Causation and Laws of Nature

by Sankey, Howard

• ISBN13: 9780792359142
• ISBN10: 0792359143
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-11-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

Causation and Laws of Nature is a collection of articles which represents current research on the metaphysics of causation and laws of nature, mostly by authors working in or active in the Australasian region. The book provides an overview of current work on the theory of causation, including counterfactual, singularist, nomological and causal process approaches. It also covers work on the nature of laws of nature, with special emphasis on the scientific essentialist theory that laws of nature are, at base, the fundamental dispositions or capacities of natural kinds of things. Because the book represents a good cross-section of authors currently working on these themes in the Australasian region, it conveys something of the interest and excitement of an active philosophical debate between advocates of several different research programmes in the area.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	xi
Howard Sankey
I. LAWS AND CAUSES
Making Sense of Laws of Physics	3	(16)
Alan Chalmers
II. SCIENTIFIC ESSENTIALISM
Causal Powers and Laws of Nature	19	(16)
Brian Ellis
Comment on Ellis	35	(4)
D.M. Armstrong
Response to David Armstrong	39	(6)
Brain Ellis
Scientific Ellisianism	45	(16)
John Bigelow
Bigelow's Worries About Scientific Essentialism	61	(16)
Brian Ellis
The Naturalness Theory of Laws	77	(6)
Martin Leckey
Nomic Necessity and Natural States: Comment on the Leckey-Bigelow Theory of Laws	83	(8)
Caroline Lierse
III. LAWS, QUANTITIES AND DISPOSITIONS
Are the Laws of Nature Deductively Closed?	91	(20)
Alan Baker
Laws of Nature as Relations Between Quantities?	111	(14)
John Forge
Real Law in Peirce's ``Pragmaticism'' (Or: How Scholastic Realism Met the Scientific Method)	125	(18)
Cathy Legg
Finkish Dispositions	143	(14)
David Lewis
Comments on David Lewis: `Finkish Dispositions'	157	(4)
Barry Taylor
Laws and Cosmology	161	(10)
J.J.C. Smart
Comment on Smart	171	(4)
D.M. Armstrong
IV. CAUSATION AND THEORIES OF CAUSATION
The Open Door: Counterfactual versus Singularist Theories of Causation	175	(12)
D.M. Armstrong
Causal Dependence and Laws	187	(28)
F. John Clendinnen
Causation is the Transfer of Information	215	(32)
John D. Collier
Good Connections: Causation and Causal Processes	247	(18)
Phil Dowe
Probabilistic Causal Structure	265	(48)
Kevin B. Korb
Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Conceptions of Causation	313	(18)
Peter Menzies
The Role of History in Microphysics	331	(16)
Huw Price
No Interaction Without Prior Correlation: Comment on Huw Price	347	(2)
Keith Hutchison
Notes on Contributors	349	(4)
Index	353