Barry Loewer

This chapter first discusses a tension in Fodor's treatment of special sciences. It argues that, on Fodor's account, special science counterfactuals are necessitated by fundamental physical laws and facts. So, if there are metaphysically independent special science laws then they can only overdetermine counterfactuals, which is puzzling. Next the lawfulness of special science regularities is considered. After examining Boltzmann's reconciliation of laws of thermodynamics with fundamental dynamical laws, the chapter proposes that the lawfulness of such regularities is grounded in the dynamical laws plus a probabilistic constraint on the initial conditions of the universe. It shows that physics misses no nomological/explanatory structure that the special sciences supply. This reductionist account denies the existence of metaphysically independent special science laws, but it does not entail that special science properties are identical to properties of fundamental physics and it allows for the multiple realisability of special science laws.

ArgumentIt is argued that the sensorium of God was introduced into theQuaestionesadded to the end of Newton’sOptice(1706) as a way of answering objections that Newton had failed to provide a causal account of gravity in thePrincipia. The discussion of God’s sensorium indicated that gravity must be caused by God’s will. Newton did not leave it there, however, but went on to show how God’s will created active principles as secondary causes of gravity. There was nothing unusual in assuming that God, acting as the First Cause, operated in nature by means of secondary causes; but it was unusual to devote as much time to discussing God’s precise role as to discussing the secondary causes themselves. It is contended that Newton felt the need to do this to persuade readers that what might seem like a second cause that could not possibly work could be made to work by the omnipotent God.

When I look at the scale of the apparatus I know what it reads. Those absurdly delicate, hopelessly inaccessible, global correlations obviously vanish when they connect up with me. Whether this is because consciousness is beyond the range of phenomena that quantum mechanics is capable of dealing with, or because it has infinitely many degrees of freedom or special super selection rules of its own, I would not presume to guess. But this is a puzzle about consciousness that should not get mixed up with efforts to understand quantum mechanics as a theory of subsystem correlations in the nonconscious world. ( David Mermin 1998)

In a discussion of Schroedinger’s views on quantum theory John Bell says that Schroedinger did not see how “to account for particle tracks in track chambers…and more generally for the definiteness, the particularity, of experience, as compared with the indefiniteness, the waviness, of the wave function. It is the problem he had had with his cat. He thought it could not be both dead and alive. But the wave function showed no such commitment, superposing the possibilities. Either the wave function as given by the Schroedinger equation is not everything or it is not right” (Bell 1987). At a recent conference Bell sermonized against the employment of “for all practical purpose” reasoning- he called it FAP reasoning-to solve this problem (Bell 1989). He argued that we should not be satisfied with any alleged solution which works “for all practical purposes” only while leaving conceptual puzzles unresolved.

Semantic Naturalism is a metaphysical doctrine about the status of semantic properties. It is the view that, the metaphysical connections between naturalistic and semantic properties are sufficiently systematic and transparent to allow us to see that certain naturalistic conditions are sufficient for certain semantic properties. Most semantic naturalizers also think that the property of being a belief involves an internal mental representation, and that this representation bears the state's semantic properties. This chapter provides survey of specific naturalization proposals with the crude causal theory (CCT) for the reference of Mentalese predicates. Teleological theories propose to explain the truth‐conditional content of mental states, especially certain desires and beliefs, in terms of their biological functions. The chapter explains causal‐role semantics (CRS), an approach to naturalizing semantics that deserves mention. In attempting to avoid counter‐examples, semantic naturalists place restrictions on the reference constituting causes or information.

Counterfactuals all the way down? Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9437-9 Authors Jim Woodward, History and Philosophy of Science, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA Barry Loewer, Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA John W. Carroll, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8103, USA Marc Lange, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#3125—Caldwell Hall, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3125, USA Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796 Journal Volume Volume 20 Journal Issue Volume 20, Number 1

Language & Logic -- Glossary -- Aristotle's syllogisms -- Russell's paradox & Frege's logicism -- profile: Aristotle -- Russell's theory of description -- Frege's puzzle -- Gödel's theorem -- Epimenides' liar paradox -- Eubulides' heap -- Science & Epistemology -- Glossary -- I think therefore I am -- Gettier's counter example -- profile: Karl Popper -- The brain in a vat -- Hume's problem of induction -- Goodman's gruesome riddle -- Popper's conjectures & refutations -- Kuhn's scientific revolutions -- Mind & Metaphysics -- Glossary -- Descartes mind-body problem -- Brentano's intentionality -- Fodor's language of thought -- Parfit's persons -- profile: René Descartes -- Chalmer's zombies -- Zeno's paradoxes -- Kant's left hand -- Theseus' ship -- Laplace's demon, determinism, & free will -- Ryle's ghost in the machine -- Ethics & Political Philosophy -- Glossary -- Aristotle's ethics -- States of nature and the social contract -- Kant's categorical imperative -- profile: Immanuel Kant -- Mill's utilitarianism -- Marx's historical materialism -- The trolley problem -- Religion -- Glossary -- Aquinas' five ways -- Anselm's ontological argument -- profile: Thomas Aquinas -- Epicurus' riddle -- Paley's watchmaker -- Pascal's wager -- Hume against miracles -- Grand Moments -- Glossary -- Socrates' method -- Plato's cave -- Aristotle's four causes -- Lucretius' atomism -- profile: Ludwig Wittgenstein -- Berkeley's idealism -- Kant's synthetic a priori -- Hegel's dialectic -- James' pragmatism -- Moore's common sense -- Wittgenstein's picture theory of language -- Continental Philosophy -- Glossary -- Nietzsche's Superman -- profile: Friedrich Nietzsche -- Derrida's deconstruction -- Heidegger's nothing -- Sartre's bad faith.

