Abstract
Humeans are often accused of accounting for natural laws in such a way that the fundamental entities that are supposed to explain the laws circle back and explain themselves. Loewer (Philos Stud 160(1):115–137, 2012) contends this is only the appearance of circularity. When it comes to the laws of nature, the Humean posits two kinds of explanation: metaphysical and scientific. The circle is then cut because the kind of explanation the laws provide for the fundamental entities is distinct from the kind of explanation the entities provide for the laws. Lange (Philos Stud 164(1):255–261, 2013) has replied that Loewer’s defense is a distinction without a difference. As Lange sees it, Humeanism still produces a circular explanation because scientific explanations are transmitted across metaphysical explanations. We disagree that metaphysical explanation is such a ready conduit of scientific explanation. In what follows, we clear Humeanism of all charges of circularity by exploring how different kinds of explanation can and cannot interact. Our defense of Humeanism begins by presenting the circularity objection and detailing how it relies on an implausible principle about the transitivity of explanation. Then, we turn to Lange’s (Philos Stud 164(1):255–261, 2013) transitivity principle for explanation to argue that it fairs no better. With objections neutral to the debate between Humeanism and anti-Humeanism, we will show that his principle is not able to make the circularity objection sound.
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Notes
Bird presents a more detailed version of the argument after this passage that relies on a notion of “the ontological content of a fact or a set of facts” (Bird 2007, p. 87). We take the relation being the ontological content of to be a relationship of metaphysical explanation, and so we believe that our later discussion extends to Bird’s argument too.
Not everyone agrees that science is concerned with laws, with Van Fraassen (1989) being a notable dissenter. Other deny that laws have structure that is at all like that of law statements. Maudlin (2007) takes laws to be fundamental sui generis entities. But among those who agree that there are laws, it is still true that scientific explanation is done with sets of statements that answer why-questions. Accordingly, it is the law statements that feature in explanation and those statements take the form of universal generalizations. Because we are concerned with explanation, and because explanations are made up of statements, we will use ’law’ to refer to law statements throughout.
Our presentation of the principle differs slightly from Lange’s (2013, p. 256). We have reversed the order of the conjuncts in the antecedent, and replaced talk of grounding with more general talk of metaphysical explanation.
Schaffer (2005, 2012) argues that counterexamples to the transitivity of causal and grounding explanations are evidence that these relations are contrastive, and so the relevant transitivity principles are contrastive as well. Perhaps a dedicated anti-Humean could revive the circularity objection with a contrastive principle. Having not seen such an argument, we are agnostic of its cogency. For reasons that will come in Sects. 2.2 and 2.3, we don’t believe that even a contrastive principle can be formulated for linking scientific and metaphysical explanation.
The Humean has a few different ways they can understand this truthmaking relation. Typically, the relation is thought to be supervenience. But the Humean could think of the relation differently. For example, it could be a grounding relation in the style of Schaffer (2010) where grounding is contingent.
We use grounding here and throughout loosely to denote something more intimate than supervenience. No commitments are made to a particular metaphysics of ground.
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Acknowledgments
For helpful comments and/or conversation, we thank Thomas Blanchard, Marco Dees, Erik Hoversten, Barry Loewer, Jonathan Schaffer, Alex Skiles, Christopher Weaver, Tobias Wilsch, and participants in the philosophy of science and metaphysics reading groups at Rutgers University.
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Hicks, M.T., van Elswyk, P. Humean laws and circular explanation. Philos Stud 172, 433–443 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0310-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0310-3