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A Reply to Nina Emery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Sam Mitchell
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Abstract

This article argues against Nina Emery’s view that there are compelling reasons to believe in nomological probabilities. To the degree that we can see no other way to detect the occurrence of the explanans apart from the bare fact that the explanandum happened, we may be skeptical that the proposed explanation is correct and open to the possibility that there is none. This provides us with a way to distinguish physical entities from mathematical ones, illuminating interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 86 , Issue 4 , October 2019 , pp. 794 - 806
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am very grateful to the Philosophy Department at Mount Holyoke College for their help: Nina Emery, James Harold, and Katia Vavova. I am also grateful to two anonymous reviewers.

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