Mark Colyvan Professor of Philosophy Director of the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science University of Sydney Publications Arranged by Topic

(You can download pdf files of many of these by selecting the relevant titles.)

Contents:

• Philosophy of Mathematics 
• Philosophy of Logic 
• Rational Choice Theory 
• Ecology, Conservation Biology and Philosophy of Ecology 
• Epistemology and General Philosophy of Science 
• Philosophy of Law 

Philosophy of Mathematics

• An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy of Mathematics, Cambridge University Press, under contract.
• The Indispensability of Mathematics, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001.

• 'An Inferential Conception of the Application of Mathematics', Noûs, forthcoming. (Coauthor: Otávio Bueno.)
• 'There's No Easy Road to Nominalism', Mind, forthcoming.
• 'Applying Inconsistent Mathematics', in O. Bueno and Ø. Linnebo (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Mathematics, Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming.
• 'Fictionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics', in E.J. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Online edition, Taylor and Francis, forthcoming.
• 'Mathematics and the World', 75 page chapter in A.D. Irvine (ed.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science Volume 4: Philosophy of Mathematics, North Holland/Elsevier, forthcoming, 2009.
• 'The Ontological Commitments of Inconsistent Theories', Philosophical Studies, Vol. 141, No. 1 (October 2008), 115–23.
• 'Mathematical and Physical Continuity', Australasian Journal of Logic, Vol. 6 (2008), pp. 87–93. (Coauthor: Kenny Easwaran.)
• 'Who's Afraid of Inconsistent Mathematics?', Protosociology, Vol. 25, (2008), pp. 24–35. Reprinted in G. Preyer and G. Peter (eds.), Philosophy of Mathematics: Set Theory, Measuring Theories and Nominalism, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt, 2008, pp. 28–39.
• 'The Explanatory Power of Phase Spaces', Philosophia Mathematica (3), Vol. 16, No. 2 (June 2008), pp. 227–43. (Coauthor: Aidan Lyon.)
• 'Philosophy of Mathematics: Five Questions', in V.F. Hendricks and H. Leitgeb (eds.), Philosophy of Mathematics: Five Questions, Automatic Press, 2008, pp. 75–85.
• 'Mathematical Recreation Versus Mathematical Knowledge', in M. Leng, A. Paseau, and M. Potter (eds.), Mathematical Knowledge, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 109–22.
• 'Scientific Realism and Mathematical Nominalism: A Marriage Made in Hell', in C. Cheyne and J. Worrall (eds.), Rationality and Reality: Conversations with Alan Musgrave, Springer, 2006, pp. 225–37.
  
• 'Ontological Independence as the Mark of the Real', Philosophia Mathematica (3), Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 2005), pp. 216–25.
• 'Mathematics and Aesthetic Considerations in Science', Mind, Vol. 111, No. 441 (January 2002), pp. 69–74.
• 'The Miracle of Applied Mathematics', Synthese, Vol. 127, No. 3 (June 2001), pp. 265–78.
• 'Conceptual Contingency and Abstract Existence', The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 198 (January 2000), pp. 87–91.
• 'Contrastive Empiricism and Indispensability', Erkenntnis, Vol. 51, No. 2-3 (November 1999), pp. 323–32.
• 'Confirmation Theory and Indispensability', Philosophical Studies, Vol. 96, No. 1 (October 1999), pp. 1–19.
• 'Mathematics: Truth and Fiction?', Philosophia Mathematica (3), Vol. 7, No. 3 (October 1999), pp. 336–49. (Coauthor: Edward N. Zalta.)
• 'Causal Explanation and Ontological Commitment', in U. Meixner and P. Simons (eds.), Metaphysics in the Post-Metaphysical Age: Papers of the 22nd International Wittgenstein Symposium, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria, 1999, Vol. 1, pp. 141–6.
• 'Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics', entry in E.N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 1095-5054, Stanford University, (December 1998), URL= http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mathphil-indis.
• 'Can the Eleatic Principle be Justified?', The Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 28, No. 3 (September 1998), pp. 313–36.
• 'Is Platonism a Bad Bet?', The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 76, No. 1 (March 1998), pp. 115–9.
• 'In Defence of Indispensability', Philosophia Mathematica (3), Vol. 6, No. 1 (February 1998), pp. 39–62.

