Download or read book A Theory of Laws of Nature Dispositions and Chances written by Heather Demarest and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Nature and Laws of Chance written by Thomas Simpson and published by . This book was released on 1792 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Nature and Laws of Chance written by Thomas Simpson and published by . This book was released on 1740 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Natural Laws as Dispositions written by Florian Fischer and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Laws of Nature written by Peter Mittelstaedt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2005-12-06 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thisbook isnotatextbook tobecomeacquainted with thelaws ofnature. An elementaryknowledgeaboutlawsofnature,inparticularthelawsofphysics,is presupposed. Thebookisratherintendedtoprovideaclari?cationofconcepts and properties of the laws of nature. The authors would like to emphasise that this book has been developed – created – as a real teamwork. Although the chapters (and in some cases parts of the chapters) were originally written by one of the two authors, all of them were discussed thoroughly and in detail and have been revised and complemented afterwards. Even if both authors were in agreement on most of the foundational issues discussed in the book, they did not feel it necessary to balance every viewpoint. Thus some individual and personal di?erence or emphasis will still be recognisable from the chapters written by the di?erent authors. In this sense the authors feel speci?cally responsible for the chapters as follows: Mittelstaedt for Chaps. 4, 9. 3, 10, 11. 2, 12, 13 and Weingartner for Chaps. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8. 2, 9. 2, 9. 4. The remaining parts are joint sections. Most of the chapters are formulated as questions and they begin with arguments pro and contra. Then a detailed answer is proposed which contains a systematic discussion of the question. This is the respective main part of the chapter. It sometimes begins with a survey of the problem by giving some important answers to it from history (cf. Chaps. 6 and 9).
Download or read book Laws of Nature written by Tyler Hildebrand and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-16 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element provides an opinionated introduction to the metaphysics of laws of nature. The first section distinguishes between scientific and philosophical questions about laws and describes some criteria for a philosophical account of laws. Subsequent sections explore the leading philosophical theories in detail, reviewing the most influential arguments in the literature. The final few sections assess the state of the field and suggest avenues for future research.
Download or read book Causation and Laws of Nature written by H. Sankey and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1999-12-31 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Nature And Laws Of Chance Containing Among Other Particulars The Solutions Of Several Abstruse And Important Problems The Whole After A N written by Thomas Simpson and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book Laws in Nature written by Stephen Mumford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book outlines a major new theory of natural laws and addresses questions currently being debated by metaphysicians.
Download or read book Dispositions and Causes written by Toby Handfield and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2009-02-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title contains ten essays by scholars working in both metaphysics and in philosophy of science, examining the relation between dispositional and causal concepts.
Download or read book Probability written by D.H. Mellor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Probability: A Philosophical Introduction introduces and explains the principal concepts and applications of probability. It is intended for philosophers and others who want to understand probability as we all apply it in our working and everyday lives. The book is not a course in mathematical probability, of which it uses only the simplest results, and avoids all needless technicality. The role of probability in modern theories of knowledge, inference, induction, causation, laws of nature, action and decision-making makes an understanding of it especially important to philosophers and students of philosophy, to whom this book will be invaluable both as a textbook and a work of reference. In this book D. H. Mellor discusses the three basic kinds of probability – physical, epistemic, and subjective – and introduces and assesses the main theories and interpretations of them. The topics and concepts covered include: * chance * frequency * possibility * propensity * credence * confirmation * Bayesianism. Probability: A Philosophical Introduction is essential reading for all philosophy students and others who encounter or need to apply ideas of probability.
