Dr Patrick McGivern

BA (University of British Columbia), MSc (University of Edinburgh), PhD (University of Alberta)

Office: 19.1103
Phone: 02 4221 5676
Email: patrick_mcgivern@uow.edu.au
 

Biography

I came to Wollongong in 2009 after studying and teaching for a bunch of years at the University of Alberta, where I earned my PhD in 2005.  Before becoming a philosopher, I earned an MSc in Cognitive Science at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a computational linguist in the Natural Language Laboratory at Simon Fraser University.  I specialize in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics.

Research Interests

My research focuses on questions about the structure of explanation in science, and related problems concerning causation, reduction, laws of nature, and the use of models in science.  I am primarily interested in understanding how theories and explanations from different branches of science fit together.  Scientists and non-scientists alike often talk about theories applying at different ‘levels’ or of one sort of phenomena ‘emerging from’ or ‘reducing to’ another: I am interested in giving a clear and rigorous account of such ideas.  I tend to focus on examples drawn from physics, though my work is relevant for understanding how theories and explanations in the biological sciences and in the social sciences function as well.

I am also interested in arguments about reduction and emergence in philosophy of mind, along with various questions about the relationship between cognition and computation.
 

Research Profile

Searchable RIS publications database >>

Selected Publications

Journal publications

• “Hierarchies and Levels of Reality”. (co-authored with Alexander Rueger). Forthcoming in Synthese, DOI: 10.1007/s11229-009-9572-2
• “Reductive levels and multi-scale structure”, Synthese, vol. 165, no. 1, pp. 53-75, 2008.

Other publications

• “Dynamical Systems”, co-authored with Alexander Rueger, 1000-word entry for the Handbook of Mereology, Hans Burkhardt , Johanna Seibt and Guido Imaguire (eds), forthcoming from Philosophia Verlag.

Current Research Projects

• Reduction, emergence, and ‘levels’ in the physical sciences.
• The distinction between ‘fundamental’ and ‘non-fundamental’ laws and the role of such laws in different sciences.
• Scientific realism and the role of mathematics in models and explanations in science.