Donald A. Gillies

Donald A. Gillies
Donald A. Gillies
Born	4 May 1944 (age 80)
Alma mater	Cambridge University; London School of Economics
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic
Institutions	University College London
Thesis	A critique of von Mises' theory of probability (1970)
Doctoral advisor	Imre Lakatos
Other academic advisors	Karl Popper
Doctoral students	David Corfield
Main interests	Philosophy of mathematics; Philosophy of artificial intelligence
Notable ideas	Non-Bayesian confirmation theory

Donald Angus Gillies (/ˈɡɪliːz/; born 4 May 1944) is a British philosopher and historian of science and mathematics. He is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at University College London.

Career

After undergraduate studies in mathematics and philosophy at Cambridge, Gillies became a graduate student of Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos (his official PhD supervisor) at the London School of Economics, where he completed a PhD on the foundations of probability.^[2]

Gilles is a past President^[2] and a current Vice-President^[3] of British Society for the Philosophy of Science. From 1982 to 1985 he was an editor of the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.^[2]

Gillies is probably best known for his work on Bayesian confirmation theory, his attempt to simplify and extend Popper’s theory of corroboration. He proposes a novel "principle of explanatory surplus", likening a successful theoretician to a successful entrepreneur. The entrepreneur generates a surplus (of income) over and above his initial investment (the outgoes) to meet the necessary expenses of the enterprise. Similarly, the theoretician generates a surplus (of explanations) over and above his initial investment (of assumptions) to make the necessary explanations of known facts. The size of this surplus is held to be a measure of the confirmation of the theory, but only in qualitative, rather than quantitative, terms.

Gillies has researched the philosophy of science, most particularly the foundations of probability; the philosophy of logic and mathematics; and the interactions of artificial intelligence with some aspects of philosophy, including probability, logic, causality and scientific method. In the philosophy of mathematics, he has developed a method of dealing with very large transfinite cardinals from an Aristotelian point of view.^[4]

Books and articles (selection)

Gillies, Donald and Chihara, Charles S. (1988). "An Interchange on the Popper-Miller Argument". Philosophical Studies, Volume 54, pp. 1–8.
Gillies, Donald (1989). "Non-Bayesian Confirmation Theory and the Principle of Explanatory Surplus". The Philosophy of Science Association, PSA 1988, Volume 2, pp. 373–380.
Gillies, Donald ed. (1992). Revolutions in Mathematics. Oxford Science Publications. The Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, New York.
Gillies, Donald (1996). "Artificial intelligence and scientific method". Oxford: Oxford University Press.^[5]
Gillies, Donald (2000). Philosophical Theories of Probability. London: Routledge.
Gillies, Donald (2010). An objective Theory of Probability. London: Routledge.
Gillies, Donald (2011). Frege, Dedekind, and Peano on the Foundations of Arithmetic. London: Routledge.

References

^ Corfield interviewed by McLarty - Thales + Friends
^ ^a ^b ^c Wenceslao J. González, Contemporary Perspectives in Philosophy and Methodology of Science. Netbiblo, 2006, ISBN 0-9729892-3-4; pp. v-vi
^ BSPS Officers and Committees 2009-2010 Archived 26 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine, British Society for the Philosophy of Science. Accessed January 25, 2010
^ Gillies, Donald (2015). "An Aristotelian approach to mathematical ontology". In Davis, Ernest; Davis, Philip J. (eds.). Mathematics, Substance and Surmise. Cham: Springer. pp. 147–176. ISBN 9783319214726.
^ Gillies, Donald A (2 May 2019). "Books". Donald A. Gillies Personal Website. Retrieved 28 August 2022.