Armstrong holds the Supervenience Theory of instantiation, namely that the instantiation of universals by particulars supervenes upon what particulars and what universals there are, where supervenience is stipulated to be explanatory or dependent supervenience. I begin by rejecting the Supervenience Theory of instantiation. Having done so it is then tempting to take instantiation as primitive. This has, however, an awkward consequence, undermining one of the main advantages universals have over tropes. So I examine another account hinted at by Armstrong. This (...) is the Operator Theory of instantiation, by which I mean the theory that universals are operators, and that a particular instantiates a monadic universal because the universal operates on the particular, resulting in the state of affairs. On this theory the state of affairs supervenes on the instantiation rather than vice versa. In the second part of the paper I develop this theory of universals as operators, including an account of structural universals, which are useful for accounts of modality and of mathematics. (shrink)

The revival of analytic metaphysics in the latter half of the twentieth century is typically understood as a consequence of the critiques of logical positivism, Quine’s naturalization of ontology, Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, clarifications of modal notions in logic, and the theoretical exploitation of possible worlds. However, this explanation overlooks the work of metaphysicians at the height of positivism and linguisticism that affected metaphysics of the late twentieth century. Donald C. Williams is one such philosopher. In this paper I explain (...) how Williams’s fundamental ontology and philosophy of time influenced in part the early formation of David Lewis’s metaphysics. Thus, Williams played an important role in the revival of analytic metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two issues related to ontological emergence: whether it is a coherent notion, and its relation to the doctrine of physicalism. First, it is argued that ontological emergence is best understood as a thesis relying on three fundamental tenets claiming that emergents are basic, genuinely causal, and determined by the physical realm. The paper elucidates the roles of these tenets, and introduces an interpretation that is able to resolve any apparent contradiction between the tenets, thereby supporting the (...) claim that the commitments of ontological emergence form a consistent view. The proposed understanding also hints that telling physicalism and emergentism apart is not a problem even if one subscribes to a supervenience-based formulation of physicalism. The difference in the modal strength of the supervenience relation physicalism and emergentism endorse readily distinguishes them – the former is committed to metaphysical determination whereas the latter to nomological determination. However, in a recent paper, Jessica Wilson has posed an objection to this way of differentiating physicalism from emergentism on the ground that the metaphysical/nomological distinction cannot be drawn in this context. The second part of this paper introduces Wilson's objection, and argues in detail that it fails to disqualify the modal strength-based distinction. (shrink)

Probabilism is committed to two theses: 1) Opinion comes in degrees—call them degrees of belief, or credences. 2) The degrees of belief of a rational agent obey the probability calculus. Correspondingly, a natural way to argue for probabilism is: i) to give an account of what degrees of belief are, and then ii) to show that those things should be probabilities, on pain of irrationality. Most of the action in the literature concerns stage ii). Assuming that stage i) has been (...) adequately discharged, various authors move on to stage ii) with varied and ingenious arguments. But an unsatisfactory response at stage i) clearly undermines any gains that might be accrued at stage ii) as far as probabilism is concerned: if those things are not degrees of belief, then it is irrelevant to probabilism whether they should be probabilities or not. In this paper we scrutinize the state of play regarding stage i). We critically examine several of the leading accounts of degrees of belief: reducing them to corresponding betting behavior (de Finetti); measuring them by that behavior (Jeffrey); and analyzing them in terms of preferences and their role in decision-making more generally (Ramsey, Lewis, Maher). We argue that the accounts fail, and so they are unfit to subserve arguments for probabilism. We conclude more positively: ‘degree of belief’ should be taken as a primitive concept that forms the basis of our best theory of rational belief and decision: probabilism. (shrink)

I present an argument for the view that laws ground their instances. I then outline two important consequences that follow if we accept the conclusion of this argument. First, the claim that laws ground their instances threatens to undermine a prominent recent attempt to make sense of the explanatory power of Humean laws by distinguishing between metaphysical and scientific explanation. And second, the claim that laws ground their instances gives rise to a novel argument against the view that grounding relations (...) are metaphysically necessary. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

Resemblances obtain not only between objects but between properties. Resemblances of the latter sort - in particular resemblances between quantitative properties - prove to be the downfall of a well-known theory of universals, namely the one presented by David Armstrong. This paper examines Armstrong's efforts to account for such resemblances within the framework of his theory and also explores several extensions of that theory. All of them fail.

