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The paper tries to provide an alternative to C. G. Hempel’s approach toscientificlaws andscientific explanation as given in his D-N model. It starts with a brief exposition of the main characteristics of Hempel’s approach to deductive explanations based on universalscientificlaws and analyzes the problems and paradoxes inherent in this approach. By way of solution, it analyzes thescientificlaws and explanations in classical mechanics and then reconstructs the corresponding (...) models of explanation, as well as the types ofscientificlaws appearing in it. The paper makes an attempt to provide a new approach toscientificlaws andscientific explanations. Based on my paper Hanzel I give a brief overview of Hempel’s approach toscientificlaws andscientific explanation, as well as of its failures and paradoxes. As a way out, I analyze thescientificlaws and explanations in classical mechanics and then reconstruct the corresponding models of explanation, as well as the types ofscientificlaws appearing in it. Finally, I provide a differentiated typology ofscientificlaws andscientific explanations. (shrink)

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The aim of this paper is to show the incompleteness of the exclusively logico-syntactical and logico-semantical approaches to one of the core issues of philosophy of science, namely,scientificlaws andscientific explanation in C. G. Hempel’s works. I start with a brief exposition of the main characteristics of Hempel’s approach to deductive explanations based on universalscientificlaws and then analyze the problems and paradoxes inherent in this approach. Next, I trace these characteristics back (...) to Hempel’s and Carnap’s attempts to ground the concepts ofscientific law and explanation exclusively on logic , which led to a highly normative approach alienated from the practice of real science. (shrink)

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The assumption is often made that there cannot bescientificlaws about individuals. I shall try to provide a plausible semantics and epistemology forscientificlaws about individuals. This would be interesting, however, only if one were tempted to believe that mentioning individuals did not disqualify a sentence fromscientific lawhood. To begin with, I will try to provide such a temptation.

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An acceptable empiricist account oflaws of nature would havesignificant implications for a number of philosophical projects. For example, such an account may vitiate argumentsthat the fundamental constants of nature are divinelydesigned so thatlaws produce a life permittinguniverse. On an empiricist account,laws do not produce the universe but are designed by us to systematize theevents of a universe which does in fact contain life; so any ``fine tuning'' of natural law has a naturalistic explanation.But there (...) are problems for the empiricist project. This paper develops a ``perspectival'' version of the Humean bestsystem approach and argues that this version solves the standard problems faced by the empiricist project.Furthermore, the paper argues, this version is best able to answer the proponents of divine design while leaving scientificlaw a suitably objective matter.[I]t is possible tocondense the enormous mass of results to a large extent – that is to findlaws which summarize...Richard Feynman It has become fashionable in some circles to argue thatscience is ultimately a sham, that we scientists read order into nature, not out of nature, and that thelaws of physicsare ourlaws, not nature's. I believe this is arrant nonsense. You would be hard-pressed to convince a physicist thatNewton's inverse square law of gravitation is a purely cultural concoction. Thelaws of physics, I submit, reallyexist in the world out there, and the job of the scientist is to uncover them, not invent them. True, at any giventime, thelaws you find in the textbooks are tentative and approximate, but they mirror, albeit imperfectly, a reallyexisting order in the physical world. Of course, many scientists do not recognize that in accepting the reality of anorder in nature-the existence oflaws `out there' – they are adopting a theological world view. P. C. W. Davies. (shrink)

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Biological knowledge does not fit the image of science that philosophers have developed. Many argue that biology has nolaws. Here I criticize standard normative accounts of law and defend an alternative, pragmatic approach. I argue that a multidimensional conceptual framework should replace the standard dichotomous law/ accident distinction in order to display important differences in the kinds of causal structure found in nature and the correspondingscientific representations of those structures. To this end I explore the dimensions (...) of stability, strength, and degree of abstraction that characterize the variety ofscientific knowledge claims found in biology and other sciences. (shrink)

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[full article, abstract in English; only abstract in Lithuanian] In Normativity ofScientificLaws explicit and implicit normativities were discerned and it was shown, following Joseph Rouse, thatscientificlaws implicitly harbour what Alchourrón and Bulygin imply to be the core of normativity. Here I develop this claim by discerning six aspects of implicit normativity inscientificlaws: general and special conceptual normativity, concerning analytical thinking and specialscientific terminologies; theoretical and material epistemic (...) normativity, concerning mathematical and experimental accountability of the world; narrow and broad practical normativity, concerning technologies in both narrower and broader senses. (shrink)

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This article critically examines Donald Davidson's argument against socialscientificlaws. Set within the context of his larger thesis of anomalous monism, this piece identifies three main flaws in Davidson's alleged refutation of the possibility of psychologicallaws, and suggests a collateral flaw within his account of anomalous monism as well.

