501 lines
39 KiB
HTML
501 lines
39 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
|
||
<html>
|
||
<head>
|
||
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
|
||
<title>Epistemological philosophy of causation</title>
|
||
<meta name="generator" content="LibreOffice 4.2.8.2 (Linux)">
|
||
<meta name="author" content="Amr Gharbeia">
|
||
<meta name="created" content="20010831;0">
|
||
<meta name="changed" content="20150722;234527775069326">
|
||
<style type="text/css">
|
||
<!--
|
||
@page { margin-left: 2cm; margin-right: 1.2cm; margin-top: 1.2cm; margin-bottom: 1.25cm }
|
||
p { text-indent: 1.27cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm; direction: ltr; color: #99ccff; line-height: 120%; text-align: left; widows: 2; orphans: 2 }
|
||
p.western { font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; so-language: en-US }
|
||
p.cjk { font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 10pt }
|
||
p.ctl { font-family: "Simplified Arabic"; font-size: 10pt; so-language: ar-EG }
|
||
p.sdendnote-western { margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: -0.6cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; color: #000000; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 10pt; so-language: en-US; line-height: 150%; widows: 0; orphans: 0 }
|
||
p.sdendnote-cjk { margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: -0.6cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; color: #000000; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%; widows: 0; orphans: 0 }
|
||
p.sdendnote-ctl { margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; text-indent: -0.6cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; color: #000000; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; so-language: ar-SA; line-height: 150%; widows: 0; orphans: 0 }
|
||
a.sdendnoteanc { font-size: 57% }
|
||
-->
|
||
</style>
|
||
</head>
|
||
<body lang="en-GB" text="#99ccff" dir="ltr" style="background: transparent">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#ff0000"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>E<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkC27" align="right" width="100" height="39" border="0">pistemological
|
||
philosophy of causation.</b></font></font> This ontological
|
||
explanation of change has implications about the nature of efficient
|
||
causation that solves various problems that have arisen in
|
||
epistemological philosophy of science, and following them out here
|
||
may help clarify the significance of ontological philosophy. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">More
|
||
central issues in epistemological philosophy of science, about
|
||
realism, which arise from its attempt to show the validity of natural
|
||
science, have already been discussed in describing contemporary
|
||
philosophy, the last era in the history of epistemological
|
||
philosophy. We have seen in discussing the philosophical spiritual
|
||
stage how ontological philosophy would join the issue about
|
||
scientific realism and metaphysical realism and defend the truth of
|
||
the conclusions of the empirical method of natural science.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
problems about causation in epistemological philosophy of science
|
||
fall into two main categories. One arises in natural science about
|
||
the nature of efficient causation, and the other arises in social
|
||
science about the nature of rational causation (and, thus, about the
|
||
basic nature of human society as such). </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
|
||
difference between natural and social science arises, as we have seen
|
||
(in <font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Stage 9</font>), from the
|
||
difference between naturalistic and subjectivistic understanding. It
|
||
illustrates one of the dichotomies of rational culture that
|
||
epistemological philosophy has not adequately overcome, and though we
|
||
already know how it is over come, it may be useful to see how it
|
||
works out in the context of current discussions in philosophy of
|
||
science. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>E<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkC28" align="right" width="72" height="32" border="0">fficient
|
||
causation.</b></font></font> Efficient-cause explanations show that
|
||
the events and conditions identified as causes produce the events and
|
||
conditions identified as their consequences. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Efficient
|
||
causes are different from ontological causes, because efficient
|
||
causes precede their effects in time (though when both are static
|
||
conditions, the temporal priority may not be obvious). Ontological
|
||
causes are simultaneous with their effect, because they produce their
|
||
effect by constituting them. That is, the existence of ontological
|
||
effects is part of what already exists in the ontological causes. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Ontological
|
||
cause explanations are, therefore, self contained and do not call for
|
||
any deeper explanation. Ontological causes are substances, which are
|
||
self-subsistent, and the connection between them and their effects is
