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Best Friends or Worst Enemies Bridge Laws in Inter-theoretic Relations| old_uid | 8880 |
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| title | Best Friends or Worst Enemies Bridge Laws in Inter-theoretic Relations |
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| start_date | 2010/06/10 |
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| schedule | 11h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | Despite some differences of detail, a common assumption of many models of inter-theoretic reduction is that a certain kind of postulate, called by E. Nagel a 'bridge law', plays a key-role in enabling reductions. Thus, if we take - customarily, and roughly - an emergent phenomenon to be one for which its reduction to (or derivation from) its microphysical basis is impossible, then these laws seem to be the reductionist's best friend and the emergentist's worst enemy. This assumption is corroborated by the standard philosophical examples of allegedly successful reductions in physics and psychology.
In this paper I argue that the role of the bridge laws in inter-theoretic reduction is actually more complex than this assumption takes it to be. I discuss an example from physics, involving first order phase transitions, which has two important features: (a) it provides a clear candidate for an emergent phenomenon, and (b) the emergence / irreducibility claim can be traced back to the adoption of a certain bridge law. Thus, the thesis I'll try to substantiate here is that there are contexts in which the role of the bridge laws is simply the opposite of what the received wisdom has recommended so far: they can also be the emergentists' best friends and the reductionists' worst enemies. |
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| responsibles | Barberousse |
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