Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T08:34:51.326Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Maximal Specificity and Lawlikeness in Probabilistic Explanation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Carl G. Hempel
Carl G. Hempel*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article is a reappraisal of the requirement of maximal specificity (RMS) proposed by the author as a means of avoiding “ambiguity” in probabilistic explanation. The author argues that RMS is not, as he had held in one earlier publication, a rough substitute for the requirement of total evidence, but is independent of it and has quite a different rationale. A group of recent objections to RMS is answered by stressing that the statistical generalizations invoked in probabilistic explanations must be lawlike, and by arguing that predicates fit for occurrence in lawlike statistical probability statements must meet two conditions, at least one of which is violated in each of the counterexamples adduced in the objections. These considerations suggest the conception that probabilistic-statistical laws concern the long-run frequency of some characteristic within a reference class as characterized by some particular “description” or predicate expression, and that replacement of such a description by a coextensive one may turn a statement that is lawlike into another that is not. Finally, to repair a defect noted by Grandy, the author's earlier formulation of RMS is replaced by a modified version.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , June 1968 , pp. 116 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © 1968 The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Preparation of this article was supported by a research grant from the National Science Foundation.

References

[1] Carnap, Rudolf, Logical Foundations of Probability, University of Chicago Press, 1950.Google Scholar
[2] Glass, Bentley, Science and Ethical Values, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1965.Google Scholar
[3] Goodman, Nelson, Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (Second edition), The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., Indianapolis, 1965.Google Scholar
[4] Hempel, C. G., “Deductive-Nomological vs. Statistical Explanation,” in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. III (eds. Feigl, H. and Maxwell, G.), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1962, pp. 98–169.Google Scholar
[5] Hempel, C. G., “Aspects of Scientific Explanation,” in Aspects of Scientific Explanation and other Essays in the Philosophy of Science, The Free Press, New York, 1965, pp. 331–496.Google Scholar
[6] Humphreys, W. C., “Statistical Ambiguity and Maximal Specificity,” Philosophy of Science, vol. 35, No. 2, 1968, pp. 112–115.10.1086/288196CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[7] Massey, Gerald J., “Hempel's Criterion of Maximal Specificity,” Philosophical Studies, vol. XIX, No. 3, 1968.Google Scholar
[8] Reichenbach, Hans, The Theory of Probability, The University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1949.Google Scholar
[9] Salmon, Wesley C., The Foundations of Scientific Inference, The University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1967.10.2307/j.ctt5hjqm2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[10] Wójcicki, Ryszard. “Filozofia Nauki W Minnesota Studies,” Studia Filozoficzne for 1966, pp. 143–154. This is a review article on Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. III (eds. H. Feigl and G. Maxwell), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1962.Google Scholar