Barry Ward 

Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, AR 72701

Office: Main 303
Phone: (479) 575-7550
bmward@uark.edu
Office hours Fall 2007:  W 10:20-11:20 and 2:00-4:00

Barry Ward's main interests are in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of physics. His doctoral dissertation offers a Humean projectivist analysis of laws of nature and objective chances, and his current research aims at extending the treatment to causation and natural properties while fervently arguing that standard Humean approaches to the above issues are ill-motivated and fundamentally flawed. The entire projectivist package, coupled with a critique of both van Fraassen's antirealism about laws and standard realist views, is ultimately intended to make a book. In addition, he is currently exploiting some ideas about laws and explanation to construct a solution to Hempel's and Goodman's paradoxes of confirmation. He has a master's degree in theoretical physics from Trinity College, Dublin, and has interests in the Measurement Problem in Quantum Mechanics and the philosophy of time. 
 
 

Representative Publications:

  • "Laws, Explanation, Governing, and Generation", The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2007), 537-552.
  • "Projecting Chances: A Humean Vindication and Justification of the Principal Principle", Philosophy of Science 72 (2005), 241-261.
  • "Sometimes the World is not Enough: The Pursuit of Explanatory Laws in a Humean World", Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 84 (2003), 175-197.
  • "Humeanism without Humean Supervenience: A Projectivist Account of Laws and Possibilities", Philosophical Studies, 107 (2002), 191-218.
  • "Inequivalent Vacuum States and Rindler Particles", with Robert Weingard in Le Vide, Univers du Tout et du Rien, edited by E. Gunzig and S. Diner, (Editions Complexe, Bruxelles, 1998), and in an English version of the volume forthcoming from Plenum. 


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