Let me start. Okay, so I think that we should start. Welcome everybody to our fifth meeting of the seminar of metaphysical science. It's a pleasure for me to have a Christian Soto from the University of Chile, but right now he's in the London School of Economics. Okay, so his talk is going to be about physical modality for physical loss. So Chris, you have roughly one for the talk, but this is up to you, and then we have questions and comments after that. So wherever you want. Yeah, thank you so much for the invitation to the live at this talk. Thank you, Christian. Thanks to the group in LaVanne. Like I said earlier, I would have loved to be there, to meet you in person, and hopefully that'll happen anytime soon. I'm actually really scared to present this work, both because yesterday I was told at the LSE that there was a very good group of philosophers working on similar issues in UC LaVanne, and also because this is not a published work, it's work in progress. I put a lot of thoughts into it, but I'm not sure yet if that's going to be the last result of the work. In any case, I'll do my best to try to be clear about which are the main claims and where actually I have some doubts yet into the progress of my research. The title is their physical modality for physical loss. The outline of the main tenets is actually quite simple. I try to elaborate and defend an account of physical modality for physical loss, where physical modality should be understood as if it were different from metaphysical modality or mathematical modality. What I wanted to find out is whether physical modality could be enough for physical loss. I acknowledge the fact that most laws are originally expressed in mathematical terms, in terms of mathematical equations, various sorts of equations indeed. But they are ultimately intended to inform us about physical possibility, some physical necessities. The second part of the talk will be mainly focused on the following issues. I will try to put forward arguments for trying to show that our account of physical modality for physical loss avoids and to collapse into humane or anti-humane views on nomic modality. I will also try to do away with fears about the epistemic restrictions of physical modalities and I'll face what I call the instrumentalist threat. I'll also try to make sense of mathematics contribution to nomic modality and the distinction between accidents and necessities. In the last part, I'll try to show how we should deflate the source of modality, metaphor that has been predominating into debates of laws of nature. The first part, I assume, will be broadly known for all of you, so I'll go through each rather quickly. There is a historical consideration about the source of modality metaphor. You surely know that the model interpretation of theories and models suggests that there are not only summaries of observed phenomena, actual phenomena. Instead, they try to inform us about possibilities and necessities of different sorts. This goes in accordance with tradition in metaphysics where possibility and necessity are regarded model categories of being, modes of being. The same goes for laws of nature, of course, to a model in the sense that they inform us not only about summaries of events, rather to the information about ranches of possibilities and necessities in physical domain. There is a historical consideration here that I wanted to highlight. The model of winning of laws is not something that we owe to the 20th or the 21st centuries. The issue occupied a central state into the emergence and consolidation of laws in the 17th century. You may know already that most natural philosophers in that epoch did a lot of work trying to come up with a reason for the necessity of laws of nature. You can find details about that in Descartes' work or in Newton's, Principia. Basically, what I argue was that laws of nature were both imposed by God, the God of Judeo-Christianism, and their necessity was accounted upon God's immutability. So they faced the issue of the source of modality for physical laws and provided an answer for it. The theological presupposition played two roles. The first was to account for the origins of laws, but also the second was to secure laws' necessity to make sense of the apparent orderliness of phenomena. Now, you may also be familiar with Aristotelian ontology, predominant before Descartes' era. According to Aristotelian ontology, the causal conduct of substances could be explained in terms of their properties or formal causes, along with, of course, other causal determinations and the causal interactions between different substances. But causal conduct could be explained in terms of those intrinsic properties. Now, substances not only had natural plays, but they also had a natural way to behave causally interacting with other substances. So modality, in this case, was crowned by the nature of substances, their properties, and so forth. Something interesting, something that's actually really interesting, happened by the late medieval times when people introduced the God of Judeo-Christianism into the ontological scene, because then what you had there was something like an over-determination of causal influence. Because on the one hand, you had Aristotelian causal properties, whereas on the other, you had this voluntary theological presupposition about God being causally influenced on the temporal evolution of being. So you had two different sources of causation for the conduct of substances in this period. Now, the question, of course, was responded in different ways before the emergence of laws of nature. It wasn't clear here whether God only needed to impart the first movement on substances, or whether he needed to keep things moving all the time, or whether he needed to participate in specific occasions. So it wasn't clear at all. But something that was clear in these debates, in Suarez or Aquinas, was this potential causal over-determination into evolution of things. That was clear at least. But a way in which natural philosophers did away with the problem was abandoning Aristotelian ontology and introducing laws of nature. And that's the point that's going to matter to us and the rest of the talk. So what they did was to say, okay, we won't explain the apparent orderliness of phenomena in terms of causal, Aristotelian causal powers, and we will explain them in terms of laws of nature, got imposed laws, something mechanical, a modal world, and God, in this way, governs the temporal evolution of things. Now, in this case, there were two