J. van Brakel

Units of Measurement and Natural Kinds : Some Kripkean Considerations

Kripke has argued that definitions of units of measurements provide examples of statements that are both contingent and a priori. In this paper I argue that definitions of units of measurement are intended to be stipulations of what Kripke calls “theoretical identities”: a stipulation that two terms will have the same rigid designation. Hence such a definition is both a priori and necessary. The necessity arises because such definitions appeal to natural kind properties only, which on Kripkes account are necessary.

The Plasticity of Categories: The Case of Colour

Probably colour is the best worked-out example of allegedly neurophysiologically innate response categories determining percepts and percepts determining concepts, and hence biology fixing the basic categories implicit in the use of language. In this paper I argue against this view and I take C. L. Hardins Color for Philosophers [1988] as my main target. I start by undermining the view that four unique hues stand apart from all other colour shades (Section 2) and the confidence that the solar spectrum is naturally divided into four categories (Section 3). For such categories to be truly universal, they have to be true for all peoples and in Section 4 I show that Berlin and Kays [1969] widely quoted theory of basic colour categories is not sufficiently supported to lend it any credibility. Having disposed of the view that inspection of language or ‘pure’ perception unveils the universal colour categories. I turn to neurophysiological and psychophysical theories of colour vision to see whether they provide a more solid basis for deciding what the innate response categories are. In Section 5 I show that Hardins account of the opponent-process theory neither supports his view that ‘colour-coding’takes place early in the visual neural pathway, nor his view that knowledge of colour vision science will help us solve many philosophical mysteries about colour. In Section 6 I give a more detailed review of what is known today about the neurophysiology of colour vision and I show that theres nothing in the brain which could be called a colour module, let alone a module with homunculi for particular basic colour categories. In Section 7 I show that psychophysical models do not support such rigid constraints on category formation either. Hence (Section 8), at least in the case of colour, current science supports a plasticity in the formation of categories that goes far beyond the requirements of those naturalistic philosophers who would like to ground primitive concepts in biology

Ceteris paribus laws

Laws of nature take center stage in philosophy of science. Laws are usually believed to stand in a tight conceptual relation to many important key concepts such as causation, explanation, confirmation, determinism, counterfactuals etc. Traditionally, philosophers of science have focused on physical laws, which were taken to be at least true, universal statements that support counterfactual claims. But, although this claim about laws might be true with respect to physics, laws in the special sciences (such as biology, psychology, economics etc.) appear to have—maybe not surprisingly—different features than the laws of physics. Special science laws—for instance, the economic law “Under the condition of perfect competition, an increase of demand of a commodity leads to an increase of price, given that the quantity of the supplied commodity remains constant” and, in biology, Mendels Laws—are usually taken to “have exceptions”, to be “non-universal” or “to be ceteris paribus laws”. How and whether the laws of physics and the laws of the special sciences differ is one of the crucial questions motivating the debate on ceteris paribus laws. Another major, controversial question concerns the determination of the precise meaning of “ceteris paribus”. Philosophers have attempted to explicate the meaning of ceteris paribus clauses in different ways. The question of meaning is connected to the problem of empirical content, i.e., the question whether ceteris paribus laws have non-trivial and empirically testable content. Since many philosophers have argued that ceteris paribus laws lack empirically testable content, this problem constitutes a major challenge to a theory of ceteris paribus laws.

Meaning, Prototypes and the Future of Cognitive Science

In this paper I evaluate the soundness of the prototype paradigm, in particular its basic assumption that there are pan-human psychological essences or core meanings that refer to basic-level natural kinds, explaining why, on the whole, human communication and learning are successful. Instead I argue that there are no particular pan-human basic elements for thought, meaning and cognition, neither prototypes, nor otherwise. To illuminate my view I draw on examples from anthropology. More generally I argue that the prototype paradigm exemplifies two assumptions that dominate cognitive science: (1) If human beings use words they mean something particular and what they mean can be discovered by scientific methods. (2) There is a fixed number of domains of categorization, each made up of a fixed number of basic categories. I suggest that these two assumptions lead to Brave New World.

Colour word trouble

In reply to Wierzbickas advocacy of semantic primitives we argue that talk of the semantic primitives (like to see ) repeats the fallacies addressed in the target article at a higher level. In reply to Malcolms plea for a Wittgensteinian grammar of colour words, we argue that he uses words like “we” and “us” too easily, falling into the trap of “silly relativism.” In reply to McManuss science of word counts, we reiterate the nineteenth-century criticism that this method is based on an illegitimate application of seemingly rigorous statistical methods.

The Possible Influence of the Discovery of Radio-active Decay on the Concept of Physical Probability

ConclusionBrush has somewhat prosaically said that since the time of Fourier we have been confronted with an awareness that our knowledge of the physical world can at best be probable. It has become clear that as the world consists of such a large number of particles of various sorts moving about, only statistical descriptions can be justified. This approach, worked out amidst some confusion about the concepts of probability, relative frequency, and a priori equal probabilities62, was first developed in the field of statistical mechanics. More fundamental perhaps was the subsequent invention of the concept of a quantum of energy and “wavicles”. This has led to the theory of quantum mechanics and has induced most physicists and philosophers to repudiate physical causality. In this context, the statistical description of radioactivity was a relatively isolated development, concerned with experimental physics. In so far as a theoretical or conceptual analysis of the statistical character of radioactive decay was developed, it was analogous to prevailing concepts in the kinetic theory of gases, including the theory of chemical reaction. In the publications of physicists in the first third of this century, no support can be found for the hypothesis that the development of the theory of radioactive decay in itself contributed much to a changing concept of physical probability.