Mark Colyvan Professor of Philosophy Director of the Sydney Centre for the Foundations of Science University of Sydney Research Page

Contents:

Current Research Projects

• Formal consensus methods (DAFF funded)
• A paraconsistent approach to vagueness (ARC funded)
• Decision and risk in environmental science (CERF funded)
• Complex Environmental Decision Making (NSF funded)
• Ethics in decision theory (ARC funded)
• Formal Approaches to Social Epistemology (Dutch Science Foundation funded)

Major Research Awards

• Dutch Science Foundation Internationalisation Grant (2008–2010): Formal Approaches to Social Epistemology (with Stephan Hartmann, Cristina Bicchieri, and Jesus Pedro Zamora Bonilla)
• ARC Discovery Grant (2008–2010): Ethics and Formal Theories of Decision
• AEDA Project Funding (2008–2010): Environmental Ethics and Decision Theory
• ACERA Project Funding (2007–2009): The Evaluation and Development of Formal Consensus Methods
• Commonwealth Environment Research Facilities (CERF) Research Hub (2006–2010): Applied Environmental Decision Analysis (AEDA) (with Hugh Possingham and several other CIs)
• Australian Government funded Centre of Excellence (2006–2010): Australian Centre of Excellence for Risk Analysis (ACERA) (administered by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) (with Mark A. Burgman and several other CIs)
• ARC Discovery Grant (2006–2008): A Paraconsistent Approach to Vagueness (with Dominic Hyde)
• University of Queensland Research Grant (2005): A Paraconsistent Approach to Vagueness
• ARC Discovery Grant (2002–2004): The Role of Naturalism in Ontology and Scientific Methodology
• University of Tasmania Institutional Research Grant (2002): A Metaphysical Approach to Vagueness
• ARC SPIRT Grant (2001): Mathematical Issues at the Foundation of Population Ecology
• University of Tasmania Institutional Reserach Grant (2001): Philosophical Naturalism
• ARC Small Grant (2000): The Identification and Treatment of Uncertainty in Threatened Species Classification
• University of Tasmania Industry Collaborative Research Grant (1999–2000): Uncertainty in Risk Assessment

Visiting Appointments

• 2007: Department of Philosophy at the University of Otago
• 2004: The Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh
• 2002–2003: Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology
• 2001: Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Irvine

Other Short-term and Honorary Positions

• 2007–present: Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Tilburg Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science at Tilburg University
• 2005: The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University
• 1999: The Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies

Publications

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

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.

Refereed Papers

• 'Modelling the Moral Dimension of Decisions', Noûs, forthcoming. (Coauthors: Damian Cox and Katie Steele.)
• 'Some Practical Suggestions for Improving Engagement Between Researchers and Policy-makers in Natural Resource Management', Ecological Management and Restoration, forthcoming. (Coauthors: Philip Gibbons, et al.)
• 'Paraconsistent Vagueness: Why Not?', The Australasian Journal of Logic, forthcoming. (Coauthor: Dominic Hyde)
• 'Applying Inconsistent Mathematics', in O. Bueno and Ø. Linnebo (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Mathematics, Palgrave MacMillan, 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.)
• 'Fictionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics', in E.J. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Online edition, Taylor and Francis, forthcoming.
• 'The Biodiversity Bank Cannot be a Lending Bank', Ecological Economics, forthcoming. (Coauthors: Sarah Bekessy, Brendan Wintle, David Lindenmayer, and Hugh Possingham.)
• 'Naturalising Normativity', in D. Braddon-Mitchell and R. Nola (eds.), Conceptual Analysis and Philosophical Naturalism, MIT Press, 2008, chap. 13, 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, 2008.
• 'Vagueness and Truth', in H. Dyke (ed.), From Truth to Reality: New Essays in Logic and Metaphysics, Routledge, 2008, forthcoming.
• '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.
• '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.)
• 'Population Ecology', in S. Sarkar and A. Plutynski (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, Blackwell, 2008, pp. 301–20.
• 'Philosophy of Mathematics: Five Questions', in V.F. Hendricks and H. Leitgeb (eds.), Philosophy of Mathematics: Five Questions, Automatic Press, 2008, pp. 75–85
• 'Relative Expectation Theory', Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 105, No. 1 (January 2008). pp. 37–44.

• 'Mathematical Recreation Versus Mathematical Knowledge', in M. Leng, A. Paseau, and M. Potter (eds.), Mathematical Knowledge, Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 109–22.
• '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.)
• '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.)
• 'Ontological Independence as the Mark of the Real', Philosophia Mathematica (3), Vol. 13, No. 2 (June 2005), pp. 216–25.

• '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.)
• '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.)
• 'Paradox without Satisfaction', Analysis, Vol. 63, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 152–6. (Coauthor: Otávio Bueno.)

• '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.)
• 'Mathematics and Aesthetic Considerations in Science', Mind, Vol. 111, No. 441 (January 2002), pp. 69–74.

• '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.
• 'The Miracle of Applied Mathematics', Synthese, Vol. 127, No. 3 (June 2001), pp. 265–78.
• '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.)
• '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.)
• 'Conceptual Contingency and Abstract Existence', The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 198 (January 2000), pp. 87–91.
• '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.)

• '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.)
• 'Contrastive Empiricism and Indispensability', Erkenntnis, Vol. 51, No. 2-3 (September 1999), pp. 323–32.
• '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.
• '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.)

• '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.

Book Reviews

• '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.
• '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.
• 'Models and Explanation in Ecology', Metascience, Vol. 13, No. 3 (December 2004), pp. 334–7.
• '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.

Other Publications

• 'Environmental Philosophy: Beyond Environmental Ethics', Arts, Vol. 29, 2007, pp. 95–104.
• '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.
• '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 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.
• '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.

Some Non-Philosophical Publications

Work Currently Under Consideration

• 'There's No Easy Road to Nominalisim'
• 'Philosophical Issues in Ecology: Recent Trends and Future Directions' (Coauthors: Stefan Linquist, William Grey, Paul Griffiths, Jay Odenbaugh, and Hugh Possingham.)
• 'Buying Into Conservation: Intrinsic Versus Instrumental Value' (Joint work with James Justus, Helen M. Regan, and Lynn A. Maguire)
• 'The Potential for Perverse Outcomes for Biodiversity from Broad-scale Plantation Establishment in a Carbon Economy' (Joint work with David B. Lindenmayer et al.)
• 'An Inferential Conception of the Application of Mathematics' (Coauthor: Otávio Bueno.)

Work in Progress

• A book manuscript, under contract with Oxford University Press, tentatively titled: Thinking about Ecology.
• A book manuscript, under contract with Cambridge University Press, tentatively titled: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mathematics.
• 'Just What is Vagueness?' (Joint work with Otávio Bueno)
• 'Inclosing the Sorites' (Joint work with JC Beall, Zach Weber and Dominic Hyde.)
• 'Dutch Books and Bayesian Representation Theorems'
• 'Idealisations in Normative Models'
• 'What's Maths Got to Do with It?'
• 'The Conservation Game' (Joint work with Helen M. Regan, Mark Lubell and Brian Skyrms)
• 'Reductions, Supervenience and Ontology' (Joint work with Kristie Miller and David Braddon-Mitchell)

Unpublished Pieces

• 'Yablo's Paradox Rides Again' (Coauthor: Otávio Bueno)