In Progress

My current research program in philosophy of science, a collaboration with Olaf Wolkenhauer at the University of Rostock, focuses on the role of diagrams in the biological sciences. Our first paper in this research program focuses on the role of cell cycle diagrams in model construction and explanation (both functional and nomological).I currently am working on a paper about pathway diagrams.

My ongoing research program in Asian Philosophy focuses on the metaphysics of Huayan Buddhism, and in particular the philosophical system of the medieval Chinese Buddhist Fazang. Published work in this program situates Fazang's mereology within a larger (non-European) philosophical context and attempts to reconstruct reasoning Fazang provides for his views.

Contact me if you would like to read a draft of any work in progress.


Philosophy of Science


Diagrams as Locality Aids for Explanation and Model Construction in Cell Biology (with Olaf Wolkenhauer), Biology and Philosophy, forthcoming [penultimate] [official]

We argue that diagrams in biology can provide functional explanations and facilitate the construction of mathematical models. Extending beyond prior analyses, we also show how diagrams facilitate the construction of mathematical models, we argue that the diagrams permit nomological explanations of the cell cycle, and we argue that what makes diagrams integral and indispensible for explanation and model construction is their nature as locality aids: they group together information that is to be used together in a way that sentential representations do not.

General Relativity and the Standard Model: Why Evidence for One Does Not Disconfirm the Other, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 40 (May 2009) [penultimate] [official]

I develop a program for understanding why General Relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics are not disconfirmed by evidence about phenomena for which, respectively, quantum effects and gravity matter. 

Is All Abstracting Idealizing? The Reasoner 2:4 (April 2008): 4-5 [penultimate] [official]

I propose a necessary condition for a substantial distinction between abstracting from a property of a physical system and idealizing that property.

Ineliminable Idealizations, Phase Transitions, and Irreversible Behavior

This is my dissertation.  It focuses on how to best interpret certain idealizations that occur in scientific explanations of phase transitions and irreversible behavior.  For a general overview, see Chapter 1: Introductory Remarks on Explanation, Idealization, and Ineliminability [nonofficial]  


Asian Philosophy

Fazang: Hermeneutics, Causation, and Mereology, in Dao Companion to Chinese Buddhist Philosophy, ed. Sandra A. Wawrytko (Springer: 2010), forthcoming [draft]

This chapter surveys Fazang's hermeneutics, accompanying theories of causation, and the teaching of the six characteristics that results from his preferred theory of causation.  The chapter shows how Fazang's commitment to an ideal of inclusivity motivates these views, it evaluates extant proposals about what justifies his views, and it compares those views to those of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz.  The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of whether Fazang's metaphysics is paradoxical.

Mereological Heuristics for Huayan Buddhism, Philosophy East and West 60:3 (July 2010) [penultimate] [official]

This paper attempts to explain, in a way familiar to contemporary ways of thinking about mereology and in a way that does not violate the principle of non-contradiction, why someone might accept some prima-facie puzzling remarks by the Chinese Buddhist philosopher Fazang, such as his claims that the eye of a lion is its ear and that a rafter of a building is identical to the building itself.

Nyāya-Vaisesika Inherence, Buddhist Reduction, and Huayan Total Power, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37:s1 (June 2010) [penultimate] [official]

Huayan Buddhism offers a solution to the Problem of the One over the Many that preserves the reality of wholes without treating the whole-part relation as eternal.  I reconstruct the details of this solution, and contrast it with competitors from Nyāya-Vaisheshika and Indian Buddhism.  

Fazang's Total Power Mereology: An Interpretive Analytic Reconstruction, Asian Philosophy 19:3 (November 2009) [penultimate] [official]

This paper interprets some of Fazang's mereological remarks--that wholes are in each of their parts and that each part of a whole is every other part of the whole--and reconstructs his arguments for these remarks. On the interpretation I favor, Fazang means that the presence of a whole's part suffices for the presence of the whole and that the presence of any such part is both necessary and sufficient for the presence of any other part. 

The Logic of Soku in the Kyoto School, Philosophy East and West 54:3 (July 2004) [penultimate] [official 1] [official 2] [official 3]

This paper presents a formal system for the logic of soku that relies upon a  distinction between internal and external negation and preserves the principle of non-contradiction.


Miscellany


Civility, Sincerity, and Ambiguity, Alabama Humanities Review 1:1 (2011) [official]
- Winner, 2011 Whetstone-Seaman Faculty Development Award


Idealizing, Abstracting, and Semantic Dispositionalism (with Adam C. Podlaskowski), European Journal of Philosophy, forthcoming [penultimate] [official]

According to certain dispositional accounts of meaning, an agent's meaning is determined by the dispositions that an idealized version of this agent has in optimal conditions. We argue that such attempts cannot properly fix meaning. For even if there is a way to determine which features of an agent should be idealized without appealing to what the agent means, there is no non-circular way to determine how those features should be idealized. We sketch an alternative dispositional account that avoids this problem, according to whichan agent's meaning is determined by the dispositions that an abstract version of this agent has in optimal conditions.

Unreliable Informant Testimony (with Jeffrey Neuschatz), in Conviction of the Innocent: Lessons from Psychological Research, ed. B. Cutler (Washngton, D.C.: APA Press, 2012): 213-238 [penultimate]

Is Theology Respectable as Metaphysics?, Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 42:3 (September 2008): 579-592 [penultimate]

I discuss theology's intellectual standing as a metaphysical discipline in light of the criteria that make modern science reputable.  I conclude that, barring the development of an epistemology of modern science that is amenable to theology, theology as metaphysics is intellectually disreputable.

Evidence and Falsification: Challenges to Gregory Peterson, Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 42:3 (September 2008): 599-604

This is a reply to Gregory Peterson's "Maintaining Respectability," which itself is a response to my "Is Theology Respectable as Metaphysics?"  Here I elaborate upon the claims, in the latter article, that theology treats God's existence as an absolute certitude immune to refutation and that modern science constitutes the canons of respectable reasoning for metaphysical disciplines.

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