PHIL 2301 Lecture Notes - Special Sciences, Positivism, Physical Law
Document Summary
A typical thesis of positivistic philosophy of science is that all true theories in the special sciences should reduce to physical theories in the long run. What has traditionally been called "the unity of science" is a much stronger, and much less plausible, thesis than the generality of physics. Reductivism is the view that all the special sciences reduce to physics. The sense of reduce to" is, however, proprietary. Be a law of the special science s ((1) is intended to be read as something like alll s1 situations bring about s2 situations". A necessary and sufficient condition of the reduction of (1) to a law of physics is that the formulae (2) and (3) be laws, and a necessary and sufficient condition of the reduction of. S to physics is that all its laws be so reducible. (2a) s1x p1x (2b) s2x p2x (3) p1x -> p2x.
