Minimal Anti-Humeanism

There is a tension in our theorizing about laws of nature: our practice of using and reasoning with laws of nature suggests that laws are universal generalizations, but if laws are universal generalizations then we face the problem of explanatory circularity. In this paper I elucidate this tension and show how it motivates a view of laws that I call Minimal Anti-Humeanism. This view says that the laws are the universal generalizations that are not grounded in their instances. I argue that this view has a variety of advantages that could make it attractive to people with both Humean and anti-Humean inclinations.     

The oldest solution to the circularity problem for Humeanism about the laws of nature

According to Humeanism about the laws, the laws of nature are nothing over and above certain kinds of regularities about particular facts (the “Humean mosaic”). Humeanism has often been accused of circularity: according to scientific practice laws often explain their instances, but on the Humean view they also reduce to the mosaic, which includes those instances. In this paper I formulate the circularity problem in a way that avoids a number of controversial assumptions routinely taken for granted in the literature, and against which many extant responses are therefore ineffective. I then propose a solution that denies the alleged Humean commitment that laws are explained by their instances. The solution satisfies three desiderata that other solutions don’t: it provides independent motivation against the idea that Humean laws are explained by their instances; it specifies the sense in which Humean laws are nonetheless “nothing over and above” their instances; and it gives an alternative account of what does explain the laws, if not their instances. This solution, I will argue, is not only the simplest but also the oldest one: it appeals only to tools and theses whose first appearance predates the earliest statements of the circularity problem itself.

     

The Powerlessness of Necessity

This paper concerns anti‐Humean intuitions about connections in nature. It argues for the existence of a de re link that is not necessity. Some anti‐Humeans tacitly assume that metaphysical necessity can be used for all sorts of anti‐Humean desires. Metaphysical necessity is thought to stick together whatever would be loose and separate in a Hume world, as if it were a kind of universal superglue. I argue that this is not feasible. Metaphysical necessity might connect synchronically co‐existent properties—kinds and their essential features, for example—but it is difficult to see how it could also serve as the binding force for successions of events. That is, metaphysical necessity seems not to be fit for diachronic, causal affairs in which causal laws, causation, or dispositions are involved. A different anti‐Humean connection in nature has to do that job. My arguments focus mainly on a debate which has been the battleground for Humean vs. anti‐Humean intuitions for many decades—namely, the analysis of dispositional predicates—yet I believe (but do not argue here) that the arguments generalise to causation and causal laws straightforwardly.     

Realism,Rational Action,and the Humean Theory of Motivation

Realists about practical reasons agree that judgments regarding reasons are beliefs. They disagree, however, over the question of how such beliefs motivate rational action. Some adopt a Humean conception of motivation, according to which beliefs about reasons must combine with independently existing desires in order to motivate rational action; others adopt an anti-Humean view, according to which beliefs can motivate rational action in their own right, either directly or by giving rise to a new desire that in turn motivates the action. I argue that the realist who adopts a Humean model for explaining rational action will have a difficult time giving a plausible account of the role that desire plays in this explanation. I explore four interpretations of this role and argue that none allows a Humean theory to explain rational action as convincingly as an anti-Humean theory does. The first two models, in different ways, make acting on a reason impossible. The third allows this possibility, but only by positing a reason-sensitive desire that itself demands an explanation. The fourth avoids this explanatory challenge only by retreating to an empty form of the Humean view. In contrast, an anti-Humean theory can provide an intuitively plausible explanation of rational action. I conclude that the realist about reasons should adopt an anti-Humean theory to explain rational action.

Is the Humean defeated by induction?

Many necessitarians about cause and law (Armstrong, What is a law of nature. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983; Mumford, Laws in nature. Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Philosophy. Routledge, Abingdon, 2004; Bird, Nature’s metaphysics: Laws and properties. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007) have argued that Humeans are unable to justify their inductive inferences, as Humean laws are nothing but the sum of their instances. In this paper I argue against these necessitarian claims. I show that Armstrong is committed to the explanatory value of Humean laws (in the form of universally quantified statements), and that contra Armstrong, brute regularities often do have genuine explanatory value. I finish with a Humean attempt at a probabilistic justification of induction, but this fails due to its assumption that the proportionality syllogism is justified. Although this attempt fails, I nonetheless show that the Humean is at least as justified in reasoning inductively as Armstrong.     