|
||
a kind of identity. Ontological effects are identical to parts or
|
||
aspects of their ontological causes. Seeing the connection between
|
||
ontological cause and effect is, therefore, just a matter of
|
||
recognizing that the substances involved have a certain aspect, and
|
||
as we have seen, the power of rational beings to single out aspects
|
||
of the natural world is explained by the nature of rational
|
||
imagination. (Rational imagination includes spatial and structural
|
||
imagination as well as naturalistic and reflective imagination --
|
||
that is, imagination that depends on natural and psychological
|
||
sentences, respectively). </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Efficient-cause
|
||
explanations, on the other hand, require further support, because the
|
||
efficient causes and their effects are distinct events or states (or
|
||
even less general regularities, in the case of reductive
|
||
efficient-cause explanations). The connections cited in empirical
|
||
science are laws of nature, which are descriptions of regularities
|
||
about change that are observed in nature. Though epistemological
|
||
philosophy of science does not recognize anything more basic than
|
||
laws of nature, it has recognized, ever since Hume, that something
|
||
more seems to be required. Efficient-cause explanations call for a
|
||
deeper explanation. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">By
|
||
efficient-cause explanations, I mean explanations that conform to the
|
||
"covering law model" of explanation. As represented in the
|
||
so-called deductive-nomological model, each such explanation is a
|
||
deductive argument in which the conclusion describes what is
|
||
explained (a particular event or condition or else a regularity that
|
||
holds under certain conditions). The premises are of two kinds, laws
|
||
of nature and descriptions of relevant initial and/or boundary
|
||
conditions. The explanation depends on deducing a description of what
|
||
is being explained from the premises, that is, showing them to be
|
||
instances of the relevant laws of nature. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Something
|
||
about the nature of efficient causes can be inferred from the
|
||
standard for judging the best explanation, which is part of the
|
||
empirical method itself. As we saw in <font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Method</font>,
|
||
that standard is explaining the most with the least. Applying it to
|
||
the case of efficient-cause explanations, the best explanations of
|
||
any given phenomenon is the one that uses the fewest and simplest
|
||
laws of nature, for that means it uses the fewest and simplest
|
||
causes. But science aspires to explain all natural phenomena, and
|
||
thus, more generally, the best explanation is not merely the
|
||
simplest, but also the one with the largest scope. (There can be
|
||
tradeoffs between simplicity and scope that make it difficult to tell
|
||
which explanation is best, though in practice, such conflicts tend to
|
||
be resolved by further discoveries.) In general, therefore, the goal
|
||
of science is to discover the fewest, simplest and most general laws
|
||
of nature that are able to explain all the particular events and
|
||
conditions (and less general laws) by their efficient causes.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
covering law model is not a very satisfactory explanation of the
|
||
nature of efficient causes, because it comes down to the nature of
|
||
laws of nature, and that is no less problematic than the nature of
|
||
efficient causes. The problem is not solved by discovering the most
|
||
basic laws of nature (the basic laws of ideal physics), because even
|
||
at the bottom, there is no explanation of why there is a connection
|
||
between efficient causes and their effect. There is only the
|
||
description of a regularity.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">In
|
||
less general branches of natural science, there is nevertheless hope
|
||
of explaining how efficient causes produce their effects, for it
|
||
seems possible to reduce them to explanations in more basic branches
|
||
of science and ultimately to the laws of physics. But this
|
||
expectation is not satisfied for two reasons. First, the laws and
|
||
explanations given in physics do not reveal the nature of the casual
|
||
connection in the most basic efficient causes. And second, many of
|
||
the laws and explanations of less general branches of science cannot
|
||
be reduced to those of physics. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">As we shall
|
||
see, the second problem comes down to the first, because the
|
||
irreducibility of the laws, properties and efficient causes cited in
|
||
the less general branches of science to physics is a result of the
|
||
lack of any deeper explanation of the truth of the basic laws of
|
||
physics. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">But first,
|
||
let us consider the basic laws and explanations of empirical physics
|
||
and how they are explained ontologically. That will enable us to see
|
||
how the apparently irreducible laws, properties and efficient-cause
|
||
