The official model of explanation proposed by the logical empiricists, the covering law model, is subject to familiar objections. The goal of the present paper is to explore an unofficial view of explanation which logical empiricists have sometimes suggested, the view of explanation as unification. I try to show that this view can be developed so as to provide insight into major episodes in the history of science, and that it can overcome some of the most serious difficulties besetting the (...) covering law model. (shrink)

Laplacean Determinism (his so-called demon argument) is the thesis that every event that transpires in a closed universe is a physical event caused (i.e., determined) in full by some earlier event in accord with laws that govern their behavior. On this view, it is possible, in principle, to make perfect predictions of the state of the universe at any time Tn on the basis of complete knowledge of the state of the universe at time T1. Thus, if identity theory, epiphenomenalism (...) or any other instantiation of Laplacean Determinism is correct, mental events such as free will, intention and other forms of mental agency are tricks of the mind, misleading us into believing our volitional concerns have traction in a world ruled entirely by physical circumstance. Not surprisingly, advocates of free will and related acts of human volition have engaged in spirited debate with adherents to Laplacean orthodoxy, the results of which have been far from conclusive. Rather than join these deliberations, I wholly embrace the demon argument and then ask “what are the consequences of this allegiance?” As I hope to show, acceptance of this argument commits one to a belief in the existence of human precognition. This, I suggest, is a consequence that does not fit comfortably within a contemporary scientific worldview. (shrink)

The literary and poetic turn in philosophy exudes contempt for science and hostility against technology, both allegedly justified on grounds established by Nietzsche and Heidegger. I try to show that these grounds instead call for an extremely positive assessment of science and technology. It turns out that what Nietzsche and Heidegger describe as our highest achievement, namely, human autonomy, is really made possible by modern experimental physics. And I show how this assessment is borne out by what Heisenberg describes as (...) the lesson of quantum physics. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that Newtonian forces are real, symmetrical and non-causal relations. First, I argue that Newtonian forces are real; second, that they are relations; third, that they are symmetrical relations; fourth, that they are not species of causation. The overall picture is anti-Humean to the extent that it defends the existence of forces as external relations irreducible to spatio-temporal ones, but is still compatible with Humean approaches to causation (and others) since it denies that forces are a (...) species of causation. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Cet article explore les liens entre la Wissenschaftslehre de Fichte, en 1794-1795, et ses Fondements du droit naturel de 1796-1797. Nous examinons la façon dont le concept de réciprocité dans WL aide à expliquer la pensée développée par Fichte dans GNR au sujet de l’action intersubjective et de la sphère du droit, et montrons que certaines difficultés conceptuelles dans le premier texte expliquent des tensions irrésolues dans le second. Hans-Jürgen Verweyen a identifié une conception large et une conception étroite (...) de l’intersubjectivité dans GNR, la première impliquant la réciprocité comme causalité mutuelle, tandis que la seconde l’implique comme limitation mutuelle. Pour expliquer cette dualité, nous entreprenons une analyse détaillée de l’action réciproque dans WL, établissant d’abord sa place et sa fonction dans l’idéalisme critique de Fichte, et procédant ensuite à l’examen de son application à l’intersubjectivité juridique dans GNR. Cette approche clarifie également le rapport de Fichte à Kant et à Hegel. (shrink)

Newton wrote in thePrincipiathat all bodies are to be regarded as subject to the principle of gravitation. Every body, however great or small, is related to every other body in the universe by a mutual attraction. It was this postulated universality of the force of gravity which contributed so greatly to the order and unity of the Newtonian world. This unity was, for its followers, an untested article of faith for nearly a century after thePrincipia. During this time the evidence (...) of gravitational attraction continued to be drawn from the motions of the earth, moon, planets, comets, and falling bodies—phenomena which span an intermediate range of masses, sizes, and distances. In three domains of experience, involving the extreme upper and lower limits of masses and dimensions, the action of gravity had not yet been observed: the gravity of the “fixed” stars; the mutual attraction of terrestrial bodies; and the gravitation of light. The task of deducing observable consequences from each of these supposed instances of universal gravitation fell to the Reverend John Michell (1724–1793), a teacher at Cambridge (1749–1763) and afterwards Rector of Thornhill, Yorkshire. His renowned London friend Henry Cavendish (1731–1810) encouraged him in these researches and became involved in the resulting observational and experimental questions. The immersion of Michell and Cavendish in gravitational studies was an essential feature of their commitment to a unified Newtonian world. Their commitment had yet a broader significance: Newton's theory of gravitation inspired their image of physical reality, and it served as their model of an exact science. This paper is an attempt to relate the personal friendship of Michell and Cavendish, their scientific collaboration, and their common Newtonian philosophy. Its chief focus is on Michell's 1784 plan for weighing the stars by the gravitational retardation of their light; his project of weighing the world by means of a torsion balance is treated by way of an epilogue. (shrink)

Benjamin Franklin's enunciation of his so-called ‘one-fluid’ theory of electricity in the period 1747–55 nas often been hailed as an important milestone in the history of physics. So indeed it was, for, with the rapid and widespread acceptance of the new theory, the science of electricity became based for the first time on the view that the electrification of a body involved the accumulation of a ‘charge’ from elsewhere, rather than the excitation of matter already present in the body. Only (...) a little more remotely, the triumph of Franklin's theory over the rival ‘excitation’ theory espoused by the Abbé Nollet paved the way for the more sophisticated fluid theories propounded by Aepinus, Cavendish, and Coulomb in the years that followed. (shrink)

Brian Ellis advances a robust species of realism he calls Physical Realism. Physical Realism includes an ontology comprising three kinds of universal and three kinds of particular: a six‐category ontology. After comparing Physical Realism to a modest two‐category ontology inspired by Locke, I mention two apparent difficulties a proponent of a six‐category ontology might address.1.

