Mathias Frisch

According to a widespread view, which can be traced back to Russell’s famous attack on the notion of cause, causal notions have no legitimate role to play in how mature physical theories represent the world. In this paper I first critically examine a number of arguments for this view that center on the asymmetry of the causal relation and argue that none of them succeed. I then argue that embedding the dynamical models of a theory into richer causal structures can allow us to decide between models in cases where our observational data severely underdetermine our choice of dynamical models

In order to motivate the thesis that there is no single concept of causation that can do justice to all of our core intuitions concerning that concept, Ned Hall has argued that there is a conflict between a counterfactual criterion of causation and the condition of causal locality. In this paper I critically examine Hall's argument within the context of a more general discussion of the role of locality constraints in a causal conception of the world. I present two strategies that defenders of counterfactual accounts of causation can pursue to respond to Hall's challenge—including the adoption of a counterfactual condition that is sufficient for causal action-at-a-distance in place of Hall's ‘process’ condition—and conclude that Hall's argument against counterfactual accounts of causation is unsuccessful.

Classical dispersion relations are derived from a time-asymmetric constraint. I argue that the standard causal interpretation of this constraint plays a scientifically legitimate role in dispersion theory, and hence provides a counterexample to the causal skepticism advanced by John Norton and others. Norton ([2009]) argues that the causal interpretation of the time-asymmetric constraint is an empty honorific and that the constraint can be motivated by purely non-causal considerations. In this paper I respond to Norton's criticisms and argue that Norton's skepticism derives its force partly by holding causal principles to a standard too high to be met by other scientifically legitimate constraints. 1. Introduction2. Non-causal Foundations?3. Other Grounds for Skepticism4. The Principle of Energy Conservation.

I examine Harvey Brown’s account of relativity as dynamic and constructive theory and Michel Janssen recent criticism of it. By contrasting Einstein’s principle-constructive distinction with a related distinction by Lorentz, I argue that Einstein's distinction presents a false dichotomy. Appealing to Lorentz’s distinction, I argue that there is less of a disagreement between Brown and Janssen than appears initially and, hence, that Brown’s view presents less of a departure from orthodoxy than it may seem. Neither the kinematics-dynamics distinction nor Einstein’s principle- and constructive theory distinction ultimately capture their disagreement, which may instead be a disagreement about the role of modality in science and the explanatory force of putatively nomic constraints.

Mathias Frisch provides the first sustained philosophical discussion of conceptual problems in classical particle-field theories. Part of the book focuses on the problem of a satisfactory equation of motion for charged particles interacting with electromagnetic fields. As Frisch shows, the standard equation of motion results in a mathematically inconsistent theory, yet there is no fully consistent and conceptually unproblematic alternative theory. Frisch describes in detail how the search for a fundamental equation of motion is partly driven by pragmatic considerations (like simplicity and mathematical tractability) that can override the aim for full consistency. The book also offers a comprehensive review and criticism of both the physical and philosophical literature on the temporal asymmetry exhibited by electromagnetic radiation fields, including Einstein's discussion of the asymmetry and Wheeler and Feynman's influential absorber theory of radiation. Frisch argues that attempts to derive the asymmetry from thermodynamic or cosmological considerations fail and proposes that we should understand the asymmetry as due to a fundamental causal constraint. The book's overarching philosophical thesis is that standard philosophical accounts that strictly identify scientific theories with a mathematical formalism and a mapping function specifying the theory's ontology are inadequate, since they permit neither inconsistent yet genuinely successful theories nor thick causal notions to be part of fundamental physics.

In Frisch 2004 and 2005 I showed that the standard ways of modeling particle-field interactions in classical electrodynamics, which exclude the interactions of a particle with its own field, results in a formal inconsistency, and I argued that attempts to include the self-field lead to numerous conceptual problems. In this paper I respond to criticism of my account in Belot 2007 and Muller 2007. I concede that this inconsistency in itself is less telling than I suggested earlier but argue that existing solutions to the theory's foundational problems do not support the kind of traditional philosophical conception of scientific theorizing defended by Muller and Belot. *Received January 2007; revised October 2007. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Maryland, Skinner Building, College Park, MD 20742; e-mail: [email protected].

Many climate scientists have made claims that may suggest that evidence used in tuning or calibrating a climate model cannot be used to evaluate the model. By contrast, the philosophers Katie Steele and Charlotte Werndl have argued that, at least within the context of Bayesian confirmation theory, tuning is simply an instance of hypothesis testing. In this paper I argue for a weak predictivism and in support of a nuanced reading of climate scientists’ concerns about tuning: there are cases, model-tuning among them, in which predictive successes are more highly confirmatory of a model than accommodation of evidence

In previous work I have argued that classical electrodynamics is beset by deep conceptual problems, which result from the problem of self-interactions. Symptomatic of these problems, I argued, is that the main approach to modeling the interactions between charges and fields is inconsistent with the principle of energy–momentum conservation. Zuchowski reports a formal result that shows that the so-called ‘Abraham model' of a charged particle satisfies energy–momentum conservation and argues that this result amounts to a refutation of my inconsistency claim. In this paper I defend my claims against her criticism and argue that she has succeeded neither in refuting my inconsistency argument nor in showing that the conceptual problems of classical electrodynamics have been solved

In an illuminating article, Claus Beisbart argues that the recently-popular thesis that the probabilities of statistical mechanics (SM) are Best System chances runs into a serious obstacle: there is no one axiomatization of SM that is robustly best, as judged by the theoretical virtues of simplicity, strength, and fit. Beisbart takes this 'no clear winner' result to imply that the probabilities yielded by the competing axiomatizations simply fail to count as Best System chances. In this reply, we express sympathy for the 'no clear winner' thesis. However, we argue that an importantly different moral should be drawn from this. We contend that the implication for Humean chances is not that there are no SM chances, but rather that SM chances fail to be sharp

Many contemporary philosophers of physics (and philosophers of science more generally) follow Bertrand Russell in arguing that there is no room for causal notions in physics. Causation, as James Woodward has put it, has a ‘human face’, which makes causal notions sit ill with fundamental theories of physics. In this paper I examine a range of anti-causal arguments and show that the human face of causation is the face of scientific representations much more generally. Physics, like other sciences, is deeply permeated with causal reasoning

Climate change presents us with a problem of intergenerational justice. While any costs associated with climate change mitigation measures will have to be borne by the world’s present generation, the main beneficiaries of mitigation measures will be future generations. This raises the question to what extent present generations have a responsibility to shoulder these costs. One influential approach for addressing this question is to appeal to neo-classical economic cost–benefit analyses and so-called economy-climate “integrated assessment models” to determine what course of action a principle of intergenerational welfare maximization would require of us. I critically examine a range of problems for this approach. First, integrated assessment models face a problem of underdetermination and induction: They are very sensitive to a number of highly conjectural assumptions about economic responses to a temperature and climate regime, for which we have no empirical evidence. Second, they involve several simplifying assumptions which cannot be justified empirically. And third, some of the assumptions underlying the construction of economic models are intrinsically normative assumptions that reflect value judgments of the modeler. I conclude that, while integrated assessment models may play a useful role as “toy models,” their use as tools for policy optimization is highly problematic