Causation and Explanation

Ontic Structural Realism and Modality

“…2 While the distinction between truth and empirical adequacy may seem modally neutral, note that it is often spelled out in terms of the distinction between explaining the phenomena 2 Psillos [19] develops a hybrid causal descriptivist theory of reference and applies it to various cases of abandoned theoretical terms. While he is officially a Humean , there is a question as to whether the causal theory of reference is viable if one denies that causation may be a singular relation between language users and events.…”

“…On this view, laws are those generalizations that play a certain epistemic role: "they are believed to be true, and they are so believed because they are confirmed by their instances, and they are used in proper inductive reasoning." (Psillos [19], 141) One problem for this view is that some laws lack any positive instances. Newton's first law, for example, concerns the motion of bodies on which no forces are exerted.…”

“…It offers an objective characterization of lawlikeness, and so avoids the subjectivity of the epistemic view. In addition to its namesakes, the view counts Earman [6], Loewer [16], Psillos [19], and Cohen and Callender [4] among its defendants. While all but Earman identify themselves as scientific realists, we show the view to be plagued by several problems, each of which makes it difficult to reconcile with the spirit of realism.…”

“…If, for instance, we were to add to the best system Reichenbach's regularity that all gold cubes are smaller than one cubic mile, we would detract from its simplicity without gaining in strength. ( [19], 151) Why wouldn't the resulting system be one that has gained in strength despite losing in simplicity? The only plausible reason is that the additional regularity we derive from the amended system is not a law.…”

“…One of Psillos's footnotes supports this interpretation. He finds it worth noting that, "Carnap also took the laws of nature to be whatever lawlike statements are deducible from a set of axioms that express a certain physical theory, or more generally, 'the deductive system of physics"' ( [19], 303). This suggests that the web-of-laws adherent expects all laws of nature that are not themselves fundamental to be derivable from an axiomatized physics.…”