Humean Laws for Human Agents

by Hicks, Michael Townsen; Jaag, Siegfried; Loew, Christian

• ISBN13: 9780192893819
• ISBN10: 0192893815
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2023-09-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Humean Laws for Human Agents presents cutting-edge research by leading experts on the Humean account of laws, chance, possibility, and necessity. A central question in metaphysics and philosophy of science is: What are laws of nature? Humeans hold that laws are not sui generis metaphysical entities but merely particularly effective summaries of what actually happens. The most discussed recent work on Humeanism emphasizes the laws' usefulness for limited agents and uses pragmatic considerations to address fundamental and long-standing problems. The current volume develops and critically examines pragmatic Humean accounts, with innovative new work on the epistemology of laws and chance, the problem of induction, counterfactuals, special science laws, and a Humean account of essence. Taken together, the papers provide a roadmap for developing pragmatic Humeanism and connate views, setting the agenda for future research.

Author Biography

Michael Townsen Hicks, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Birmingham,Siegfried Jaag, Visiting Professor, University of Tübingen, and Postdoctoral Fellow, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, ,Christian Loew, Associate Professor, Umeå University

Michael Townsen Hicks is a philosopher focusing on philosophy of science, metaphysics, and philosophy of physics. He has published papers on Humean reductionism about laws of nature, the symmetries of physical laws, locality considerations in physics, the nature of explanation in science and metaphysics, and the logic of conditionals. He continues to be interested in the way science and physics helps us understand the world, and the way in which philosophy can help us understand science and physics.

Siegfried Jaag is a philosopher working mainly on themes at the intersection of metaphysics and science, and in particular on the role of modality in science. He has published papers on pragmatic versions of Humean reductionism about laws of nature, dispositionalist accounts of natural modalities, counterfactuals conditionals and scientific and metaphysical explanations.

Christian Loew is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Umeå University. His primary research is in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of action. He has published articles on topics pertaining to the direction of time, causation, counterfactuals, laws of nature, free will, and personal identity.

Table of Contents

Preface
Humeanism and the pragmatic turn, Michael T. Hicks, Siegfried Jaag, and Christian Loew
1. Humean Laws of Nature: The End of the Good Old Days, Craig Callender
2. Humean Disillusion, Jenann Ismael
3. Knowing the Powers, Wolfgang Schwarz
4. Naturalism, Functionalism and Chance: Not a Best Fit for the Humean, Alison Fernandes
5. Generalizing the Problem of Humean Undermining, Heather Demarest and Elizabeth Miller
6. Are Humean Laws Flukes?, Barry Loewer
7. The Package Deal Account of Naturalness, Harjit Bhogal
8. Properties for and of Better Best Systems, Markus Schrenk
9. Predictive Infelicities and the Instability of Predictive Optimality, Chris Dorst
10. Best-System Laws, Explanation, and Unification, Thomas Blanchard
11. A Discourse on Methods; or, Humean Metaphysics of Science Without Best Systems, John T. Roberts
12. Humean Reductionism about Essence, Ned Hall