48 research outputs found
Can Physics ever be Complete if there is no Fundamental Level in Nature?
In their recent book Every Thing Must Go, Ladyman and Ross claim: (i) Physics is analytically complete since it is the only science that cannot be left incomplete. (ii) There might not be an ontologically fundamental level. (iii) We should not admit anything into our ontology unless it has explanatory and predictive utility. In this discussion note I aim to show that the ontological commitment in implies that the completeness of no science can be achieved where no fundamental level exists. Therefore, if claim requires a science to actually be complete in order to be considered as physics,, and if Ladyman and Ross's âtentative metaphysical hypothesis ... that there is no fundamental levelâ is true,, then there simply is no physics. Ladyman and Ross can, however, avoid this unwanted result if they merely require physics to ever strive for completeness rather than to already be complete
Ernst Mach on the Self
In his Contributions to the Analysis of the Sensations (Mach 1885) the phenomenalist philosopher Ernst Mach confronts us with a difficulty: âIf we regard the Ego as a real unity, we become involved in the following dilemma: either we must set over against the Ego a world of unknowable entities [âŠ] or we must regard the whole world, the Egos of other people included, as comprised in our own Ego.â (Mach 1885: 21)
In other words, if we start from a phenomenalist viewpoint, i.e., if we believe that the manifold of sensations we are confronted with is ontologically fundamental âas Mach clearly does: âFor us, colors, sounds, spaces, times,⊠are the ultimate ele-mentsâ (Mach 1885: 23)âthen we are in danger to end up in solipsism. Unless, that is, we assume that some underlying thing-in-itself substratum from which matter, we ourselves, and all the others emanate.
The only other alter-native seems to beâand Mach advertises it vehemently for he denies any âmons-trous notion of a thing-in-itselfâ (Mach 1885: 6)1âthat we get rid of the Ego. For, if there is no Self in the first place, then the question whether there are others dissolves. To put it the other way round, it is ok that the others do not exist because, really, I do not exist either. If the Ego is a Myth solipsism is not just wrong but nonsense.
There are two questions this paper wishes to address: first, do we need independent additional support for the denial of the Self or is the avoidance of solipsism reason enough to assume the Egoâs non-existence? I will argue that we do need additional reasons and I will evaluate those that Mach indeed gives to prove that âthe primary fact is not the I, the Ego, but the elements (sensations)â (Mach 1885: 19). Second, is the deconstruction of the I, even if further sufficient support can be found, really adequate to stop us from worrying about solipsism? The doubt I will put forward is that the illusion of a Self might conjure up enough of an Egoâjust like feeling a pain is having a pain, even if it is located in a phantom limbâto start us wondering whether it also occurs elsewhere
The Bookkeeper and the Lumberjack. Metaphysical vs. Nomological Necessity
The striking difference between the orthodox nomological necessitation view of laws and the claims made recently by Scientific Essentialism is that on the latter interpretation laws are metaphysically necessary while they are contingent on the basis of the former. This shift is usually perceived as an upgrading: essentialism makes the laws as robust as possible.
The aim of my paperâin which I contrast Brian Ellisâs Scientific Essentialism and David Armstrongâs theory of nomological necessityâis threefold.
(1) I first underline the familiar fact that metaphysical necessity (of Kripkean âwater is necessarily H2Oâ kind) is not a stronger kind of necessity than nomological necessity but an entirely different kind of thing: nomological, but not metaphysical necessity, is an intra-world necessitation which Armstrong (almost) identifies with causation; metaphysical, but not nomological necessitation, has a canonical link to possible world considerations and counterfactual reasoning. Hence, the change from one necessity to the other is not an upgrading but a substantial shift.
(2) I will explain how the essentialists, who promote this shift, are nonetheless able to retain the features of nomological necessity.
(3) I also explore, for both the essentialist and the Armstrongian, whether they could extract a modal force from intra-world nomological necessity which it does not have per se. I argue that such a modal force is, indeed, obtainable for them.
I will close the paper with some remarks and questions about the relation between Kripkean metaphysical necessity and the modal version of nomological necessity as defined in (3)
Can Capacities Rescue Us From Ceteris paribus Laws?
Many philosophers of science think that most laws of nature (even those of fundamental
physics) are so called ceteris paribus laws, i.e., roughly speaking, laws with exceptions. Yet,
the ceteris paribus clause of these laws is problematic. Amongst the more infamous
difficulties is the danger that 'For all x: Fx â Gx, ceteris paribus' may state no more than a
tautology: 'For all x: Fx â Gx, unless not'.
One of the major attempts to avoid this problem (and others concerning ceteris
paribus laws) is to claim that the subject matter of laws are ascriptions of dispositions,
powers, capacities etc., and not the regular behaviour we find in nature. That we do not know
whether the cetera are paria in a specific situation does not matter to the dispositionalist
because the objects have the disposition regardless of the circumstances. The defence of the
latter claim is that dispositions can be instantiated without being manifested. Hence, the laws
that ascribe dispositions are strict and it looks as if they do not face the above mentioned
problems of ceteris paribus laws.