steps. The first was that you could explain the apparent orderliness of physical phenomena by introducing laws of nature. But the second was that natural philosophers were really concerned about the source of modality for physical laws, for the laws of nature. You can find a lot of details in the arguments provided by T-Cart, Mulbrant, Newton, Berkeley, Boyle, and so forth. But basically, they ultimately seemed to agree on the fact that the necessity of laws was crowned by the immutability of God. What I want to be really clear about in this point here is that there is a two-layer explanation because you have a common leitmotif, so to speak, to apparent orderliness of the world. Then you do away with Aristotelian causal powers. You add the laws of nature, but then it seems that you need a second order explanation for the necessity of laws, and that is drawn from the immutability of God. You can consider this point. Laws couldn't change, as well as we couldn't expect God's nature to change, and given God's omnipotence, a law's governed mechanical world with street necessity and found no exceptions at all. At this point, I like to claim it's not only interesting from a historical perspective. The interesting fact about it is that some of these assumptions about laws have remained throughout discussion on laws of nature until today. There are certain conceptual truths that we associate with laws of nature, conceptual truths which usually go unchallenged in tea debates. One of them, of course, is this source of modality metaphor. There is a short sense of the orderliness of the world, which calls for an explanation, an X explanation, and then there is a strategy for providing X. Aristotelians would say causal powers, early modern natural philosophers would say laws of nature, so laws provide an initial explanation, but then we will need to provide a second order explanation about why laws successfully explain the orderliness to apparent orderliness, at least, of phenomena. Now, from this, what we get in the second half of the 20th century is a standard way to conceptualize and debate the laws of nature. I'm only going to go quickly over this because I assume that you are all familiar with it. The standard framework says that there are mainly two views, humaneism and anti-humaneism about nomic modality. In the humaneum branch, you find regularity, the regularity view of laws, and the best system accounts. In the anti-humaneum branch, you find theories of universals and theories of dispositions. Of course, here to this classification, we will need to add counterfactual accounts of laws, measurements accounts of laws, primitivist accounts of laws, and so forth. I'm not doing this here. I'll mention additional accounts of laws later on in this talk, but this is just the standard framework. The regularity view of laws would say that laws are summaries of regularities, and there will be at least two stances available for those endorsing the regularity view of laws. Either we are eliminativists about laws, or we are agnostic about them, about the source of modality for laws. Either we deny that there is something to be said about an ontological groundwork for laws, or we remain agnostic about whether or not there is something to be said about ontological groundwork for law statements. In the best system account, laws apply the place of axioms in our theoretical systems, delivering the best feed between syntactic simplicity and informational strength. Then again, what it said here goes with anti-humane spirit, at least in the sense that modality becomes a property of certain theories that occupy the place of axioms in the systematization of our theories. They deliver the best feed, and we call them laws of nature. Then in the anti-humane side, theories of universal will say that laws are second-order relational universe cells governing first-order universe cells that are instantiated in particular states of affairs, and a kind of modality that we find here is top-town. Second-order universe cells impose modality on first-order universal, and so forth. The second option for anti-humans is the theory of dispositions mainly in the form of dispositional essentialism, which will contend that laws emerge from inherently modal essential dispositions that bestow modality on the particulars that bear them, that poses them. The non-extractor theories, of course, are bottom-up. You start with a theory of essential dispositions, and from there you get to the laws of nature. Now, if you allow me to continue, what I claim is that we need to go beyond the standard framework. To debate between humans and anti-humans, a nonic modality is metaphysical, I submit. It is metaphysical both for humans and anti-humans. In so far as both views advance an interpretation about duty-made constitution of reality in order to account for nonic modality. This is the case, for example, in the eliminative version of the regularity view of laws, and the eliminative version of the regularity view of laws would say that there is nothing to be said about an ontological groundwork for our law statements. Then the best system account will require us to commit ourselves with anti-humia and mosaic. The theories of universal, of course, will put forward universals, and so will do the theories of exposition with an ontology of essential dispositions. And the standard framework, I'll also claim in what follows, imposes unnecessary and desirable constraints on the ways in which the problem regarding nonic modality can be understood. And actually, that's something that happened to people trying to go beyond the standard framework. You will usually be told that any account of law in TN is doomed to collapse into either humans or anti-humans views of laws, and there will be no escape in this regard. So that's something that I want to reject. So, basically, what the standard framework does is to push us and to adopt stands on the source of modality metaphor, either in an eliminativist fashion or in an anti-humian fashion. So here is a restatement of the problem that interests me at present. Our account pays attention to the fact that physical laws, most of which are routinely expressed in terms of mathematical equations, are, in principle, intended to inform us about branches of possibilities and necessities, degrees of possibilities and necessities in physical domains. A question will emerge concerning the scope of mathematics contribution to these branches of possibilities and necessities that we obtain from laws. And here there is something really