Final Questions

Hamilton College, Fall 2008

Sample Questions for the Final

Questions for Schneider

1. Describe Earman’s single-particle world. How is it a counter-example to HS?

2. What is the Negotiability Reply to Carroll’s mirror argument? Consider the role of Schneider’s Principle C.

3. Outline Schneider’s response to Beebee’s argument against the governing conception of laws.

4. Describe the On-Balance Reply to the anti-Humean counter-examples. Why does Loewer think it favors HS? How does Schneider respond?

5. What is primitivism about laws? How does it survive the On-Balance Reply?

Questions for Loewer

1. How do fit, strength, and simplicity trade off, for the MRL account of laws?

2. What are laws, according to the van Fraassen characterization (§IV)? Which clauses does MRL violate?

3. Are MRL laws explanatory?

4. Do MRL laws support inductive inferences?

5. Are MRL laws mind-independent?

6. How are intuitions regarding laws unreliable? Do intuitions support a preference for A-laws over L-laws?

Questions for Beebee

1. Describe the intuition that the laws of nature govern. How is it connected to the interpretation of laws as necessary connections?

2. How is the realist view of laws (like that of Armstrong) non-supervenient?

3. For the Humean, how do the laws and facts determine future states of the world? How is this determination different for the anti-Humean?

4. Compare the concept of governance in science, religion, morality, and sport.

5. How does Beebee defend MRL against the Carroll/Tooley objection?

6. Describe Carroll's mirror argument. Differentiate the status of L in U1* and U2*. How does Beebee argue that Carroll's argument is question-begging? (It is fine to focus on the informal argument.)

Questions for Carroll

1. How do laws have modal character?

2. What are naive regularity theories? What problems do they have?

3. How does the MRL account of laws rely on the notion of a natural property? How does Carroll criticize this reliance?

4. Describe the Tooley counter-example to Humean supervenience. How does Carroll argue that it leads to giving up the traditional interpretation of Humean supervenience?

5. Describe Carroll’s counter-example to Humean supervenience which relies on U1 and U2. How do those worlds support the counter-example?

6. Describe Carroll’s counter-example to Humean supervenience which relies on U5* and U6*. Why are they counter-examples?

Questions for Maudlin

1. Distinguish separability from physical statism. How do they combine to form Humean supervenience?

2. How is the quantum wave function a problem for separability?

3. Do scientists dismiss modal properties and causal connections? How is the supervenience of law on physical state contrary to practice?

4. Why are laws problematic both for Hume and for positivists?

5. What is a fundamental physical property? Why isn’t fragility fundamental? Can we reduce the notion of law in the same way that we reduce the notion of fragility?

6. Why is the explanation that Socrates’ blood type is not ontologically worrisome because it is unknowable in principle “bizarre” (74)?

Questions for Hume and Lewis

1. Contrast Hume's claim that, "Every effect is a distinct event from its cause" (2) with his claim that, "Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts [and] communication of motion by impulse... are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature" (3).

2. To what does Hume refer by ‘necessary connections'? Are there necessary connections or not?

3. What is Humean supervenience?

4. What, according to Lewis, are laws of nature?

5. What exists, for the defender of Humean supervenience? Distinguish haecceitism from anti haecceitism.

6. What is the Armstrong/Kripke spinning sphere/disk. Why might it be a problem for Humean supervenience? How does Lewis respond?

7. What problem does chance create for Humean supervenience? Why does Lewis look for truthmakers for probabilities?

8. What is the difference between symmetry and frequency? How do frequencies defeat symmetries?

9. What is wrong with the frequency analysis of single-case chance? How does it depend on a Humean account of laws?

10. Describe Ramsey's best-system analysis of laws.

Questions for Hempel, and the D-N Model of Explanation

1. What are the criteria of relevance and testability for explanations? How might an explanation fail to meet these criteria? How might they be relevant, but not explanatory?

2. Describe the D-N model of explanation. What is the relation between the explanans and the explanandum? Differentiate the Lns from the Cns. Provide examples of D-N explanations.

3. Must laws of nature be true? Must laws of nature have true instances? Explain.

4. Are all statements of universal form laws of nature? How does Goodman distinguish between accidental generalizations and laws?

5. How do probabilistic explanations differ from ones based on universal laws? How do these two types of explanations differ on disconfirming evidence?

6. What is "inductive subsumption under laws of probabilistic form" (68)?

Questions for Intuition and Reflective Equilibrium

1. What is the method of reflective equilibrium? What is the role of intuition in reflective equilibrium? How does reflective equilibrium contrast with foundationalism?

2. Describe Goodman's account of the justification of inferential practices. Differentiate between constitutive and evidential interpretations of the process.

3. How does the justification of the method of reflective equilibrium relate to the problem of induction?

4. What is the difference between narrow and wide reflective equilibrium?

5. What is cognitive diversity? What is the problem of cognitive diversity?

6. What is the gambler's fallacy? How is it in reflective equilibrium for some people? Why are this and related phenomena a problem for reflective equilibrium?

Questions for Kripke and Modal Logic

1. What are possible worlds? How do we know about them?

2. What is rigid designation? How does it relate to transworld identity? What kinds of terms rigidly designate? Provide examples.

3. How does Kripke's argument against identity theory rely on intuitions about possible worlds? Consider the role of rigid designation.

4. Describe the differences between logical possibility and physical possibility.