Spohn Causation, Coherence and Concepts

A Collection of Essays
1. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4020-5474-7
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 256, 386 Seiten

Reihe: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science

In this collection I present 16 of my, I feel, more substantial papers on theoretical philosophy, 12 as originally published, one co-authored with Ulrike Haas-Spohn (Chapter14), one (Chapter 15) that was a brief conference commentary, but is in fact a suitable appendix to Chapter 14, one as a translation of a German paper (Chapter 12), and one newly written for this volume (Chapter 16), which, however, is only my recent attempt to properly and completely express an argument I had given in two earlier papers. I gratefully acknowledge permission of reprint from the relevant publishers at the beginning of each paper. In disciplinary terms the papers cover epistemology, general philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. The section titles Belief, Causation, Laws, Coherence, and Concepts and the paper titles give a more adequate impression of the topics dealt with. The papers are tightly connected. I feel they might be even read as unfolding a program, though this program was never fully clear in my mind and still isn't. In the Introduction I attempt to describe what this program might be, thus drawing a reconstructed red thread, or rather two red threads, through all the papers. This will serve, at the same time, as an overview over the papers collected.

Wolfgang Spohn, born 1950, is one of the most distinguished analytic philosophers and philosophers of science of Germany, editor-in-chief of Erkenntnis for more than 13 years, author of two books and more than 60 papers covering a wide range: epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of science, philosophical logic, philosophy of language and mind, and the theory of practical rationality. This collection presents 15 of his most important essays on theoretical philosophy. The centre piece is his uniquely successful theory of the dynamics of belief, tantamount to an account of induction and nowadays widely acknowledged as 'ranking theory'. Like any account of induction, this theory has deep implications ingeniously elaborated in the papers included. They cover an account of deterministic and also probabilistic causation, initially subjectively relativized, but then objectivized in a projectivistic sense, and an account of explanation and of strict, of ceteris paribus, and of chance laws. They advance a coherentist epistemology, though giving foundationalist intuitions their due, and establish some coherence principles as a priori true, entailing even a weak principle of causality. They finally shed light on concept formation by more broadly embedding the epistemological considerations into the framework of two-dimensional semantics. All this is carried out with formal rigor when feasible.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Spohn, W.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Preface;7
2;Contents;12
3;Introduction;16
4;Belief;31
4.1;Ordinal Conditional Functions: A Dynamic Theory of Epistemic States ;32
4.1.1;1.1 Introduction;32
4.1.2;1.2 Simple Conditional Functions;35
4.1.3;1.3 A Problem with Simple Conditional Functions;38
4.1.4;1.4 Ordinal Conditional Functions;41
4.1.5;1.5 Conditionalization and Generalized Conditionalization;43
4.1.6;1.6 Independence and Conditional Independence;46
4.1.7;1.7 Connections with Probability Theory;50
4.1.8;1.8 Discussion;51
5;Causation;55
5.1;Direct and Indirect Causes;56
5.1.1;2.1 Introduction;56
5.1.2;2.2 The Conceptual and Formal Framework;57
5.1.3;2.3 Direct Causes;61
5.1.4;2.4 The Circumstances of Direct Causes;64
5.1.5;2.5 The Difficulties with Indirect Causation;68
5.1.6;2.6 Causation;77
5.2;Causation: An Alternative;86
5.2.1;3.1 Introduction;86
5.2.2;3.2 Variables, Propositions, Time;87