BIRD AGAINST THE HUMEANS

Debate between Humean contingentists and anti-Humean necessitarians in the philosophy of science is ongoing. One of the most important contemporary anti-Humeans is Alexander Bird. Bird calls the particular version of Humeanism he is opposed to 'categoricalism'. In his paper (2005) and in Chapter 4 of his book (2007) Bird argues against categoricalism about properties and laws. His arguments against categoricalism about properties are intended to support the necessitarian position he calls dispositional monism. His arguments against categoricalism about laws are intended to refute the contingent regularity view of laws (even in its sophisticated Lewisean version) and the nomic necessitation view of Armstrong (which involves a contingent necessitation relation). The general position Bird defends is that properties are necessarily related to the dispositions they bestow on their bearers and laws are necessary truths. I consider two of Bird's arguments against categoricalism about properties, and one of his arguments against the regularity view of laws. Maybe other arguments against categoricalism are persuasive. These, I submit, are not.     

A priori causal laws

Sober and Elgin defend the claim that there are a priori causal laws in biology. Lange and Rosenberg take issue with this on Humean grounds, among others. I will argue that Sober and Elgin don’t go far enough – there are a priori causal laws in many sciences. Furthermore, I will argue that this thesis is compatible with a Humean metaphysics and an empiricist epistemology.     

Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective

David Lewis is a natural target for those who believe that findings in quantum physics threaten the tenability of traditional metaphysical reductionism. Such philosophers point to allegedly holistic entities they take both to be the subjects of some claims of quantum mechanics and to be incompatible with Lewisian metaphysics. According to one popular argument, the non-separability argument from quantum entanglement, any realist interpretation of quantum theory is straightforwardly inconsistent with the reductive conviction that the complete physical state of the world supervenes on the intrinsic properties of and spatio-temporal relations between its point-sized constituents. Here I defend Lewis's metaphysical doctrine, and traditional reductionism more generally, against this alleged threat from quantum holism. After presenting the non-separability argument from entanglement, I show that Bohmian mechanics, an interpretation of quantum mechanics explicitly recognized as a realist one by proponents of the non-separability argument, plausibly rejects a key premise of that argument. Another holistic worry for Humeanism persists, however, the trouble being the apparently holistic character of the Bohmian pilot wave. I present a Humean strategy for addressing the holistic threat from the pilot wave by drawing on resources from the Humean best system account of laws.     

The Growing-Block: just one thing after another?

In this article, we consider two independently appealing theories—the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience—and argue that at least one is false. The Growing-Block view is a theory about the nature of time. It says that (a) past and present things exist, while future things do not, and (b) the passage of time consists in new things coming into existence. Humean Supervenience is a theory about the nature of entities like laws, nomological possibility, counterfactuals, dispositions, causation, and chance. It says that none of these entities are fundamental, since if they were, this would entail the existence of irreducible necessary connections between matters of fact. Instead, these entities supervene on a fundamental, non-nomological ‘Humean mosaic’ of property instances at spacetime points. We will further explain and motivate the Growing-Block view and Humean Supervenience in Sects. 2 and 3, but first, we turn to our master argument.     

The inertness of reason and Hume's legacy

Hume argues against the seventeenth-century rationalists that reason is impotent to motivate action and to originate morality. Hume's arguments have standardly been considered the foundation for the Humean theory of motivation in contemporary philosophy. The Humean theory alleges that beliefs require independent desires to motivate action. Recently, however, new commentaries allege that Hume's argument concerning the inertness of reason has no bearing on whether beliefs can motivate. These commentaries maintain that for Hume, beliefs about future pleasurable and painful objects on their own can produce the desires that move us to action. First, I show that this reading puts Hume at odds with Humeans, since the latter are committed, not only to the view that beliefs and desires are both necessary to action, but also to the view that beliefs do not produce desires. Second, I review textual, philosophical and historical grounds for my interpretation of Hume's argument for the inertness of reason. I argue that the new line on Hume, while consistent with a certain reading of the Treatise, is not supported by the Dissertation on the Passions and the second Enquiry, where Hume argues that all motivation has an origin in “taste”, which I take to be different from belief. Thus, Hume's arguments do support the contemporary Humean theory of motivation.     