Given its importance in modern physics, philosophers of science have paid surprisingly little attention to the subject of symmetries and invariances, and they have largely neglected the subtopic of symmetry breaking. I illustrate how the topic of laws and symmetries brings into fruitful interaction technical issues in physics and mathematics with both methodological issues in philosophy of science, such as the status of laws of physics, and metaphysical issues, such as the nature of objectivity.

A previously unrecognised argument against deterministic chance is introduced. The argument rests on the twin ideas that determined outcomes are settled, while chancy outcomes are unsettled, thus making cases of determined but chancy outcomes impossible. Closer attention to tacit assumptions about settledness makes available some principled lines of resistance to the argument for compatibilists about chance and determinism. Yet the costs of maintaining compatibilism may be higher with respect to this argument than with respect to existing incompatibilist arguments.

Natural-kind essentialism faces an important but neglected difficulty: the problem of complex essences (PCE). This is the question of how to account for the unity of an instantiated kind-essence when that essence consists of multiple distinct properties, some of which lack an inherent necessary connection between them. My central goal here is to propose an essentialism-friendly solution to this problem. Along the way I also employ some points from that solution to argue for the necessary truth of essentialism (necessary, that (...) is, in all possible worlds in which there are material objects), and to support the essentialist ontology of laws over and against a major rival. (shrink)

One of the main challenges confronting Humean accounts of natural law is that Humean laws appear to be unable to play the explanatory role of laws in scientific practice. The worry is roughly that if the laws are just regularities in the particular matters of fact (as the Humean would have it), then they cannot also explain the particular matters of fact, on pain of circularity. Loewer (2012) has defended Humeanism, arguing that this worry only arises if we fail to (...) distinguish between scientific and metaphysical explanations. However, Lange (2013, 2018) has argued that scientific and metaphysical explanations are linked by a transitivity principle, which would undercut Loewer's defense and re-ignite the circularity worry for the Humean. I argue here that the Humean has antecedent reasons to doubt that there are any systematic connections between scientific and metaphysical explanations. The reason is that the Humean should think that scientific and metaphysical explanation have disparate aims, and therefore that neither form of explanation is beholden to the other in its pronouncements about what explains what. Consequently, the Humean has every reason to doubt that Lange's transitivity principle obtains. (shrink)

Representationalists who hold that phenomenal character can be explained in terms of representational content currently cannot explain counter-examples that involve indeterminate perceptual content, such as in the case of objects seen blurrily by someone with poor eyesight, or objects seen vaguely in misty conditions. But this problem can be resolved via provision of a more sophisticated double content (DC) view, according to which the representational content of perception is structured in two nested levels. I start by outlining the DC view (...) via consideration of four closely related cases of perceptual imprecision. Then, after a demonstration that the DC view can also explain imprecise photographic content, inadequacies in the more standard single content (SC) view are demonstrated. The results are then generalized so as to apply to the content of any kinds of non-conventional representation. The paper continues with evidence that a DC account provides a moderate rather than extreme realist account of perception, and it concludes with an initial analysis of the failure of nomic covariance accounts of information in indeterminacy cases. (shrink)

A dispositional property is a tendency, or potency, to manifest some characteristic behaviour in some appropriate context. The mainstream view in the twentieth century was that such properties are to be explained in terms of more fundamental non-dispositional properties, together with the laws of nature. In the last few decades, however, a rival view has become popular, according to which some properties are essentially dispositional in nature, and the laws of nature are to be explained in terms of these fundamental (...) dispositions. The supposed ability of fundamental dispositions to ground natural laws is one of the most attractive features of the dispositional essentialist position. In this paper, however, I cast doubt on the ability of dispositional essences to ground the laws of nature. In particular I argue that the dispositional essentialist position is not able to coherently respond—sympathetically or otherwise—to Cartwright's challenge that there are no true general laws of nature. (shrink)

According to power theorists, properties are powers—i.e. they necessarily confer on their bearers certain dispositions. Although the power theory is increasingly gaining popularity, a vast majority of analytic metaphysicians still favors what I call ‘the nomic theory’—i.e. the view according to which what dispositions a property confers on its bearers is contingent on what the laws of nature happen to be. This paper argues that the nomic theory is inconsistent, for, if it were correct, then properties would not confer any (...) dispositions on their bearers—they would only appear to do so (just like how, in cases of mimicking, objects do not really have the relevant dispositions, they merely appear to have them). If my arguments are sound, then the nomic theory is incoherent and ultimately collapses into what I call ‘neo-occasionalism’ and powers turns out to be the only available option for those who believe that properties genuinely confer dispositions on their bearers. (shrink)

