Wesley C. Salmon (1925–April 22 2001) was a
metaphysicianMetaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world...
and
contemporary philosopherContemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at the end of the nineteenth century with the rise of analytic and continental philosophy. Continental philosophy began with the work of Brentano, Husserl, and Reinach on the development of the...
of scienceThe philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, and implications of science. The field is defined by an interest in one of a set of "traditional" problems or an interest in central or foundational concerns in science...
concerned primarily with the topics of
causationCausation may refer to:* Causality, in philosophy, a relationship that describes and analyses cause and effect* Causality * Proximate causation* Causation , a key component to establish liability in both criminal and civil law...
and
explanationAn explanation is a set of statements constructed to describe a set of facts which clarifies the causes, context, and consequencesof those facts....
.
Salmon taught in the History and Philosophy of Science programs at
Indiana University BloomingtonIndiana University is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. It is also known as Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana, or simply IU, and is located in Bloomington, Indiana....
, where he was one of the founding members of the program, and the
University of PittsburghThe University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
. He earned his
PhDPHD may refer to:* Parisada Hindu Dharma, an Indonesian reform organization* PHD, a track on The Crystal Method album Tweekend* PHD finger, a protein sequence* PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company...
in philosophy from UCLA under the direction of
Hans ReichenbachHans Reichenbach was a leading philosopher of science, educator and proponent of logical empiricism...
.
A major feature of Salmon’s work consists of providing a philosophically sound basis for scientific
explanationAn explanation is a set of statements constructed to describe a set of facts which clarifies the causes, context, and consequencesof those facts....
.
Wesley C. Salmon (1925–April 22 2001) was a
metaphysicianMetaphysics investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world...
and
contemporary philosopherContemporary philosophy is the present period in the history of Western philosophy beginning at the end of the nineteenth century with the rise of analytic and continental philosophy. Continental philosophy began with the work of Brentano, Husserl, and Reinach on the development of the...
of scienceThe philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, and implications of science. The field is defined by an interest in one of a set of "traditional" problems or an interest in central or foundational concerns in science...
concerned primarily with the topics of
causationCausation may refer to:* Causality, in philosophy, a relationship that describes and analyses cause and effect* Causality * Proximate causation* Causation , a key component to establish liability in both criminal and civil law...
and
explanationAn explanation is a set of statements constructed to describe a set of facts which clarifies the causes, context, and consequencesof those facts....
.
Salmon taught in the History and Philosophy of Science programs at
Indiana University BloomingtonIndiana University is the flagship campus of the Indiana University system. It is also known as Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana, or simply IU, and is located in Bloomington, Indiana....
, where he was one of the founding members of the program, and the
University of PittsburghThe University of Pittsburgh, commonly referred to as Pitt, is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as Pittsburgh Academy in 1787 on what was then the American frontier, Pitt is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of...
. He earned his
PhDPHD may refer to:* Parisada Hindu Dharma, an Indonesian reform organization* PHD, a track on The Crystal Method album Tweekend* PHD finger, a protein sequence* PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company...
in philosophy from UCLA under the direction of
Hans ReichenbachHans Reichenbach was a leading philosopher of science, educator and proponent of logical empiricism...
.
A major feature of Salmon’s work consists of providing a philosophically sound basis for scientific
explanationAn explanation is a set of statements constructed to describe a set of facts which clarifies the causes, context, and consequencesof those facts....
. Salmon claimed that a scientific explanation is the state of affairs of something fitting into or being a part of a pattern in the world, where the pattern is constituted by at least one causal process. A process is the real physical connection between cause and effect. For example, the heat from the flame of a gas stove excites the molecules in the water via the iron atoms in the bottom of the pan. This is a process where every step from the cause, the flame, can be traced to the effect, boiling water. This view has come to be known as the ‘ontic’ account of explanation, specifically a causal-mechanical model of explanation, which involved
mechanism (biology)In biology, a mechanism is part of an answer to a question about why some object or process occurred. Thus mechanism refers back from the object or process, along some chain of causation. No description of mechanism is ever complete...
. It is thoroughly
realistContemporary philosophical realism is the belief in a reality that is completely ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc. Philosophers who profess realism also typically believe that truth consists in a belief's correspondence to reality...
and rests on an
ontologyOntology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic categories of being and their relations...
that is designed to answer the question: "Just what is a causal process?"
