Table Of ContentMetaphysics of Science
M etaphysics and science have a long but troubled relationship. In the
twentieth century the Logical Positivists argued metaphysics was irrel-
evant and that philosophy should be guided by science. However, meta-
physics and science attempt to answer many of the same, fundamental
questions: What are laws of nature? What is causation? What are natural
kinds?
In this book, Markus Schrenk examines and explains the central
questions and problems in the metaphysics of science. He reviews the
development of the fi eld from the early modern period through to the
latest research, systematically assessing key topics including:
• dispositions
• counterfactual conditionals
• laws of nature
• causation
• properties
• natural kinds
• essence
• necessity.
With the addition of chapter summaries and annotated further reading,
Metaphysics of Science is a much needed, clear and informative survey
of this exciting area of philosophical research. It is essential reading for
students and scholars of philosophy of science and metaphysics.
Markus Schrenk is Professor for Theoretical Philosophy at Heinrich
Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany. He is the author of T he Meta-
physics of Ceteris Paribus Laws (2007), co-author of Einführung in
die Sprachphilosophie (2nd edition 2014), and editor of Handbuch
Metaphysik (2016).
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Metaphysics of Science
A Systematic and Historical
Introduction
Markus Schrenk
First published 2017
by Routledge
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© 2017 Markus Schrenk
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this title has been requested
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Schrenk, Markus Andreas, 1974- author.
Title: Metaphysics of science: a systematic and historical introduction/
Markus Schrenk.
Description: 1 [edition]. | New York: Routledge, 2016. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015049235| ISBN 9781844655922 (hardback: alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781844655939 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315639116 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Metaphysics. | Science–Philosophy. | Philosophy and science.
Classification: LCC BD111 .S326 2016 | DDC 110–dc23LC record
available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049235
ISBN13: 978-1-844-65592-2 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-1-844-65593-9 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-1-315-63911-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Brixham, UK
Contents
Preface viii
Acknowledgements xiv
1 Prologue: a brief history of metaphysics 1
1.1 Rationalism 2
1.2 Empiricism 6
1.3 Transcendental Idealism 17
1.4 Logical Empiricism 24
1.4.1 Aufbau (Construction) 24
1.4.2 Demolition 34
1.4.3 Reconstruction: the road ahead 39
2 Dispositions 45
2.1 Semantics 45
2.1.1 Core features of dispositions 45
2.1.2 Void Satisfaction and modality 47
2.1.3 Random Coincidences (RC) and Productive Responsibility 52
2.1.4 Natural properties and natural laws 58
2.1.5 Summary: (NON-OBS), (MOD) and (PROD) 63
2.2 Ontology 64
2.2.1 Farewell to Empiricism 64
2.2.2 An ontological turn 64
2.2.3 Categorical properties 66
2.2.4 Categoricalism 70
2.2.5 Humean Supervenience 75
3 Counterfactuals 87
3.1 Motivation. Where we come from 87
3.2 Post-Empiricist truth conditions for counterfactual conditionals 90
vi Contents
3.3 Interlude: Possible Worlds Semantics: the world is not enough 96
3.4 The present orthodoxy for counterfactuals 102
3.5 Counterfactuals and dispositions 112
4 Laws of nature 128
4.1 Basic intuitions about laws 128
4.2 Early regularity accounts 131
4.3 A sophisticated regularity account 135
4.4 The necessitation account 145
4.5 The counterfactuals account 152
4.6 Laws as unanalysably fundamental 162
4.7 Laws and dispositions 168
5 Causation 175
5.1 Preliminaries and agenda 175
5.2 Regularity theories 177
5.3 Counterfactual theories 183
5.4 Transfer theories 193
5.5 Interventionist theories 202
5.6 Classifications 212
5.7 Causation and dispositions 215
6 Dispositional Essentialism 223
6.1 Back to pre-Humean metaphysics 223
6.2 Dispositionalism 224
6.2.1 What is Dispositionalism? 224
6.2.2 Indirect reasons for Dispositionalism 224
6.2.3 Direct reasons for Dispositionalism 226
6.3 Essentialism 234
6.3.1 Semantic Internalism 234
6.3.2 Semantic Externalism 239
6.3.3 Essences 246
6.4 Dispositional Essentialism 251
6.4.1 Dispositional Essentialism and counterfactuals 255
6.4.2 Dispositional Essentialism and laws 259
6.4.3 Dispositional Essentialism and causation 264
6.5 Back to monads? 273
Contents vii
7 Epilogue: meta-metaphysics 285
7.1 Metaphysics, anti-metaphysics and metaphysics again 285
7.2 Simplicity, strength and their balance as a tool to judge
metaphysics 287
7.3 Inferences to the best explanation 291
7.4 Transcendental arguments, serviceability and indispensability 293
7.5 Science, scientific realism and the metaphysics of science 296
7.6 The Canberra Plan 299
7.7 Extensional adequacy 304
7.8 Why defend Hume’s Dictum? 307
7.9 Polemical remarks 316
Afterword 325
Index 327
Preface
This book’s primary aim is to introduce the reader to some of the key
concepts within contemporary metaphysics of science: dispositions,
counterfactual conditionals, laws of nature, causation, properties, natu-
ral kinds, essence and necessity.