• 'The Calculus of Cat and Mouse', The Australian Review of Public Affairs, (December, 2007), URL= http://www.australianreview.net.
• 'Myths and Mathematics in our Vision of the World', The Australian Review of Public Affairs, (1 August 2005), URL= http://www.australianreview.net. Reprinted as 'Of Demons, Gods and Mathematicians' in The Australian Financial Review, Friday 19 August 2005, p. Review 3.
• 'The Pursuit of the Riemann Hypothesis', Metascience, Vol. 14, No. 1 (March 2005), pp. 78–80.
• 'Review of M. Giaquinto, The Search for Certainty', Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, Vol. 10, No. 2 (June 2004), pp. 214–6.
• 'Review of J.R. Brown, Philosophy of Mathematics', Philosophy in Review, Vol. 22, No. 1 (February 2002), pp. 14–6.
• 'Review of J.P. Burgess and G. Rosen, A Subject with No Object', Studia Logica, Vol. 67, No. 1 (February 2001), pp. 146–9.
• 'Review of M. Steiner, The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem', Mind, Vol. 109, No. 434 (April 2000), pp. 390–4.
• 'Quaternions and Space-Time', Metascience, Vol. 8, No. 3 (November 1999), pp. 489–90.
• 'Review of P. Maddy, Naturalism in Mathematics', Mind, Vol. 108, No. 431 (July 1999), pp. 586–90.
• 'Review of H.G. Dales and G. Oliveri (eds.), Truth in Mathematics', Australian Mathematical Society Gazette, Vol. 26, No. 2 (June 1999), pp. 82–6.
• 'Review of M.D. Resnik, Mathematics as a Science of Patterns and S. Shapiro, Philosophy of Mathematics', The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 49, No. 4 (December 1998), pp. 652–6.
• 'Review of A. Morton, and S.P. Stich (eds.), Benacerraf and his Critics', The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 75, No. 2 (June 1997), pp. 262–5.

• 'Quine's Indispensability Argument' in A. Duckworth (ed.), Proceedings of the 3rd Australasian Philosophy Postgraduate Students Conference, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 1995, pp. 269–82.
• 'The Undeniable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Special Sciences', invited contribution to a volume on the history and philosophy of applied mathematics to be edited by Benjamin Wardhaugh (and intended for Brill).

Philosophy of Logic

• 'Applying Inconsistent Mathematics', in O. Bueno and Ø. Linnebo (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Mathematics, Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming.
• '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, pp. 29–40.
• 'Who's Afraid of Inconsistent Mathematics?', Protosociology, Vol. 25, (2008), pp. 24–35. Reprinted in G. Preyer and G. Peter (eds.), Philosophy of Mathematics: Set Theory, Measuring Theories and Nominalism, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt, 2008, pp. 28–39.
• 'Naturalism and the Paradox of Revisability', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 1 (March 2006), pp. 1–11.
• 'Logical Non-Apriorism and the Law of Non-Contradiction', in G. Priest, JC Beall, and B. Armour-Garb (eds.), The Law of Non-Contradiction: New Philosophical Essays, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 156–75. (Coauthor: Otávio Bueno.)
• 'The Philosophical Significance of Cox's Theorem', International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, Vol. 37, No. 1 (August 2004), pp. 71–85.
• 'Yablo's Paradox and Referring to Infinite Objects', The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 81. No. 3 (September 2003), pp. 402–12. (Coauthor: Otávio Bueno.)
• 'Paradox without Satisfaction', Analysis, Vol. 63, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 152–6. (Coauthor: Otávio Bueno.)
• 'Russell on Metaphysical Vagueness', Principia, Vol. 5, No. 1–2 (2001), pp. 87–98.
• 'Looking for Contradictions', The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 79, No. 4 (December 2001), pp. 564–9. (Coauthor: JC Beall.)
• 'Ranking in Threatened Species Classification', Conservation Biology, Vol. 15, No. 6 (December 2001), pp. 1814–6.
• 'Heaps of Gluts and Hyde-ing the Sorites', Mind, Vol. 110, No. 438 (April 2001), pp. 401–8. (Coauthor: JC Beall.)
• 'Fuzzy Sets and Threatened Species Classification', Conservation Biology, Vol. 14, No. 4 (August 2000), pp. 1197–9. (Coauthor: Helen M. Regan.)
• 'A Proposal for Fuzzy IUCN Categories and Criteria', Biological Conservation, Vol. 92, No. 1 (January 2000), pp. 101–8. (Coauthors: Helen M. Regan and Mark A. Burgman.)

