Phil10015 Lecture 10

1
Phil10015 - Lecture 10

• Unificationism
• Disunificationism

2

• How are the sciences arranged?
• Is Physics the paradigm science?
• What is the relationship between Physics and the
  Special Sciences?
• Is there a fundamental level?
• Unificationism
• Disunificationism

3
Unificationism (Putnam Oppenheim

• Science will at some point in future physics
  achieve unification.
• The unifying theory should have the following
  characteristics
• (1) Universally true and all-embracing
• (2) Universal scope, unifying, and simple.
• (3) The law or set of laws of nature that make up
  the theory will provide a deductive basis from
  which all else can be derived.
• (4) The language of the theory will be in
  complete correspondence with the realm of
  space-time events. The predicates pick out
  natural kinds.

4

• Have we any right to hope that experience will
  guide us aright, when there are theories (like
  classical mechanics) which agree with experience
  to a very great extent, even without
  comprehending the experience in its depths? To
  this answer with complete assurance, that in my
  opinion there is the correct path, and moreover,
  that it is in our power to find it. Our
  experience up to date justifies us in feeling
  sure that in Nature is actualized the ideal of
  mathematical simplicity. It is my conviction that
  pure mathematical construction enables us to
  discover the concepts and laws connecting them
  with the key to understanding of the phenomena of
  nature.
• (Einstein (1934) 167)

5
Unificationism The Special Sciences

• The special sciences (e.g. Biology/chemistry/the
  medical sciences and so on) will be reduced by
  the unifying theory from future physics.
• Our present physical theories will also be
  reduced.
• Reduction is the explanation of a theory or a
  set of experimental laws established in one area
  of inquiry, by a theory usually though not
  invariably formulated for some other domain.
  (Nagel 1961 338).
• The laws of the old theory will be
  straightforwardly derivable from the laws of the
  new theory.

6
Reductionism
7
Common Sense Reduction

• The cooks law that if you mix baking soda with
  something sour it bubbles up is reduced to
  chemistry by identifying baking soda with NaHCO3,
  identifying the sour taste with the presence of
  H ions, adding enough about valences, to derive
  that CO2, will form if you mix these, and
  identifying CO2 with whats in the bubbles.
• (Millikan (1999) 45)

8

• Example of Reductionism -
• The Identity Theory
• The Mind is identical to the Brain.
• The is of identity.
• Lightening the Motion of Electric Discharges
• Pain c-fibres firing.
• Mind Brain
• Evidence - Research in Neuroscience has meant
  that certain mental functions can be associated
  regions of the brain.
• Brocas brain area (lower frontal lobe of the
  left hemisphere) responsible for speech.   

9
(No Transcript)
10
Textbook Reduction

• Kepler and Newton
• Keplers laws could predict and explain the
  motions of the planets.
• But they could not explain why these
  generalisations were true (why the planets
  orbits were elliptical, why the sun was at one
  focus and so on.)
• Newtons theory of universal gravitation in
  conjunction with his three laws of motion
  explained why the planets moved in ellipses by
  introducing a theory of gravity.
• Newtons theory reduced Keplers because Keplers
  laws could be derived from Newtons law of
  gravitation in conjunction with his laws of
  motion.

11
Nagels Intertheoretic Reduction

• L1 (Law of Reduced Science)
• (Bridge Law)
• L2 (Law of Reducing Science)

12
Multiple Realisability Thesis

• Greshams Law says something about what will
  happen in monetary exchanges under certain
  conditions. . But banal considerations suggest
  that a physical description which covers all such
  events must be wildly disjunctive. Some monetary
  exchanges involve strings of wampum. Some involve
  dollar bills. And some involve signing ones name
  to a check. What are the chances that a
  disjunction of physical predicates which covers
  all these events (Fodor (1981) 134)

13

• MRT means that we cannot reduce the correlates
  of the special sciences to those in the
  underlying sciences.
• Money euros/sterling/signing ones name on a
  cheque ..
• How do we perform the reduction?

14

• Bad Money drives Good Money out of circulation
  (Greshams Law)
• Money cannot be reduced to any one physical
  thing. (Money euros/sterling/signing ones name
  on a cheque and so on) The physical things that
  can be used as currency are infinite.
• We can never complete the bridge law.
• The laws of the special sciences are irreducible.

15
Reductionism is too strict. No evidence from
neuroscience that simple identity (one neuron
Homers desire for beer) is correct. There will
be no simple laws that bridge our psychological
accounts of the mind with neurons firing in the
brain.
16
Disunificationism

• L1 (Law of Reduced Science)
• (Bridge Law)
• L2 (Law of Reducing Science)

17
Realism about the Special Sciences

• The Special Sciences will remain irreducible
  irregardless of what happens in future physics.
• They have real and distinct explanatory power.
• They have distinct laws.

18
Eliminativism (Churchland)

• The failure of reduction and the open empirical
  possibility of multiple realisability should not
  entail disunification, but rather elimination.
• Medieval medicine (the balancing of the humors)
• Should we expect the laws of the balancing of
  humors to correlate with laws of modern medicine?

19

• What might decide the dispute?
• (1) Laws - are there ceteris paribus laws?
• (2) Explanations - does the model fit?
• (3) Homogeneity - Discipline-dependency
• (4) Open Empirical question