University of Lethbridge

About Me

I studied at Trent University (BA 1977) and the University of Pittsburgh (MA 1979, PhD 1985). After teaching at Rice University in 1983-4 and working as a research associate and visiting assistant professor at Dalhousie University from 1984 to 1986, I joined the Department of Philosophy in Lethbridge in 1986. I teach courses in history and philosophy of science, logic, metaphysics, and epistemology.

Biography

Born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, I grew up in Montreal, New Jersey, Louisiana and Ontario, before majoring in philosophy at Trent University and completed my PhD at the University of Pittsburgh, in 1985.

Selected Publications

Books and edited volumes:

Philosophy of Ecology, co-edited with K. de Laplante and K. Peacock, Elsevier. xii + 431 pp. (Volume 11 in the series Handbook of the Philosophy of Science, John Woods, Dov M. Gabbay, and Paul Thagard, General Editors) 2011.

On Preserving: Essays on Preservationism and Paraconsistent Logic, co-edited with P.K. Schotch and R.E. Jennings, University of Toronto Press 2009.

Evolution: A Historical Perspective, Westport Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press 2007.

Truth and Probability: Essays in Honour of Hugues Leblanc, co-edited with François Lepage, London: College Publications 2006.

Logical Consequence: Rival Approaches, co-edited with J.H. Woods. Proceedings of the 1999 meeting of the Society for Exact Philosophy. General Editor: Dov Gabbay (Stanmore, Middlesex: Hermes Science Press. 2001).

New Essays in Exact Philosophy: Logic, Mathematics and Science, co-edited with J.H Woods. Proceedings of the 1999 meeting of the Society for Exact Philosophy. General Editor: Dov Gabbay (Stanmore, Middlesex: Hermes Science Press. 2001).

Articles:

"Inconsistency Measures and Paraconsistent Consequence," in Measuring Inconsistency in Information, John Grant and Vanina Martinez, eds., Vol. 73 in Studies in Logic, College Publications 2018.

"Paraconsistency, Pluralistic Models and Reasoning in Climate Science", 179-194 in Humana Mente, Vol 32 special volume, Beyond Toleration? Inconsistency and Pluralism in the Empirical Sciences, Maria Martinez-Ordaz and Luis Estrada-Gonzalez, eds.

"A Preservationist Perspective on Relevance Logic," 783-794 in Journal of Applied Logics - IfCoLoG Journal of Logics and their applications, Vol 4, No 3, Proceedings of the Third Workshop¸ Katalin Bimbo and J. Michael Dunn, eds., London, College Publications, 2017.
"From Consequence Relations to Reasoning Strategies," in "Shut Up" he explained, a volume of papers in honour of P.K. Schotch; G. Payette (ed), London, College Publications, 2016.

"On the Preservation of Reliability," 65-80 in Logical Studies of Paraconsistent Reasoning in Science and Mathematics, P. Verdée and H. Andreas (eds.) Springer Trends in Logic, #45 2016.

"Symmetrical Preservation Relations and Cognitive Commitments," 335-352 in New Directions in Paraconsistent Logic, Proceedings of the Fifth World Congress on Paraconsistency, Beziau, Chakraborty and Dutta (eds) Springer, 2015 ISBN 978-81-322-2717-5.

"Peter Vickers: Understanding Inconsistent Science," essay review in Journal for General Philosophy of Science, May 2015 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10838-015-9299-3.

"Chunk and Permeate II: Bohr's Hydrogen Atom" with Graham Priest, European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 5 (3), 297-314 October, 2015.

"Stipulation and Symmetrical Consequence," 2014. Ch. 15 in J.-Y. Beziau, M. Chakraborty, and S. Dutta (eds.), New Directions in Paraconsistent Logic, 335-352.
"The Shape of Science" 2014 Synthese 191, 13, 3079-3109. (Synthese special volume, Is Science Inconsistent? edited by O. Bueno and P. Vickers).

"A Short History of Preservationism," in J. Woods and D. Gabbay (eds.), Handbook of the History of Logic, Vol 8: The Many-Valued and Non-Monotonic Turn in Logic, Elsevier, 2007.

"Bootstrapping Norms: From Cause to Intention," 343-363 in Engaged Philosophy: Essays in Honour of David Braybrooke, University of Toronto Press, 2007. (refereed)

"Chunk and Permeate," with Graham Priest, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 33, 4 August 2004 379-388. (refereed)

"The Pragmatics of Empirical Adequacy," Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 82 June 2004, 242-263. (refereed)

"Knowledge and Non-Contradiction," in G. Priest and J.C. Beall (eds.), The Law of Non-Contradiction, Oxford University Press 2004. (refereed)

"Notes on Hume and Skepticism of the Senses," Croatian Journal of Philosophy, 3 (9) 2003, 289-303. (invited)

"Paraconsistent Classical Logic," in W.A.Carnielli, M.E.Coniglio and I.M.L.D'Ottaviano, eds., Paraconsistency: The Logical Way to the Inconsistent- Proceedings of the II World Congress on Paraconsistency 2000, Marcel Decker, New York, 2002. (refereed)

"Approximate Truth" pp. 81-103 in J. Meheus, ed., Inconsistency in Science, Dordrecht,/Boston/London: Kluwer, 2002. (invited)

"On Paraconsistency," Part XII, entry 39, pp. 628-650 in Dale Jaquette, ed., ¬A Companion to Philosophical Logic Blackwell Publishers, Malden, Massachusetts and Oxford, UK, 2002. (invited)

"LP, FDE and Ambiguity," in H. Arabnia, ed., IC-AI 2001 Volume II- Proceedings of the 2001 meetings of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CSREA publications, 2001). (refereed)

"An Empty Refinement in Mellors's Definition of Chances," Analysis 60, 3 (July 2000) 238-242. (refereed)

"Method and Metaphysics," critical notice of D.H. Mellor, The Facts of Causation (Cambridge, 1994), Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 30, 3, Sept. 2000, pp. 467-494. (refereed)

"Approximate Truth in Context", forthcoming in a volume collecting the proceedings of a conference at the University of Lethbridge, April '2000. P. Viminitz, ed. (invited)

"Simple Natural Deduction for Weakly Aggregative Paraconsistent Logic," in Batens, van Bendegum, Priest (eds.) Frontiers of Paraconsistency (Proceedings of the First World Conference on Paraconsistency), (2000). (refereed)

Research Interests

My research interests include logic (more specifically, preservationist and paraconsistent logic), philosophy and history of science.

Current Research and Creative Activity

Title	Location	Grant Information	Principal Investigator	Co Researchers
Preservationism		Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), $115,277, 2005-08.	Bryson Brown, University of Lethbridge	P.K. Schotch, Dalhousie University; R.E. Jennings, Simon Fraser University

Previous Research

Title	Grant Agency	Completion Date
“How to Liberate Consequence Relations from the Tyranny of Truth Values”.	Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)	2005
Lectures on Preservationist logic and philosophy of science	University of Melbourne Principal Fellow in Philosophy	2002
“Contextual Realism”	Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)	2003

Curriculum Vitae

CV December 2019