Phil 3318: Philosophy of Science

1
Phil 3318 Philosophy of Science

• Ontological status of the special sciences

2
Special Sciences

• Anything with science in its name necessarily
  isnt
• Why the doubt cast on Psychology Sociology?

3
Well

• It uses ceteris paribus laws.
• The force of gravity is proportionate to the
  masses of the objects and the distance between
  them
• All other things being equal, people will act in
  such a way that their desires will be satisfied.

4
Ceteris Paribus

• If the claim is Social or special sciences
  use ceteris paribus laws, and natural sciences
  do not how would you falsify?

5

• Claim that the special sciences do not use
  ceteris paribus laws or
• Claim that the natural sciences do as well.

6
Levels?

• What does it mean to say that sociology is on a
  different level than, say, psychology, or
  physics?
• Upper level science contains lower-level
  science
• Microbiology lt-gt macrobiology

7
Reduction?

• The laws, entities, properties and relations of a
  higher-level science are replaceable sal veritas
  with the laws, entities, properties and relations
  of a lower-level science.
• Explainable

8

• (1) seems wrong-headed statements about my
  beliefs and desires just lose weight when they
  are statements about neurons
• The explanation for my movement towards coffee
  just is my desire for coffee. Talk about neurons
  just doesnt figure.

9

• (2) turns on the nature of explanation, so if
  Im right that explanation is a matter of
  pointing to a mechanism, then reduction is
  something of a non-issue
• (I said that last time), but heres the
  implication
• There is nothing special about the special
  sciences.

10
Functional isomorphism

• Identifying a mechanism is a matter of functional
  isomorphism.
• David Lewis

11
Problems for functional isomorphism

• Multiple realizability of the mechanism (maybe
  thats a good thing?) provides loads of
  potential counter-examples

12
With apologies to Ned Block, John Searle, David
Chalmers and Frank Jackson

• China Brain
• Inverted Earth
• Zombies
• Chinese Room
• Mary.