explanations of less general branches of natural science can be
|
||
reduced to ontology, albeit not to the laws of physics. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>B<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkC29" align="right" width="45" height="30" border="0">asic
|
||
laws.</b></font></font> The most basic laws of nature are the basic
|
||
laws of physics. They describe relationships between basic
|
||
quantitative properties that require mathematics to be stated exactly
|
||
and completely, and what they predict are usually precise
|
||
measurements that are otherwise unpredictable. Considering their
|
||
vulnerability to refutation by observation, the success of physics in
|
||
discovering such laws make it undeniable that physics is on to
|
||
something real about the world. And the search for the holy grail in
|
||
physics has been for many decades now the attempt to find a single,
|
||
most basic law that would include all four of the basic forces of
|
||
nature (not only electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak
|
||
force, but also gravitation). </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">But
|
||
as we have seen, its conception of the holy grail shows the
|
||
limitation of the empirical method of physics. Physics infers to the
|
||
best efficient-cause explanation of what is observed in nature and
|
||
uses that to determine its ontology instead of inferring to the best
|
||
ontological-cause (and best efficient-cause) explanation. It
|
||
discovers basic laws and affirms the existence of what those laws
|
||
must refer to, instead of trying at the same time to explain the
|
||
basic features of the natural world (why bits of matter have spatial
|
||
relations and how change is possible). But even if there were a
|
||
single law from which all the other could be derived — and we have
|
||
seen why that is not possible in our ontological explanation of the
|
||
truth of Einstein’s general theory of relativity — it would not
|
||
reveal the nature of the efficient causes. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Ever
|
||
since Hume, it has been recognized that even though physical laws
|
||
describe causal connections, there is a problem about what such laws
|
||
correspond to. As Hume argued, the most that science can know about
|
||
the causal connections described by its laws of nature is just that
|
||
certain regularities hold in nature. That does not reveal the nature
|
||
of the power or necessity by which causes produce their effects. Hume
|
||
recognized that the problem about causation is not solved by
|
||
explaining regularities about observable processes by appealing to
|
||
physical laws describing how their more elementary parts behave,
|
||
because that merely shifts the problem to the basic laws of physics.
|
||
Hume was a skeptic who took this difficulty to its extreme, arguing
|
||
that since all we really know is that certain regularities have so
|
||
far been observed to hold in nature, we are not even rationally
|
||
entitled to predict that the same will be true in the future. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Skepticism
|
||
is not, however, what leads us to expect that, if science were to
|
||
know the truth about efficient causes, it would be able to explain
|
||
<i>how </i>efficient causes produce their effects. It is rather that,
|
||
since laws are just descriptions of regularities, there must be
|
||
something that makes the regularities true. That is what is offered
|
||
by an ontological explanation of the basic laws of physics. Even the
|
||
ontology of generic spatiomaterialism is able to explain some aspects
|
||
of the regularities described by laws of physics and show them to be
|
||
ontologically necessary. Consider how the ontologically necessary
|
||
principle of local motion contradicts Hume’s view that we can never
|
||
know the necessity of any regularity, but only the constant
|
||
conjunction itself.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote1anc" href="#sdendnote1sym"><sup>i</sup></a></sup>
|
||
</font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">When one
|
||
billiard ball hits another, it causes the second ball to start
|
||
moving. Apart from such events being constantly conjoined in
|
||
experience, he argued, we could not know anything about what would
|
||
happen. To an extent, Hume is correct, for experience does tell us
|
||
that the first ball will not just stop when it reaches the second
|
||
ball, that it will not bounce back nor go around the second ball and
|
||
proceed on its way. But Hume is wrong to hold that we can have no
|
||
knowledge of what is necessary. For if we are spatiomaterialists, we
|
||
know that the first billiard ball cannot simply disappear from the
|
||
front side of the second billiard ball at one moment and then simply
|
||
reappear on the other side at the next moment. The principle of
|
||
motion does not tell us precisely what will happen, but it does limit
|
||
the possibilities. But neither does it depend merely on the
|
||
experience of that constant conjunction. Its necessity depends on our
|
||
reasons for believing that spatiomaterialism is the best way of
|
||
explaining the natural world by substances existing in time.
