Mark Colyvan

AssocDipAppSc (RMIT), BSc(Hons) (NE), PhD (ANU)

Professor of Philosophy
Director, Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science
Department of Philosophy
A14 Main Quadrangle
University of Sydney
Sydney, NSW, 2006
Australia

Office: Room N285, Main Quad (off Lobby Q, NE corner of Quad)
Phone: (+61 2) 9036 6175
Fax: (+61 2) 9351 3918
Email: mcolyvan AT usyd DOT edu DOT au

Visiting Professor of Philosophy
Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science
Tilburg University
Tilburg
The Netherlands.

Mark's Research Page

Research interests
Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Logic, Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Biology (especially Philosophy of Ecology), Decision Theory.

Current research projects
Risk Analysis (DAFF funded), Paraconsistent Approaches to Vagueness (ARC funded), Decision and Risk in Environmental Science (CERF funded), Complex Environmental Decision Making (NSF funded), Ethics and Decision Theory (ARC funded), Formal Social Epistemology (Dutch Science Foundation funded).

Selected recent publications

Books

Ecological Orbits: How Planets Move and Populations Grow, Oxford University Press, New York, 2004. (Coauthor: Lev R. Ginzburg.)
The Indispensability of Mathematics, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001.

Papers

'An Inferential Conception of the Application of Mathematics', Noûs, forthcoming. (Coauthor: Otávio Bueno.)
'There's No Easy Road to Nominalism', Mind, forthcoming.
'Modelling the Moral Dimension of Decisions', Noûs, forthcoming. (Coauthors: Damian Cox and Katie Steele.)
'Buying Into Conservation: Intrinsic Versus Instrumental Value', Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 24, No. 4 (April 2009), 187–91. (Coauthors: James Justus, Helen M. Regan, and Lynn A. Maguire.)
'Naturalising Normativity', in D. Braddon-Mitchell and R. Nola (eds.), Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism, MIT Press, 2009, pp. 303–13.
'Paraconsistent Vagueness: Why Not?', The Australasian Journal of Logic, Vol. 6 (2008), pp. 107–21. (Coauthor: Dominic Hyde.)
'Vagueness and Truth', in H. Dyke (ed.), From Truth to Reality: New Essays in Logic and Metaphysics, Routledge, 2008, 29–42.
'The Ontological Commitments of Inconsistent Theories', Philosophical Studies, Vol. 141, No. 1 (October 2008), 115–23.
'Is Probability the Only Coherent Approach to Uncertainty?', Risk Analysis, Vol. 28, No. 3 (June 2008), pp. 645–52.
'The Explanatory Power of Phase Spaces', Philosophia Mathematica (3), Vol. 16, No. 2 (June 2008), pp. 227–43. (Coauthor: Aidan Lyon.)
'Relative Expectation Theory', Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 105, No. 1 (January 2008), pp. 37–44.

For a complete publication list and many downloadable papers, see Mark's Research Page.
For publications listed by topic, see Mark's Publications by Topic.

Other activities and service

Past President of the Australasian Association of Philosophy, Member of the editorial boards of The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, and The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, Chief Investigator in the Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis, Core Researcher in the Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities Research Hub: Applied Environmental Decision Analysis, Member of the Biotechnology, Ethics, Law and Society Network.

Last updated: 18 May 2009

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