WILLIAMSON ON LAWS AND PROGRESS IN PHILOSOPHY

Authors

  • Daniel Stoljar Australian National University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5840/eps201956226

Keywords:

philosophical progress, scientific progress, laws, explanation, models, dependency, causation, grounding, necessitation

Abstract

Williamson rejects the stereotype that there is progress in science but none in philosophy on the grounds (a) that it assumes that in science progress consists in the discovery of universal laws and (b) that this assumption is false, since in both science and philosophy progress consists at least sometimes in the development of better models. I argue that the assumption is false for a more general reason as well: that progress in both science and philosophy consists in the provision of better information about dependency structures.

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Published

2019-09-09

Issue

Vol. 56 No. 2 (2019): Epistemology & Philosophy of Science

Section

Panel Discussion

How to Cite

[1]
2019. WILLIAMSON ON LAWS AND PROGRESS IN PHILOSOPHY. Epistemology & Philosophy of Science. 56, 2 (Sep. 2019), 37–42. DOI:https://doi.org/10.5840/eps201956226.