|
||
Inferring to a deeper kind of explanation of nature than science
|
||
gives us a foundation for showing the necessity of at least certain
|
||
aspects of the constant conjunctions that science discovers by
|
||
inferring to the best efficient-cause explanations.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">The
|
||
principle of local action is also ontologically necessary, and it can
|
||
also tell us something about the billiard ball that is prior to the
|
||
experiences of what happens to them that Hume is talking about.
|
||
Experience of constant conjunctions of events in the past may be the
|
||
only way of predicting precisely what will happen, but we do know
|
||
prior to experience that the first ball will not change the motion of
|
||
the second ball without either contacting it or exerting a force or
|
||
modifying space in a way that reaches out across space as time passes
|
||
to affect it. Thus, spatiomaterialism shows that another aspect of
|
||
the regularities that science knows only from experience of constant
|
||
conjunctions is ontologically necessary. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">What
|
||
these examples are pointing to, however, is a deeper, ontological
|
||
explanation of all the aspects of the regularities described by the
|
||
basic laws of physics. The ontological explanation of the connection
|
||
between efficient cause and effect comes from showing how the causes
|
||
and effects are constituted by substances enduring through time.
|
||
Efficient causes and effects are just aspects of those substances
|
||
(that is, states of affairs or events constituted by them), and since
|
||
the natures of the substances and how they exist together as a world
|
||
constrains what can happen to them, there are certain ontologically
|
||
necessary truths about how change can and cannot take place. Thus,
|
||
when space and matter are assumed to have more detailed essential
|
||
natures, further aspects of the regularities about change are also
|
||
explained ontologically. That is how the truth of the basic laws of
|
||
physics were explained ontologically in discussing contingent laws
|
||
(<font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Local regularities)</font>. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">Such an
|
||
ontological explanation of the truth of the basic laws of physics
|
||
does not, of course, show that they are among the necessary truths
|
||
proved by ontological philosophy. They do not follow from
|
||
spatiomaterialism by itself. Instead, the theories about the nature
|
||
of space and matter that were proposed are, rather, inferences to the
|
||
best ontological explanation of the basic laws of physics, given the
|
||
truth of spatiomaterialism. Their role in this argument was to show
|
||
that it is possible, despite appearances to the contrary from
|
||
contemporary physics, that the natural world is constituted by space
|
||
and matter enduring though time as substances. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">But even
|
||
though the basic laws of physics are not ontologically necessary
|
||
truths, the ontological explanation of why they are true within the
|
||
constraints of spatiomaterialism is an ontological explanation of the
|
||
connection between the efficient causes and their effect mentioned in
|
||
the explanations of physics. It explains the "necessity" of
|
||
the connection between cause and effect, or the "power" by
|
||
which the efficient cause produces its effect.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">There
|
||
is, therefore, a way of explaining ontologically the connections
|
||
between efficient causes and their effects, and as we shall see, the
|
||
reason that regularities discovered by the less general branches of
|
||
science are not reducible to physics is its failure to take the role
|
||
of space as an ontological cause into account.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 1.27cm; margin-right: 2.54cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt"><font color="#993366"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif"><b>I<img src="data:image/png;base64,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" name="OdkC30" align="right" width="67" height="30" border="0">rreducible
|
||
regularities.</b></font></font> Even when it was assumed that there
|
||
is no solution to the problem about the nature of efficient causation
|
||
in physics, it seemed that efficient-cause connections in less
|
||
general branches of natural science could be solved by reducing their
|
||
efficient-cause explanations to efficient-cause explanations in
|
||
physics. Though that would not solve the basic problem, it would
|
||
locate all the problems in physics, and the other branches of science
|
||
could hope to explain the regularities they discovered by those
|
||
