance.” The present essay aims to motivate this same Lewisean attitude, and a similar degree of modest subjectivism, with respect to objective causation. The essay begins with Newcomb problems, which turn on an apparent tension between two principles of choice: roughly, a principle…
Boltzmann's Time Bomb
Since the late nineteenth century, physics has been puzzled by the time‐asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena in the light of the apparent T‐symmetry of the underlying laws of mechanics. However, a compelling solution to this puzzle 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 lawlike generalisation. Ac…
New Slant on the EPR-Bell Experiment
The best case for thinking that quantum mechanics is nonlocal rests on Bell's Theorem, and later results of the same kind. However, the correlations characteristic of Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR)–Bell (EPRB) experiments also arise in familiar cases elsewhere in quantum mechanics (QM), where the two measurements involved are timelike rather than spacelike separated; and in which the correlations are usually assumed to have a local causal explanat…
Thinking and Experience
The philosophy and physics of affecting the past
Time Symmetry in Microphysics
Physics takes for granted that interacting systems without common history are independent, before interaction. This principle is time asymmetric, for no such restriction applies to systems without common future, after interaction. The time asymmetry is normally attributed to boundary conditions. I argue that there are two such independence principles at work in contemporary physics, one of which cannot be attributed to boundary conditions, and th…
The Philosophy of Physics
Could a Question be True: Assent and the Basis of Meaning
Journal Article 'Could a Question be True?': Assent and the Basis of Meaning Get access Huw Price Huw Price Australian National University. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 33, Issue 133, October 1983, Pages 354–364, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219162 Published: 01 October 1983
Ramsey and Joyce on deliberation and prediction
Can an agent deliberating about an action A hold a meaningful credence that she will do A ? ‘No’, say some authors, for ‘deliberation crowds out prediction’ (DCOP). Others disagree, but we argue here that such disagreements are often terminological. We explain why DCOP holds in a Ramseyian operationalist model of credence, but show that it is trivial to extend this model so that DCOP fails. We then discuss a model due to Joyce, and show that Joyc…
Essays in Quasi-Realism
Reinterpreting the Wheeler—Feynman Absorber Theory: Reply to Leeds
Our Evidence for the Existence of Other Minds
In ordinary life everyone assumes that he has a great deal of knowledge about other minds or persons. This assumption has naturally aroused the curiosity of philosophers; though perhaps they have not been as curious about it as they ought to have been, for they have devoted many volumes to our consciousness of the material world, but very few to our consciousness of one another. It was thought at one time that each of us derives his knowledge of …
Some Philosophical Questions about Telepathy and Clairvoyance
The founder of Psychical Research, though he has not yet received the honour due to him, seems to have been King Croesus of Lydia, who reigned from 560 to 546 B.C. He carried out an interesting experiment, recorded in detail by Herodotus,2 to test the clairvoyant powers of a number of oracles. He sent embassies to seven oracles, six Greek and one Egyptian. They all started on the same day. On the hundredth day each embassy was instructed to ask i…
“Clarity is Not Enough”
“Clarity is Not Enough” Get access H. H. Price H. H. Price Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, Volume 19, Issue 1, 15 July 1945, Pages 1–31, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristoteliansupp/19.1.1 Published: 30 July 2015
Professor Ayer's Essays
Professor Ayer’s Essays Get access H. H. Price H. H. Price University of Oxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 5, Issue 20, July 1955, Pages 272–281, https://doi.org/10.2307/2957440 Published: 01 July 1955
Sir Russell Brain on Modes of Apprehension
Thinking and Experience
Contemporary Theories of Knowledge
Journal Article Critical Study Get access Contemporary Theories of Knowledge. By Thomas English Hill. (New York : Ronald Press Co. 1961. Pp. vi + 583. Price $8.00). H. H. Price H. H. Price Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 13, Issue 50, January 1963, Pages 72–79, https://doi.org/10.2307/2217009 Published: 01 January 1963
A Critical Examination of the Belief in a Life after Death
Belief ‘In’ and Belief ‘That’
Epistemologists have not usually had much to say about believing ‘in’, though ever since Plato's time they have been interested in believing ‘that’. Students of religion, on the other hand, have been greatly concerned with belief ‘in’, and many of them, I think, would maintain that it is something quite different from belief ‘that’. Surely belief ‘in’ is an attitude to a person, whether human or divine, while belief ‘that’ is just an attitude to …
On Believing—a Reply to Professor R. W. Sleeper
I am very grateful to Professor R. W. Sleeper for his critical comments on my article, as also for the kind way in which he has expressed them. I should now like to make a few comments on his comments. (1) May I first say that I have no objection to being metaphysical? I do not like the word ‘metaphysics’ very much, and wish that we could find a less provocative one. But still, I do think that the difference between the reducible and the irreduci…
The Problem of Life after Death
May I first say, Mr Chairman, that I regard it as a great honour to have been invited to take part in this Conference? I speak to you as a philosopher who happens to be interested both in religion and in psychical research (like the Neoplatonists long ago). But I am afraid I am going to discuss some questions which it is ‘not done’ to talk about
Death in the Secular City
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Essays in the Philosophy of Religion
Lectures on Philosophy
Simone Weil's Leçons de Philosophie are derived from a course she taught at the lycée for girls at Roanne in 1933–4. Anne Reynaud-Guérithault was a pupil in the class; her notes are not a verbatim record but are a very full and, as far as one can judge, faithful rendering, often catching the unmistakable tone of Simone Weil's voice as well as the force and the directness of her thought. The lectures form a good general introduction to philosophy,…
Painting and the Theory of Knowledge
Journal Article PAINTING AND THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE Get access H. H. Price H. H. Price Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 21, Issue 2, SPRING 1981, Pages 99–117, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/21.2.99 Published: 01 February 1981
Could a Question be True: Assent and the Basis of Meaning
Journal Article 'Could a Question be True?': Assent and the Basis of Meaning Get access Huw Price Huw Price Australian National University. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 33, Issue 133, October 1983, Pages 354–364, https://doi.org/10.2307/2219162 Published: 01 October 1983
The philosophy and physics of affecting the past
Mellor, Chance and the Single Case
Against causal decision theory
Creationism and Evolution-Recent Legal Developments, Likely Next Steps
Agency and Probabilistic Causality
Probabilistic accounts of causality have long had trouble with ‘spurious’ evidential correlations. Such correlations are also central to the case for causal decision theory—the argument that evidential decision theory is inadequate to cope with certain sorts of decision problem. However, there are now several strong defences of the evidential theory. Here I present what I regard as the best defence, and apply it to the probabilistic approach to c…
The Philosophy of Physics
Metaphysical Pluralism
Causation as a Secondary Quality
Introduction. 2. The agency theory: a probabilistic version outlined. 3. Metaphysics confused with epistemology? 4. Unavoidable circularity? 5. Unmanipulable causes? 6. Unacceptable anthropocentricity? 1 INTRODUCTION In this paper we defend the view that the ordinary notions of cause and effect have a direct and essential connection with our ability to intervene in the world as agents. 1 This is a well known but rather unpopular philosophical app…
Reinterpreting the Wheeler—Feynman Absorber Theory: Reply to Leeds
Philosophy (36 works) · Epistemology (34 works) · Computer Science (20 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (10 works) · Philosophy of science (9 works) · Physics (9 works) · Quantum Mechanics and Applications (9 works) · Library science (7 works) · Mathematics (7 works) · Metaphysics (7 works)