People   >   Senior members   >   Carl Hoefer

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    Departament de Filosofia
    Universitat de Barcelona
    Montalegre, 6-8, 4ª planta
    08001 Barcelona

    Phone: +34 934 037 982
    Fax: +34 934 037 980

    https://www.icrea.cat/Web/ScientificStaff/Carl-Hoefer-175

    My research has mostly addressed age-old metaphysical questions by examining the metaphysics of nature that flows from our best scientific theories. In particular, I work on the nature of space, time and motion as revealed by physics (especially, Einstein's theories of relativity); and on the nature of objective probability as revealed by its uses in many branches of science and other human activities.  I’m also interested in understanding laws of nature, causation, and the relations between these two notions.  

    Since 2017 I have worked more on issues in general philosophy of science, including scientific realism, objectivity in science, and difficulties encountered when we try to extract causal conclusions from observational studies, especially in medicine and epidemiology.

    For more information, see my ICREA web page, link below.

    https://www.icrea.cat/Web/ScientificStaff/carl-hoefer-175

Projects

List of Publications

Carl Hoefer, Alexander Krauss   |   2021
Measures of effectiveness in medical research: Reporting both absolute and relative measures

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Volume 88, August 2021, Pages 280-283.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.06.012

Carl Hoefer, Albert Solé   |   2019
The Nomological Interpretation of the Wave Function

Philosophers Look at Quantum Mechanics, ed. Alberto Cordero, Synthese Library #409, Springer 2019.

Carl Hoefer   |   2019
Chance In the World: A Humean Guide to Objective Chance

Oxford University Press, 2019.

Carl Hoefer, Christopher Viger, Daniel Viger   |   2019
The Philosopher’s Paradox: How to Make a Coherent Decision in the Newcomb Problem

THEORIA. An International Journal for Theory, History and Foundations of ScienceVolume 34/3, September 2019, pp. 313-471.  

Carl Hoefer, Antonio Vassallo   |   2020
The Metaphysics of Machian Frame-Dragging

Einstein Studies v. 15Thinking About Space and Time (edited by Claus Beisbart, Tilman Sauer & Chris Wüthrich), Springer, 2020.  

Carl Hoefer   |   2020
Scientific Realism Without the Quantum

Scientific Realism and the Quantum, ed. Steven French & Juha Saatsi, Oxford University Press 2020

Carl Hoefer, Genoveva Martí   |   2020
Realism, Reference & Perspective

European Journal for Philosophy of Science 10:3, 2020

Carl Hoefer   |   2014
Mach's Principle as action-at-a-distance in GR: the causality question 

Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics.  Online First Oct. 2014

Carl Hoefer   |   2014
Consistency and Admissibility: Reply to Meacham

Chance and Temporal Asymmetry (ed. Alastair Wilson), Oxford University Press, 2014.

Carl Hoefer, Albert Solé   |   2015
Introduction: Space–time and the wave function

Intro to special issue of Synthese (eds. A. Solé & C. Hoefer), Synthese 192:10 (2015), pp. 3055-3070.  DOI: 10.1007/s11229-015-0826-x.

Carl Hoefer, Chris Smeenk   |   2016
Philosophy of Physical Sciences

Paul Humphreys (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science.  Forthcoming, Oxford University Press, 2016