Perhaps the most significant contemporary theory of lawhood is the Best System (/MRL) view on which laws are true generalizations that best systematize knowledge. Our question in this paper will be how best to formulate a theory of this kind. We’ll argue that an acceptable MRL should (i) avoid inter-system comparisons of simplicity, strength, and balance, (ii) make lawhood epistemically accessible, and (iii) allow for laws in the special sciences. Attention to these problems will bring into focus a useful menu (...) of novel MRL theories, some of which solve problems the original MRL theory could not. Hence we conceive of the paper as moving toward a better Best System theory of laws. (shrink)

This paper examines the libertarian account of free choice advanced by Robert Kane in his recent book, The Significance of Free Will. First a rather simple libertarian view is considered, and an objection is raised against it the view fails to provide for any greater degree of agent-control than what could be available in a deterministic world. The basic differences between this simple view and Kane's account are the requirements, on the latter, of efforts of will and of an agent's (...) wanting more to do a certain thing than he wants to do anything else. It is argued here that neither of these features yields any improvement over the simple libertarian view; neither helps to meet the objection that was raised against the simple view. Finally, it is suggested that a modest defense of that view might be available. (shrink)

Minimally, causal realism (as understood here) is the view that accounts of causation in terms of mere, regular or probabilistic conjunction are unsatisfactory, and that causal phenomena are correctly associated with some form of de re necessity. Classic arguments, however, some of which date back to Sextus Empiricus and have appeared many times since, including famously in Russell, suggest that the very notion of causal realism is incoherent. In this paper I argue that if such objections seem compelling, it is (...) only because everyday expressions concerning causal phenomena are misleading with respect to certain metaphysical details. These expressions generally make reference to the relations of events or states of affairs, but ignore or obscure the role played by causal properties. I argue that on a proposed alternative, an analysis in terms of causal processes, more refined descriptions of causal phenomena escape the charge of incoherence. Causal necessity is here located in the relations of causal properties. I distinguish this view from the recent process theories of Salmon and Dowe, which are disinterested in causal realism. (shrink)

This discussion paper is a reply to Stathis Psillos’ paper “Induction and Natural Necessities” :327–340, (2017), published in this journal. In that paper, he attempts to refute David Armstrong’s solution to the problem of induction. To accomplish this desideratum, he proposes that the best explanation for our observed regularities is a sort of “best before date” necessity. That is, necessary connections may break down and are not by default timeless. He develops arguments against my :67–82, (2014) defence of the necessitarian (...) solution regarding a previous paper by Beebee :504–527, 2011.. He alleges that best before date necessity is no worse than timeless necessity; his proposal does not imply any further inductive generalisation to timeless necessity; and inductive inferences are justified. In this discussion paper, I provide arguments against these three claims. (shrink)

An argument for realism (i.E., The ontological thesis that there exist universals) has emerged in the writings of david armstrong, Fred dretske, And michael tooley. These authors have persuasively argued against traditional reductive accounts of laws and nature. The failure of traditional reductive accounts leads all three authors to opt for a non-Traditional reductive account of laws which requires the existence of universals. In other words, These authors have opted for accounts of laws which (together with the fact that there (...) are laws) entail that realism is true. This argument for realism which emerges from the work of armstrong, Dretske, And tooley is discussed and criticized. Conclusions from the discussion question the tenability of all reductive accounts of laws. (shrink)

It is argued that psychological explanations involve psychological generalizations that exhibit the same features as laws of physics. On the basis of the “systematic theory of lawhood”, characteristic features of laws of nature are elaborated. Investigating some examples of explanations taken from cognitive psychology shows that these features can also be identified in psychological generalizations. Particular attention is devoted to the notion of “ccteris‐paribus laws”. It is argued that laws of psychology are indeed ceteris‐paribus laws. However, this feature does not (...) distinguish them from the laws of physics, because such laws are found in physics as well. Moreover, the laws invoked in psychological explanations are genuine laws of psychology; they are not laws of other disciplines that are brought to bear on psychological problems. The conclusion is that if there are laws of physics then laws of psychology exist as well. (shrink)

