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Single Idea 15178

[filed under theme 26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / e. Anti scientific essentialism ]

Full Idea

Is there anything in the procedures of scientists that could reveal to them that water is necessarily H2O or that gold necessarily has atomic number 79.

Gist of Idea

Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers?

Source

Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.4)

Book Ref

Sidelle,Alan: 'Necessity, Essence and Individuation' [Cornell 1989], p.95

A Reaction

This is Leibniz's is view, that empirical evidence can never reveal necessities. Given that we know some necessities, you have an argument for rationalism.

The 22 ideas from 'Necessity, Essence and Individuation'

15032 Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider]
15167 Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths [Sidelle]
15165 A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths [Sidelle]
15168 That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water' [Sidelle]
15166 Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle]
15169 Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle]
15164 We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle]
15172 Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties [Sidelle]
15173 That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery [Sidelle]
15171 The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence [Sidelle]
15176 The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle]
15174 A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle]
15175 Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects [Sidelle]
15180 There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle]
15181 Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle]
15177 Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable [Sidelle]
15179 To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle]
15178 Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers? [Sidelle]
15182 Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle]
15185 We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it [Sidelle]
15184 Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities [Sidelle]
15183 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle]