Design explanation: determining the constraints on what can be alive, Arno G. Wouters

• the most important distinction:

“Yet, unlike accidental generalities and like causal relations, functional dependencies are in a sense physically necessary: an organism that has the dependent trait cannot be alive (or will be less viable) if it has the alternative trait instead of the needed one. In other words, a functional dependency is a constraint on what can be alive.” pg.75.

I think it is important for the philosophers’ perspective that there are boundary conditions and initial conditions for every physical system depending on their scale in space (dimensions in nm, um etc.) and their presence in time (e.g. how much time a spaceship needs to decelerate). Here, the author is making an important attempt to state a constraint to be alive by elucidating functional dependencies.

• a clarification question/criticism:

“They (functional dependence relations) are synchronic in the sense that the need must be satisfied at the time that the demand arises.” pg.75.

I understood this statement as the demand (more oxygen in blood system) and supply (lungs) should be available at the same time. However, evolution is nothing like a lightening. It is more like a process and it cannot be understood if we don’t consider the changes happening in the environmental system. For example, fish used gill in water and took the solvated oxygen in water. But, before then, there were not enough oxygen in the atmosphere for a very long time. First, oxygen had been released from the oxidized rocks, then oxygen species had resolved in oceans. During this time, there were only little planktons and bacteria. As the level of oxygen increased in oceans, evolution made a progress emerging fish with gills. My point is that the author never mentioned the effects of environment itself directing evolution and causing natural selection. The demand arises not only due to the creator’s needs, but also due to the changes in surrounding and this happens in a long time period.

Why Ask, “Why?”? An Inquiry Concerning Scientific Explanation, Wesley C. Salmon

• the most important distinction:

“Developments in twentieth‐century science should prepare us for the eventuality that some of our scientific explanations will have to be statistical—not merely because our knowledge is incomplete (as Laplace would have maintained), but rather because nature itself is inherently statistical.” pg.6.

I just wanted to say, ‘thank you!’ for this beautiful sentence. Actually, this sentence is also beating the deterministic view of Laplace and others. For example, statistical thermodynamics, which is the first step before diving into the particle’s world and quantum mechanics, has been empowered by Boltzmann, and he was so alone to defend his ideas and eventually he committed suicide. I’m still having trouble to understand why the acceptation of a statistical world required too much effort in human’s mind.

• a clarification question/criticism:

“The transmission of light from one place to another, and the motion of a material particle, are obvious examples of causal processes. The collision of two billiard balls, and the emission or absorption of a photon, are standard examples of causal interactions.” pg.8.

Transmission, emission and absorption are three modes of radiation acting on a surface, so those are basically light-electron interactions, although some say transmission is just a passing wave. I think, the separation of transmission to state it as a causal process is wrong in the sense of radiation. I wouldn’t distinguish causal process and causal interaction, as Hume suggested but I agree with the idea that cause and effect are more analogous to continuous processes which brings interactions into play.