About

Kevin Davey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Originally from Australia, he came to the USA for graduate school and has been there ever since. In his undergraduate and early graduate years, he was mainly interested in mathematics and logic, but then became interested in philosophy, which he has been studying ever since.

Research topics

• Epistemology
• Philosophy
• Mathematics
• Linguistics
• Pure mathematics
• Discrete mathematics
• Physics
• Theoretical physics
• Engineering

Selected publications

• A Priori Knowledge in an Era of Computational Opacity: The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Mathematical Discovery

  Philosophy of Science · 2025-09-03

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Can we acquire a priori mathematical knowledge from the outputs of computer programs? Although we claim Appel and Haken acquired a priori knowledge of the four-color theorem from their computer program insofar as it merely automated human forms of mathematical reasoning, the opacity of modern large language models (LLMs) and deep neural networks (DNNs) creates obstacles in obtaining a priori mathematical knowledge in analogous ways. If, however, a proof-checker automating human forms of proof-checking is attached to such machines, we can indeed obtain a priori mathematical knowledge from them, even though the original machines are entirely opaque to us and the outputted proofs cannot be surveyed by humans.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• There Are No Bad Lots, Only Bad Formulations of Inference to the Best Explanation

  The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science · 2023-11-06

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• On Inferring Explanations and Inference to the Best Explanation

  Episteme · 2023-05-05 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Although the inferring of explanations plays an important role in both our everyday lives and in the workings of science, I argue that inference to the best explanation as it is commonly conceived is often not the best way to capture this sort of reasoning. I suggest that a different form of reasoning – so-called immediate explanatory inference – is instead often much better suited to this task. This is a form of inference in which we are justified in believing explanations for the evidence before us purely in virtue of this evidence, and not in virtue of the evidence plus some general principle or rule of non-deductive reasoning. I defend the idea of such a notion of inference, and argue that it plays a central role in both ordinary life and science.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Note on the Unprovability of Consistency in Formal Theories of Truth

  Journal of Philosophical Logic · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Epistemology
  • Mathematics
  • Philosophy
  PublisherDOI

• On Euclid and the Genealogy of Proof

  Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy · 2021 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Epistemology
  • Mathematics
  • Philosophy

  I argue for an interpretation of Euclid’s postulates as principles grounding the science of measurement. Euclid’s Elements can then be viewed as an application of these basic principles of measurement to what I call general measurements—that is, metric comparisons between objects that are only partially specified. As a consequence, rather than being viewed as a tool for the production of certainty, mathematical proof can then be interpreted as the tool with which such general measurements are performed. This gives, I argue, a more satisfying story of the origin of proof in Ancient Greece, and of the status of Euclid’s postulates.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Inference to the best explanation and Norton's material theory of induction

  Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A · 2020 · 10 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Philosophy
  • Epistemology
  • Linguistics
  PublisherDOI

• Can good science be logically inconsistent?

  Synthese · 2014-05-21 · 9 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Index

  2014-06-20

  paratextOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Idealizations and Contextualism in Physics

  Philosophy of Science · 2011-01-01 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Describing a physical system in idealized terms involves making claims about the system that we know to be literally false. Because of this, it is not clear how calculations involving idealizations can generate justified belief and explain facts about the world. I argue that this puzzling aspect of idealizations cannot be explained away by talking about approximations, as is often supposed. I develop a different account of how justified beliefs and explanations can be generated from idealized descriptions of physical systems. My account involves a type of contextualism about the truth of mathematical descriptions of physical systems.

  PublisherDOI

• Thermodynamic Entropy and Its Relation to Probability in Classical Mechanics

  Philosophy of Science · 2011-12-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  A gas relaxing into equilibrium is often taken to be a process in which a system moves from an “improbable” to a “probable” state. Given that the thermodynamic entropy increases during such a process, it is natural to conjecture that the thermodynamic entropy is a measure of the probability of a macrostate. For nonideal classical gases, however, I claim that there is no clear sense in which the thermodynamic entropy of a macrostate measures its probability. We must therefore reject the idea that (in classical mechanics) thermodynamic entropy and probability are connected in a deep and general way.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Lev D. Beklemishev

  1 shared

• Chiu Man Ho

  1 shared

• Rob Clifton

  1 shared

• D. Boyanovsky

  University of Pittsburgh

  1 shared

• Mark Lippelmann

  University of Chicago

  1 shared

• Oleg Belegradek

  1 shared

• Jean-Louis Krivine

  Sorbonne Paris Cité

  1 shared

Labs

• Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy WorkshopPI