5.2.3;3.3 Induction First;89
5.2.4;3.4 Causation;95
5.2.5;3.5 Redundant Causation;100
5.2.6;3.6 Objectivization;105
5.3;Bayesian Nets Are All There Is to Causal Dependence;109
5.3.1;4.1 Introduction;109
5.3.2;4.2 Causal Graphs and Bayesian Nets;109
5.3.3;4.3 About the Causal Import of Bayesian Nets;113
5.3.4;4.4 Actions and Interventions;118
5.4;Causal Laws are Objectifications of Inductive Schemes;122
5.4.1;5.1 Is Causation Objective?;123
5.4.2;5.2 Induction;125
5.4.3;5.3 Causation;129
5.4.4;5.4 An Explication of Objectification;131
5.4.5;5.5 The Objectification of Induction and Causation;135
5.4.6;5.6 Outlook;142
6;Laws;144
6.1;Laws, Ceteris Paribus Conditions, and the Dynamics of Belief;145
6.1.1;6.1 Preparations;145
6.1.2;6.2 Ranking Functions;148
6.1.3;6.3 Laws;151
6.1.4;6.4 Other Things Being Equal, Normal, or Absent;155
6.1.5;6.5 On the Confirmation of Laws;158
6.1.6;6.6 Some Comparative Remarks;160
6.2;Enumerative Induction and Lawlikeness;163
6.2.1;7.1 Introduction;163
6.2.2;7.2 Ranking Functions;165
6.2.3;7.3 Symmetry and Non-negative Instantial Relevance;169
6.2.4;7.4 Laws;172
6.2.5;7.5 Laws and Enumerative Induction;175
6.2.6;7.6 The Apriority of Lawfulness;180
6.3;Chance and Necessity: From Humean Supervenience to Humean Projection;182
6.3.1;8.1 Introduction;182
6.3.2;8.2 Chance-Credence Principles;186
6.3.3;8.3 The Admissibility of Historic and Chance Information;190
6.3.4;8.4 The Admissibility of Chance Information and Humean Supervenience;194
6.3.5;8.5 Humean Supervenience;198
6.3.6;8.6 Projection Turns the Principal Principle into a Special Case of the Reflection Principle;201
6.3.7;8.7 Humean Projection;206
6.3.8;8.8 Appendix on Ranking Functions and Deterministic Laws: The Same All Over Again;210
7;Coherence;213
7.1;A Reason for Explanation: Explanations Provide Stable Reasons;214
7.1.1;9.1 Introduction;214
7.1.2;9.2 Induction and Causation;215
7.1.3;9.3 Causation and Explanation;220
7.1.4;9.4 Reason and Truth;226
7.1.5;9.5 Explanations and Stable Reasons;232
7.2;Two Coherence Principles;238
7.2.1;10.1 Introduction;238
7.2.2;10.2 Reasons;239
7.2.3;10.3 Two Coherence Principles;241
7.2.4;10.4 Justifying the Coherence Principles via Enumerative Induction?;245
7.2.5;10.5 Justifying the Coherence Principles via the Essence of Propositions?;246
7.2.6;10.6 Justifying the Coherence Principles via Consciousness?;247
7.2.7;10.7 Justifying the Coherence Principles via a Theory of Perception;251
7.3;How to Understand the Foundations of Empirical Belief in a Coherentist Way;256
7.3.1;11.1 Introduction;256
7.3.2;11.2 Belief, Belief Change, Reasons, and Apriority;257
7.3.3;11.3 Dispositions and Reduction Sentences;260
7.3.4;11.4 A Thesis Concerning the Basis of Empirical Beliefs;262
7.3.5;11.5 Defending the Thesis;264
7.3.6;11.6 The Foundationalist’s Last Resort?;267
8;Concepts;269
8.1;A Priori Reasons: A Fresh Look at Disposition Predicates;270
8.1.1;12.1 Introduction;270
8.1.2;12.2 Beliefs and Reasons;271
8.1.3;12.3 Kant, Kripke, Kaplan and Beliefs A Priori;273
8.1.4;12.4 Disposition Predicates and Reduction Sentences;278
8.1.5;12.5 Normal Conditions and A Priori Reasons;280
8.1.6;12.6 The Categorical Base of a Disposition;283
8.1.7;12.7 Outlook;285
8.2;The Character of Color Terms: A Materialist View;287
8.3;Concepts Are Beliefs About Essences;307
8.3.1;14.1 Introduction;307
8.3.2;14.2 The Problems Specified;309
8.3.3;14.3 How to Define Concepts: A Proposal;315
8.3.4;14.4 Explanations;319
8.3.5;14.5 Individualism Rescued?;326
8.4;Changing Concepts;331
8.5;The Intentional Versus the Propositional Structure of Contents;336
8.5.1;16.1 The Thesis;336
8.5.2;16.2 Stage Setting;338
8.5.3;16.3 The Dialectical Background of the Thesis;343
8.5.4;16.4 Two Arguments for the Thesis and an Objection;347
8.5.5;16.5 The Method of Sufficiently Fine-Grained Descriptions;354
8.5.6;16.6 Some Afterthoughts;359
9;Bibliography;361
10;Name Index;376
11;Subject Index;380