Paul Humphreys (1950-2022) was a British professor of philosophy at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United States, with College admission ...

, specialising in

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ulti ...

, metaphysics, and epistemology. His interests included the

metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

and

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...

emergence In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. Emergen ...

computational science Computational science, also known as scientific computing or scientific computation (SC), is a field in mathematics that uses advanced computing capabilities to understand and solve complex problems. It is an area of science that spans many disc ...

, empiricism and

realism Realism, Realistic, or Realists may refer to: In the arts * Realism (arts), the general attempt to depict subjects truthfully in different forms of the arts Arts movements related to realism include: *Classical Realism *Literary realism, a mov ...

Education and career

Humphreys attended Ealing Grammar school in London and earned his undergraduate degree at the

University of Sussex , mottoeng = Be Still and Know , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £14.4 million (2020) , budget = £319.6 million (2019–20) , chancellor = Sanjeev Bhaskar , vice_chancellor = Sasha Roseneil , ...

, and then went to Stanford University where he received his Ph.D. in 1976. He joined the

faculty in 1978, where he spent the rest of his career (apart from visiting appointments at

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. ...

, Stanford University,

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...

and others), rising to the rank of "Commonwealth Professor of Philosophy."

Philosophical work

He was a significant contributor to the philosophy of

emergent properties In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. Emergen ...

, as well as other areas in the

and

philosophy of probability The word probability has been used in a variety of ways since it was first applied to the mathematical study of games of chance. Does probability measure the real, physical, tendency of something to occur, or is it a measure of how strongly one be ...

. Humphreys published a substantial number of books and scholarly articles. He was Series Editor for the Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Science. He serves on the editorial Boards of the ''

American Philosophical Quarterly The ''American Philosophical Quarterly'' (APQ) is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering philosophy. It was established in 1964 by Nicholas Rescher and is published quarterly by University of Illinois Press under license with North American Phi ...

'', ''

Philosophy of Science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ulti ...

'', and ''

Foundations of Science ''Foundations of Science'' is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal focussing on methodological and philosophical topics concerning the structure and the growth of science. It is the official journal of the Association for Foundatio ...

''.

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Humphreys, Paul 1950 births Living people 21st-century American philosophers 20th-century American philosophers University of Virginia faculty