These topics are closely connected. Consider the following relations:
that something has a disposition to do something – for example, that
these white granules are soluble – means, roughly, that the following
counterfactual conditional is true of them: they would dissolve if they
were put into water. The explanation for this potential behaviour might
well be that the powder belongs to the n atural kind salt which has e ssen-
tially an ionic structure, N aCl , that fi gures in multiple l aws of nature .
These laws govern the causal processes NaCl can be involved in – for
example, being torn apart by H O dipoles into the anionic/cationic sub-
2
parts N a + and Cl −. Finally, some laws might tell us that such causal
processes happen necessarily.
The core questions Yet what exactly is a law of nature? What is a
causal process? When is a sentence ‘if such-and-such were the case,
then this-and-that would happen’ true? These are the questions philoso-
phy of science asks and especially in its metaphysical department. Its
epistemic section focuses primarily on the question how scientifi c
knowledge – for example, about nature’s laws and her regular causal
processes – is accumulated. In this book we will focus on the metaphys-
ical ‘what is the nature of XYZ?’ rather than the ‘how do we know of
XYZ?’ question.
Entanglement For someone new to the subject it is a challenge that all
these topics – laws, causation, etc. – are not isolated but entangled: get-
ting to grips with one area within the metaphysics of science presupposes
prior acquaintance with another which hinges on a third, etc. Yet we can
turn this situation, this entanglement, into an advantage. A short histori-
cal detour will show how. It will also introduce another goal of the book.
A brief history of metaphysics of science and the plan for the
book The book’s secondary aim is to acquaint the reader with the
Preface ix
historical development of metaphysics of science beginning with the
early modern period but especially throughout the twentieth and at the
start of the twenty-fi rst centuries. At the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury metaphysics as a whole fell into disrepute. Or, we should say, fell
once again into disrepute. Early in the last century, the Logical Empiri-
cists revived their eighteenth-century ancestors’ metaphysics critique.
They, as much as the ancestors, saw no merit in non-scientifi c theorising
about the fundamental features of reality. Metaphysics, when under-
stood as the philosophical investigation into the most basic, ultimate,
fundamental features and structures of a reality that goes beyond what
can be known via (experimental) observations and sensory experiences
was thought to be pointless.
T he Logical Empiricists declared that the only task left for philosophy/
metaphysics is the clarifi cation of concepts as they are used in the natu-
ral sciences. Particularly, philosophy should explicate how scientifi c
sentences can be verifi ed by observations and how scientifi c concepts
can be reformulated in observational terms only. (These are terms like
‘is red’, ‘is hot’, etc. that refer to sense perceptions we experience
directly.) It turned out, however, that satisfactory explications of this
kind are not so easily available and that it is probably not possible for a
multitude of scientifi c terms without making assumptions that were
pejoratively labelled ‘nonsensical metaphysics’ by the Empiricists.
Dispositional predicates were an especially hard nut to crack. Dispo-
sitional properties – we have given the example of solubility; further
dispositions are infl ammability, elasticity, irascibility, etc. – have in
common that many objects that have them only potentially act or react
in a certain way when in certain circumstances. As long as something
soluble is not put in water it does not show its solubility. Because of
their only potential manifestation, they are properties of objects that are
not directly observable.
Now, because the Empiricists’ aim was to base all our factual knowl-
edge on direct sense experience, they tried to translate what it means for
a thing to be disposed (to be soluble, for example) into some statement
that refers to observable things, properties and events only. Yet they failed.
H istory tells us that each attempt to amend the shortcomings of a
prior analysis led the Empiricists either to acknowledge some meta-
physical assumption and/or to refer, within their analyses, to one of the
other core concepts within science, like law of nature , causation, natu-
ral kind and so forth. Needless to say, these other concepts were, con-
secutively, themselves in need of explication.
I n this book we follow the history of the analysis of dispositions. Trac-
ing it, we not only get acquainted, bit by bit, with analyses of c ounterfac-
tual conditionals , laws of nature , causation , natural kinds , essences and