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In this article, we tackle the phenomenon of what seems to be a misunderstanding between science education theory and philosophy of science−one which does not seem to have received any attention in the literature. While there seems to be a consensus within the realm of science education on limiting or altogether denying the explanatory role ofscientificlaws (particularly in contrast with “theories”), none of the canonical models ofscientific explanation (covering law, statistical relevance, unification, mechanistic-causal, pragmatic) (...) lends any support to this view oflaws. We will reconstruct three different versions of this demotion oflaws (i.e.,laws are merely descriptive;laws are explanatory only of singular events, not oflaws;laws are explanatory but only in a “superficial” way), propose possible grounds for them and illustrate why these perspectives pose a conceptual challenge as they contrast with epistemological approaches to the problem of explanation. We will also suggest the potential negative outcomes that would arise from science teachers adopting these approaches in the classroom when aiming to assist students in moving beyond mere description and towards explanation. (shrink)

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For many years now a “principle of uncertainty” has played a major role in all discussion of the problem ofscientific law as description of nature. That this principle had its origin in the efforts of science to describe nature is entirely appropriate; that it has had so immediate an effect on philosophic thought is inevitable.It is also inevitable that questions should be raised concerning the meaning of certainty and its reference to descriptive law. Such questions are bound to (...) occur to one who is concerned about the kinds of law in terms of which nature might be described. If these kinds can be considered to be two, one “mechanical,” the other “statistical,” it appears to be an easy step from the assertion of a principle of uncertainty which requires that the description of elemental processes and facts of nature be statistical—in terms of probabilities, that is—to a further assertion that after all a strictly mechanical description of nature is impossible, since the observational data which constitute its material are approximate and probable, and because thelaws which provide the formal element of that description can never be more than approximately or probably true. It is concluded, then, that no element of certainty attaches to the so-called mechanicallaws, any more than to others that are avowedly statistical. When a prediction is based on either sort of law, it is taken to be a prediction that an event will probablyoccur. (shrink)

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John Searle’s argument that social-scientificlaws are impossible depends on a special open-ended feature of social kinds. We demonstrate that under a noncontentious understanding of bridging principles the so-called "counts-as" relation, found in the expression "X counts as Y in (context) C," provides a bridging principle for social kinds. If we are correct, not only are social-scientificlaws possible, but the "counts as" relation might provide a more perspicuous formulation for candidate bridge principles.

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This essay defends the role of law-like explanation in the social sciences by showing that the "argument from complexity" fails to demonstrate a difference in kind between the subject matter of natural and social science. There are problems internal to the argument itself - stemming from reliance on an overly idealized view of naturalscientific practice - and reason to think that, based upon an analogy with a more sophisticated understanding of natural science, which makes use of "redescriptions" in (...) the face of obstacles like complexity, we have reason to be optimistic about the prospects for a nomological social science. (shrink)

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This article aims to defend Locke against Quine’s charge, made in his famous “two dogmas” paper, that Locke’s theory of knowledge is badly flawed, not only for assuming the dogmas, but also for adopting an “in-tolerably restrictive” version of the dogma of reductionism. It is shown here that, in his analysis of the epistemological status ofscientificlaws, Locke has effectively transcended the narrow idea-empiricism which un-derlies this version of reductionism. First, in order to escape idealism, he introduced (...) the notion of “sensitive knowledge of the particular existence of finite beings without us,” broadening thus his initial definition of knowledge in terms of the “perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas” — a definition compatible with Quine’s interpretation. Sec-ondly, after showing that we can have virtually no a priori knowledge of universal truths about substances, Locke extended the notion of “sensi-tive knowledge” to the particular propositions of “coexistence” in sub-stances, appealing to the notion of “probability” for treating their induc-tive generalizations and, in particular, the phenomenologicallaws of sci-ence. Finally, acknowledging the essential presence of hypothetical, non-phenomenologicallaws in science, he anticipated much of the contempo-rary views on their role and nature, including, remarkably, a mild ver-sion of the epistemological holism championed by Quine. (shrink)