According to Davidson, a theory of meaning for a language L should specify information such that if someone had this information he would be in a position to understand L. He claims that a theory of truth for L fits this description. Many critics have argued that a truth theory is too weak to be a theory of meaning. We argue that these critics and Davidson's response to them have been misguided. Many critics have been misguided because they have not been clear aboutwhat a theory of meaning is supposed to do. These critics and Davidson himself, though, have also been misguided because they thought that by adding further conditions on a truth theory we can come up with an adequate theory of meaning. We will show that Davidson has available to him, though he apparently failed to see so, a reply to his critics in his own paratactic account of the semantics for indirect discourse reports.

According to Tarski, a theory of truth for a language L is a theory which logically implies for each sentence S of L a sentence of the form:S is true-in-L if and only if p,where rS1 is replaced by a canonical description of a sentence of L and rp1 is replaced by that sentence if L is contained in the metalanguage or by a translation of S if it is not so contained. Tarski constructed consistent and finitely axiomatized theories of truth for various formal languages and showed how to explicitly define ‘is true in L’ within these theories. We all agree that Tarski's theories of truth have enormous philosophical significance, but there is much less agreement on precisely what that significance consists in.

This chapter first discusses a tension in Fodor's treatment of special sciences. It argues that, on Fodor's account, special science counterfactuals are necessitated by fundamental physical laws and facts. So, if there are metaphysically independent special science laws then they can only overdetermine counterfactuals, which is puzzling. Next the lawfulness of special science regularities is considered. After examining Boltzmann's reconciliation of laws of thermodynamics with fundamental dynamical laws, the chapter proposes that the lawfulness of such regularities is grounded in the dynamical laws plus a probabilistic constraint on the initial conditions of the universe. It shows that physics misses no nomological/explanatory structure that the special sciences supply. This reductionist account denies the existence of metaphysically independent special science laws, but it does not entail that special science properties are identical to properties of fundamental physics and it allows for the multiple realisability of special science laws.

It has been argued contra Humean accounts of scientific laws that on Humean accounts laws are flukes since they are merely true generalizations and it would be an accident or a fluke for a generalization to obtain unless there was a non-Humean law "backing" it. This paper argues that this kind of objection is mistaken. It goes on to describe an account of laws called "the Package Deal Account" that is a descendent of Lewis' BSA on which it is not an accident that our universe has a best systematization.

My primary focus in this paper is on an objection to Humean account of laws and specifically to David Lewis’ “best systems analysis” (BSA). The objection is that the laws according to the BSA (which I call L-laws) fail to account for the ability of laws to explain. In contrast governing laws (which I will call G-laws) are alleged to account for the role of laws in scientific explanations by virtue of their governing role. If governing is required for laws to be explanatory then Humean accounts like Lewis’ are dead in the water since explanation is central to the role of laws in the sciences. However, I will argue that there are effective rebuttals to arguments that Humean laws don’t explain and that actually it is governing accounts that have difficulty with explanation.

This paper develops an account of the metaphysics of fundamental laws I call “the Package Deal Account ” that is a descendent of Lewis’ BSA but differs from it in a number of significant ways. It also rejects some elements of the metaphysics in which Lewis develops his BSA. First, Lewis proposed a metaphysical thesis about fundamental properties he calls “Humean Supervenience” according to which all fundamental properties are instantiated by points or point sized individuals and the only fundamental relations are geometrical spatial and temporal relations between these. While the BSA does not require HS Lewis seems to hope that it is true. In contrast, the PDA is not committed to HS or even to the fundamental arena in which fundamental properties are instantiated possessing geometrical structure and thus is able to accommodate relations and structures found in contemporary physics that apparently conflict with HS. Second, although Lewis’ BSA doesn’t require HS his Humeanism does require that fundamental properties are categorical. In contrast, the PDA allows for the possibility that fundamental properties are individuated in terms of laws and so are not categorical. Third, the PDA expands and develops the criteria for what counts in favor of a candidate system with more attention to the criteria employed by physicists in evaluating proposed theories. Fourth and most importantly, unlike Lewis’ BSA, the PDA does not presuppose metaphysically primitive elite properties/quantities that Lewis calls “perfectly natural” properties/quantities or presuppose a metaphysically preferred language whose terms denote such properties/quantities. It replaces Lewis’ account with an account on which natural properties are not metaphysically prior to the laws but are elements of a package that includes a fundamental arena that plays the role of space-time as well as fundamental laws and properties. By doing so it responds to some epistemological and metaphysical issues that have been raised regarding natural properties and their role in the BSA. In sum, the PDA goes further in explicating the notion of laws in terms of the aims and practices of science especially fundamental physics rather than in terms of prior metaphysics. I begin by reviewing Lewis’ account of perfectly natural properties and his Humean BSA of laws.