| Instructor: | Brad Skow. |
| Office Hours: | No regular office hours; but I am in all day on most days. Email to make an appointment. Short notice (same or next day appointments) usually work out. |
| Class Meetings: | MWF, 10am, 4-144. |
| How This Class Will be Run: | A good part of our work this semester is a collaborative project: for all of us to come to some collective view about the place of causation in physics, about the nature of laws of nature, and about the nature of explanation. To call it a collective view is not to say that we must all agree by the end; but we should have some sense of the source of our disagreements and some sense of what reasons each party to the disagreement has for their view. As a means to this end the class will be largely discussion-based. This means that for class meetings to function well you should have done the reading before class and have something to say about it when you arrive. At the very least you should have tried to identify, and be willing to try to explain to the class: the paper's main conclusion, and the author's main argument (or one of the author's main arguments) for that conclusion. |
| Requirements: | Produce a "class summary" when it is your turn, and revise that summary taking other students' comments into account; comment, on NB, on other class summaries when it is not. Submit essays collectively totally at least 15 pages; each essay must be at least 7 pages.
Further notes on essays: all writing is due on the last day of class. It is a bad idea to save all the writing till the end of the semester though. Ideally you will work on the essays throughout the semester. It is up to you to come up with topics for your papers, but you must clear your topics with me (this can be done informally in person or by email). You may submit drafts of your essays to me for comments. At least one of the times you do this we will meet in person to discuss your draft. You may submit as many drafts of each essay as you like (but please no more frequently than once every two weeks). It is up to you to decide when you think the paper has reached its final form. (The papers will not receive individual grades.) |
| Resources: | What is an argument? | Guidelines for writing philosophy papers. |
| Annotated Class Summaries: | Feb 10 | Feb 13 | Feb 15 | Feb 17 | Feb 21 | Feb 22 |
(Your name next to a day means you are in charge of writing the summary after that day's class. Remember: email me your summary in PDF form as soon as you've written it.)
| Date | Topic | Reading |
| Part 1: The place of causation in physics | ||
| 2/8 | Introductory Class. | |
| 2/10 | Eliminativism (Brad). Summary of 2/10 | Russell, On the Notion of Cause, to page 16. |
| 2/13 | Eliminativism (Krithi). Summary of 2/13 | Latham, Singular Causal Statements and Deterministic Laws (up to the end of section III). |
| 2/15 | Eliminativism (Billy). Summary of 2/15 | |
| 2/17 | Eliminativism (Chris). Summary of 2/17. | Cartwright, Causal Laws and Effective Strategies. |
| 2/20 | No class: President's Day. | |
| 2/21 (tuesday) | Eliminativism (Alex). Summary of 2/21. | Smith, Resolving Russell's Anti-Realism about Causation. |
| 2/22 | Eliminativism (Julia). Summary of 2/22. | Frisch, No Place for Causes? |
| 2/24 | Eliminativism concluded (Ovie). Summary of 2/24. | |
| 2/27 | Causation as a "high level phenomenon" (Cody). Summary of 2/27. | Elga, Isolation and Folk Physics. |
| 2/29 | Causation as a "high level phenomenon" (Nathan). Summary of 2/29. | Woodward, Causation with a Human Face. Handout on the folk model of causation. |
| 3/2 | Causation as a secondary quantity (Mark). Summary of 3-2. | Price and Menzies, Causation as a Secondary Quality. |
| Part 2: What is a law of nature? | ||
| 3/5 | Introductory Discussion (Rhys). Summary of 3/5. | |
| 3/7 | What are laws supposed to do? (Matthew). Summary of 3/7. | Van Fraassen, Laws and Symmetry ch 2. |
| 3/9 | The Naive Regularity Theory (Kathy). Summary of 3/9. | Carroll, The Humean Tradition, I-III. |
| 3/12 | The "Best Systems" Theory (Billy). Summary of 3/12. | Lewis, Counterfactuals, pp. 73-75. Lewis, New Work for a Theory of Universals, pp. 39-43. |
| 3/14 | Against the Best Systems Theory (Krithi). Summary of 3/14. | Van Fraassen, Laws and Symmetry ch 3. |
| 3/16 | Against the Best Systems Theory (Chris). Summary of 3/16. | |
| 3/19 | Anti-Reductionism (Julia). Summary of 3/19. | Carroll, The Humean Tradition, VI. |
| 3/21 | "Non-Humean" Reductionism (Alex). | Lange, Laws and Lawmakers, Ch 1 (you may skip sections 1.5 and 1.9). |
| 3/23 | "Non-Humean" Reductionism (Ovie). Summary of 3/23. | |
| Spring Break | ||
| 4/2 | Are there laws of nature? (Cody). Summary of 4/2. | |
| Part 3: What is Explanation? | ||
| 4/4 | The Deductive-Nomological Theory (Nathan). Summary of 4/4. | Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, sects. 1 and 2. |
| 4/6 | The D-N Theory continued (Mark). Summary of 4/6. | Edge.org's explanation compilation. Assignment for Friday's class. |
| 4/9 | No class --- medical reasons. | |
| 4/11 | No class --- visiting committee. | |
| 4/13 | The Causal Theory (Rhys). Summary of 4/13. | Lewis, Causal Explanation. |
| 4/16 | No Class: Patriot's Day. | |
| 4/18 | The Causal Theory (Matthew). Summary of 4/18. | |
| 4/20 | Unificationism (Kathy). Summary of 4/20. | Kitcher, Explanatory Unification. |
| 4/23 | Idealization in Explanation. | Strevens, Why Explanations Lie (you may skip section 9). |
| 4/25 | Idealization in Explanation. | |
| 4/27 | Chancy Explanation. | Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, sect. 3, to the end of 3.4.2. |
| 4/30 | Chancy Explanation. | |
| 5/2 | Explanation in Mathematics. | Knuth, Proof as a tool for learning mathematics. Steiner, Mathematical Explanation. |
| Coda: What is Science? | ||
| 5/4 | The demarcation problem. | Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos. |
| 5/7 | The demarcation problem continued. | Laudan, the demise of the demarcation problem. |
| 5/9 | Is Science Objective? | Railton, Marx and the Objectivity of Science. |
| 5/11 | Is Science Objective? | |
| 5/14 | Realism and Anti-Realism. | Van Fraassen, The Scientific Image, Ch 2. |
| 5/16 | Realism and Anti-Realism. |