discovered by physics. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">On
|
||
the deductive-nomological model of explanation, such reductive
|
||
explanations would involve deducing the laws of less general branches
|
||
of natural science from the basic laws of physics together with
|
||
relevant initial and boundary conditions. Regularities would be
|
||
explained in the same way as events or states of affairs, because
|
||
they would be shown to depend on certain deeper initial and boundary
|
||
conditions as their efficient causes. This was a project proposed by
|
||
logical positivists to show what they called “the unity of
|
||
science.” </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">Attempts
|
||
have been made to reduce the theories discovered by less general
|
||
branches of science, from chemistry and biology to physiology and
|
||
psychology, to physics. But this project encountered various
|
||
obstacles. They all involve the discovery of what seem to be
|
||
irreducible laws of nature.</font></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">To be sure,
|
||
it is often assumed that properties, such as functional properties,
|
||
can be irreducible in the sense of being supervenient without holding
|
||
that there are any irreducible laws. But as we shall see,
|
||
supervenient properties presuppose irreducible laws. It is just that
|
||
those laws are not the kind that support efficient cause
|
||
explanations. The regularities they describe have to do with constant
|
||
conjunctions that are explicitly assumed not to be causal. But they
|
||
are nonetheless irreducible in the sense of not being explainable by
|
||
physics, except as accidents. </font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">We
|
||
will consider the obstacles to reductionism in natural science in
|
||
three classes, those having to do with thermodynamics, those having
|
||
to do with mechanical principles, and those having to do with
|
||
evolution. These problems correspond to three kinds of global
|
||
regularities, material, structural and reproductive, respectively.
|
||
Thus, it should not be surprising that what makes it possible to
|
||
overcome the irreducibility to physics is the recognition of the role
|
||
that the wholeness of space plays as an ontological cause, for that
|
||
is what made it possible to explain the global regularities
|
||
ontologically. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif">This does
|
||
not, of course, show that these less general laws of nature are
|
||
reducible to physics. They still cannot be deduced from the laws of
|
||
physics and initial and boundary conditions, at least, not in a way
|
||
that anyone takes to explain the regularity. But it does show that
|
||
they are <i>ontologically </i>reducible in a spatiomaterial world
|
||
like ours. That is, they could be explained by an “ontological
|
||
natural science,” or a natural science in which empirical ontology
|
||
was recognized to be a more basic branch of natural science than
|
||
physics, because physics would then formulate its efficient-cause
|
||
explanations on the assumption that space is a substance enduring
|
||
through time. In other words, the solution to the puzzles posed by
|
||
the apparent irreducibility of less general laws of nature does not
|
||
depend on any of the theories about the more specific natures of
|
||
space and matter required to explain the truth of the basic laws of
|
||
physics. What is crucial is only the recognition that space is a
|
||
substance, because when it is seen as one of the substances
|
||
constituting the regularity, its nature can be seen as constraining
|
||
what happens in the world, that is, as an ontological cause. What
|
||
seems to be irreducible regularities are, in fact, ontological
|
||
effects, specifically, global regularities.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 2.54cm; margin-right: 1.27cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font size="3" style="font-size: 12pt">The
|
||
advantage of this ontological reduction of physically irreducible
|
||
regularities is that it takes the steam out of the engine that is
|
||
currently pulling epistemological philosophy of science toward the
|
||
acceptance of emergentism, or laws that deny that physics offer a
|
||
complete efficient-cause explanation of what happens in the world. It
|
||
shows that the irreducibility of laws to physics is not a reason to
|
||
suppose that there are other kinds of efficient causes at work in
|
||
nature. What I mean by this tendency are illustrated by the following
|
||
examples. </font></font></font>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Self-organizing
|
||
systems.</font> There are thermodynamicists, such as Prigogine
|
||
(1980), who see the phenomena described by the second law of
|
||
thermodynamics as evidence of "self-organizing" systems.