interesting. Mathematically expressed physical laws are poured to deliver information about physical domains, but they do so at the cost of introducing mathematical abstractions and idealizations. And then one can naturally wonder whether the possibilities and necessities we infer from laws, from physical laws, are possibilities and necessities at least partially thriving from the mathematical formalism employed in each case in the formulation of each law, particularly when surplus mathematical structure occurs in accepted physical laws. So that's my way of setting out the stage for my analysis. So what I want to argue is that physical mortality is crucial for our understanding of the model character of physical laws. And although mathematics is certainly relevant for inferential practices, such inferences need a physical interpretation. And in order for us to know about the physical possibilities and physical necessities about which laws inform us, we need to provide an interpretation of the mathematical formalisms. Here is a first, actually, humble approach to physical modality. I call these following Catherine Brady's epistemic road. One way to approach nomic modality consists in reflecting on the scope of theories of model. Theories of models usually refer not to particular things, but rather to theoretical kinds of objects. And here Catherine Brady, of course, with her structuralist commitments, he says that such theoretical kinds of objects correspond to the shared structure of models, are presented by the shared structure of models. This is the case when it comes to physical laws. They are not intended to describe particular physical systems. That's something that has been broadly acknowledged in the literature. Laws instead codify model information about scenarios, usually ideal scenarios in which certain relations will take place among several variables, constants, and other constraints. As is routinely claimed, the literature, the Newtonian law of gravitation in classical mechanics can be applied to various two-body systems, instantiating the classical gravitational relation. It doesn't describe any system in particular. Actually, it couldn't be literally true of a system, and so forth. It just provides model information codified in the form of an equation that's susceptible of physical interpretation. And then the theories of models we accept provide us with a guide to our model commitment. Since believing a theory broadly amounts to, this is Catherine Brading again, placing a restriction on our beliefs about what will and will not happen based on what, theoretically, cannot or must happen. Model commitment then can be distilled from our theories of models which orient epistemic practices. This is the epistemic road to physical modularity.  Well, because model discourse is implicated in our acceptance of theories of models, and it can be kept in place without braiding again, without making any commitment to modality at the ontological level. In the italics part is where I want to take a little distance from braiding approach. I don't think that it would be enough to say that we don't need to make any commitment to modality at the ontological level. I want commitment to modality at the ontological level. So the epistemic road wishes to avoid the conundrums that the humane and anti-humane debate leaves an answer, remaining neutral regarding their metaphysical constructions on reality. That's okay. And then this works well, but only to a certain extent. Since it ensues the risk to take distance from the physical dimension of nomic modality, we may want to avoid embarking in metaphysical endeavors, but this is compatible with acknowledging that the model commitment of theories and models expand beyond theoretical considerations. Basically what we want to show is that physical possibilities and physical necessities are entrenched in the physical world. So it's all going to be the first approach, the epistemic road. Now let's move on to the second approach to physical modality, inferential practices. And here I throw from a rather recent chapter by Janan Ismael. Our argument for physical modality embraces a deflationary empiricist methodological assumption. We need not presuppose ontological commitment beyond what we find in our theories and models. Ismael says scientific models are embodiments of our very best interactive practices, the model content of our models are to be understood in terms of the role guiding prediction and decision. So again what we have here is a body of theories and model that incorporate certain model beliefs and those model beliefs guide your epistemic lives, so to speak, guide your inferential practices, your predictions, decision-making processes and so forth. Physical laws do exactly the same to guide our expectations in epistemic practices, informing us about what can or must be the case under these or that set of circumstances. According to Ismael everything that there is to know about laws, chances and all the scientific modalities is given into account of how beliefs about chances are formed during differential implications and the role they play in our practical and epistemic lives. So here again is where I want to take a little distance although in spirit my proposal will be quite close to what Ismael suggests. Since I don't think that all the risks to laws and chances is this and guiding of our is providing guidance to our epistemic lives. So although the epistemic road to model commitment through theories and model is a stretch we must walk, I highlight the emphasis there, is a stretch we must walk. It's not the whole story that we can tell about model commitment. Inferential practices need not be in the seclusion of our minds. In scientific settings actually what matters is that we get our inferential practices correct because they inform us about what's physically possible or necessary under certain circumstances. An account of physical modality that is neither humane or anti-humane may turn out to be uncomfortable for those trained in the standard framework. And Ismael acknowledges this. This is a test actually that in her view modality may seem to provide only shadows of law, shadows of modality because it's neither humane nor anti-humane. And here my precision could be that it may not be shadows of modality. Insofar as we acknowledge that modality, it's not an all or nothing matter. That possibilities and necessities come in degrees, both come in degrees, hence accommodating the various scopes of physical loss. And here I get to the third approach to