Dr Robert Northcott

Email: r.northcott@bbk.ac.uk

My research is in philosophy of science and metaphysics, focusing in particular on causation and its use in science. For more details, consult my personal webpage.

Biographical details

I started at Birkbeck in May 2011. Before that, I was as an assistant professor at University of Missouri-St Louis from autumn 2005, and was awarded tenure there in February 2011. I received my PhD in 2004 from the London School of Economics. I was also a visiting scholar for two years at University of California, San Diego. Before switching to philosophy I did graduate work in economics, receiving an MSc. Before even that, I began my student days as an undergraduate at Cambridge University studying mathematics and then history.

Areas of research supervision

• Philosophy of science; metaphysics; philosophy of biology.

Publications

• 'Walsh on causes and evolution' Philosophy of Science,  2010, 77.3: 457-467.
• ‘Verisimilitude: a causal approach’ Synthese, forthcoming. (This is a late draft.)
• ‘On Lewis, Schaffer and the non-reductive evaluation of counterfactuals’ Theoria, 2009, 75.4: 336-343. (This is a late draft.)
• ‘Is actual difference making actually different?’ Journal of Philosophy, 2009, 106.11: 629-634. (This is a late draft.)
• 'Natural-born determinists: a new defense of causation as probability-raising' Philosophical Studies, 2010, 50.1:1-20
• 'Weighted explanations in history' Philosophy of the Social Sciences 2008, 38.1: 76-96
• 'Can ANOVA measure causal strength?' Quarterly Review of Biology 2008, 83.1: 47-55
• 'Causation and contrast classes' Philosophical Studies 2008, 39.1: 111-123
• 'Causal efficacy and the analysis of variance' Biology and Philosophy 2006, 21.2: 253-276
• 'Pearson’s wrong turning: against statistical measures of causal efficacy' Philosophy of Science 2005, 72.5: 900-912
• 'Comparing apples with oranges' Analysis 2005, 65.1: 12-18
• 'Genetic traits and causal explanation'  to appear in Thomas Reydon and Katie Plaisance (eds) Philosophy of Behavioral Biology (Springer: Boston Studies in Philosophy of Science)
• 'Progress in economics' chapter 11 in Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics (Oxford 2009, Don Ross and Harold Kincaid, eds), pp306-337 (co-authored with Anna Alexandrova)
• 'How necessary are randomized controlled trials?' to appear in the 9^th edition of Ronald Munson, Intervention and Reflection: Basic Issues in Medical Ethics (Thomson Wadsworth)
• 'Review of ‘The Scientific Study of Society’ by Max Steuer' Economics and Philosophy 2004, 20.2: 375-381.

Forthcoming events

• Tuesday 8 May 2012, 10am-1pm - 'Aristotelian Powers Now', at The London School of Economics and Political Science in CPNSS, T206.  Seminar will be chaired by Robert Northcott.  View 
• May 2012 (invited talk) - ‘Explanatory power and difference-making’, workshop on explanatory power, Ruhr Universität Bochum,
• April 2012 - ‘Sui generis explanations: theory and scientific progress’, The Progress of Science conference, Tilburg, April 2012
• ‘Natural selection and causal exclusion’, Philosophy of Biology in the UK, Oxford,
• February 2012 - ‘Scientific progress and sui generis cases’, Cambridge History and Philosophy of Science department seminar
• January 2012 (invited talk) - ‘Scientific progress and sui generis explanations’, British Society for the Philosophy of Science meeting, London School of Economics,
• January 2012 - ‘Pre-emption and causation’, Cambridge Serious Metaphysics group,