Eric Christian Barnes

I have worked primarily in the philosophy of science, including the nature of scientific progress, scientific explanation, confirmation theory, and the realist-anti realist debate. My primary focus over the last several years has been on predictivism, the claim that evidence confirms theory more strongly when it is predicted than when theories are built to fit such evidence. My current research interests are in ethics.

Representative Publications

The Paradox of Predictivism, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, forthcoming.
under review: "Evidence and Leverage: Comment on Roush", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
2005 "Predictivism for Pluralists", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 56, 421-450.
2002 "The Miraculous Choice Argument for Realism", Philosophical Studies 111, No. 2, 97-120.
2002 "Neither Truth nor Empirical Adequacy Explain Novel Success", Australasian Journal of Philosophy 80, No. 4, 418-431.
2000 "Ockham's Razor and the Anti-Superfluity Principle", Erkenntnis 53, No. 3, 353-374.
1999 "The Quantitative Problem of Old Evidence", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 50, 249-264.
1998 "Probabilities and Epistemic Pluralism", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49, 31-37.
1996, "Why P Rather than Q? The Curiosities of Fact and Foil", Philosophical Studies, 73: 35-53.
1995 "Inference to the Loveliest Explanation", Synthese 103, 251-277.
1992 "Explanatory Unification and the Problem of Asymmetry", Philosophy of Science 59, 558-571.
1991 "The Causal History of Computational Activity: Maudlin and Olympia", Journal of Philosophy 88, 304-316.

Work in Progress

The relationship between effort and desert
The nature of moral responsibility
Various problems in virtue ethics

Teaching

Introduction to Philosophy
Plato's Ethical Thought
Philosophy of Human Emotion
Creativity, Discovery, and Science

Other than that

I am a fan of bluegrass music and Asian cuisine. My wife and two daughters rule my world.