Wesley C. Salmon
Wesley Salmon | |
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Born | Wesley Charles Salmon August 9, 1925 Confirmation theory, philosophy of science, metaphysics |
Notable ideas | Statistical-relevance model, the requirement of strict maximal specificity, mark transmission |
Wesley Charles Salmon (August 9, 1925 – April 22, 2001) was an American
Under
Education and career
Salmon attended
Salmon authored over 100 papers.[3] For decades, his introductory textbook Logic was a standard, widely used, that went through multiple editions and was translated into several languages, including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.[3] Salmon was president of the Philosophy of Science Association from 1971 to 1972, and president of the American Philosophical Association's Pacific Division from 1977 to 1978.[3] In 1988, at the University of Bologna, for its 900th anniversary, he gave a four-lecture series, "Four decades of scientific explanation", whereupon, taking Italian courses at University of Pittsburgh, Salmon mastered Italian and gave lectures at several other universities in Italy.[12] From 1998 to 1999, he was president of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, sponsored by UNESCO.[3] Salmon was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[3] In 2001, traveling with his wife Merilee, also a philosopher of science, Wesley Salmon died suddenly in a car crash,[13][11] though she was uninjured.[12]
Philosophical work
Confirmation theory
Starting in 1983, Salmon became interested in theory choice in science, and sought to resolve the enduring conflict between the
Scientific explanation
Humean empiricism
According to the empiricist view associated with the 18th-century Scottish philosopher
In the 20th century, as a formula to scientifically answer Why? questions,
Relevance/specificity
By 1970, Salmon had found that when seeking to explain probabilistic phenomena, we seek not merely high probability, but screen for causal influence by removing components of a system to find ones that alter the probability. Salmon sought to replace Hempel's IS model with Salmon's statistical-relevance model (SR model).
In 1948 when explicating DN model, Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim had stated scientific explanation's semiformal conditions of adequacy (CA), but acknowledged redundancy of the third, empirical content (CA3), implied by the other three: derivability (CA1), lawlikeness (CA2), and truth (CA4).[17] In the early 1980s, Salmon called for returning cause to because,[18] and helped replace CA3 empirical content with CA3' strict maximal specificity.[9] Yet ultimately, Salmon found mere modifications to the covering law model to be unsatisfactory.[8]
Causal mechanism
As conventionally conceived by philosophers of science, scientific explanation of a phenomenon was simply
Metaphysics of causality
Mark transmission
In
Salmon explained causal processes as "the means by which causal influence is transmitted", and thus what "constitute precisely the objective physical causal connections which Hume sought in vain".[22] Salmon explained that causal processes can transmit a mark or can transmit structure in a way continuous spatiotemporally.[8] Thereby, the marking principle sorts causal processes from pseudo processes (Reichenbach's "unreal sequences").[5] Marking a causal process modifies it,[8] a mark not transmitted by a pseudo process.[5] Meanwhile, causal forks are "the means by which causal structure is generated and modified".[22] Others have found Salmon's theory of mark transmission to have shortcomings, however, whereby it can fail to discern causal processes from pseudo processes.[5]
Bibliography[23]
- Logic (1963)
- The Foundations of Scientific Inference (1967)
- Statistical Evidence and Statistical Relevance (1971)
- Space, Time, and Motion: A Philosophical Introduction (1975)
- Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (1984)
- Four Decades of Scientific Explanation (1990)
- Causality and Explanation (1998)
Notes
- ^ a b Paul Lewis, "Wesley C. Salmon, 75, theorist in realm of improbable events", New York Times, May 4, 2001.
- ^ a b c d e f William Bechtel, Discovering Cell Mechanisms: The Creation of Modern Cell Biology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp 24–25.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Lance Lugar, § "Biography", Collection #ASP.2003.01: "Wesley C. Salmon Papers", Special Collections Department, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh, 1951–2001 (collection dates), June 2011 (date published), accessed March 12, 2014.
- ^ Vincenzo Crupi, "Confirmation", in Edward N Zalta, ed, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2014 edn.
- ^ a b c d e f Phil Dowe, "Causal Processes", in Edward N Zalta, ed, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2008 edn, esp §§ 2 "Objections to Russell's theory", 3 "Salmon's mark transmission theory" & 4 "Objections to Salmon's mark transmission theory".
- ^ Kenneth J Rothman & Sander Greenland, "Causation and causal inference in epidemiology", American Journal of Public Health, 2005;95(Suppl 1):S144-50.
- ^ Deductive-nomological model
- ^ S2CID 73604470.
- ^ a b James H Fetzer, ch 3 The paradoxes of Hempelian explanation", in Fetzer, ed, Science, Explanation, and Rationality: Aspects of the Philosophy of Carl G Hempel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p 129.
- ^ Wesley Salmon (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- ^ a b c d e James H Fetzer, "In memoriam: Wesley C Salmon (1925–2001)", Synthese, 2002 Jul;132(1–2):1–3.
- ^ a b Adolf Grünbaum, "Memorial minutes: Wesley C. Salmon, 1925-2001", Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 2001 Nov;75(2):125–27.
- ^ "University Times » Obituary: Wesley C. Salmon".
- ^ a b Salmon's paper "Rationality and objectivity in science" Archived April 15, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, collected posthumously in Wesley C Salmon, Reality and Rationality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), esp pp 93–94.
- ^ a b Gary Goertz & Jack S Levy, ch 2 "Causal explanation, necessary conditions, and case studies", pp 9–46, in Jack Levy & Gary Goertz, eds, Explaining War and Peace: Case Studies and Necessary Condition Counterfactuals (New York: Routledge, 2007), p 11.
- ^ a b Wesley C Salmon, Statistical Explanation and Statistical Relevance (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), pp 7–8.
- ^ James H Fetzer, ch 3, in Fetzer J, ed, Science, Explanation, and Rationality: Aspects of the Philosophy of Carl G Hempel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p 113.
- ^ James H Fetzer, ch 3 "The paradoxes of Hempelian explanation", in Fetzer J, ed, Science, Explanation, and Rationality: Aspects of the Philosophy of Carl G Hempel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp 121–22.
- ^ Indicating a hypothetical alteration of factual circumstances, the concept counterfactual points to the hypothetical alteration's expected or conjectured effect on outcomes. For instance, increasing an object's mass is expected to increase the object's impact force—that is understood counterfactually—but this relation does not itself reveal that greater mass causes greater force.
- ^ a b Kenneth F Schaffner, ch 8 "Philosophy of medicine", pp 310–45, in Merrilee H Salmon, ed, Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1992/1999), p 338.
- ^ Andrew C Ward, "The role of causal criteria in causal inferences: Bradford Hill's 'aspects of association'", Epidemiologic Perspectives & Innovations, 2009 Jun 17;6:2.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-802682-2.
- ^ Maria Carla Galavotti, "Wesley Salmon", in Edward N Zalta, ed, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2018 edn.
External links
- Galavotti, Maria Carla. "Wesley Salmon". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Adolf Grünbaum, "Wesley C. Salmon in memoriam" Archived February 23, 2006, at the Wayback Machine, archived by Scott Campbell, University of Nottingham, May 1, 2001.
- Wesley C Salmon, Collection # ASP.2003.01: "Wesley C. Salmon Papers", Special Collections Department, University Library System, University of Pittsburgh, 1951–2001 (collection dates), Jun 2011 (date published).