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Factual statements that might qualify for the status of law statements are classed from various philosophically relevant standpoints (referents, precision, structure of predicates, extension, systemicity, inferential power, inception, ostensiveness, testability, levels, and determination categories). More than seven dozen of not mutually exclusive kinds of lawlike statements emerge. Strictly universal and counterfactually powerful statements are seen to constitute just one kind of lawlike statements; classificatory and some statisticallaws, e.g., are shown not to comply with the requirements of universality and (...) counterfactual force. Conditions for lawlike statements to be calledlaws are then examined, and a liberal criterion of lawfulness is finally proposed, which reads thus: A proposition is a law statement if and only if it is a posteriori (not logically true), general in some respect (does not refer to unique objects), has been satisfactorily corroborated for the time being in some domain, and belongs to a theory (whether adult or embryonic). It is claimed that criteria oflaws change alongside with the emergence of new usages of the term 'law', and that by adopting a liberal criterion of lawfulness we would conform to contemporary usage and would cease inhibiting the search for regularities in the sciences of man. (shrink)

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The first invariance principle, called “meaningfulness,” is germane to the common practice requiring that the form of ascientific law must not be altered by a change of the units of the measurement scales. By itself, meaningfulness does not put any constraint on the possible data. The second principle requires that the output variable is “order-invariant” with respect to any transformation (of one of the input variables) belonging to a particular family or class of such transformations which are characteristic (...) of the law. These principles are formulated as axioms of a theory. Taken together, meaningfulness and order-invariance axioms have strong consequences on the feasible theories. Three applications of our results are discussed in details, involving the Lorentz–FitzGerald contraction, Beer's law, and the Monomiallaws, each of which is derived from three axioms implementing meaningfulness and order-invariance concepts. (An “initial condition” axiom is also used.) Not allscientificlaws are order-invariant in the sense of this paper. An example is van der Waals' equation. (shrink)

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Rachel Briggs’ critique of “antirealist” accounts ofscientific law— including my own perspectivalist best-system account—is part of a project meant to show that Humean conceptions ofscientific law are more problematic than has been commonly realized. Indeed, her argument provides a new challenge to the Humean, a thoroughly epistemic version of David Lewis’ “big, bad bug” for Humeanism. Still, I will argue, the antirealist (perspectivalist and expressivist) accounts she criticizes have the resources to withstand the challenge and come (...) out stronger for it. Attention to epistemic possibilities, I argue, shows a number of advantages to a perspectivalist account ofscientific law. (shrink)

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Many have felt that it is impossible to defend autonomouslaws of social science: where the regularities upheld are law-like it is argued that they are not at base socialscientific, and where the phenomena to be explained would seem to require social descriptions, it is argued thatlaws governing the phenomena are unavailable at that level. But is it possible to develop an ontology that supports the dependence of the social on the physical, while nonetheless supporting (...) the explanatory power of genuinely autonomous socialscientificlaws? The aim of this paper is to show that reductive explanation is not a requirement of a `naturalist' ontology, thereby defending an account of supervenience as a suitable framework within which to recognize a metaphysical relationship between the natural and the social that is consistent with the pursuit of autonomous nomological socialscientific explanations. (shrink)

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Ist der Unterschied zwischen wissenschaftlichen Gesetzen und Theorien ein qualitativer oder lediglich von quantitativer Art? Der Autor versucht zu zeigen, daß Gesetze und Theorien fundamental verschieden sind und daß die Kenntnis ihrer verschiedenen Natur notwendig für ein richtiges Wissenschaftsverständnis ist. Aus seiner Sicht sind Theorien geistige Konstruktionen mit dem Ziel, kausale Erklärungen von empirischen Gesetzen zu geben, während diese Gesetze auf der Grundlage von Messungen entdeckt werden und die Tatsachen der Wissenschaft konstituieren. Erkenntnistheoretisch sind daher Theorien und Gesetze auf verschiedenen (...) Ebenen anzusiedeln: während Gesetze Wissen liefern, liefern Theorien Verstehen. Der Kern der Theorien besteht aus Modellen, die idealisierte Abstraktionen aus Zustandsarten darstellen. Theoretische Modelle konstituieren Ontologien, die kausale Mechanismen aufzeigen. Solche Ontologien betreffen den Bedeutungsaspekt des Gegenstandsbereichs, auf den die Theorie angewendet wird, während empirische Gesetze den Ausdrucksaspekt des gleichen Gegenstandsbereichs betreffen. Theorien erklären Gesetze, indem sie zeigen, wie der Ausdrucksaspekt lediglich der natürliche Ausdruck der Auswirkungen der Kausalmechanismen in Bedeutungsaspekt sind. (shrink)

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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'sscientific 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. (shrink)

