Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement

by Cartwright, Nancy

• ISBN13: 9780198235071
• ISBN10: 0198235070
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-05-19
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

This book argues for the place of capacities within an grounds of meaning, not method. Yet it is questions of method that should concern the modern empiricist: can capacities be measured? Cartwright argues that they are measured if anything is. Stanford University's Gravity-Probe-B willmeasure capacities in a cryogenic dewar deep in space. More mundanely, we use probabilities to measure capacities, and the assumptions required to ensure that probabilities are a reliable instrument are investigated in the opening chapters of this book, where the early methods of econometrics set amodel. The last chapter applies lessons about probabilities and capacities to quantum mechanics and the Bell inequalities. The central thesis throughout is that capacities not only can be admitted by empiricists, but indeed must be - otherwise the empirical methods of modern science will make nosense.

Table of Contents

nature's Capacities And Their Measurement	p. i
Nature's Capacities and Their Measurement	p. iii
Acknowledgements	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
How to Get Causes from Probabilities	p. 11
Appendix: Back Paths and the Identification of Causes	p. 37
No Causes In, No Causes Out	p. 39
Singular Causes First	p. 91
Capacities	p. 141
Abstract and Concrete	p. 183
What Econometrics Can Teach Quantum Physics: Causality and the Bell Inequality	p. 231
Appendix I a More General Common-Cause Model for Epr	p. 251
Index	p. 265
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