Using defaults to understand token causation

Friends of the counterfactual theory of causation have recently employed the notion of a default to respond to standard problem cases for counterfactual theories. I argue that while the notion of a default is in- deed useful for understanding token causation, it is a tool that belongs in the toolbox of the process theorist, not in that of counterfactual accounts of causation. I show that an event is a default event relative to a particular process. In light of this, the way to employ default events to improve our understanding of token causation is by taking token causation to be the intersection of two processes where the token effect is a default event relative to one process, but a deviant event relative to another. Doing so reveals causal processes to be more fundamental than token causation, since the latter is understood in terms of the former, which suggests that the use of defaults to understand token causation is especially suitable for process views of causation. Moreover, employing the notion of defaults affords the process theorist a way of handling cases of causation by omission.

Journal of Philosophy, 113:1 5-26, 2016 (pdf)

 

Naturalistic Quietism or Scientific Realism? 

Realists about science tend to hold that our scientific theories aim for the truth, that our successful theories are at least partly true, and that the entities referred to by the theoretical terms of these theories exist. Antirealists about science deny one or more of these claims. A sizable minority of philosophers of science prefers not to take sides: they believe the realism debate to be fundamentally mistaken and seek to abstain from it altogether. In analogy with other realism debates I will call these philosophers quietists. In the philosophy of science quietism often takes a somewhat peculiar form, which I will call naturalistic quietism. In this paper I characterize Maddy’s Second Philosophy as a form of naturalist quietism, and show what the costs for making it feasible are.

Synthese, First online: 03 September 2015. (pdf)

Spin as a Determinable 

Observability, visualizability and the question of metaphysical neutrality

Heisenberg’s Observability Principle

Werner Heisenberg’s 1925 paper “Quantum-theoretical re-interpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations” marks the beginning of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg famously claims that the paper is based on the idea that the new quantum mechanics should be “founded exclusively upon relationships between quantities which in principle are observable”. My paper is an attempt to understand this observability principle, and to see whether its employment is philosophically defensible. Against interpretations of ‘observability’ along empiricist or positivist lines I argue that such readings are philosophically unsatisfying. Moreover, a careful comparison of Heisenberg’s reinterpretation of classical kinematics with Einstein’s argument against absolute simultaneity reveals that the positivist reading does not fit with Heisenberg’s strategy in the paper. Instead the complain that electron orbits are unobservable should be understood as a criticism of the causal inefficacy of orbital electron motion in Bohr’s atomic model. I conclude that the tacit philosophical principle behind Heisenberg’s argument is not a positivistic connection between observability and meaning, but the idea that a theory should not contain causally idle wheels.

Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 2014 (pdf)

 

Are conservation laws metaphysically necessary?

Are laws of nature necessary, and if so, are all laws of nature necessary in the same way? This question has played an important role in recent discussion of laws of nature. I argue that not all laws of nature are necessary in the same way: conservation laws are perhaps to be regarded as metaphysically necessary. This sheds light both on the modal character of conservation laws, and on the relationship between different varieties of necessity.

Philosophy of Science 80 (5), 2013 (pdf)

 

Do objects depend on structures?

Ontic Structural Realists hold that structure is all there is, or at least all there is fundamentally. This thesis has proved to be puzzling: what exactly does it say about the relationship between objects and structures? In this paper I look at different ways of articulating ontic structural realism in terms of the relation between structures and objects. I show that objects cannot be reduced to structures, and argue that ontological dependence cannot be used to establish strong forms of structural realism. At the end I show how a weaker, but controversial, form of structural realism can be articulated on the basis of ontological dependence.

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2012 63(3); Penultimate Draft (pdf)