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It has become a standard view in the philosophy of science scholarship (e.g., van Fraassen [1989]) that debates on the problem oflaws of nature and/orscientificlaws employ pre-Kantian approaches to the subject in question. But what exactly a Kantian approach might look like and, above all, what Kant endorses on this matter are not entirely settled issues. In particular, this regards Kant’s argument on the problem of ’necessity grounding’ with respect to different types of the (...) so-called “empiricallaws of nature” (empirische Naturgesetze) in the third Critique. In order to assess the aforementioned problem, in this paper I will address the following questions:1) What is Kant’s main nomological criterion or a combination of criteria, that is, the criterion/criteria according to which we can explicate the distinction betweenlaws of nature and accidentally true statements?2) What exactly is the role of an apriori law of nature, such as the one instantiated by the Second Analogy of Experience, in considering nature as a lawful existence of objects?3) On what grounds can a statement describing a particular causal regularity, for example, the statement “the sun warms the stone” (Prolegomena, N 301), be viewed as an empirical law of nature?4) Is Kant’s systematicity a nomological criterion in the strict and standard sense or, rather, is it a certain kind of transcendental criterion, which not only makes the whole of Kant’s nomological machinery up and running, but also has decisive influence on the final arrangement of nomological criteria? (shrink)

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This article derives some morals from the examination of the physico-mathematical view ofscientificlaws and its place in the current debate. After revisiting the expressionscientific law, which appears inscientific practice under various names (laws, principles, equations, symmetries, and postulates), I briefly assess two extreme, opposite positions in the literature onlaws, namely, full-blown metaphysics oflaws of nature, which distinguishes suchlaws from the more mundanelaws that we (...) find in science; and the no-laws thesis, which ultimately contends that we should dispense withlaws in science altogether. I argue that both positions fail to make sense of thelaws that we find inscientific practice. For this, I outline the following twofold claim: first, mostlaws (in physics) are abstract mathematical statements; and second, they express some of the best physical generalisations achieved in this branch of science. Thus understood, a minimal construal oflaws suggests that they are in principle intended to refer to those features of phenomena whose salience and stability are relevant for specificscientific tasks. (shrink)

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Humanists expound the virtues of science and reason. Emphasis is placed on formulating theories and predictions with clarity and precision, focusing wherever possible on phenomena that are mathematically quantifiable and can be objectively and precisely measured. Science and reason offer us truth‐sensitive ways of arriving at beliefs. As a result ofscientific investigation, many religious claims, or claims endorsed by religion, have been shown to be false, or at least rather less well founded than previously thought. So science has (...) threatened and indeed established beyond reasonable doubt the falsity of some religious beliefs. Science and reason are able to threaten, and indeed demolish, many religious beliefs. When religious and other woo‐claims are challenged by science and reason, various strategies may be employed in their defence. Some of the strategies are selective scepticism, re‐interpretation and accusation of scientism. (shrink)

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Cyberspace, a term popularized in the 1984 novel Neuromancer, was used by William Gibson to describe the ‘consensual hallucination’ and interstitial online world that lies between the reality of our world and that of the surreal terrain of dreamscapes. While many attempts have been made to describe this intangible, yet seemingly perceptible space, the digital domain as a metaphor mirrors in many ways our own inadequate understanding of consciousness. Conversely, the physicist Michio Kaku explains that our reality is bounded by (...) hyperspace – a multi-dimensioned space beyond our quotidian 3D existence that runs parallel, or tangential, to us along with the phenomenon of time. Indeed, if space and time (here considered as space–time) are a consolidated whole in the physical sense, perhaps our consciousness, as a structure manifest within this continuum may itself be thought of as a sensorial projection of this amalgam that attempts to observe and make sense, or meaning, of this condition. In truth, what if our need and delight in storytelling is driven by the evolution of our biology, as well as our impulse to locate our place in the universe? This article will attempt to examine and delimit the narrative confines of space–time as an appeal to, and an endeavour at, uncovering the alterity of storytelling as a function of consciousness. It will visit the realms of the holograph, quantum mechanics, virtual and augmented realities, as well as otherscientific and philosophical tracts as a means to investigate and explore the physiology of space and our imperative desire to share stories. (shrink)

