Philosophy of Science

Hw # 1

Name: Omar Saleem ID: 205111466

It is said necessity is the mother of invention. Science is considered an invention which is created to fulfill our need to understand the world, science achieves this by providing objective explanations. One view of looking at scientific explanation is considering it as a causal explanation, this point of view claims that scientists search for causes in order to seek out explanations which will enable science to control and predict phenomena. But, for theory of causation to apply successfully to an explanation it has to explicitly or implicitly assume laws. According to empiricist point of view, causation consists in law-governed sequence that is, the relation of cause and effect obtains only when one or more laws subsume the events. Also, the empiricist claim all causal sequences share one thing in common that is missing in all coincidental sequences that is, they are instances of laws. The view of an empiricist philosopher David Hume who provided the basis for the theory is that it is not required that for every causal claim we make, that we must already know the law or laws which connect cause and effect. Rather it is only required that there be a law or laws which maybe known or still to be discovered. And that it is a task of science to find these laws and employ to provide explanations. By considering scientific explanations as casual explanations it can be concluded that scientific explanations require laws. But this argument creates problems. Firstly, there are some important explanations that do not cite causes. For example, the ideal gas law explains the temperature of a gas at equilibrium by appeal to its pressure and volume. Where as these cannot be the cause, since all three obtain at the same time. Secondly, the claim that every causal sequence is causal just because it is law-governed is not widely accepted among philosophers who acknowledge that causation is much stronger a relation between events than mere regular succession. For example, the sound of thunder regularly succeeds the flash of lightning, but the latter is not its cause. Rather they are joint effects of the electrical discharge from the cloud to the ground. Another issue is that what we identify as the cause of an event is almost always one among many that could have made it happen, and no cause can guarantee the events

occurrence. For, example the case of lighting of a match is cited by its cause that is, the match was struck. But the striking is not alone responsible for the lighting of the match. If the match had been wet or if there was no oxygen and many other conditions like these would have to be considered in order to decide if the lighting of match will be successful or not. So this raises the issue to whether striking was a cause or a mere condition. This problem is also obvious in the laws that include centeris paribus that is, other things being equal, which is a rather hard condition to ensure. The argument that all causal sequences are distinguished from coincidental sequences because they are instances of laws. This argument raises the question of distinguishing laws from accidental generalization. This problem is also faced the positivists when they try to decide between different law or theories. But as we can see that the causation basically calls for laws to provide explanations which leads us to the argument about how laws are formed. One perspective is that both the positivist and empiricist share that scientific knowledge should in some way be logically derived from facts arrived at by observation. But, logic on its own can simply reveal what follows from, or what in a sense is already contained in, the statement we already have in hand. Alternatively, theories can be derived from the fact using induction, which involves a finite number of observations that can be repeated under various conditions and also have no contradicting statements. The laws and theories derived by induction can be used to make predictions and explanations either by itself or by deduction. The principle of inductions faces many problems such as the problem with the condition that there should be finite number of observations forming the basis of a generalization, but the quantity required or acceptable to be able to generalize is not specified. Then the problem with the condition that the observation must be repeated under a wide variety of conditions, here the problem is that one cannot specify the quantity of the conditions that might be affecting the outcome of an observation. Also, the condition that there should be no contradicting observation should be present is a problem, since history teaches that there can be many contradictions.

It is noticed that with induction any generalization from facts about the observable world can yield nothing other than generalization about the observable world. Therefore, the scientific knowledge of the unobservable world can never be established only by employing induction. Another problem is that some laws are based on directly our observations or measurements which will have some degree of error, so how can exact laws be inductively justified on the bases of inexact evidence. Also, there is a problem that how induction itself is to be justified. There are two options that are, either it is justified by logical deduction or by appeal to experience. It is already noted that the first option cannot be used. So, for the second option would conclude in a way that induction has been successfully applied in many occasions so it works. But, this would be just like using the principle of induction to proof it self so both option will fail. Another problem for those seeking the nature of scientific explanations in the causal relationships which these explanations report is that many of them are in statistical terms. Some are statistical because they represent the incompleteness of our knowledge to understand or discover fully the concerned conditions or causes for a certain event to occur. For example, the positive correlation is said to exist between smoking and lung cancer and the probability associated to it is 40%, but we cannot say for certain if someone will get cancer because we are un aware of the background conditions. While on the other hand there are law like quantum mechanics which are based on probabilistic phenomena at the core of the subject. Unification is one way of increasing our understanding of causations. This is because as we go to more general and if the universe reflects a hierarchy of more basic and more derived causal sequences, then explanations which effect unification will also uncover the causal structure of the world. But if we assume that the universes causal structure is hidden permanently that is, it is too complex or too small or other reasons. But in this case even unification will not be able to enhance our understanding of the world, or will only do to certain limits. Another form of explanations is the teleological explanations which are based on the fact that the causal explanation is incomplete since it just reveals how things come about or move from one cause to an effect, but does not go in the detail

of why it came to happen, more like seeking an end result or something that was aimed at for example, green plants have chlorophyll in order to produce starch. Teleological explanations tend to explain causes in terms of effects. But, there is an objection that how can a future event which is yet to occur can be responsible for bringing about the earlier event. Also sometime the aims or goals that explain their cause are not attained. For example, producing starch can be concluded to the presence of chlorophyll in the plant even when absence of carbon dioxide prevents starch production. Basically, physical theory rule out teleological explanation as it requires future to determine the past.