physical modality, evidential support. And here I draw from what I believe is still an unpublished draft by John Norton. What I claim at this point is that there is no denying that theory is a model based systematized and express our model beliefs. Then however what matters is to understand the physical scope of our model beliefs. Branches of possibilities and necessities are dictated by the relevant physical domains and not by our belief systems. Evidential support, key term here, evidential support may prove our theories and models wrong or inaccurate and only the increase of evidential support can teach us whether or not that's the case. So we are turning our eyes now onto the evidential support part of physical modality. We expect from our theories and models that if they are the best grasp of physical domains, of certain physical domains, then they are likely to be our best shot at the branches of physical possibilities and necessities. Here's a definition by Norton. He reconceptualizes possibility and necessity in the following terms. What's possible according to the empiricist conception is what our evidence positively allows, positively allows the evidence and then what's necessary is what these evidence compels, allows or compels. In view of laws, we can say that following empirical evidence can speak in favor of degrees of physical possibilities for certain outcomes to take place. Empirical evidence and theoretical efforts shape our beliefs about physical possibilities and supporting inductions and generalizations, some of them leading to what we call laws. And empirical evidence may compel physical necessity. We judge physical necessity according to an arbitrary threshold fulfilling accepted evidential standards in epistemic practices leading us to believe that certain facts couldn't have been or cannot be otherwise. And then a consequence following from these is as follows. Physical possibilities and necessities even when they are embodied in laws of nature are valuable and correctable. A vision of empirical evidence and theoretical efforts may force us to correct interactive practices. And another consequence, the modal force of physical loss accepts some degrees, some laws appear to apply throughout space time, as in the case of Feinstein's conservation of mass and energy. But in other cases, laws would apply only locally, as in the case of Fresnel's equation about the reflection and transmission of light as a transverse wave. So you see, so you start deriving a series of consequences about the character of laws by introducing these three arguments. First, the epistemic road to modality, then inferential practices, and at a central stage, three evidential supports. So what I wanted to, in the rest of these talks, is to try to put the proposal at work by addressing, by addressing in this case, five issues, standard issues in the philosophy of laws literature. Those issues are, well, the first. This is really funny because I've been told this in a number of occasions. Any account of laws will, in the end, collapse into either a humane view of laws or an anti-humane views of laws. So that's the first issue. I want to deal with it and show that that's not necessarily the case, that there is conceptual space for other possibilities for additional understandings of laws. Then the second issue will be that our physical account for physical laws is inevitably epistemic and that it may even fall prey of an instrumentalist threat, which I don't think is the case. I'll argue so in what follows. And then a third issue is that given the relevance of mathematics for the articulation of physical laws, well, mathematics ends up taking over nomic modality. I'll show why this need not be the case. Number four, I'll dispense, I'll try to, I'll try to dispense with the distinction between accidents and necessities, which I believe is one of those supposed conceptual truths of laws of nature. Laws provide a distinction between accidents and necessities. And I don't see why this needs to be the case. And five, going back to the beginning of this talk, I'll show how we can take the source of modality metaphor for what it is, just an anachronism that we inherit from 17th century natural philosophers, philosophy. So that's what I'll do now in the last part of the talk. Here's the first point. Some will say that views on nomic modality cannot match either humane or anti-humane. I've been told that in many occasions, in many settings, and I know of people that have been told that in various occasions as well, you want to get out of the standard framework, well, you're wrong. And because you, at the end, you will need to either embrace a full-blown commitment to modality or not. You will go anti-humane or humane. But, well, the deflationary character of physical modality makes laws hacking to the humane, regularly to view laws, or to the best system account of laws. That's something that I'm prepared to accept. Since it shares with them the reaction of heavy metaphysical prepositions, think of the best system account and the epistemic approach. The best system account, what it does is to say that certain theories achieve the character of laws, the status of laws, once they go above a certain threshold. That's given by the best feature of syntactic simplicity and informational strength. And what I'm saying now here in the first argument was that theories and models provide access to physical modality. So, they actually sound quite similar. And then another reason for this would be that on the anti-humane side, some people will say, well, if physical modality is something at all, it must lean towards one of the following two options. Either laws exist as something different from the patterns that instantiate them. Or there is something that grounds the modal character of laws, model-infused properties, universals, dispositions, and so forth. So, if I want to say that physical laws is something, physical modality, excuse me, physical modality is something, then there are only two options. We'll say an anti-humane. Either laws are something or there is something grounding the modal status of laws. But then, I see a familiar case in James Goodward's invariance-based account of laws. He runs into similar considerations regarding standard ways of framing tea debate. With humane views, the invariance-based account approach rejects and they need to pose it non-humane stuff in terms of universals, dispositions, and else. But against humane views, the invariance-based account defends that laws cannot be reduced to