|
||
The systems that are supposed to organize themselves are made of
|
||
matter, but if matter is doing anything more than obeying the laws of
|
||
motion and the laws about the attractive and repulsive forces that
|
||
are recognized by physics, it is hard to avoid the suggestion that it
|
||
is a holistic kind of matter exerting an emergent force of order in
|
||
some way.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote2anc" href="#sdendnote2sym"><sup>ii</sup></a></sup></font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Stratification
|
||
of nature.</font> Emergentism is more explicit in the belief that
|
||
nature itself is "stratified" according to branches of
|
||
science, so that the laws discovered in chemistry, biology,
|
||
physiology, psychology, and social science are each as basic as any
|
||
discovered by physics.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote3anc" href="#sdendnote3sym"><sup>iii</sup></a></sup>
|
||
This would mean that every branch of science discovers not only
|
||
properties, but also laws of nature, that are emergent with respect
|
||
physics, because to accept the stratification of nature is to assume
|
||
that there is something <i>sui generis</i> about the laws of each
|
||
higher branch of science that makes them irreducible to lower level
|
||
laws (and relevant initial and boundary conditions), or at least not
|
||
reducible to laws of physics and physical conditions.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Emergent
|
||
evolutionism.</font> The defense of emergentism has a long history.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote4anc" href="#sdendnote4sym"><sup>iv</sup></a></sup>
|
||
A view called "emergent evolutionism" was defended, for
|
||
example, by philosophers like C. Lloyd Morgan (1920) and Samuel
|
||
Alexander (1920). They postulated a kind of matter whose essential
|
||
nature included emergent powers that were supposed to account for the
|
||
<i>order </i>that exists in nature, including the "new forms of
|
||
relatedness" that show up in the course of evolution over time
|
||
at several levels of complexity. Their emergentism is not all that
|
||
different from "process philosophy," which began with
|
||
Alfred North Whitehead (1927, 1929) and has been taken up by Charles
|
||
Hartshorn (1970), Errol Harris (1965), and others. Although they deny
|
||
that nature is stratified, they assume that what accounts for the
|
||
apparent truth of the laws of physics as well as the order in nature
|
||
is a subjective nature that is found in even the simplest
|
||
particulars.</font></font></p>
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="western" align="left" style="margin-left: 3.81cm; margin-right: 2.03cm; margin-top: 0.49cm; margin-bottom: 0.49cm; line-height: 100%; widows: 0; orphans: 0">
|
||
<font color="#000000"><font face="Times New Roman, serif"><font face="Verdana, sans-serif">Chaos
|
||
theory.</font> Emergentism seems to be what is being suggested by
|
||
defenders of the recently popular "chaos theory." They
|
||
point to the way in which random motion and interaction sometimes
|
||
seems to break out into order to suggest that there is some
|
||
heretofore unrecognized emergent aspect of matter.<sup><a class="sdendnoteanc" name="sdendnote5anc" href="#sdendnote5sym"><sup>v</sup></a></sup>
|
||
But instead of defending emergentism explicitly, they are content to
|
||
present these phenomena in the vein of a mystery yet to be solved.</font></font></p>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote1">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote1sym" href="#sdendnote1anc">i</a>
|
||
Among other places, Hume uses the billiard ball example in Section
|
||
IV, Part I of <i>An Enquiy Concerning Human Understanding</i>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote2">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote2sym" href="#sdendnote2anc">ii</a>
|
||
Although the notion of self-organizing systems comes from
|
||
thermodynamics, it has uses in biology, as is clear in Kauffman
|
||
(1993).
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote3">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote3sym" href="#sdendnote3anc">iii</a><sup>
|
||
</sup>See for example, Manicas (1987).</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote4">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote4sym" href="#sdendnote4anc">iv</a><sup>
|
||
</sup>Mandelbaum (1971, pp. 20-28 and p. 291) discusses various
|
||
forms of monistic holism or emergentism, including Engels. Engels
|
||
denied the adequacy of reductionistic materialism in all branches of
|
||
natural science, not just history, claiming that the basic laws of
|
||
nature were not those of physics, but rather dialectical laws, in
|
||
which essentially novel phenomena arise from the "contradictions"
|
||
in established processes.</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<div id="sdendnote5">
|
||
<p lang="en-US" class="sdendnote-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.25cm">
|
||
<a class="sdendnotesym" name="sdendnote5sym" href="#sdendnote5anc">v</a>
|
||
For a popular exposition, see James Gleick, 1987.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
</body>
|
||
</html> |