Phil 8: Introduction to Philosophy of Science

Outline 22: The Inductive-Statistical Model

I. Determinism and Indeterminism

A. Any complete state of “deterministic” system, together with the laws of

nature, fixes its state at all past and future times.

B. “Determinism” is the doctrine that any indeterministic system has not been
specified completely.

II. Inductive-Statistical Model

A. Five jointly sufficient conditions for being a scientific explanation:

1. The explanans consists of the premises of an inductively strong

argument whose conclusion is the explanandum.
2. The premises are true.
3. At least one of the premises must be a statistical law of nature,
without which the argument would not be valid.
4. The explanans must be empirically verifiable (testable by
observation/experiment)
5. Requirement of maximal specificity (RMS)

III. RMS

A. RMS is needed because, intuitively, we only have a genuine explanation when

all the relevant data is in.

B. Difficulty in formulating RMS: All relevant info, or only what we believe to

be relevant?

C. Difficulty in formulating RMS: “relevant” can’t mean “statistically relevant”.

IV. Criticism

A. Counterexample (not sufficient): Psychotherapy, Vitamin C.

B. High probability requirement is not necessary: Paresis, Coin Toss