My areas of specialization are philosophy of science and metaphysics. I’m particularly interested in metaphysical questions that arise in connection with the physical sciences. My book The Metaphysics of Quantities has just come out with Oxford University Press. In the book I ask what it takes for an attribute to be quantitative.
I articulate and defend an original answer to this important, insufficiently understood question through the novel position of substantival structuralism. I argue that quantitativeness is an irreducible feature of attributes, and quantitative attributes are best understood as substantival structured spaces. The book first explores what it means for an attribute to be quantitative, and what metaphysical implications a commitment to quantitative attributes has. It then sets the stage to address the metaphysical and ontological consequences of the existence of quantitative attributes.
I’m currently exploring a couple of new research projects around questions of measurement in the social sciences, in politics, and in our personal lives.
I’m really enjoying your book! Even though it is metaphysical. 🙂 I’m looking forward to lecturing on it next week in the course I’m teaching this term at the MCMP. I’ll let you know how it goes—I’ll let you know why I think you’re wrong, and you can tell me why I’m wrong about that.
Erik, I would love nothing more than for you to tell me why I’m wrong! I suspect, though, that you are actually right about it. 😉
I could agree with and endorse most of the content of the book if the phrase “non-reductive, restrictive realism” were everywhere replaced by “non-reductive, restrictive pragmatism à la Peirce, Carnap and Stein”. 🙂