• 'Dealing with Vagueness in Threatened Species Classification' in R.N. Dave and T. Sudkamp (eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society: Real World Applications of Fuzzy Logic and Soft Computing. IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, 1999, pp. 685–94. (Coauthors: Helen M. Regan and Mark A. Burgman.)
• 'A Topological Sorites' (Coauthor: Zach Weber.)
• 'Yablo's Paradox Rides Again', manuscript. (Coauthor: Otávio Bueno)

Rational Choice Theory (including probability, decision, social choice, and game theory)

• 'Modelling the Moral Dimension of Decisions', Noûs, forthcoming. (Coauthors: Damian Cox and Katie Steele.)
• 'Mating, Dating, and Mathematics: It's All in the Game', in K. Miller and M. Clark (eds.), Dating and Philosophy, Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming.
• 'Environmental Ethics and Decision Theory: Fellow Travellers or Bitter Enemies?', in B. Brown, K. de Laplante, and K. Peacock (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science Volume 11: Philosophy of Ecology, North Holland/Elsevier, forthcoming. (Coauthor: Katie Steele.)
• 'Buying Into Conservation: Intrinsic Versus Instrumental Value', Trends in Ecology and Evolution, forthcoming, 2009. (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.
• 'Is Probability the Only Coherent Approach to Uncertainty?', Risk Analysis, Vol. 28, No. 3 (June 2008), pp. 645–52.
• 'Relative Expectation Theory', Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 105, No. 1 (January 2008). pp. 37–44.
• 'Right Decisions or Happy Decision Makers?', Social Epistemology, Vol. 21, No. 4. (October–December, 2007), pp. 349–68. (Coauthors: Katie Steele, Helen M. Regan and Mark A. Burgman.)
• 'Legal Decisions and the Reference-Class Problem', International Journal of Evidence and Proof, Vol. 11, No. 4 (2007), pp. 274–85. (Coauthor: Helen M. Regan.)
• 'No Expectations', Mind, Vol. 115, No. 459 (July 2006), pp. 695–702.
• 'A Formal Model for Consensus and Negotiation in Environmental Management', Journal of Environmental Management, Vol. 80, No. 2 (July 2006), pp. 167–76. (Coauthors: Helen M. Regan and Lisa Markovchick-Nicholls.)
• 'Probability and Ecological Complexity', Biology and Philosophy, Vol. 20, No. 4 (September 2005), pp. 869–79.
• 'Problems with the Argument from Fine Tuning', Synthese, Vol. 145, No. 3 (July 2005), pp. 325–38. (Coauthors: Jay L. Garfield and Graham Priest.)
• 'The Philosophical Significance of Cox's Theorem', International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, Vol. 37, No. 1 (August 2004), pp. 71–85.
• 'Ranking in Threatened Species Classification', Conservation Biology, Vol. 15, No. 6 (December 2001), pp. 1814–6.
• 'Is it a Crime to Belong to a Reference Class?', The Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 9, No. 2 (June 2001), pp. 168–81. Reprinted in H.E. Kyburg and M. Thalos (eds.), Probability is the Very Guide of Life, Open Court, Chicago, 2003, pp. 331–47. (Coauthors: Helen M. Regan and Scott Ferson.)
• 'Fuzzy Sets and Threatened Species Classification', Conservation Biology, Vol. 14, No. 4 (August 2000), pp. 1197–9. (Coauthor: Helen M. Regan.)

• 'Review of M. Sagoff, The Economy of the Earth: Philosophy, Law, and the Environment', The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol, 83, No. 3 (September 2008), p. 301.
• 'The Calculus of Cat and Mouse', The Australian Review of Public Affairs, (December, 2007), URL= http://www.australianreview.net.

• 'Environmental Philosophy: Beyond Environmental Ethics', Arts, Vol. 29, 2007, pp. 95–104.
• 'Philosophy's Role in the Taming of Uncertainty' in M. La Caze (ed.), Philosophy and the New Millennium, Pyrrho Press, Hobart, 2000, pp. 1–13.
• 'The Potential for Perverse Outcomes for Biodiversity from Broad-scale Plantation Establishment in a Carbon Economy', manuscript. (Joint work with David B. Lindenmayer et al.)

Ecology, Conservation Biology, and Environmental Philosophy

• Thinking About Ecology, Oxford University Press, under contract.
• Ecological Orbits: How Planets Move and Populations Grow, Oxford University Press, New York, 2004. (Coauthor: Lev R. Ginzburg.)