In this article, I consider an important challenge to the popular theory of scientific inference commonly known as ‘inference to the best explanation’, one that has received scant attention.1 1 The problem is that there exists a wide array of rival models of explanation, thus leaving IBE objectionably indeterminate. First, I briefly introduce IBE. Then, I motivate the problem and offer three potential solutions, the most plausible of which is to adopt a kind of pluralism about the rival models of (...) explanation. However, I argue that how ranking explanations on this pluralistic account of IBE remains obscure and pluralism leads to contradictory results. In light of these objections, I attempt to dissolve the problem by showing why IBE does not require a ‘model’ of explanation and by giving an account of what explanation consists in within the context of IBE. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that facts would be complex entities made out of particulars and universals. This thesis, which I call Compositionalism, holds that parthood may be construed broadly enough so that the relation that holds between a fact and the entities it ‘ties’ together counts as a kind of parthood. I argue firstly that Compositionalism is incompatible with the possibility of certain kinds of fact and universal, and, secondly, that such facts and universals are possible. I conclude that Compositionalism (...) is false. What all these kinds of fact and universal have in common is a violation of supplementation principles governing any relation that may be intelligibly regarded as a kind of parthood. Although my arguments apply to Compositionalism generally, I focus on recent work by David Armstrong, who is a prominent and explicit Compositionalist. (shrink)

The central aim of this paper is to use a particular view about how the laws of nature govern the evolution of our universe in order to develop and evaluate the two main competing options in the metaphysics of persistence, namely endurantism and perdurantism. We begin by motivating the view that our laws of nature dictate not only qualitative facts about the future, but also which objects will instantiate which qualitative properties. We then show that both traditional doctrines in the (...) metaphysics of persistence must take on surprising further commitments in order to vindicate our universe being law-governed in this strong sense. For example, we argue that endurantists should adopt a particular version of monism, and that perdurantists should adopt a qualitativist doctrine that dispenses with all individuals at the fundamental level. (shrink)

In this paper we examine theoretical utility arguments in metaphysics. While philosophers claim a procedural continuity with science when using such arguments, we argue that examining famous instances from the history of science expose their fundamental flaws. We find that arguments from theoretical utility invoke considerations that are not truth conducive and that justifications for claims that a theory possesses theoretical virtues often assume the truth of the theory such virtues are supposed to support. We conclude that theoretical utility arguments (...) provide no epistemic grounds for metaphysical inquiry. (shrink)

Two aims are at work in James Brown's Smoke and Mirrors: to defend realism against some of its recent detractors, and to expound his own programmatic commitment to a Platonic form of realism. I am sympathetic to his first goal, and dubious about the second, so, as Brown himself predicts, I am enthusiastic about the critical part of the book but critical of his Platonic project. But I will begin this review with a hearty recommendation. Smoke and Mirrors is clear, (...) articulate, perceptive, occasionally provocative, and a healthy antidote to the sceptical pessimism about science that one encounters so often today. (shrink)

Suppose it is a law that all Fs are G. Does the law hold in all possible worlds? According to Necessitarianism, it holds in at least all those worlds containing F-ness. I argue that the Necessitarian must also take the law to hold in all those possible worlds which do not contain F-ness. Accepting the principle that a law can only hold in a world if it has some ontological grounding in that world, I argue that Necessitarianism is committed to (...) the claim that any law holding in the actual world is grounded in every possible world, and that any law holding in any possible world is grounded in the actual world. In other words, Necessitarianism takes all possible laws to be actual. (shrink)

I argue for the claim that if Lewis’s regularity theory of laws were true, we could not know any positive law statement to be true. Premise 1: According to that theory, for any law statement true of the actual world, there is always a nearby world where the law statement is false (a world that differs with respect to one matter of particular fact). Premise 2: One cannot know a proposition to be true if it is false in a nearby (...) world (the epistemological safety principle). The conclusion that no law statement can be known to be true follows immediately from the two premises. (shrink)

Dispositional essentialism, a plausible view about the natures of (sparse or natural) properties, yields a satisfying explanation of the nature of laws also. The resulting necessitarian conception of laws comes in a weaker version, which allows differences between possible worlds as regards which laws hold in those worlds and a stronger version that does not. The main aim of this paper is to articulate what is involved in accepting the stronger version, most especially the consequence that all possible properties exist (...) in all worlds. I also suggest that there is no particularly strong reason for preferring the weaker to the stronger version. For example, Armstrong's instantiation condition on universals entails that according to strong necessitarianism every property is instantiated in all possible worlds. But first we do not need to accept Armstrong's instantiation condition, in part because his arguments for it are forceful only for a contingentist about laws and properties. Secondly, even if we do accept the condition, the consequence that all properties are instantiated is not itself contradictory, so long as any form of necessitarianism holds. Strong necessitarianism is prima facie counter-intuitive. But for that matter so is weak necessitarianism. Accepting either weak or strong necessitarianism requires denying the force of intuition in this area. And indeed we have every reason to deny the force of intuition and its primary source, imagination, concerning modal facts. (shrink)