In this essay I attempt to show that these assumptions are wrong. I hope to illustrate
that not only does the ceteris paribus clause reoccur inside the dispositions, moreover, there
are lawsâlaws about non-fundamental entities with instable dispositionsâwhich bear a
ceteris paribus clause that cannot be hidden in a disposition
Verificationist Theory of Meaning
The verification theory of meaning aims to characterise what it is for a sentence to be meaningful and also what kind of abstract object the meaning of a sentence is. A brief outline is given by Rudolph Carnap, one of the theory's most prominent defenders:
If we knew what it would be for a given sentence to be found true then we would know what its meaning is. [...] thus the meaning of a sentence is in a certain sense identical with the way we determine its truth or falsehood; and a sentence has meaning only if such a determination is possible. [4: 420]
In short, the verification theory of meaning claims that the meaning of a sentence is the method of its verification
Real ceteris paribus Laws
Although there is an ongoing controversy in philosophy of science about so called ceteris
paribus laws that is, roughly, about laws with exceptionsĂła fundamental question
about those laws has been neglected (Ă2). This is due to the fact that this question
becomes apparent only if two different readings of ceteris paribus clauses in laws have
been separated.
The first reading of ceteris paribus clauses, which I will call the epistemic reading,
covers applications of laws: predictions, for example, might go wrong because we do
not know all the relevant factors which are causally effective in relevant situation. The
second reading, which I will call the metaphysical reading, is concerned with the laws
themselves and their possible exceptions (Ă3). It is this latter readingĂłand the funda-
mental question associated with itĂłwhich has been neglected due to the confusion of
the two readings (Ă4): if we leave epistemic issues aside is there at all conceptual space
left for a notion of laws of nature which allows the laws themselves to have exceptions?
I call a law with exceptions in this sense, if such there is, a real ceteris paribus law.
To tackle this question, I distinguish grounded laws from non-grounded laws (Ă5). A
grounded law is, roughly, a law about structured entities where the properties of the
parts of that structure figure themselves in laws of nature (Ă6). I will claim that, since
the substructure of such an entity can be damaged, grounded laws themselves can face
exceptions. Hence, they are candidates to be real (metaphysical) ceteris paribus laws in
the sense of my central question. I will discuss grounded laws and their exceptions in
detail (Ă7, Ă8, Ă9).
For reasons of space, the further question whether we can even have a notion of fun-
damental (non-grounded) laws that allows for exceptions cannot be discussed here. I
will, however, give a positive answer and also outline how I have argued for that claim
elsewhere (Ă10)
Better Best Systems and the Issue of CP-Laws
This paper combines two ideas:
(i) That the Lewisian best system analysis of lawhood (BSA) can cope with laws that have exceptions (cf. Braddon-Mitchell 2001, Schrenk 2007).
(ii) That a BSA can be executed not only on the mosaic of perfectly natural properties but also on any set of special science properties (cf., inter alia, Schrenk 2007 & 2008, Cohen & Callender 2009 & 2010).
Bringing together (i) and (ii) results in an analysis of special science ceteris paribus laws
Highly Selective PTK2 Proteolysis Targeting Chimeras to Probe Focal Adhesion Kinase Scaffolding Functions
Focal adhesion tyrosine
kinase (PTK2) is often overexpressed in human hepatocellular carcinoma
(HCC), and several reports have linked PTK2 depletion and/or pharmacological
inhibition to reduced tumorigenicity. However, the clinical relevance
of targeting PTK2 still remains to be proven. Here, we present two
highly selective and functional PTK2 proteolysis-targeting chimeras
utilizing von HippelâLindau and cereblon ligands to hijack
E3 ligases for PTK2 degradation. BI-3663 (cereblon-based) degrades
PTK2 with a median DC<sub>50</sub> of 30 nM to >80% across a panel
of 11 HCC cell lines. Despite effective PTK2 degradation, these compounds
did not phenocopy the reported antiproliferative effects of PTK2 depletion
in any of the cell lines tested. By disclosing these compounds, we
hope to provide valuable tools for the study of PTK2 degradation across
different biological systems
Real Potential
There\u27s a student in my philosophy class who has real potential. I might express this thought in any of the following ways: She is potentially a philosopher ; She is a potential philosopher ; She has the potential to be a philosopher. The first way uses a cognate of potential as an adverb to modify is. The second ways uses potential as an adjective to modify philosopher. However, the third way uses potential as a noun to refer to something that the student has. What kind of thing is this potential? One worry about even asking this question is that this nominalization of the adjective potential suggests a metaphysical picture that is an artifact of language. This is even more strongly suggested by the less ambiguous nominalization potentiality. Once we have the term potentiality, we have a new kind of entity to countenance, and questions about its nature arise. One might argue, just because we use the word potentiality, we should not think that it refers to a thing that someone can have.
There is something disingenuous about such an argument. It proceeds as if the adverbial and adjectival uses of potential are unproblematic, and questions only arise with the nominalization. But it is not obvious what it means to potentially be something, or what it means to be a potential something. To say that someone is potentially a philosopher is to talk about a way of being that falls short of actuality. And a potential philosopher is not a kind of philosopher at all. So what is it? Each of the three above formulations is a modal claim. If there is anything philosophical puzzling about a potentiality claim, it is not going to go away by translating it into an equivalent modal claim.
In this chapter I defend the existence of potentialities against anti-realist arguments, and make a proposal as to their nature. The proposal, in short, is that potentialities are properties, specifically dispositions, though more needs to be said about properties and dispositions. I will do this in Part I. In Part II, I will address two lines of argument against potentialities: that they are reducible, and that they are causally inert