PHI 30 Lecture 5: Salmon_Notes pt.2
Document Summary
Hempel was going to put causes into laws and/or initial conditions. These examples show that you should focus on causal structure not logical structure. Logic doesn"t explain things, causes explain things. Violation of symmetry theory: a man explains his lack of pregnancy in terms of his taking the pill. Salmon says the focus should be on statistical relevance, not high probability. Giving a statistical model of explanation that gets rid of logical structure and focuses on causal structure (that is statistically relevant) Hempel uses requirement of maximal speci city to deal with problem of relevancy (logical structure) however, you run up against principle of essential epistemic relativity. Only relevant to what the person explaining it just happens to know. Because hempel and salmon both argue for relevancy salmon must overcome the problem of explaining that explanations do not rely on just our knowledge. 1) focus on what"s relevant: causal structure, avoid epistemic relativity.