• 'Analogical Thinking in Ecology: Looking Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries', Quarterly Review of Biology, forthcoming. (Coauthor: Lev R. Ginzburg.)
• 'Environmental Ethics and Decision Theory: Fellow Travellers or Bitter Enemies?', in B. Brown, K. de Laplante, and K. Peacock (eds.), Handbook of the Philosophy of Science Volume 11: Philosophy of Ecology, North Holland/Elsevier, forthcoming. (Coauthor: Katie Steele.)
• 'Philosophical Issues in Ecology: Recent Trends and Future Directions', Ecology and Society, Vol. 14, No. 2 (December 2009), article 22. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art22/ (Coauthors: Stefan Linquist, William Grey, Paul Griffiths, Jay Odenbaugh, and Hugh Possingham.)
• 'Buying Into Conservation: Intrinsic Versus Instrumental Value', Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 24, No. 4 (April 2009), pp. 187–91. (Coauthors: James Justus, Helen M. Regan, and Lynn A. Maguire.)
• 'Some Practical Suggestions for Improving Engagement Between Researchers and Policy-makers in Natural Resource Management', Ecological Management and Restoration, Vol. 9, No. 3 (December 2008), 182–6. (Coauthors: Philip Gibbons, et al.)
• 'Population Ecology', in S. Sarkar and A. Plutynski (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, Blackwell, 2008, pp. 301–20.
• 'Right Decisions or Happy Decision Makers?', Social Epistemology, Vol. 21, No. 4. (October–December, 2007), pp. 349–68. (Coauthors: Katie Steele, Helen M. Regan and Mark A. Burgman.)
• 'A Formal Model for Consensus and Negotiation in Environmental Management', Journal of Environmental Management, Vol. 80, No. 2 (July 2006), pp. 167–76. (Coauthors: Helen M. Regan and Lisa Markovchick-Nicholls.)
• 'Probability and Ecological Complexity', Biology and Philosophy, Vol. 20, No. 4 (September 2005), pp. 869–79.
• 'The Galilean Turn in Population Ecology', Biology and Philosophy, Vol. 18, No. 3 (June 2003), pp. 401–14. (Coauthor: Lev R. Ginzburg.)
• 'Laws of Nature and Laws of Ecology', Oikos, Vol. 101, No. 3 (June 2003), pp. 649–53. To be reprinted in R.A. Skipper Jr., R. Ankeny, C.F. Craver, L. Darden, G.M. Mikkelson, and R.C. Richardson (eds.), Philosophy and the Life Sciences: A Reader, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA., forthcoming. Translated into Estonian and reprinted in Akadeemia, forthcoming. (Coauthor: Lev R. Ginzburg.)
• 'A Taxonomy and Treatment of Uncertainty for Ecology and Conservation Biology', Ecological Applications, Vol. 12, No. 2 (April 2002), pp. 618–28. (Coauthors: Helen M. Regan and Mark A. Burgman.)
• 'Ranking in Threatened Species Classification', Conservation Biology, Vol. 15, No. 6 (December 2001), pp. 1814–6.
• 'Fuzzy Sets and Threatened Species Classification', Conservation Biology, Vol. 14, No. 4 (August 2000), pp. 1197–9. (Coauthor: Helen M. Regan.)
• 'A Proposal for Fuzzy IUCN Categories and Criteria', Biological Conservation, Vol. 92, No. 1 (January 2000), pp. 101–8. (Coauthors: Helen M. Regan and Mark A. Burgman.)
• 'The Treatment of Uncertainty and the Structure of the IUCN Threatened Species Categories', Biological Conservation, Vol. 89, No. 3 (August 1999), pp. 245–9. (Coauthors: Mark A. Burgman, Charles R. Todd, H. Resit Akcakaya and Chris Boek.)

• 'Review of M. Sagoff, The Economy of the Earth: Philosophy, Law, and the Environment', The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol, 83, No. 3 (September 2008), p. 301.
• 'Models and Explanation in Ecology', Metascience, Vol. 13, No. 3 (December 2004), pp. 334–7.

