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Against the Statistical Account of Special Science Laws

Hüttemann, Andreas and Reutlinger, Alexander (2013) Against the Statistical Account of Special Science Laws. [Preprint]

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Abstract

John Earman and John T. Roberts advocate a challenging and radical claim regarding the semantics of laws in the special sciences: the statistical account. According to this account, a typical special science law “asserts a certain precisely defined statistical relation among well-defined variables” (Earman and Roberts 1999) and this statistical relation does not require being hedged by ceteris paribus conditions. In this paper, we raise two objections against the attempt to cash out the content of special science generalizations in statistical terms.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Hüttemann, Andreasahuettem@uni-koeln.de
Reutlinger, AlexanderAlexander.Reutlinger@uni-koeln.de
Additional Information: Forthcoming in Vassilios Karakostas and Dennis Dieks (eds.) (2013), “Recent Progress in Philosophy of Science: Perspectives and Foundational Problems”, The Third European Philosophy of Science Association Proceedings, Dordrecht: Springer.
Keywords: laws of nature, ceteris paribus laws, probability/statistics, determinism/indeterminism, causation
Subjects: General Issues > Causation
General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism
General Issues > Laws of Nature
General Issues > Models and Idealization
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Depositing User: Alexander Reutlinger
Date Deposited: 18 Feb 2013 13:14
Last Modified: 18 Feb 2013 13:14
Item ID: 9575
Subjects: General Issues > Causation
General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism
General Issues > Laws of Nature
General Issues > Models and Idealization
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Date: 2013
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/9575

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