Download or read book The Nature and Laws of Chance written by Thomas Simpson and published by . This book was released on 1840 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Nature and Laws of Chance written by Thomas Simpson and published by . This book was released on 1792 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dispositions and Laws of Nature written by Jennifer McKitrick and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Concepts of Law of Nature written by Brendan P. Shea and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past 50 years, there has been a great deal of philosophical interest in laws of nature, perhaps because of the essential role that laws play in the formulation of, and proposed solutions to, a number of perennial philosophical problems. For example, many have thought that a satisfactory account of laws could be used to resolve thorny issues concerning explanation, causation, free-will, probability, and counterfactual truth. Moreover, interest in laws of nature is not constrained to metaphysics or philosophy of science; claims about laws play essential roles in areas as diverse as the philosophy of religion (e.g., in the argument from design) and the philosophy of mind (e.g., in the formulation of Davidson0́9s anomalous monism). In my dissertation, I consider and reject the widely-held thesis that the facts concerning laws can be reduced to the facts concerning the particular entities that the laws 0́−govern,0́+ and that the laws thus have no independent existence. I instead defend a version of nomic primitivism, according to which the facts about laws cannot be reduced to facts that are themselves non-nomic 0́3 i.e., to facts that do not fundamentally involve laws, counterfactuals, causes, etc. Insofar as the truth or falsity of reductionism about laws has implications for many of the problems mentioned above, I think that this result should be of interest even to those who who do not work in metaphysics or the philosophy of science. My methodology, which I lay out and defend in Chapter One, is a version of Carnapian explication. This method emphasizes the importance of articulating and maintaining clear distinctions between (1) the vague concept (or concepts) law of nature inherent in ordinary language and scientific practice and (2) the precise analyses of 0́−law of nature0́+ that philosophers have proposed as potential replacements for this concept. I argue that metaphysics-as-explication has clear advantages over rival conceptions of metaphysical methodology; in particular, it allows us to formulate evaluative criteria for metaphysical claims. In Chapter Two, I offer an example of how careful attention to concepts already in use can help resolve philosophical debate. Specifically, I argue that much recent literature has mistakenly assumed that there is only one concept of 0́−law of nature0́+ in use, while there are in fact at least two. Strong laws are the principles pursued by fundamental physics: they are true, objective, and bear distinctive relationships to counterfactuals and explanation. Weak laws, by contrast, lack at least one of these distinctive characteristics but play central roles in both the 0́−special sciences0́+ and in everyday life. In Chapters Three and Four, I offer extended arguments against the two most prominent versions of reductionism about laws 0́3 Humeanism and law necessitarianism. According to philosophical Humeans, the laws of nature supervene upon the non-modal, non-nomic facts concerning the behavior of particular things at particular times and places. Law necessitarians, by contrast, argue that the laws are in fact metaphysically necessary, and that which laws there are is determined by a class of primitive, modally loaded facts concerning the essences, natures, or dispositions. I argue that both of these views are mistaken insofar as they disagree with well-entrenched scientific practices and those in favor of reductionism have failed to provided sufficient reason for thinking that these practices should be revised. Much of my argument is focused on the role played by a number of supposed methodological principles, including appeals to intuition, parsimony, and methodological naturalism. While the conclusions of this dissertation are explicitly constrained to laws, many of the arguments should be of interest to those who are concerned about philosophical methodology (especially in the role of intuition in philosophical argument) or the appropriate relation between metaphysics, science, and the philosophy of science.
Download or read book Chance Cause Reason written by Arthur Walter Burks and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concepts and problems; The calculus of inductive probability; Alternative inductive logics and the justification of induction; Probability and action; The pragmatic theory of inductive probability; The logic of causal statements as a formal language; The logic of causal statements as a model of natural language; The dispositional theory of empirical probability; Cause and chance in space - time systems; The presupposition of theory induction; Chance, cause, and reason.
Download or read book The Divine Lawmaker written by John Foster and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-15 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Foster presents a clear and powerful discussion of a range of topics relating to our understanding of the universe: induction, laws of nature, and the existence of God. He begins by developing a solution to the problem of induction - a solution whose key idea is that the regularities in the workings of nature that have held in our experience hitherto are to be explained by appeal to the controlling influence of laws, as forms of natural necessity. His second line of argumentfocuses on the issue of what we should take such necessitational laws to be, and whether we can even make sense of them at all. Having considered and rejected various alternatives, Foster puts forward his own proposal: the obtaining of a law consists in the causal imposing of a regularity on theuniverse as a regularity. With this causal account of laws in place, he is now equipped to offer an argument for theism. His claim is that natural regularities call for explanation, and that, whatever explanatory role we may initially assign to laws, the only plausible ultimate explanation is in terms of the agency of God. Finally, he argues that, once we accept the existence of God, we need to think of him as creating the universe by a method which imposes regularities on it in the relevantlaw-yielding way. In this new perspective, the original nomological-explanatory solution to the problem of induction becomes a theological-explanatory solution.The Divine Lawmaker is bold and original in its approach, and rich in argument. The issues on which it focuses are among the most important in the whole epistemological and metaphysical spectrum.
