Background

Since Autumn 2007, I have been an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

I received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Ohio State University in December 2006, and an M.A. along the way in June 2004.  My dissertation, Ineliminable Idealizations, Phase Transitions, and Irreversibility, was examined by: Robert Batterman (advisor), Neil Tennant (co-advisor), Stewart Shapiro, and Robert Perry (Physics).  My academic genealogy includes Carl Hempel, Hans Reichenbach, Emmy Noether, and Carl Jacobi.

I graduated magna cum laude at Saint Francis College (PA) in June 2000 with a major in Philosophy and minors in both History and Mathematics, although I began my college career as a Physician Assistant major.

I hail from a former coal mining town in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania and lived the first decade of my life in Baltimore, Maryland.  Prior to becoming a philosophy teacher, the most interesting jobs I had were being a proofreader for a medical transcription company, being a desk clerk/night auditor at a hotel, and coaching a high school soccer team.

Research

My primary research focus concerns issues about idealization, explanation, and confirmation in the sciences (especially in statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics).  Some specific questions include: When is a community justified in regarding a theory's ontology (its claims about what there is in the world) as real? Why does evidence about phenomena for which gravity is important not disconfirm quantum field theory? How can the standard statistical mechanical accounts of phase transitions and irreversible behavior be explanatory, given that both require idealizing the particle number of real systems? Must all idealizations be false descriptions of the world, or can some be merely devices for ignoring details about the world? 

¤ "Is All Abstracting Idealizing?" The Reasoner 2:4 (April 2008): 4-5 [PDF]

My secondary research focus is Asian philosophy, specifically the metaphysics of Huayan Buddhism and the Chinese philosopher Fazang.  I have written a chapter for the Dao Companion to Chinese Buddhist Philosophy (Springer: 2009) on the relations between Fazang's hermeneutics (theory of textual interpretation), his theories of causation, and his mereology (theory of the relation between a whole and its parts).  Currently I am writing an article on how Huayan Buddhism solves the Problem of the One over the Many--the problem of how a whole and the collection of tis parts can occupy the same space at the same time--in a way that retains the virtues and avoids the vices of Nyaya-Vaisheshika and Buddhist Reductionist solutions.

I also have published on whether theology satisfies the fundamental standards of modern scientific methodology.

¤ "Is Theology Respectable as Metaphysics?" Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 42:3 (Sept. 2008), 579-592.

¤ "Evidence and Falsification: Challenges to Gregory Peterson," Zygon 42:3 (Sept. 2008), 599-604.

Teaching

Office Hours (Autumn 2008): MW 1:40-3:40, TR 2:50-3:50, by appointment, and whenever the office door is open.

For the Autumn 2008 semester, I am teaching Introduction to Logic, Introduction to Ethics, and Philosophy of Science.

Contact

332B Morton Hall
Department of Philosophy
The University of Alabama in Huntsville
301 Sparkman Drive
Huntsville, AL 35899

Office: 256.824.2338
Fax: 256.824.2387
Email: Nick[dot]Jones[at]uah[dot]edu

Disclaimer

The views, opinions, and conclusions expressed in these pages are those of the author and not necessarily those of The University of Alabama in Huntsville or its officers and trustees.  The content of these pages has not been reviewed or approved by UAHuntsville and the author is solely responsible for their content.