My Research

Published work:

A Theory of Physical Probability” (Ph.D. thesis, 1999)

Probability and Symmetry” (with Paul Bartha) Philosophy of Science  68 (Proceedings) (2001), S109-S122.

A Theory of Physical Probability, University of Toronto Press, 2002.

Self organisation in dynamical systems: a limiting result“, Synthese, 2011  (pre-published version)

Some Misunderstandings Related to WTC Collapse Analysis” (with Gregory Szuladzinski, Anthony Szamboti) International Journal of Protective Structures, Vol. 4, No. 2, June 2013.

“Epistemic Theories of Objective Chance”, Synthese, 2018 (this is the published version, and may be read online, but not downloaded without a subscription).  A preprint version may be downloaded here.

Why Physicalism Seems to Be (and Is) Incompatible with Intentionality“, Acta Analytica, 2020.  (This is the accepted manuscript.  The final publication is available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12136-020-00423-3 )

A more accessible version of the argument is here.

Works in Progress:

Physicalism and the Problem of Biological Form“.  This paper argues that no physicalist theory of evolution can explain the origin of biological forms.  According to physicalism, the evolution of all physical systems is ultimately governed by physical laws.  Now, evolution must have a ‘functional bias’ in the sense that it strongly favours the formation of functional objects over non-functional ones.  Yet I show that the actual laws of physics themselves cannot have such a bias, and also that in the absence of such a bias evolution could not occur.

 

Works Rejected (without justification)

Discussion of the paper ‘Why the Observed Motion History of World Trade Center Towers is Smooth’ by Ja-Liang Le and Zdeněk Bažant“, Anthony Szamboti, Richard Johns.  Submitted to the Journal of Engineering Mechanics in May 2011, and declined (after two years of review!) as “out of scope” for the journal.