non-modal stuff. So, what you see here is an attempt by Goodward to provide an account of physical modality for laws that's non-humane, at least in the sense that we don't try to reduce laws to something that's not modal, but that it's humane. And so, for us, you try to avoid adding layers of ontology that are grounded only in metaphysical speculation. Finding a middle way doesn't come easy, but this is only due to the metaphysical expectations ensued by the standard framework, by the source of modality metaphor, predominating in tea debate. So, our analysis of physical modality for laws is neutral. We respect both to further metaphysical commitments and be there, be them, you know, humane or anti-humane. And physical modality is captured by the modal beliefs embodied in our modals and theories. But physical modality isn't restricted to belief systems, since it rests on evidential support shaping interactive generalizations. Now, here is a second comment. We can easily move in our physical, in our account of physical modality. We can easily move from epistemic fears to the instrumentalist threat. It may be argued that the flash in our character of physical modality is epistemic rather than ontological in character. And if that's the case, then it's widely disappointing, since we want our account of physical modality to account for the character of physical laws. And things will get worse once the epistemic threat becomes radically instrumentalistic. The epistemic interpretation of physical modality makes it clear that modality, the modality at stake, is largely linguistic, having to do with modals and theories and not with the world, or at least not largely linguistic, but just exclusively theoretical. The instrumentalist threat continues in a well-known manner. We need not care about whether such beliefs are physically informative, but only about whether to enable us to save future experience. Theories and models and body model belief need not be true to be good. They can be useful without being true. And we can accommodate them as we wish to save anomalous phenomena and so forth. So there we go. So in response to the conflation of epistemic possibility and physical possibility, one can follow Norton. I'm following Norton again here, page 21 of his manuscript. Epistemic possibility. I'm changing, of course, the terms and focusing exclusively on nomic modality. Epistemic possibility comes really close to physical possibility, informing us about what we can know to be possibly the case. Epistemic possibilities relies on agents, but physical possibility relies on the way physical domains are and is ultimately grounded in evidential support. That is, we firstly approach physical modality by examining our theories and models, and secondly, we judge them to be reliable guides for our influential practices and epistemic lives overall, so long as they are supported by empirical evidence and grounding in tactic practices that leads us to generalizations of various sorts regarding physical possibilities and necessities. And then again, think of cases in which theories and models are corrected or even abandoned or replaced by new ones. Such changes are mainly motivated by the increase of evidential support. And to diffuse the instrumentalist threat, we can still investigate how we actually provide physical interpretation for theories and models expressing physical loss. And I move on now to this point in number three. But does mathematics take over nomic modality? Here there is a number of considerations and to apparent indispensability of mathematics for physical loss makes an initial case for the contribution of mathematics to the modal scope of loss. Not only are laws expressing mathematical terms, but in some cases, parcels of so-called mathematical structures occur in laws. And even though they resist physical interpretation, they may be essential in contributing to the solution, possible solutions to certain equations, or facilitating inferential practices. So this, its claim, suffices for arguing that loss's modality is partly mathematical. Of course, I want to deal with that and show that physical modalities are crucial, and not so mathematical modality. It should be acknowledged that the application of mathematics to the formulation of physical loss is largely effective. Remember Bickner in 1960. Now, the effectiveness of mathematics in the formulation of loss shouldn't be read as if laws were purely mathematical statements, or as if the mathematical character of loss were to prove and to make mathematical constitution of reality. What we need instead is to account for the ways in which mathematics contributes to the formulation of loss. And some people, particularly Mauro Dorato and R.S.U. Islami, have done some brilliant work in this regard. The challenge has to do with our ability to provide suitable physical interpretations for mathematically expressed physical loss. There is a continuum. In some cases, providing such an interpretation for mathematically expressed physical loss comes easy. Think of Kepler's laws or Hooke's laws for springs. But in other cases, providing physical interpretation for a mathematically formulated law will prove harder, especially if surplus mathematical structure occurs in such a law. That is the case, I believe, with the general form of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation. In this equation, there is an imaginary number. You have h bar. That's the reduced blank constant and c is the state vector of a quantum system. Imaginary numbers, the reduced blank constant and the state vector of a quantum system, all of them present various difficulties when it comes to offer mapping from the target physical domain to the mathematical structure. Imaginary numbers, I assume, do not find a counterpart in the world, making a case for the claim that the equation bears more mathematical structure than the physical structure we can attribute to a target system. But beyond the interpretive difficulties, the general form of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation provides information about the wave function of a quantum system evolving through time. It provides certain interpretation, certain information. It's susceptible to certain interpretations. Applications of this equation requires us to specify the Hamiltonian for the quantum system, considering the kinetic and potential energy of the particle constituting the system in question. The equation delivers, thus, a space of physical possibilities for a quantum system which can be adjusted to