Abstract
AbstractThis chapter is the third of three case studies demonstrating the potential impacts of methodological naturalism. It focuses on an extra-empirical principle that says that we should avoid a certain kind of excess structure in our theories, and shows how that principle plays a key role in justifying the acceptance of special relativity over alternative theories that are also compatible with the data. It has often been observed that this kind of extra-empirical principle can be used to rule out theories of time that posit a fundamental distinction between the present, on the one hand, and the past and the future, on the other. This chapter argues that the very same extra-empirical principle would also apply in a surprising way to debates about the nature of possibility. It would lead to the rejection of views that posit a fundamental distinction between what is actual and what is merely possible.
Publisher
Oxford University PressNew York
Reference270 articles.
1. On the Empirical Equivalence between Special Relativity and Lorentz’s Ether Theory.;Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics,2014
2. Allori, V. (2013). Primitive Ontology and the Structure of Fundamental Physical Theories. In A. Ney and D. Z. Albert (Eds.), The Wave Function: Essays in the Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics (168–183). Oxford University Press.
3. A New Perspective on the Race Debate.;British Journal for the Philosophy of Science,1998
4. Race: Biological Reality or Social Construct?;Philosophy of Science,2000
5. Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections.;Tanner Lectures on Human Values,1996