Abstract
The meaning and truth conditions for claims about physical modality and causation have been considered problematic since Hume’s empiricist critique. But the underlying semantic commitments that follow from Hume’s empiricism about ideas have long been abandoned by the philosophical community. Once the consequences of that abandonment are properly appreciated, the problems of physical modality and causal locutions fall away, and can be painlessly solved.
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Notes
The form of causation at issue is what Hall [4] has called “production”, and we can in parallel fashion isolate what we may call “productive explanation”: explaining by citing how a result was produced by the sequential operation of the laws of physics over time. This is not to deny that there are other forms of explanation, or that the everyday notion of causation is more open-textured than that of physical production. But the everyday notion is also highly context- and interest-dependent, and does not admit of any clean analysis.
References
Hume D (2007) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Maudlin T (2010) The Metaphysics Within Physics. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Goodman N (1983) Fact, Fiction and Forecast. Harvard University Press, Cambridge
Hall N (2004) Two concepts of causation. In: Collins J, Hall N (eds) Causation and Counterfactuals. A Banford Book, Cambridge, pp 225–276
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Maudlin, T. A Modal Free Lunch. Found Phys 50, 522–529 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-020-00327-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-020-00327-7