• 'Environmental Philosophy: Beyond Environmental Ethics', Arts, Vol. 29, 2007, pp. 95–104.
• 'Dealing with Vagueness in Threatened Species Classification' in R.N. Dave and T. Sudkamp (eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Conference of the North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society: Real World Applications of Fuzzy Logic and Soft Computing. IEEE, Piscataway, NJ, 1999, pp. 685–94. (Coauthors: Helen M. Regan and Mark A. Burgman.)
• 'The Biodiversity Bank Cannot Be a Lending Bank', manuscript. (Coauthors: Sarah Bekessy, Brendan Wintle, David Lindenmayer, and Hugh Possingham.)
• 'The Potential for Perverse Outcomes for Biodiversity from Broad-scale Plantation Establishment in a Carbon Economy', manuscript. (Joint work with David B. Lindenmayer et al.)
• 'The Conservation Game' (Coauthors: Helen M. Regan, and James Justus)

Epistemology and General Philosophy of Science

• 'An Inferential Conception of the Application of Mathematics', Noûs, forthcoming. (Coauthor: Otávio Bueno.)
• 'Applying Inconsistent Mathematics', in O. Bueno and Ø. Linnebo (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Mathematics, Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming.
• 'Naturalising Normativity', in D. Braddon-Mitchell and R. Nola (eds.), Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism, MIT Press, 2009, pp. 303–13.
• 'The Ontological Commitments of Inconsistent Theories', Philosophical Studies, Vol. 141, No. 1 (October 2008), 115–23.
• 'Mathematical and Physical Continuity', Australasian Journal of Logic, Vol. 6 (2008), pp. 87–93. (Coauthor: Kenny Easwaran.)
• '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.)
• 'Scientific Realism and Mathematical Nominalism: A Marriage Made in Hell', in C. Cheyne and J. Worrall (eds.), Rationality and Reality: Conversations with Alan Musgrave, Springer, 2006, pp. 225–37.
  
• 'Naturalism and the Paradox of Revisability', Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 1 (March 2006), pp. 1–11.
• 'Probability and Ecological Complexity', Biology and Philosophy, Vol. 20, No. 4 (September 2005), pp. 869–79.
• 'Problems with the Argument from Fine Tuning', Synthese, Vol. 145, No. 3 (July 2005), pp. 325–38. (Coauthors: Jay L. Garfield and Graham Priest.)
• 'The Philosophical Significance of Cox's Theorem', International Journal of Approximate Reasoning, Vol. 37, No. 1 (August 2004), pp. 71–85.
• 'Laws of Nature and Laws of Ecology', Oikos, Vol. 101, No. 3 (June 2003), pp. 649–53. To be reprinted in R.A. Skipper Jr., R. Ankeny, C.F. Craver, L. Darden, G.M. Mikkelson, and R.C. Richardson (eds.), Philosophy and the Life Sciences: A Reader, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA., forthcoming. Translated into Estonian and reprinted in Akadeemia, forthcoming. (Coauthor: Lev R. Ginzburg.)
• 'Causal Explanation and Ontological Commitment', in U. Meixner and P. Simons (eds.), Metaphysics in the Post-Metaphysical Age: Papers of the 22nd International Wittgenstein Symposium, Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria, 1999, Vol. 1, pp. 141–6.
• 'Can the Eleatic Principle be Justified?', The Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 28, No. 3 (September 1998), pp. 313–36.

• 'Quaternions and Space-Time', Metascience, Vol. 8, No. 3 (November 1999), pp. 489–90.

• 'Beauty and Scientific Virtue' in I. Sawford (ed.), Virtues and Vices, Pyrrho Press, Hobart, 2002, pp. 1–17.
• 'Philosophy's Role in the Taming of Uncertainty' in M. La Caze (ed.), Philosophy and the New Millennium, Pyrrho Press, Hobart, 2000, pp. 1–13.
• 'The Bubble of Belief' in Y. Rider and G.A. Rutter (eds.), Proceedings of the 4th Australasian Philosophy Postgraduate Students Conference, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1997, pp. 35–43.
• 'Evidenced-Based Policy' (Coauthor: Adam La Caze.)

Philosophy of Law

• 'Legal Decisions and the Reference-Class Problem', International Journal of Evidence and Proof, Vol. 11, No. 4 (2007), pp. 274–85. (Coauthor: Helen M. Regan.)
• 'Is it a Crime to Belong to a Reference Class?', The Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 9, No. 2 (June 2001), pp. 168–81. Reprinted in H.E. Kyburg and M. Thalos (eds.), Probability is the Very Guide of Life, Open Court, Chicago, 2003, pp. 331–47. (Coauthors: Helen M. Regan and Scott Ferson.)