Paul Humphreys (philosopher)

Paul Humphreys is a significant contributor to the philosophy of emergent properties, as well as other areas in the Philosophy of science and Philosophy of probability. He is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Virginia, specialising in philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology. His current interests include the metaphysics and epistemology of emergence, computational science, empiricism and realism, and strategy.

Humphreys has published a substantial number of books and scholarly articles. He is Series Editor for the Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Science. He serves on the editorial Boards of the American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy of Science, and Foundations of Science.

Select publications

• Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Science and Philosophy. Mark Bedau and Paul Humphreys (eds). The MIT Press, 2007
• Extending Ourselves: Computational Science, Empiricism, and Scientific Method (Oxford, 2004)
• "Some Considerations on Conditional Chance," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (2004)
• "Computational Models", Philosophy of Science 69 (2002), S1-S11
• "Are There Algorithms that Discover Causal Structure?" Synthese (1999, with David Freedman)
• "How Properties Emerge," Philosophy of Science 64 (1997), 1-17
• The Chances of Explanation (Princeton, 1989)
• "Why Propensities Cannot Be Probabilities," The Philosophical Review 94 (1985), 557-570