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 |
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| 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 08:14 |
| Last Modified: | 18 Feb 2013 08:14 |
| Item ID: | 9575 |
| URI: | http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/9575 |
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