various scenarios by considering the relevant Hamiltonian in each case. So what we have there is, once again, you know, physical laws that are expressed mathematically and some may say, well, given the relevance of mathematics and the effectiveness of mathematics in the articulation of laws, so it may be the case that it's not physical modality that's turned to war, it's actually mathematical modality. But what I contrary argue to that is that what you need is to provide a physical interpretation to the mathematical formalism. But not, of course, to all the mathematical formalism, specifically in those cases where surplus mathematical structure appears. So what about the distinction between accidents and necessities? Here, what we find is a distinction that has been assumed as a jocma or a conceptual truth of loss of nature. There are a number of such conceptual truths. One of them was recently addressed by Sartiner, Guillain Humphries, Guillain Humphries, and that has to do with the fact that laws don't change. Well, just like that dogma, there is another dogma that any theory of law should provide a distinction, categorical distinction between laws and accidents. But then the distinction is nevertheless misplaced. It did not be a conceptual truth of loss of nature that they provide a categorical distinction in those terms. And it's not an empirical truth of science that its laws provides us with such a distinction. So on the one hand, on the conceptual side, loss of nature need not be something that provides a distinction between two parts of the world, two sets of facts, accidents and necessities. But on the other hand, on the other hand, in the scientific side, it's not an empirical truth of science that its laws provide such a distinction either. Now, recent literature, fortunately, has come to call into question the purported, this purported the theorem, theorist of nomic stability by central material or nomic invariance by Woodward have consistently argued that nomic modality comes into Greece. And I move along the same lines, the model status of physical loss come into Greece. Laws are intended to inform us about righteousness of possibilities and necessities. Some laws are strictly phenomenological, as aforementioned Fresnel's equations, other applied to very specific systems, and can be construed as local empirical generalizations as a hook, hook law for springs, and get all the purports to deliver model information obtaining throughout space time. And here's the moral, physical loss did not amount to any special category in ontology. Laws are just like any other facts, only that the scope of their physical possibilities and necessities is widely informative and relevant to us. And here's the last point, and with this I'm closing my talk today. How should we interpret the source of modality metaphor? Well, I think it's just an anachronism that we inherit from natural philosophy. You may remember here, from Fresnel in 1989, saying that the expression law of nature is an anachronism. Well, I'm not that sure about that, but I'm sure that the argumentative strategy of the source of modality metaphor is an anachronism. The expression source of modality is a metaphor. Remember, if there are laws of nature, and if we assume that they are modalling character, a source is to be found for their modality, then I will ask, but why? How come? Why? The regress moves a step farther back. Laws, which were introduced to explain the apparent orderliness of the physical world, are now wanting an explanation of their model scope. That's what natural philosophers in the 17th century think. Humians and anti-humians, this is my take, have overreacted to the requirements imposed by the source of modality metaphor. The farmer, of course, by doing away with modalities in the world altogether, and the latter by positing extra layers of ontology. They have felt compelled to do so because of this argumentative strategy imposed by the source of modality metaphor. Well, we shouldn't follow the source of modality metaphor. Our account of physical modality identifies a middle point. First, we dispense with the source of modality metaphor, and second, we hold a commitment to laws informing us about just possibilities and necessities in physical domains. And by deflating the source of modality metaphor, we free our account from standard ways to articulate the problem. The goal of the debate is not one related to grounding nomic modality in something else or adopting a stance on whether or not we have such a grounding for nomic modality. The goal of the debate is just to account for the physical scope of laws. Well, here's the outline of some concluding remarks. Like I said, at the beginning, this is a work in progress. I haven't published this work. I'm aware of many points in which I need to do further work, but it's a fact of history that nomic modality has posed a challenge since 17th century natural philosophy. Humians and anti-humans have terminated to debate, but I provided a drawing, actually, perhaps a bit heavily from works by Catherine Brady and John Norton. I provided three arguments, what I call the epistemic road to physical modality, inferential practices, and evidential support for intact generalizations in order to just offer an outline of what physical modality could mean for physical laws. And my goal is to show, has been to show, that this kind of physical modality for physical laws has the benefits of, well, given a step further, you know, beyond the standard framework for the debate, it doesn't go down the slippery slope of instrumentalism. It takes into account the fact that physical laws are expressing mathematical terms without compromising the key role of physical modality for laws. It dispenses, or it doesn't need, the distinction between accidents and necessities. And it does away with this anachronistic anachronic metaphor of the source of modality. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much, Cristian for the talk. Thank you very much. Okay, so we are going to take probably five minutes off and then we come back to start the discussion. So see you in five minutes.


