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科学哲学ニューズレター |
Soshichi Uchii, Wes and Merrilee Salmon in Kyoto UniversityEditor: Soshichi Uchii
It is our great honor to have two distinguished philosophers of science from the University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A., as our visiting professors here at Kyoto University. When I was a student in the philosophy department in Kyoto, some 35 years ago, I attended a course by Prof. John D. Goheen, Stanford University, given here in Kyoto. He gave a seminar on metaethics (in addition to a lecture on Whitehead), and that was my first experience to write a paper in English; and since that was a valuable experience for me, I wished, ever since, to arrange similar opportunities for my students, and I am indeed pleased that I have succeeded in realizing this year one of my wishes. The following is my personal report (at the second week of June) of Wes's lecture on causality and of Merrilee's seminar on the philosophy of social science.
The main campus of the University of Pittsburgh
(1) Wesley Salmon on causality
Wesley Salmon said that this lecture is going to be his last class in a university, but he is now presenting his up-to-date view on causality. Beginning with David Hume's analysis of causation, he wishes to present a new view of causality in the object (not in the mind). For this purpose, he uses as his materials Mackie's book The Cement of the Universe (1980), and Sosa & Tooley's useful anthology Causation (1993). Initially nearly 30 students attended and still more than 20 students continue to attend, despite the language barrier and rather heavy requirements of two sessions a week, which is rather unusual here in Kyoto (we are renowned for sloppy and lenient customs). While the students are asked to read substantial portions of these books, Wes provides related materials and analyses in his talks. For instance, he talked about the significance of the case of geometry for discussing the epistemological problem of the synthetic a priori; he talked about the importance of Mill's methods of eliminative induction for understanding important features of causality. And in order to prepare the grounds for probabilistic causality, he talked about the development of quantum theory, beginning with Planck's quantum hypothesis, Einstein's light quanta hypothesis for explaining photo-electric effect, Compton scattering, de Broglie's idea of the wave-like character of matter, and finally to Schroedinger's wave equation and Heisenberg indeterminacy (uncertainty) principle. This part of Wes's talks was just marvelous, showing his expertise in a plain language. We also admire Wes's good memory as regards philosophical matters.
Then he began to introduce his own theory, drawing on Reichenbach's original ideas in The Direction of Time (1956). Reichenbach was the first to begin to develop the idea of probabilistic causality. Conjunctive fork is defined statistically by Reichenbach. I.J.Good and Patrick Suppes presented their respective versions of probabilistic causality. But they all presuppose that the principle of positive statistical relevance is necessary to make sense of the notion of probabilistic causality. Wes is going to argue that they are wrong, and that probabilistic causality makes sense even if there is a negative statistical relevance in a given case. Wes has the distinction between statistical concepts and physical concepts in his arsenal; while he uses conjunctive folks, he also introduces physical concepts of interaction and of causal process, and he postulates the notion of complete causal structure of the world (for any given region). He wishes to show that if we replace our old talks in terms of "cause-effect" relations by his proposed new talks in terms of his notions, we shall be better off. There seem to be difficult problems of combining probabilistic processes (and Wes is a frequentist, you may recall) with physical (and actual) processes, these are the most intriguing part of his whole idea.
Wes also gave a talk on causality for the Kyoto Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science on May 28; he talked for 6 hours, during the session and the dinner after the session (according to Merrilee), and consequently and unfortunately, he lost his voice for several days! I also regret that most students do not follow him when Wes inserts, every now and then, a joke into his philosophical talks! Incidentally, he has generously distributed a copy of his Four Decades of Scientific Explanation to each student in his class, for which we must thank.
(2) Merrilee Salmon on the philosophy of social science
As for Merrilee, she is giving an intensive seminar on the philosophy of social science, with reading materials from Martin & McIntyre's anthology, Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science (1994). I believe that this is the first occasion that we have this sort of full-fledged seminar on this subject, because there are very few (if any) philosophers of social science in Japan, although there are certainly a number of scholars who talk about the philosophy of social science, every now and then. Her class is smaller than Wes's, but ten students are regularly attending. Merrilee makes a clear outline for each session (you can see it on the web), which is a great help for Japanese students with a heavy handicap for listening to spoken English.
So far, she has discussed such topics as the naturalism in the social sciences (begun by J.S.Mill and forcefully defended by Carl Hempel), the humanism or the hermeneutic challenge to the naturalistic model (Collingwood, Winch, and Charles Taylor), the problem of rationality and cognitive relativism, functionalism in anthropology and sociology, and the problems of functional explanation in the social sciences. Students may have already realized how the philosophy of social sciences, which may have looked somehow remote from the major realm of standard philosophy of science, is in fact closely connected with it. Also, they may have well realized how these problems of the philosophy of social sciences stem from specific studies and theories of anthropology, sociology, or political sciences, etc. Merrilee shows her broad and detailed knowledge of such social scientists as Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski, and Talcott Parsons, as well as knowledge of such philosophers as Hempel, Nagel, Collingwood, Charles Taylor, Peter Winch, or more recent figures such as David Papineau, G.A.Cohen, Harold Kincaid, and Jon Elster. If any student among her audience gets interested in these problems and begins to study in more depth, it is more than welcome for the philosophy of science in Japan.
She is also going to give a talk for the Kyoto Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science toward the end of June. Having seen her husband's example, she may not talk as long as 6 hours!
In the meantime, a couple of other distinguished philosophers visited Kyoto. Prof. Allan Gibbard, University of Michigan, was invited by an organization in Tokyo; he also visited Kyoto and gave a talk on rationality at the School of Economics. Although some philosophy professors and students attended this talk, we regret that we did not have another seminar for philosophers; since our school is going on, it is for us very hard to create such extra occasions. David Gauthier, another distinguished moral philosopher of University of Pittsburgh, visited Kyoto for a couple of days. However, since he was with his family and prohibited (by who?) to get involved in philosophy, only Wes and Merrilee had the privilege to dine and talk with his family; I just happened to meet him at a train station close to the campus.
See Causality and Philosophy of Social Science
Last modified Nov. 30, 2008 . (c) Soshichi Uchii