Alexander J Bird

Dispositions and antidotes

C.B. Martin has shown that the simple conditional analysis of disposition concepts (x is disposed at time t to give response r to stimulus s) is in error. This is due to finkish dispositions which are caused to disappear by the stimulus s. David Lewis has proposed an improved analysis which takes account of finkish dispositions by requiring that the appropriate causal basis remains for a sufficiently long time. I argue that Lewis’ analysis also fails, because of the existence of antidotes. An antidote to a disposition interferes with its normal operation so that the stimulus does not bring about the usual response. I consider several possible defences of Lewis’ analysis and a plausible repair, but find these unsatisfactory. I conclude by suggesting that an analysis of disposition concepts is not available because an unavoidable indexical element (e.g., reference to normal circumstances) is present in explanations of these concepts. In this regard they may be thought of as akin to theoretical or natural kind concepts.

Kuhn's wrong turning

Abstract Why, despite his enormous influence in the latter part of the twentieth century, has Kuhn left no distinctively Kuhnian legacy? I argue that this is because the development of Kuhn’s own thought was in a direction opposite to that of the mainstream of the philosophy of science. In the 1970s and 1980s the philosophy of science took on board the lessons of externalism as regards reference and knowledge, and became more sympathetic to a naturalistic approach to philosophical problems. Kuhn, on the other hand, started out with a strong naturalistic streak, employing non-philosophical disciplines, primarily psychology, in order to build his accounts of scientific change and the nature of observation and scientific thought. But by the 1970s Kuhn’s work had taken on a much more purely philosophical, a priori , tone. His explanation of incommensurability moved from a psychological explanation to one embedded in the philosophy of language. Increasingly he gave his outlook a Kantian gloss. I suggest, nonetheless, that Kuhn’s most valuable contribution is to be found in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and not in his later work, and that the naturalistic direction of the former has important links with connectionist research in cognitive science that deserve further study.

On Whether Some Laws are Necessary

In Bird 2001 I argued that a law that might seem to many to be contingent is in fact necessary. In short the argument is this. Given the existence of salt and water, Coulomb’s law of electrostatic attraction is sufficient to make the former dissolve in the latter. So any possible world in which salt failed to dissolve in water would be one in which Coulomb’s law is false. However, it is also the case that the existence of salt depends on Coulomb’s law. If Coulomb’s law is false then salt cannot exist. So there is no possible world in which salt exists and in which it does not dissolve in water. When fully elaborated the argument needs to take into consideration the thought that salt might after all be permitted to exist in a world in which Coulomb’s law (as it is found in the actual world) is false. A close cousin of Coulomb’s law might be true in that world, sufficiently close to allow salt to exist. But the cousin might not be close enough to require dissolving to take place. I suggested that such a world will not exist, given what we know of chemistry. Our knowledge of chemistry allows us to predict what would happen were the laws slightly different. (This sort of thought

The Epistemological Function of Hill's Criteria

OBJECTIVE This article outlines an epistemological framework for understanding how Hills criteria may aid us in establishing a causal hypothesis (A causes B) in an observational study. METHOD We consider Hills criteria in turn with respect to their ability or otherwise to exclude alternative hypotheses (B causes A; there is a common cause of A and B; there is no causal connection between A and B). RESULTS We may classify Hills criteria according to which of the alternative hypotheses they are able to exclude, and also on the basis of whether they relate to (a) evidence from within observational study or (b) evidence independent of that study. It is noted that no criterion is able to exclude the common cause hypothesis in a systematic way. CONCLUSION Observational studies are typically weaker than experimental studies, since the latter can systematically exclude competing hypotheses, whereas observational studies lack a systematic way of ruling out the common cause hypothesis.