Take a moment to think about what it's like when you're hanging out with your best friend. It's just the two of you You're hanging out. What do you talk about? What's that conversation like? What's the style of conversation? How do you talk to each other in what kinds of tones and what are you wearing? What kind of facial expressions using what kind of inside jokes? Do you have just all those things that you know? Those are unique when you have just you and your best friend and there's just this kind of vibe happening between you right and then that vibe is still there and it's still a special relationship But when you add in other people to that mix even friends of yours your close friends your good friends as a group of friends But that dynamic changes slightly right what you talk about how you talk about it and the inside jokes You have it changes when you get in that group dynamic. There are other people to consider and think about Think about some of our most famous friends, right? Well from the show friends exponentially Joey and Chandler were dumber when it was just the two of them I did more stupid things when they were together and acted differently when it was just the two of them Then they did when it was the larger group of friends when they were all together and the same is true for any other pair You look at them and most of the shenanigans They got into had to do with two people because they were acting differently When it was just a two of them then they were in the larger group There are different considerations and different dynamics that exist when we're in a group situation And so that's why we think of group communication as different than other types of communication It's different than interpersonal communication or interpersonal communication or public speaking or mass communication It has different rules different considerations and different things We need to be aware of if we're going to be effective in a group environment and communicating in that environment So in this video, we're going to start our series by talking about the characteristics of small groups What is it that makes them unique and what is it that sets them apart from other types of communication? scenarios and communication forms So let's start off by defining what it is we mean when we say small group a small group Involves interactions among three or more people who are connected through a common purpose a mutual influence and a shared identity All of these elements are important If you don't have all of these elements together them We're not really talking about a small group in the sense that we're talking about it We're gonna be focusing mostly on task-oriented problem-solving groups and things these things certainly apply to friendship groups and situations like that as well, but Our focus is going to be mostly on Work-related problem-solving type groups task-oriented groups So we're talking though at a minimum you got to have three people's we'll talk about and that you can have more We'll kind of establish those guidelines, but those are you know It's got to be between three and something amount of people they're connected though between this common purpose mutual influence and shared identity We'll talk about each of these things here in a second So again the characteristics of a small group that we want to talk about first involve size Let's establish some things about size first of all for a small group You have to have at least three people if there's less than that It's not what we would consider a group again two people would be interpersonal one person will be Intrapersonal and there are different dynamics for public speaking and mass communication Three people at least three people are involved in a group now you can have more than that Of course you can have a larger group than three people you can go all the way up to some people would say you know 10 12 15 20 people But and that would be that would be fine. There's no agreed upon maximum size It can grow though beyond three people obviously Now when you get too many people though Too big a group is a problem It exponentially adds more connections that you have to be concerned about between group members members can then in too large a group can feel overwhelmed or Disconnected from the group individual members can feel that and and and you start to see groups form within a group And that's when we that's what we would call an organization then an organization as groups within a group really and And they these groups though start to develop Different a sense of purpose and different identities and so forth, and they're not really one cohesive group as much when you get too big So too big is a problem really the ideal group size is Considered what is necessary and what is functional? So when you get too big You may add more people than you need to get the job done You really for the ideal group size involves However, many people you need in order to do the job that you're trying to do or solve the test and solve the problem Or complete the task that you're trying to complete That's how many people you need that group and then what is functional if the group gets so big that you can't really communicate with one Another or that it's that it's veering off in different directions within these subgroups Then that's not functional anymore You can't really control that so then the group starts to lose effect of so the ideal group size There's no exact number other than it has to be at least three And you don't want to get so big that you that you had on what is unnecessary and what is not functional anymore? Another element or characteristic of small groups that we need to consider is Structure and the way the groups are affected by the structure and the elements that go into that So we look at a couple of different things in terms of structure first. We look at internal versus external Influences and factors and functions and so the structure of group is affected by the internal dynamics of that group So you have a leader that emerges or you have you know a group a block of people That's influential and but within the group that are working within the group or some different Dynamics within the group that really influence the way that group operates. That's that's those are internal Influences and factors that we need to consider but then there are also external ones Maybe if your group is part of a larger organization if you're at a if you're part of a group at work You're part of that larger company Or you're at a nonprofit. You're part of that larger Organization you're a group working within that structure see if those external factors to consider things that are going on there or maybe you have Clients or a public or customers or whatever You're trying to consider. So those are external factors as well. So we are the group is affected both structurally internally and externally by these these factors and influences We also have to think