ELTE TTK Tudomanytortenet es Tudomanyfilozofia Tanszek Budapest, Pazmany P. setany 1/A TUDOMANYFILOZOFIA SZEMINARIUM (http://hps.elte.hu/seminar) ________________________________________________ November 15 12:30 6. em. 6.54 H u o r a n s z k i F e r e n c ELTE BTK Tarsadalomfilozofia Tanszek CEU Political Science Department INTENTIONALITY AND THE NATURE OF LAWS One of the central topic in recent philosophy of mind concerns the possibility of giving a reductive analysis of intentional content. Many think that for showing that intentional psychology is a science it is necessary to analyze thought-content in nomic-causal terms. The lecture attempts to show that the intentional cannot be reduced to the nomic. It grounds its claim on the assumption that none of the available concepts of laws allows for the assumed nomological analysis. First we must distinguish between lawlike sentences and laws in the metaphysical sense. If laws are but sentences of the form of a universally quantified conditional then no reductive analysis of intentional content can invoke the concept of a law since sentences themselves are intentional objects. Therefore the nomological analysis must assume that laws of nature are possible objects of scientific discovery and not only constructs of language. The Ramsey - Lewis analysis of laws take them to be members of "an integrated system of truths which combines simplicity with strength in the best possible way". Another current view of laws claims that laws are second order facts about first order universals. The third view takes laws to be relations between possible worlds: whatever remains invariant when we shift from one physically possible world to another is a law of nature. It will be shown that none of these conceptions fit the purpose of assumed "laws about intentionality". Finally I will argue that sciences which deal with phenomena only globally supervenient on physics should not attempt to give nomological explanations. (Ha mindenki beszel magyarul, akkor az eloadas magyarul lesz!) A szeminarium szervezoje: E. Szabo Laszlo --- Laszlo E. Szabo Department of Theoretical Physics Department of History and Philosophy of Science Eotvos University, Budapest H-1518 Budapest, Pf. 32. Phone: (36-1)2090-555/6671 Fax: (36-1)372-2509 Home: (36-1)200-7318 http://hps.elte.hu/~leszabo