Phil 3318: Philosophy of Science Ontological status of the ‘special sciences’

‘Special’ Sciences “Anything with ‘science’ in its name necessarily isn’t” Why the doubt cast on Psychology & Sociology?

Well… 1.It uses ‘ceteris paribus’ laws. The force of gravity is proportionate to the masses of the objects and the distance between them All other things being equal, people will act in such a way that their desires will be satisfied.

Ceteris Paribus If the claim is “Social” or ‘special’ sciences use ceteris paribus laws, and ‘natural’ sciences do not – how would you falsify?

1.Claim that the ‘special’ sciences do not use ceteris paribus laws or 2.Claim that the ‘natural’ sciences do as well.

Levels? What does it mean to say that sociology is on a different level than, say, psychology, or physics? –Upper level science ‘contains’ lower-level science –Microbiology macrobiology

Reduction? 1.The laws, entities, properties and relations of a higher-level science are replaceable sal veritas with the laws, entities, properties and relations of a lower-level science. 2.‘Explainable’

(1) seems wrong-headed: statements about my beliefs and desires just lose weight when they are statements about neurons: The explanation for my movement towards coffee just is my desire for coffee. Talk about neurons just doesn’t figure.

(2) turns on the nature of ‘explanation’, so if I’m right that explanation is a matter of pointing to a mechanism, then reduction is something of a non-issue –(I said that last time), but here’s the implication: –There is nothing ‘special’ about the special sciences.

Functional isomorphism Identifying a mechanism is a matter of functional isomorphism. –David Lewis…

Problems for functional isomorphism: Multiple realizability of the mechanism (maybe that’s a good thing?) provides *loads* of potential counter-examples:

With apologies to Ned Block, John Searle, David Chalmers and Frank Jackson… China Brain Inverted Earth Zombies Chinese Room Mary.