In recent years a number of scholars have argued that Faraday's theories of matter and force were founded on concepts which were derived from Boscovich'sTheoria Philosophiae Naturalis(1758). The notion that Faraday's ideas display Boscovichean tendencies is not a new one: it was proposed by several of Faraday's immediate successors and has been noted by more recent commentators. Statements of this kind are not implausible as assertions of a general correspondence between Faraday's views on matter, as expressed in the “Speculation touching (...) Electric Conduction and the Nature of Matter” of 1844, and Boscovich's theory of point atomism, but Professor L. Pearce Williams has made much stronger claims for the dependence of Faraday's ideas on Boscovich's theory of matter. Williams' interpretation has been questioned by recent scholarship, and in this paper I wish to advance an alternative interpretation of Faraday's ideas on electricity and the nature of matter. (shrink)

Appeals to dispositionality in explanations of phenomena in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, require that we first agree on what we are talking about. I sketch an account of what dispositionality might be. That account will place me at odds with most current conceptions of dispositionality. My aim is not to establish a weighty ontological thesis, however, but to move the discussion ahead in two respects. First, I want to call attention to the extent to which assumptions philosophers have (...) made about dispositionality are far from innocent. The assumptions incorporate substantive theses that, by constraining the space of acceptable answers to particular philosophical questions, have inhibited the search for answers to those questions. Second, and more positively, I hope to open up the space of possibilities by offering an alternative way of conceiving dispositionality developed by C. B. Martin. (shrink)

Abstract The grammar of spatial and temporal concepts cannot, it is argued, be the same in their application to the (manifest) world as perceived and to the (nether) world of unobservable causes as modelled in physics. A parallel case is the dual meaning of colour words, for hues and for material dispositions. The keys to differentiating the two main ranges of uses of ?s? and ?t? are: differences in criteria of numerical and qualitative identity in the two ?worlds'; differences in (...) the logic of indexicals in each context; the explanatory role of powers. The differences can be illustrated in a close analysis of the concept of velocity. (shrink)

The project of chemistry to classify substances and develop techniques for their transformation into other substances rests on assumptions about the means by which compounds are constituted and reconstituted. Robert Boyle not only proposed empirical tests for a metaphysics of material corpuscules, but also a principle for designing experimental procedures in line with that metaphysics. Later chemists added activity concepts to the repertoire. The logic of activity explanations in modern times involves hierarchies of activity concepts, transitions between levels through non-dispositional (...) groundings. Such hierarchies terminate in powerful particulars, such as elementary charged particles. Do these have a fundamental place in the most recent accounts of molecular architecture, stabilities and transformations? However, a close study of the contemporary chemistry of substances transforming reactions discloses a hybrid metaphysics, making use of both the Boylean corpuscles and Faradayan fields. This is illustrated by an analysis of the metaphysics inherent in John Polanyi’s use of “chemoluminescence” to follow the formation of products in chemical reactions. A brief sketch of a resolution of the tension between the two metaphysical schemes is drawn from Niels Bohr’s radical metaphysics extended from the quantum realm proper to chemistry (and perhaps beyond). (shrink)

Contribution to a symposium on Alan Chalmer's The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s Stone: How Science Succeeded and Philosophy Failed to Gain Knowledge of Atoms (Springer, Dordrecht, 2009).

1. This paper addresses the development of mutual relations between two sets of ideas in scholastic logic. First, consider the following statements: (1) It is impossible to encounter a chimera.(2)...

Nietzsche’s translation of phycisist Roger Joseph Boscovich’s theory of matter to the language of a sensorial atomism evokes the emergence of several moral prejudices. For Boscovich, material points are the symptoms of an action that itself does not belong to those points, but is produced from a distance by other points, as the result of an operation from point A to point B and vice versa. By appropriating aspects of Boscovich’s physics, Nietzsche equates this dynamism to a theory of sensation. (...) In this sense, sensorial points receive actions from afar and every action is a sensory action from a distance, as the result of the points acting one on another. To neglect this sensorial diversity would be to mistake the physical constitution of organisms. Is not this lack of recognition at the origin of our moral prejudices? (shrink)

Primitive, unanalysable grounding relations are considered by many to be indispensable constituents of the metaphysician’s toolkit. Yet, as a primitive ontological posit, grounding must earn its keep by explaining features of the world not explained by other tools already at our disposal. Those who defend grounding contend that grounding is required to play two interconnected roles: accounting for widespread intuitions regarding what is ontologically prior to what, and forming the backbone of a theory of metaphysical explanation, in much the same (...) way that causal relations have been thought to underpin theories of scientific explanation. This thesis undermines the need to posit grounding relations to perform either of these jobs. With regard to the first, it is argued that a pair of human psychological mechanisms—for which there is substantial empirical support—can provide a more theoretically virtuous explanation of why we have the intuitions that we do. With regard to the second, I begin by considering what we want from a theory of explanation, and go on to develop three attractive (yet grounding-free) theories of metaphysical explanation. I offer: i) a psychologistic theory that calls upon the aforementioned psychological mechanisms, as well as the modal relations of necessitation and supervenience, ii) a metaphysical variant of the deductive-nomological theory of scientific explanation, and iii) a metaphysical variant of the unificationist theory of scientific explanation. Furthermore, these theories draw upon mechanisms and relations (both logical and ontological) to which we are already committed. Thus, to posit grounding relations in order to explain our priority intuitions, or in order to develop a theory of metaphysical explanation, is ontologically profligate. I conclude that we should not posit relations of ground. (shrink)