Notes and news

Recently, proponents of Humean Supervenience have challenged the plausibility of the intuition that the laws of nature ‘govern’, or guide, the evolution of events in the universe. Certain influential thought experiments authored by John Carroll, Michael Tooley, and others, rely strongly on such intuitions. These thought experiments are generally regarded as playing a central role in the lawhood debate, suggesting that the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis view of the laws of nature, and the related doctrine of the Humean Supervenience of laws, are false. In this paper, I take on these recent challenges, arguing that the intuition that the laws govern should be taken seriously. Still, I find the recent discussions insightful, in certain ways. Employing some ideas from one of the critics (Barry Loewer), I draw some non-standard conclusions about the significance of the thought experiments to the lawhood debate.     

There is no measurement problem for Humeans

The measurement problem concerns an apparent conflict between the two fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, namely the Schrödinger equation and the measurement postulate. These principles describe inconsistent behavior for quantum systems in so-called “measurement contexts.” Many theorists have thought that the measurement problem can only be resolved by proposing a mechanistic explanation of (genuine or apparent) wavefunction collapse that avoids explicit reference to “measurement.” However, I argue here that the measurement problem dissolves if we accept Humeanism about laws of nature. On a Humean metaphysics, there is no conflict between the two principles, nor is there any inherent problem with the concept of “measurement” figuring into the account of collapse.     

Humean supervenience and best-system laws

David Lewis has proposed an analysis of lawhood in terms of membership of a system of regularities optimizing simplicity and strength in information content. This article studies his proposal against the broader background of the project of Humean supervenience. In particular, I claim that, in Lewis's account of lawhood, his intuition about small deviations from a given law in nearby worlds (in order to avoid backtracking and epiphenomena) leads to the conclusion that laws do not support (certain) counterfactuals and do not bestow nomic necessity on (certain) facts induced by these laws. Support of counterfactuals and nomic necessity, however, are widely held to be important aspects of the concept of lawhood. In my view, therefore, it is not possible to abandon these criteria in any satisfactory analysis of the notion of laws of nature. In a final section, I suggest that the whole project of Humean supervenience is misleading. It does not sufficiently take notice of the important role that reasoning about contrary-to-fact situations plays in modern scientific practice.     

Scientific Law: A Perspectival Account

An acceptable empiricist account of laws of nature would havesignificant implications for a number of philosophical projects. For example, such an account may vitiate argumentsthat the fundamental constants of nature are divinelydesigned so that laws produce a life permittinguniverse. On an empiricist account, laws do not produce the universe but are designed by us to systematize theevents of a universe which does in fact contain life; so any ``fine tuning' of natural law has a naturalistic explanation.But there are problems for the empiricist project. This paper develops a ``perspectival' version of the Humean bestsystem approach and argues that this version solves the standard problems faced by the empiricist project.Furthermore, the paper argues, this version is best able to answer the proponents of divine design while leaving scientificlaw a suitably objective matter.[I]t is possible tocondense the enormous mass of results to a large extent – that is to find laws which summarize ...Richard Feynman (1963)It has become fashionable in some circles to argue thatscience is ultimately a sham, that we scientists read order into nature, not out of nature, and that the laws of physicsare our laws, not nature's. I believe this is arrant nonsense. You would be hard-pressed to convince a physicist thatNewton's inverse square law of gravitation is a purely cultural concoction. The laws of physics, I submit, reallyexist in the world out there, and the job of the scientist is to uncover them, not invent them. True, at any giventime, the laws you find in the textbooks are tentative and approximate, but they mirror, albeit imperfectly, a reallyexisting order in the physical world. Of course, many scientists do not recognize that in accepting the reality of anorder in nature-the existence of laws `out there' – they are adopting a theological world view. P. C. W. Davies (1995)     