about formal and informal networks and the role that they can play in group structure So, you know formal and networks are those that are that are firmly established either, you know Written or unwritten but but firmly established again if you're part of a larger organization There may be a hierarchy within that organization There may be even a hierarchy within the group if it's a formal type of group like that Where you have these very clear lines of communication and report and power structures and things those are formal Those are identified. Those are recognized, but then there are also maybe these Informal networks of communication where somebody knows somebody, you know You're trying to do something as a group and and you're putting on this event And you you have a buddy who has a PA system who has a sound system and does some DJing So you you know, it's not part of your formal network as part of this group But you say look I can get a PA system for cheap or for free because my buddy has one and I can Ask him to do me a favor and those are informal networks So you have those that work as well You have the and within a group formal and informal networks that are part of that structure and things that we've got to Keep tabs on and be aware of Another characteristic of small groups is that there exists what we call interdependence So this interconnectedness among the different aspects of the group We think of it like when you when you throw a stone in a pond or something falls in a in a calm body of water And it makes those ripples extend from there, right? Everything in that pond is connected and affected by those ripples then that ecosystem is affected by what's going on in one Part of it and even though it's not directly involved It's going to affect other things another way to look at or to think about an independence Interdependence is if you're playing Jenga, you know, this is the huge size Jenga with the blocks So but he was playing big gen big Jenga regular Jenga, whatever When you move one of those blocks it affects obviously that tower it affects you it affects what you're doing and And you know, you're trying to be careful not to knock that tower over but it also affects everybody else, right? That impacts the the the block that I pull out affects Which block you're going to pull out and how you're going to play the game and and and you know The chances that you have of success and the way you do your work So there's this interconnectedness in a group as well that what one person does in that group affects everybody else When one person is late to a meeting that affects everybody else it holds everybody else up When one person's not doing their work effectively It affects everybody else when one person is going gangbusters and really Knocking it out of the park that affects everybody else in a positive way. So it works all together, right? But what happens with one person affects those others in the group. That's interdependence You don't have that outside of that group if I'm walking down the sidewalk and I trip and fall It doesn't affect about unless I fall into somebody, right? But if you're just walking along the other side of the street, it doesn't really affect you We're not intermittent in that way But when something happens to someone within a group or some, you know Any action you take within a group is going to have an effect on everybody else In that group and we need to be aware of that and as a characteristic of a small group Small groups as we as we mentioned in our definition also have the shared identity They develop a shared identity You know something that connects them and and pushes them forward as well and draws them closer together So I happen to be a huge fan of the university of michigan. I love the university of michigan Sports I did not attend the university of michigan people always ask that. No, I didn't go to michigan But I grew up a huge fan And go blue right and all that so and those are things that I have a shared identity when I see a stranger I'm I'm frequently walking around with a michigan sweatshirt or hat or something on and it drives my wife That's because she's not a michigan fan But because almost everywhere we go somebody's gonna holler out just out of the blue go blue And I'm gonna holler back go blue right go blue That's a shared identity that we have as michigan fans and and people with different sports affiliations will have that You'll you'll see somebody wearing Sweatshirt or hat of your team or whatever and and you'll holler out something to them And let me because you have that shared identity complete strangers You have that shared identity With them and and fans of a particular group will have that Groups will develop that as well that not necessarily slogans or whatever Although it could take that but these shared histories and shared stories and shared goals and and they just developed a shared Identity with one another ineffective groups. That's a characteristic of a small group that happens I'm really divides us into what we call in groups and out groups right in groups Are just people who are within that group who anybody who's within you know, michigan fans are in my in group We're all in an in group together Other fans are you know fans of different teams are in are the in the out group They're in their own in group if they have another team, but for my perspective, they're in the out group and groups throughout that as well you have this shorthand and these inside references and jokes and whatever These connections that you have within your group when you're in group That won't make sense to people or or affect people in the same way If they are part of the out group because groups develop these shared identities So now we have a better idea of what we're talking about when we say What is a small group right? What is a small group? Well now we've defined it a little bit We've got to have three or more people We've got to have that shared purpose that mutual identity and you know just be driving forward together So in future videos, then we're going to take a look at some of the other elements and considerations for small group And how we can be more effective within those groups If you have questions about any of those small groups or anything related to to working in small groups and communication within small groups Please feel free to email me be happy to chat with you there in the meantime I hope this has given us a solid foundation to start from as we begin our exploration of communicating effectively in small groups