Salmon argued that events are intersections of two or more causal processes. This interpretation leads to depicting the world as a network with lines (causal processes) and nodes (intersections of causal processes - events). Thus events, causes and effects are reduced to causal processes, where causal processes are real connections between events. According to Salmon, causal processes transmit 'structure', or
energyIn physics, energy is a scalar physical quantity that describes the amount of work that can be performed by a force, an attribute of objects and systems that is subject to a conservation law...
and
momentumIn classical mechanics, momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object . For more accurate measures of momentum, see the section "modern definitions of momentum" on this page...
or 'information' from one spatio-temporal location to another. There are two ways, in principle, by which it is possible to demarcate causal processes from 'pseudo-processes' – how causal processes are transmitted through space-time and what they transmit. As for how causal processes are transmitted, the theory holds that the transmissions must be continuous, with no discontinuities or 'jumps' in space-time. Unfortunately this is not enough to be sure that it is a genuinely causal process, as 'pseudo-processes' can also be continuous.
DemarcationThe demarcation problem in the philosophy of science is about how and where to draw the lines around science. The boundaries are commonly drawn between science and non-science, between science and pseudoscience, and between science and religion. A form of this problem, known as the generalized...
requires that it is necessary to examine what causal processes transmit. Salmon argued causal processes transmit information, and as such we should be able to 'mark' a process by modifying it, to see if the modification is transmitted. This 'marking principal' serves to demarcate causal process from pseudo-processes, as the latter cannot be marked. Further to this, 'things' are 'causal agents' if they are originators of causal chains and not merely 'passers on' of causes. They are 'uncaused causers'. The 'uncaused causer' is the first cause in a new causal chain. It is the initial cause in the chain of causal events we are interested in explaining. The uncaused causer obviously had a cause of its own, but in terms of the phenomenon that we are attempting to explain, the uncaused causer's cause is irrelevant
Salmon's ontology of causal processes seems to fit scientific explanations very well. For example,
genesGênes is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy. It was named after the city Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa. Its capital was Genoa. It was divided into the arrondissements of Genoa, Bobbio, Novi Ligure, Tortona and...
are very much 'causal agents'. Geneticists have inserted the 'antifreeze' genes from flounders into the genetic code of tomatoes. This then protects the tomatoes from frost damage. A process (normal reproduction) has been marked, such that the information that is transmitted (the
DNADeoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms and some viruses. The main role of DNA molecules is the long-term storage of information...
) is modified (the addition of the flounder gene). Genes, therefore, are a part of a genuine causal process. Specifically, genes are made up of DNA. Inside the
cell nucleusIn cell biology, the nucleus , also sometimes referred to as the "control center", is a membrane-enclosed organelle found in eukaryotic cells. It contains most of the cell's genetic material, organized as multiple long linear DNA molecules in complex with a large variety of proteins, such as...
, a particular nitrogen-base sequence of DNA controls precisely what proteins are formed in the
cytoplasmThe cytoplasm is the part of a cell that is enclosed within the cell membrane. In eukaryotic cells, the cytoplasm contains organelles, such as mitochondria, which are filled with liquid that is kept separate from the rest of the cytoplasm by biological membranes. The contents of the cell nucleus...
. By controlling the synthesis of proteins, DNA determines what chemical reactions take place in the cell. The chemical reactions of cells affect the chemical reactions of the body. A small chemical change to the way a particular molecule forms can produce a considerable effect on the
phenotypeA phenotype is any observable characteristic or trait of an organism: such as its morphology, development, biochemical or physiological properties, or behavior. Phenotypes result from the expression of an organism's genes as well as the influence of environmental factors and possible interactions...
.
Here we have a detailed account of the way genes cause phenotypic effects. DNA is information that tells the cell what kind of proteins to form. This, in turn, governs the chemical reactions in the cell, which then produces a phenotypic effect. The gene is the 'uncaused causer' in the chain of causal events we are trying to explain.
Salmon also contributed to Bayesian concepts of probability. He attempted to explain Thomas Kuhn in terms of
Bayes' theoremIn probability theory, Bayes' theorem shows how one conditional probability depends on its inverse . The theorem expresses the posterior probability In probability theory, Bayes' theorem (often called Bayes' law or Bayes' rule, and named after Rev. Thomas Bayes; IPA:/'beɪz/) shows how one...
in an article called "Rationality and Objectivity".
He died in a car crash.
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