John Earman

Hume defined ‘cause’ three times over. The two principal definitions (constant conjunction, felt determination) provide the anchors for the two main strands of the modem empiricist accounts of laws of nature 1 while the third (the counter factual definition 2) may be seen as the inspiration of the nonHumean necessitarian analyses. Corresponding to the felt determination definition is the account of laws that emphasizes human attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Latter day weavers of this strand include Nelson Goodman, A. J. Ayer, and Nicholas Rescher. In Fact, Fiction and Forecast Goodman writes: “I want to emphasize the Humean idea that rather than a sentence being used for prediction because it is a law, it is called a law because it is used for prediction” (1955, p. 62). In “What is a law of nature?”, Ayer explains that the difference between ‘generalizations of fact’ and ‘generalizations of law’ “lies not so much on the side of facts which make them true, as in the attitude of those who put them forward” (1956, p. 162). And in a similar vein, Rescher maintains that lawfulness is “mind-dependent”; it is not something which is discovered but which is supplied: “Lawfulness is not found in or extracted from the evidence but superadded to it. Lawfulness is a matter of imputation” (1970, p. 107). By contrast, the constant conjunction definition promotes the view that laws are to be analyzed in terms of the de re characteristics of regularities, independently of the attitudes and actions of actual or potential knowers.

Much of the literature on "ceteris paribus" laws is based on a misguided egalitarianism about the sciences. For example, it is commonly held that the special sciences are riddled with ceteris paribus laws; from this many commentators conclude that if the special sciences are not to be accorded a second class status, it must be ceteris paribus all the way down to fundamental physics. We argue that the (purported) laws of fundamental physics are not hedged by ceteris paribus clauses and provisos. Furthermore, we show that not only is there no persuasive analysis of the truth conditions for ceteris paribus laws, there is not even an acceptable account of how they are to be saved from triviality or how they are to be melded with standard scientific methodology. Our way out of this unsatisfactory situation to reject the widespread notion that the achievements and the scientific status of the special sciences must be understood in terms of ceteris paribus laws

Newton's Principia introduced conceptions of space and time that launched one of themost famous and sustained debates in the history of physics, a controversy that involves fundamentalconcerns in the foundations of physics, metaphysics, and scientific epistemology.This bookintroduces and clarifies the historical and philosophical development of the clash between Newton'sabsolute conception of space and Leibniz's relational one. It separates the issues and provides newperspectives on absolute relational accounts of motion and relational-substantival accounts of theontology of space time.Earman's sustained treatment and imaginative insights raise to a new levelthe debate on these important issues at the boundary of philosophy and physics. He surveys thehistory of the controversy from Newton to Einstein develops the mathematics and physics needed topose the issues in sharp form and provides a persuasive assessment of the philosophical problemsinvolved.Most importantly, Earman revitalizes the connection of the debate to contemporary science.He shows, for example, how concerns raised by Leibniz form the core of ongoing debate on thefoundations of general theory of relativity, moving the discussion into a new and vital arena andintroducing arguments that will be discussed for years to come.John Earman is Professor of Historyand Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. A Bradford Book.

There is currently no viable alternative to the Bayesian analysis of scientific inference, yet the available versions of Bayesianism fail to do justice to several aspects of the testing and confirmation of scientific hypotheses. Bayes or Bust? provides the first balanced treatment of the complex set of issues involved in this nagging conundrum in the philosophy of science. Both Bayesians and anti-Bayesians will find a wealth of new insights on topics ranging from Bayes’s original paper to contemporary formal learning theory.In a paper published posthumously in 1763, the Reverend Thomas Bayes made a seminal contribution to the understanding of "analogical or inductive reasoning." Building on his insights, modem Bayesians have developed an account of scientific inference that has attracted numerous champions as well as numerous detractors. Earman argues that Bayesianism provides the best hope for a comprehensive and unified account of scientific inference, yet the presently available versions of Bayesianisin fail to do justice to several aspects of the testing and confirming of scientific theories and hypotheses. By focusing on the need for a resolution to this impasse, Earman sharpens the issues on which a resolution turns. John Earman is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh.

Nearly all accounts of the genesis of special relativity unhesitatingly assume that the theory was worked out in a roughly five week period following the discovery of the relativity of simultaneity. Not only is there no direct evidence for this common presupposition, there are numerous considerations which militate against it. The evidence suggests it is far more reasonable that Einstein was already in possession of the Lorentz and field transformations, that he had applied these to the dynamics of the electron, and that portions of the 1905 paper had actually been drafted well before the epistemological analysis of time.

