PPE Notes The Philosophy of Science and Social Science Notes
Notes on various texts and debates in the philosophy of science and philosophy of social science, including explanation, relativism, interpretation, and individual/holism....
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Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science
Chapter One: Laws of Nature
Aims of science including explaining, categorizing, detecting causes, measuring and predicting all rely upon ‘the existence of laws’
separate claim: these aims also rely upon the concept, theory of a law
Laws of nature are things in the world which we try to discover - they are separate from our theories or statements of laws
Minimalism about laws - the simple regularity theory
Laws are just regularities
laws are nothing more than the collection of their instances
this is an expression of empiricism - concepts should be explicable in terms of our experiences
Simple regularity theory (SRT): it is a law that Fs are Gs if and only if all Fs are Gs
but this is neither a sufficient nor a necessary account of laws - there are regularities that are not laws and laws that are not regularities
Regularities that are not laws
There are many regularities that are accidental, not law-like
e.g. ‘All persisting lumps of pure gold-195 have a mass less that 1000kg’ is contingent
whereas ‘All persisting lumps of pure uranium-235 have a mass of less than 1000kg’ is not contingent, it is a law of chemistry
SRT cannot distinguish between genuine laws and mere coincidences
We can create a contrived example e.g. describe Jane perfectly (such that only she fits the description) and then claim that all people matching that description play the oboe
retort of the SRT minimalist:
is it right to bundle a collection of properties together as one property?
well, this is done by some things that we consider laws e.g. gas laws relate the pressure of a gas to the compound of its temperature and volume
can one instance be regarded as a regularity?
and there are presumably laws that cover e.g. the Big Bang, for which it is the only instance, or else the properties of transuranium elements with very short half lives, for which there is not observable regularity at all
Another problem for the SRT minimalist: how to account for laws without instances
the statement ‘All Fs are Gs’, if there are no Fs, is trivially true (according to logic)
so how are we to distinguish the trivially true regularities that are laws from the trivially true regularities that aren’t
we can’t, using SRT anyway
Another problem for the SRT minimalist: how do we account for functional regularities?
where a law refers to a continuum - e.g. the pressure of a gas, there are infinitely many points on the continuum, so such a law cannot be modelled on observed regularities- there will inevitable be gaps
hence if we are to model such a law, we need to go beyond observed instances
Laws and counterfactuals
Laws support counterfactuals - what would have happened in a possible but not actual situation
On the SRT model, every empty regularity is true. That means that ‘All Fs are Gs’ and ‘All Fs are not Gs’ are both true, where there are no Fs
but with a counterfactuals show that this is a problem - if there had been an F, then it would have been either G or not-G, but not both
hence counterfactual analysis shows that the two empty regularities cannot both be laws
same for two distinct functional laws that give the same results only for the observed instances
Counterfactuals also allow us to distinguish between nomic and accidental regularities
where a regularity is accidental, we can imagine a circumstance in which an F would have been not-G, but not so where a regularity is nomic
The fact that laws support counterfactuals is not on its own enough to show the minimalist to be wrong
this is believed because counterfactuals allow us to go beyond actual instances, and towards what would have happened in possible but non-actual circumstances
the problem here is that counterfactuals imply a ceteris paribus clause, which must include the laws of nature staying the same
so, because counterfactuals implicitly refer to laws, counterfactuals cannot help us in the analysis of laws
laws support counterfactuals only insofar as counterfactuals refer to laws - where a counterfactual does not keep constant the laws of nature, then laws do not support it
e.g. ‘how fast would things have accelerated had the gravitational constant been twice what it is’ is a counterfactual not supported by laws of gravitation
Laws that are not regularities - probabilistic laws
Regularities that are not laws:
accidental regularities
contrived regularities
uninstantianted trivial regularities
competing functional regularities
the response of the minimalist is usually to add conditions to reduce the range of regularities
but what if regularities are not even necessary? i.e. there are laws which are not regularities
Imagine a probabilistic law which says that nuclei of a certain kind have a probability p of decaying within time t
for the minimalist, this law is equivalent to the fact that of all the relevant particles, a certain proportion will have decayed within time t
but if we consider each individual particle, each has a probability p of decaying in time t. this means that the law is consistent with every particle (i.e. the whole nucleus) decaying after time t
this is a problem for the minimalist because the law is equivalent to its instances, and here is a radical divergence between the law and its instances
BUT this argument commits the fallacy of assuming that what is possible for any individual particle is possible for a collection of particles
this argument is only valid if there is a logical gap between a law and its instances, which is precisely what the minimalist denies
hence it begs the questions against the minimalist
The systematic account of laws of nature
So, if we consider the argument that regularities are an unnecessary feature of laws to be invalid, then perhaps the minimalist...
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Notes on various texts and debates in the philosophy of science and philosophy of social science, including explanation, relativism, interpretation, and individual/holism....
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