In the course of defending both a unified model of intertheoretic relations in science and scientific realism, Paul Churchland has attempted to reinvigorate eliminative materialism. Churchland's eliminativism operates on three claims: (1) that some intertheoretic contexts involve incommensurable theories, (2) that such contexts invariably require the elimination of one theory or the other, and (3) that the relation of psychology and neuroscience is just such a context. I argue that a more detailed account of intertheoretic relations, which distinguishes between the (...) relations that hold between successive theories at a particular level of analysis over time and those that hold between theories at different levels of analysis at the same time, offers grounds for denying Churchland's second and third claims and, therefore, undermines his eliminativism. The paper concludes by suggesting why it is, nonetheless, not unreasonable, given this more detailed model of intertheoretic relations, to expect the eventual elimination of common sense psychology. (shrink)

I analyse Rueger’s application of Kim’s model of functional reduction to the relation between the thermal conductivities of metal bars at macroscopic and atomic scales. 1) I show that it is a misunderstanding to accuse the functional reduction model of not accounting for the fact that there are causal powers at the micro-level which have no equivalent at the macro-level. The model not only allows but requires that the causal powers by virtue of which a functional predicate is defined, are (...) only a subset of the causal powers of the properties filling the functional specification. 2) The fact that the micro-equation does not converge to the macro-equation in general but only under the constraint of a “solvability condition” does not show that reduction is impossible, as Rueger claims, but only that reduction requires inter-level constraints. 3) Rueger tries to analyse inter-level reduction with the conceptual means of intra-level reduction. This threatens the coherence of his analysis, given that it makes no sense to ascribe macroproperties such as thermal conductivity to entities at the atomic level. Ignoring the distinction between theses two senses of “reduction” is especially confusing because they have opposite directions: in intra-level reduction, the more detailed account reduces to the less detailed one, whereas in inter-level reduction, the less detailed theory is reduced to the more detailed one. 4) Finally I criticize Rueger’s way of using Wimsatt’s criteria for emergence in terms of non-aggregativity, to construct a concept of synchronic emergence. It is wrong to require, over and above non-aggregativity, irreducibility as a criterion for emergence. (shrink)

Summary The concept of unified theory is defined in logical and abstract semantic terms, and employed in the analysis of relations between empirical scientific theories. The conceptual framework of the approach applies to binary relations such as the reduction or replacement of one theory by another, and to multiple intertheory relations. Historically, unified theories tend to arise within the contexts of scientific conflicts which they may show susceptible of solution even in the most controversial cases of the logical incompatibility or (...) conceptual incommensurability of competing theories. These conclusions are exemplified by the Planck-Einstein quantum theory of thermal radiation. The analysis shows in which sense it can, and in which it cannot, be said that this theory unifies Wien's law and the Rayleigh-Jeans law of black-body radiation. (shrink)