For much of this century, philosophers hoped that Einstein’s general theory of relativity would play the role of physician to philosophy. Its development would positively influence the philosophy of methodology and confirmation, and its ontology would answer many traditional philosophical debates—for example, the issue of spacetime substantivalism. In physics, by contrast, the attitude is increasingly that GTR itself needs a physician. The more we learn about GTR the more we discover how odd are the spacetimes that it allows. Not only does GTR permit singularities, naked and clothed, but it allows time travel, topology change, and event and particle horizons, to name but a few of these oddities. Rather than revel in the riches of the theory, however, many physicists seek to rule out one or more of the above “pathologies” on the grounds that they are “physically unreasonable.” Thus contemporary researchers hawk various “cures” for the “illnesses” of GTR: among them, Chronology Protection to ensure against time travel, Cosmic Censorship for naked singularities, Inflation for horizons, and so on. The physics of these illnesses and cures, and the problems they engender, are the source of much controversy in the physics literature. Philosophers have largely neglected it. But clearly the subject needs philosophers of physics to determine whether the patient is genuinely ailing, and if so, to sift the real antidotes from the snake oil.

We discuss two supertasks invented recently by Laraudogoitia [1996, 1997], Both involve an infinite number of particle collisions within a finite amount of time and both compromise determinism. We point out that the sources of the indeterminism are rather different in the two cases - one involves unbounded particle velocities, the other involves particles with no lower bound to their sizes - and consequently that the implications for determinism are rather different - one form of indeterminism affects Newtonian but not relativistic physics, while the other form is insensitive to the classical vs relativistic distinction. We also note some interesting linkages among supertasks, indeterminism and foundations problems in the general theory of relativity.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, I want to examine some rather curious arguments of Kant’s which purport to show that some alleged properties of space can be derived from some alleged facts about incongruous counterparts. Secondly, I want to give some preliminary answers to some important questions about the distinction between right and left and the nature of space and space-time which are raised by Kant’s argument. As a byproduct, I hope that the discussion will provide an example of how science can illuminate philosophical issues and of how philosophy can at least lead one into interesting scientific issues.

The overaraching goal of this paper is to elucidate the nature of superselection rules in a manner that is accessible to philosophers of science and that brings out the connections between superselection and some of the most fundamental interpretational issues in quantum physics. The formalism of von Neumann algebras is used to characterize three different senses of superselection rules (dubbed, weak, strong, and very strong) and to provide useful necessary and sufficient conditions for each sense. It is then shown how the Haag–Kastler algebraic approach to quantum physics holds the promise of a uniform and comprehensive account of the origin of superselection rules. Some of the challenges that must be met before this promise can be kept are discussed. The focus then turns to the role of superselection rules in solutions to the measurement problem and the emergence of classical properties. It is claimed that the role for “hard” superselection rules is limited, but “soft” (a.k.a. environmental) superselection rules or N. P. Landsman’s situational superselection rules may have a major role to play. Finally, an assessment is given of the recently revived attempts to deconstruct superselection rules.

We discuss the intertwined topics of Fulling non‐uniqueness and the Unruh effect. The Fulling quantization, which is in some sense the natural one for an observer uniformly accelerated through Minkowski spacetime to adopt, is often heralded as a quantization of the Klein‐Gordon field which is both physically relevant and unitarily inequivalent to the standard Minkowski quantization. We argue that the Fulling and Minkowski quantizations do not constitute a satisfactory example of physically relevant, unitarily inequivalent quantizations, and indicate what it would take to settle the open question of whether a satisfactory example exists. A popular gloss on the Unruh effect has it that an observer uniformly accelerated through the Minkowski vacuum experiences a thermal flux of Rindler quanta. Taking the Unruh effect, so glossed, to establish that the notion of particle must be relativized to a reference frame, some would use it to demote the particle concept from fundamental status. We explain why technical results do not support the popular gloss and why the attempted demotion of the particle concept is both unsuccessful and unnecessary. Fulling non‐uniqueness and the Unruh effect merit attention despite these negative verdicts because they provide excellent vehicles for illustrating key concepts of quantum field theory and for probing foundational issues of considerable philosophical interest.