Potency and Modality

Let us call a property that is essentially dispositional a potency. David Armstrong thinks that potencies do not exist. All sparse properties are essentially categorical, where sparse properties are the explanatory properties of the type science seeks to discover. An alternative view, but not the only one, is that all sparse properties are potencies or supervene upon them. In this paper I shall consider the differences between these views, in particular the objections Armstrong raises against potencies.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and its Significance: An Essay Review of the Fiftieth Anniversary Edition

Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most cited books of the twentieth century. Its iconic and controversial nature has obscured its message. What did Kuhn really intend with Structure and what is its real significance? 1 Introduction 2 The Central Ideas of Structure 3 The Philosophical Targets of Structure 4 Interpreting and Misinterpreting Structure   4.1 Naturalism   4.2 World-change   4.3 Incommensurability   4.4 Progress and the nature of revolutionary change   4.5 Relativism, rationality, and realism   4.6 History and sociology of science   4.7 Wittgenstein 5 After Structure 1 Introduction 2 The Central Ideas of Structure 3 The Philosophical Targets of Structure 4 Interpreting and Misinterpreting Structure   4.1 Naturalism   4.2 World-change   4.3 Incommensurability   4.4 Progress and the nature of revolutionary change   4.5 Relativism, rationality, and realism   4.6 History and sociology of science   4.7 Wittgenstein   4.1 Naturalism   4.2 World-change   4.3 Incommensurability   4.4 Progress and the nature of revolutionary change   4.5 Relativism, rationality, and realism   4.6 History and sociology of science   4.7 Wittgenstein 5 After Structure

The epistemology of science: a bird's-eye view

In this paper I outline my conception of the epistemology of science, by reference to my published papers, showing how the ideas presented there fit together. In particular I discuss the aim of science, scientific progress, the nature of scientific evidence, the failings of empiricism, inference to the best (or only) explanation, and Kuhnian psychology of discovery. Throughout, I emphasize the significance of the concept of scientific knowledge.

Kuhn, Nominalism, and Empiricism*

In this paper I draw a connection between Kuhn and the empiricist legacy, specifically between his thesis of incommensurability, in particular in its later taxonomic form, and van Fraassens constructive empiricism. I show that if it is the case the empirically equivalent but genuinely distinct theories do exist, then we can expect such theories to be taxonomically incommensurable. I link this to Hackings claim that Kuhn was a nominalist. I also argue that Kuhn and van Fraassen do not differ as much as might be thought as regards the claim that observation is theory laden.

Unexpected a posteriori necessary laws of nature

In this paper I argue that it is not a priori that all the laws of nature are contingent. I assume that the fundamental laws are contingent and show that some non-trivial, a posteriori, non-basic laws may nonetheless be necessary in the sense of having no counterinstances in any possible world. I consider a law LS (such as ‘salt dissolves in water’) that concerns a substance S. Kripkes arguments concerning constitution show that the existence of S requires that a certain deeper level law or variants thereof hold. At the same time, that law and its variants may each entail the truth of LS. Thus the existence of S entails LS. Consequently there is no world in which S exists and fails to obey LS. I consider the conditions concerning the fundamental laws that would make this phenomenon ubiquitous. I conclude with some consequences for metaphysics.

Explanation and Metaphysics

Is the nature of explanation a metaphysical issue? Or has it more to do with psychology and pragmatics? To put things in a different way: what are primary relata in an explanation? What sorts of thing explain what other sorts of thing? David Lewis identifies two senses of ‘explanation’ (Lewis 1986, 217–218). In the first sense, an explanation is an act of explaining. I shall call this the subjectivist sense, since its existence depends on some subject doing the explaining. Hence it is people who, in this sense, explain things. In the second of his two senses, Lewis says, quoting Sylvain Bromberger, that one may properly ask of an explanation “Does anyone know it? Who thought of it first? Is it very complicated?” (Lewis 1986, 218; Bromberger 1965). In this second sense, no subject is needed, the explanation can remain unknown, perhaps for ever. So I call this the objectivist sense. Corresponding to the two senses, there are two tendencies, each emphasizing the primacy of one of the two senses. Corresponding to the subjectivist sense is an anti-metaphysical tendency that will typically deny that there are real explanations in nature. It is people who explain things; they do so by arranging information or beliefs in certain ways, so that certain salient connections may be seen. The saliency of such connections, and so whether an explanation is a good one or not, will depend on the interests of the recipient of the explanation. It cannot be denied that we do talk of one fact explaining another, as when we say that the decaying of the O-rings explained the explosion of the Challenger spacecraft. But this is just a projection of our practice of explanation onto the things we refer to in our explanations. Which is not to say that explanation is independent of the way things are; rather it is to say that it does not constitute part of the way things are. In this regard explanations are akin to secondary qualities, on a projectivist view of the latter.