From Metaphysical to Substantive Naturalism: A Case Study

This paper addresses two related questions. First, what is involved in giving a distinctively realist and naturalist construal of an area of discourse, that is, in so much as stating a distinctively realist and naturalist position about, for example, content or value? I defend a condition that guarantees the realism and naturalism of any position satisfying it, at least in the case of positions on content, but perhaps in other cases as well. Second, what sorts of considerations render a distinctively realist and naturalist position more plausible than its irrealist and non-naturalist rivals? The answer here focuses again on theories of content and is wholly negative. I argue that the standard array of arguments offered in support of realist and naturalist theories in fact provide equal support for a host of irrealist and non-naturalist ones. Taken together, these considerations reveal an important gap in the recent philosophical literature on content. The challenge to proponents of putatively realist and naturalist theories is to insure that those theories so much as state distinctively realist and naturalist positions and then to identify arguments that support what is distinctively realist and naturalist about them.

... the deepest motivation for intentional irrealism derives ... from a certain ontological intuition: that there is no place for intentional categories in a physicalistic view of the world; that the intentional can't be naturalized.'' Fodor (1987, p. 97).

``Realists about representational states ... must ... have some view about what it is for a state to be representational ....

Well, what would it be like to have a serious theory of representation? Here there is some consensus to work from. The worry about representation is above all that the semantic (and/or intentional) will prove permanently recalcitrant to integration in the natural order ... ''Fodor (1990, p. 32).

     

True-to-Hume laws and the open-future (or Hypertemporal Humeanism)

Take open-future Humeanism to comprise the following four tenets: (T1) that truth supervenes on a mosaic of local particular matters of fact; (T2) that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences; (T3) that there is a dynamic present moment; and (T4) that there are no future facts; that is, contingent propositions about the future obtain truth values only when their referents are actualised. Prima facie this is a deeply problematic metaphysic for the Humean, since given that the widely accepted Humean conception takes all truths (inclusive of nomological truths) to supervene on an omnitemporal mosaic of local particular matters of fact, if there are no future facts, then the Humean can neither provide laws of nature, nor justify many everyday inductive inferences. However, I argue that this eternalist metaphysic is in tension with at least one of Hume’s central metaphysical claims concerning causation, e.g. that causal regularities may cease to hold at any time. In this paper I propose and defend one possible open-future Humean metaphysic which admits of “true-to-Hume” causal and nomological facts. Furthermore, although I am happy to concede that induction is problematic for the open-future Humean, I demonstrate that it poses no greater threat to the open-future conception than it does to the popular Lewisian conception of natural law.     

Lockean Essentialism and the Possibility of Miracles

If the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, then it appears that miracles are metaphysically impossible. Yet Locke accepts both essentialism, which takes the laws to be metaphysically necessary, and the possibility of miracles. I argue that the apparent conflict here can be resolved if the laws are by themselves insufficient for guaranteeing the outcome of a particular event. This suggests that, on Locke's view, the laws of nature entail how an object would behave absent divine intervention . While other views of laws also make miracles counterfactually dependent on God's will, I show how this view is consistent with the essentialist commitment to the view that the laws are metaphysically necessary. Further, I argue that Locke's view is a relatively attractive version of essentialism, in part, because it allows for the possibility of miracles.     

论自然律与因果知识的知觉经验基础

<正>一、引论自休谟以来,特别是在科学哲学的演进中,自然律理论与因果理论从来是不可分离的。相比而言,自然律理论具有某种优先地位。因为按照休谟的广为接受的论证,人类的知觉经验并不能直接辩     

Genuine Violations of Laws

Could laws of nature be violated, in the sense that some proposition is both a law and false? I argue that opponents of regularity theories of laws should accept the metaphysical possibility of such genuine violations. I begin with a clarification of this claim. The main argument is then developed in three steps. I first argue that opponents of regularity theory should endorse the modal-essence view: certain modal principles are essential to the laws of nature. Second, I argue that the modal-essence view entails sophisticated modal primitivism. Third, I argue from sophisticated primitivism to the metaphysical possibility of genuine violations of laws.