This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.

1. 1. Ethics

   Inventing Right and Wrong

   

   This book argues that moral judgments, though commonly treated as reports about objective values, are systematically mistaken because there are no mind-independent moral properties; it develops the argument from cultural diversity and the argument from queerness to show the metaphysical and epistemological implausibility of objective values, defends a form of moral error theory, and examines the consequences for moral language and practice while considering how moral discourse might nonetheless be retained for its social and motivational functions.

2. 2. The Oilmen

   

3. 3. The Klondykers

   

4. 4. Maxwell's Demon

   

   Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment that appears to disprove the second law of thermodynamics. It was proposed by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. In his first letter, Maxwell referred to the entity as a "finite being" or a "being who can play a game of skill with the molecules". Lord Kelvin would later call it a "demon". In the thought experiment, a demon controls a door between two chambers containing gas. As individual gas molecules (or atoms) approach the door, the demon quickly opens and closes the door to allow only fast-moving molecules to pass through in one direction, and only slow-moving molecules to pass through in the other. Because the kinetic temperature of a gas depends on the velocities of its constituent molecules, the demon's actions cause one chamber to warm up and the other to cool down. This would decrease the total entropy of the system, seemingly without applying any work, thereby violating the second law of thermodynamics. The concept of Maxwell's demon has provoked substantial debate in the philosophy of science and theoretical physics, which continues to the present day. It stimulated work on the relationship between thermodynamics and information theory. Most scientists argue that, on theoretical grounds, no device can violate the second law in this way. Other researchers have implemented forms of Maxwell's demon in experiments, though they all differ from the thought experiment to some extent and none have been shown to violate the second law.