Papers by Christopher G Weaver
Forthcoming in Foundations of Science
I show how Sir William Rowan Hamilton’s philosophical commitments led him to a causal interpretat... more I show how Sir William Rowan Hamilton’s philosophical commitments led him to a causal interpretation of classical mechanics. I argue that Hamilton’s metaphysics of causation was injected into his dynamics by way of a causal interpretation of force. I then detail how forces are indispensable to both Hamilton’s formulation of classical mechanics and what we now call Hamiltonian mechanics (i.e., the modern formulation). On this point, my efforts primarily consist of showing that the contemporary orthodox interpretation of potential energy is the interpretation found in Hamilton’s work. Hamilton called the potential energy function the “force-function” because he believed that it represents forces at work in the world. Various non-historical arguments for this orthodox interpretation of potential energy are provided, and matters are concluded by showing that in classical Hamiltonian mechanics, facts about the potential energies of systems are grounded in facts about forces. Thus, if one can tolerate the view that forces are causes of motion, then Hamilton provides one with a road map for transporting causation into one of the most mathematically sophisticated formulations of classical mechanics, viz., Hamiltonian mechanics.
International Journal of Modern Physics B, 2022
In (Weaver 2021), I showed that Boltzmann's H-theorem does not face a significant threat from the... more In (Weaver 2021), I showed that Boltzmann's H-theorem does not face a significant threat from the reversibility paradox. I argue that my defense of the Htheorem against that paradox can be used yet again for the purposes of resolving the recurrence paradox without having to endorse heavy-duty statistical assumptions outside of the hypothesis of molecular chaos. As in (Weaver 2021), lessons from the history and foundations of physics reveal precisely how such resolution is achieved.
Foundations of Physics
I will argue, pace a great many of my contemporaries, that there's something right about Boltzman... more I will argue, pace a great many of my contemporaries, that there's something right about Boltzmann's attempt to ground the second law of thermodynamics in a suitably amended deterministic time-reversal invariant classical dynamics, and that in order to appreciate what's right about (what was at least at one time) Boltzmann's explanatory project, one has to fully apprehend the nature of microphysical causal structure, time-reversal invariance, and the relationship between Boltzmann entropy and the work of Rudolf Clausius.
Erkenntnis, 2020
I argue that the best interpretation of the general theory of relativity (GTR) has need of a caus... more I argue that the best interpretation of the general theory of relativity (GTR) has need of a causal entity (i.e., the gravitational field), and causal structure that is not reducible to light cone structure. I suggest that this causal interpretation of GTR helps defeat a key premise in one of the most popular arguments for causal reductionism, viz., the argument from physics.
Blackwell Companion to Atheism and Philosophy
I proffer a success argument for classical logical consequence. I articulate in what sense that n... more I proffer a success argument for classical logical consequence. I articulate in what sense that notion of consequence should be regarded as the privileged notion for metaphysical inquiry aimed at uncovering the fundamental nature of the world. Classical logic breeds necessitism. I use necessitism to produce problems for both ontological naturalism and atheism.
Journal for General Philosophy of Science
I argue that the Carroll-Chen cosmogonic model does not provide a plausible scientific explanatio... more I argue that the Carroll-Chen cosmogonic model does not provide a plausible scientific explanation of the past hypothesis (the thesis that our universe began in an extremely low-entropy state). I suggest that this counts as a welcomed result for those who adopt a Mill-Ramsey-Lewis best systems account of laws and maintain that the past hypothesis is a brute fact that is a non-dynamical law.
Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project
We argue that there exists a necessary causally potent being. We then argue that that being is God.
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion
I argue that the existence of a necessary concrete being can be derived from an exceedingly weak ... more I argue that the existence of a necessary concrete being can be derived from an exceedingly weak causal principle coupled with two contingent truths one of which falls out of very popular positions in contemporary analytic metaphysics. I then show that the argument resists a great many objections commonly lodged against natural theological arguments of the cosmological variety.
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion
I show that the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and essentially omnimalevolent being is i... more I show that the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and essentially omnimalevolent being is impossible given only two metaethical assumptions (viz., moral rationalism and reasons internalism). I then argue (pace Stephen Law) that such an impossibility undercuts Law's (2010) evil god challenge.
Synthese
In an attempt to improve upon Alexander Pruss’s work (2006, pp. 240-248), I (Weaver, 2012) have a... more In an attempt to improve upon Alexander Pruss’s work (2006, pp. 240-248), I (Weaver, 2012) have argued that if all purely contingent events could be caused and something like a Lewisian analysis of causation is true (per Lewis, 2004), then all purely contingent events have causes. I dubbed the derivation of the universality of causation the “Lewisian argument”. The Lewisian argument assumed not a few controversial metaphysical theses, particularly essentialism, an incommunicable-property view of essences (per Plantinga 2003), and the idea that counterfactual dependence is necessary for causation. There are, of course, substantial objections to such theses. While I think a fight against objections to the Lewisian argument can be won, I develop, in what follows, a much more intuitive argument for the universality of causation which takes as its inspiration a result from Frederic Fitch’s work (1963) (with credit to who we now know was Alonzo Church (2009)) that if all truths are such that they are knowable, then (counter-intuitively) all truths are known. The resulting Church-Fitch proof for the universality of causation is preferable to the Lewisian argument since it rests upon far weaker formal and metaphysical assumptions than those of the Lewisian argument.
Teaching Documents by Christopher G Weaver
This is the course syllabus for a course I teach for the department of physics at the University ... more This is the course syllabus for a course I teach for the department of physics at the University of Illinois.
Course syllabus for Christopher Gregory Weaver's PHIL 471 Foundations of Statistical Mechanics co... more Course syllabus for Christopher Gregory Weaver's PHIL 471 Foundations of Statistical Mechanics course at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Spring 2019.
Course syllabus for my PHIL 424 Philosophy of Religion course at UIUC for Spring 2017.
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Papers by Christopher G Weaver
Teaching Documents by Christopher G Weaver