Are Humean Laws Flukes?

In Christian Loew, Siegfried Jaag & Michael Townsen Hicks (eds.), Humean Laws for Human Agents. Oxford: Oxford UP (2023)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

It has been argued contra Humean accounts of scientific laws that on Humean accounts laws are flukes since they are merely true generalizations and it would be an accident or a fluke for a generalization to obtain unless there was a non-Humean law "backing" it. This paper argues that this kind of objection is mistaken. It goes on to describe an account of laws called "the Package Deal Account" that is a descendent of Lewis' BSA on which it is not an accident that our universe has a best systematization.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 93,932

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Humean laws and explanation.Barry Loewer - 2019 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 23 (3):373-385.
Humean Reductionism about Laws of Nature.Ned Hall - 2015 - In Barry Loewer & Jonathan Schaffer (eds.), A companion to David Lewis. Chichester, West Sussex ;: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 262–277.
Humean Laws in an unHumean World.Samuel Kimpton-nye - 2017 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 3 (2):129-147.
Powerful Properties, Powerless Laws.Heather Demarest - 2017 - In Jonathan D. Jacobs (ed.), Causal Powers. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 38-53.
Grounding, scientific explanation, and Humean laws.Marc Lange - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (1):255-261.
Laws of Nature and Free Will.Pedro Merlussi - 2017 - Dissertation, Durham University
Humean Supervenience Debugged.David Lewis - 1994 - Mind 103 (412):473--490.

Analytics

Added to PP
2021-04-16

Downloads
85 (#194,542)

6 months
22 (#158,899)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Barry Loewer
Rutgers University - New Brunswick

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

The metaphysics within physics.Tim Maudlin - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
New work for a theory of universals.David K. Lewis - 1983 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343-377.
New Work For a Theory of Universals.David Lewis - 1997 - In David Hugh Mellor & Alex Oliver (eds.), Properties. New York: Oxford University Press.
Explanation and scientific understanding.Michael Friedman - 1974 - Journal of Philosophy 71 (1):5-19.
The Ground Between the Gaps.Jonathan Schaffer - 2017 - Philosophers' Imprint 17.

View all 20 references / Add more references