Timeline for Does ontological commitment to unobservables in science give one ontological commitment to causality?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 28 at 7:32 | comment | added | edelex | @JuliusHamilton I was wondering if it was possible to reject the causal claims in science but accept the ontological ones as a new position in the philosophy of science. | |
| Mar 27 at 22:56 | comment | added | Julius Hamilton | @edelex Can you motivate the question more? How did you come upon this question? What do you think might depend on or follow from it? | |
| Mar 27 at 19:21 | answer | added | user73173 | timeline score: 1 | |
| Mar 27 at 17:45 | comment | added | Conifold | "Ontological validity" does not have to be provided by causality, physical laws, or some other arrangement, work just as well. And this is to the extent that we need any "non-contingent validity" at all. Empirical generalizations remain fallible whatever we declare in our ontology, so we always infer ontology only "contingently". | |
| Mar 27 at 16:51 | comment | added | edelex | @JoWehler Being ontologically committed to causality would be, in order to be logical, having to believe that causality exists as its own thing in reality rather than something like a way of looking back at events | |
| Mar 27 at 16:48 | comment | added | edelex | @Conifold But how can we know that that causal logic isn't contingent without ontological validity? | |
| Mar 27 at 16:34 | comment | added | edelex | @JuliusHamilton Someone uncommitted to the existence of electrons could just view them as fictions which we use to explain what we observe (instrumentalism). You could believe that electrons exist but deny causality in the same way you could do the same for anything else. I'm more talking about justification for the belief in electrons than what's necessary for the existence of electrons themselves. | |
| Mar 27 at 7:04 | comment | added | Jo Wehler | @edelex What do you mean by "ontological commitment to causality"? In the first approximation: Causality is a principle which links events: Ontology determines the basic entities of a philosophical theory about a domain of investigation. | |
| Mar 26 at 18:12 | comment | added | Conifold | First, electrons have been observed, including outside of atoms. And second, there are theories of causation with no ontological commitment to causality, e.g. Humean regularities, "no metaphysical entities or connections are posited which would ground the regularities". All a theory needs to infer the unobservable is to postulate stable correlations between it and what is observed (based on physical laws, for example). There is no need for ontological causality. | |
| Mar 26 at 18:06 | comment | added | andrós | i have asked someone something like this. entity realism is sometimes conceived of in terms causal powers. some scientific realisms the answer is, i think, no, we don't need to believe in causation. as to obserable phenomena, the unobservable realm is usually thought of as one form of sentence to scientific theories, alongside observation reports. you might want to check i'm not talking crap | |
| Mar 26 at 18:05 | comment | added | Julius Hamilton | Can you expand on your thoughts on that? Do you think someone “uncommitted” to the “existence” of electrons has a theory about why they don’t exist as commonly conceived, or that they merely are “unsure”? Secondly, how might you envision someone committed to electrons, but not committed to their causal role in relevant phenomena? Are you saying they believe electrons exist but aren’t sure exactly in what way? | |
| Mar 26 at 16:57 | history | asked | edelex | CC BY-SA 4.0 |