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The ArgumentIn this we explore some of the ways in which a statescientific laboratory (Daresbury SERC) reacted to the rtetoric and forces of the marketpace in the 1980s. We describe laboratory attempts to create what we call “good customers” while converting itself into a “good seller” by developing a particulat set of costing practicting that were closely related to the implementation of a management accounting system. Finally, we consider how Daresbury response to “market forces” influenced scintific and organzational (...) practice, and arsponse that the social technologies of governmentality performed by accountancy — but also byscientific and bureaucratic practice are complex, discursively heterogeneou, and used in context-sensitive ways. This means, or so we suggest, that it is difficult to mount general argunents about “science” and “the market,” and that the use of such large-scale institions impedes impedes analysis. (shrink)

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According to relativists, people who speak simply of what's ‘true’ are naïve. ‘Whose truth?’ asks the relativist. ‘No claim is ever true, period. What's true is always true for someone. It's true relative to a particular person or culture. There's no such thing as the absolute truth on any issue.’ This sort of relativism is certainly popular. For example, many claim that we are wrong to condemn cultures with moral codes different from our own: their moralities are no less valid. (...) Similarly, some claim that while astrology and Feng Shui might be ‘false’ from a Western,scientific viewpoint, they are ‘true’ when viewed from alternative, New Age points of view. What's ‘true’ and what's ‘false’ ultimately depend on where one is standing. Is this sort of relativism about truth tenable? (shrink)

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It has often been argued that Humean accounts of natural law cannot account for the role played bylaws inscientific explanations. Loewer (Philosophical Studies 2012) has offered a new reply to this argument on behalf of Humean accounts—a reply that distinguishes between grounding (which Loewer portrays as underwriting a kind of metaphysical explanation) andscientific explanation. I will argue that Loewer’s reply fails because it cannot accommodate the relation between metaphysical andscientific explanation. This relation (...) also resolves a puzzle aboutscientific explanation that Hempel and Oppenheim (Philosophy of Science 15:135–75, 1948) encountered. (shrink)

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One of the main challenges confronting Humean accounts of natural law is that Humeanlaws appear to be unable to play the explanatory role oflaws inscientific practice. The worry is roughly that if thelaws are just regularities in the particular matters of fact (as the Humean would have it), then they cannot also explain the particular matters of fact, on pain of circularity. Loewer (2012) has defended Humeanism, arguing that this worry only arises (...) if we fail to distinguish betweenscientific and metaphysical explanations. However, Lange (2013, 2018) has argued thatscientific and metaphysical explanations are linked by a transitivity principle, which would undercut Loewer's defense and re-ignite the circularity worry for the Humean. I argue here that the Humean has antecedent reasons to doubt that there are any systematic connections betweenscientific and metaphysical explanations. The reason is that the Humean should think thatscientific and metaphysical explanation have disparate aims, and therefore that neither form of explanation is beholden to the other in its pronouncements about what explains what. Consequently, the Humean has every reason to doubt that Lange's transitivity principle obtains. (shrink)

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This book addresses central issues in the philosophy and metaphysics of science, namely the nature ofscientific theories, their partial truth, and the necessity ofscientificlaws within a moderate realist and empiricist perspective. Accordingly, good arguments in favour of the existence of unobservable entities postulated by our best theories, such as electrons, must be inductively grounded on perceptual experience and not their explanatory power as most defenders ofscientific realism claim. Similarly, belief in the reality (...) of dispositions such as causal powers which ground the natural necessity ofscientificlaws must be based on experience. Hence, this book offers a synthetic presentation of an original metaphysics of science, namely a metaphysics of properties, both categorical and dispositional, while at the same time opposing strong versions of necessitarism according to whichlaws are true in all possible worlds. The main theses and arguments are clearly presented in a non-technical way. Thus, on top of being of interest to the specialists of the topics discussed, it is also useful as a textbook in courses for third year and more advanced university students. (shrink)

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Peirce'sScientific Metaphysics is the first book devoted to understanding Charles Sanders Peirce's (1839-1914) metaphysics from the perspective of thescientific questions that motivated his thinking. While offering a detailed account of thescientific ideas and theories essential for understanding Peirce's metaphysical system, this book is written in a manner accessible to the non-specialist.

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A new model ofscientific explanation is proposed: the covering theory model. Its goal is understanding. One chooses the appropriatescientific theory and a model within it. From these follows the functioning of the explanandum, i.e. the way in which the model portrays it on one particular cognitive level. It requires an ontology and knowledge of the causal processes, probabilities, or potentialities (propensities) according to which it functions. This knowledge yields understanding. Explanations across cognitive levels demand pluralistic ontologies. (...) An explanation is believed or only accepted depending on the credibility of the theory and the idealizations in the model. (shrink)

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