Those who favour an ontology based on dispositions are thereby able to provide a dispositional essentialist account of the laws of nature. In part 1 of this paper I sketch the dispositional essentialist conception of properties and the concomitant account of laws. In part 2, I characterise various claims about the modal character of properties that fall under the heading ‘quidditism’ and which are consequences of the categoricalist view of properties, which is the alternative to the dispositional essentialist view. I (...) argue that quidditism should be rejected. In part 3, I address a criticism of a strong dispositional essentialist view, viz. that ‘structural’ (i.e. geometrical, numerical, spatial and temporal) properties must be regarded as categorical. (shrink)

In this paper I examine two aspects of Hempel’s covering-law models of explanation. These are (i) nomic subsumption and (ii) explication by models. Nomic subsumption is the idea that to explain a fact is to show how it falls under some appropriate law. This conception of explanation Hempel explicates using a pair of models, where, in this context, a model is a template or pattern such that if something fits it, then that thing is an explanation. A range of well-known (...) counter-examples to Hempel’s models has led his successors to seek alternatives. Problems with limited amendments have encouraged some theorists of explanation to abandon nomic subsumption. So, in particular, causal components have come to be regarded as essential, even though Hempel had intended his model to capture causal explanation as well.1 Here I want to examine the prospects for retaining nomic subsumption by rejecting the other feature of Hempel’s approach – explication by models. An examination of the counter-examples will suggest that it is a mistake to imagine that a limited quantity of information about laws and antecedent conditions will be able to provide an actual explanation – other information, about explanations, may be relevant. This in turn leads me to examine what I shall call structural approaches. They are structural because the status of something as an explanation depends on its fitting into a structure of explanations. There are two structural approaches I shall examine. One is holistic – it proposes that we consider explanation hand-in-hand with the concept of law. This account of explanation inherits its holistic nature from the holistic (or sys- tematic) character of laws of nature. The second supervenience view I shall consider is not global as the holistic approach is. Instead it concentrates on the ‘vertical’ structure of explanations, whereby the existence of a nomic explanation at one level reflects explanations on lower levels on which it supervenes. These structural approaches were first proposed in Bird Synthese 120: 1–18, 1999. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers.. (shrink)

Is the nature of explanation a metaphysical issue? Or has it more to do with psychology and pragmatics? To put things in a different way: what are primary relata in an explanation? What sorts of thing explain what other sorts of thing? David Lewis identifies two senses of ‘explanation’ (Lewis 1986, 217–218). In the first sense, an explanation is an act of explaining. I shall call this the subjectivist sense, since its existence depends on some subject doing the explaining. Hence (...) it is people who, in this sense, explain things. In the second of his two senses, Lewis says, quoting Sylvain Bromberger, that one may properly ask of an explanation “Does anyone know it? Who thought of it first? Is it very complicated?” (Lewis 1986, 218; Bromberger 1965). In this second sense, no subject is needed, the explanation can remain unknown, perhaps for ever. So I call this the objectivist sense. (shrink)

Recently, Brian Ellis came up with a neat and novel idea about laws of nature, which at first I misunderstood. Then I participated, with Brian Ellis and Caroline Lierse, in writing a joint paper, “The World as One of a Kind: Natural Necessity and Laws of Nature” (Ellis, Bigelow and Lierse, forthcoming). In this paper, the Ellis idea was formulated in a different way from that in which I had originally interpreted it. Little weight was placed on possible worlds or (...) individual essences. Much weight rested on natural kinds. I thought Ellis to be suggesting that laws of nature attribute essential properties to one grand individual, The World. In fact, Ellis is hostile towards individual essences for any individuals at all, including The World. He is comfortable only with essential properties of kinds, rather than individuals. The Ellis conjecture was that laws of nature attribute essential properties to the natural kind of which the actual world is one (and presumably the only) member. (shrink)

The Great Divide in metaphysical debates about laws of nature is between Humeans, who think that laws merely describe the distribution of matter, and non-Humeans, who think that laws govern it. The metaphysics can place demands on the proper formulations of physical theories. It is sometimes assumed that the governing view requires a fundamental / intrinsic direction of time: to govern, laws must be dynamical, producing later states of the world from earlier ones, in accord with the fundamental direction of (...) time in the universe. In this paper, we propose a minimal primitivism about laws of nature (MinP) according to which there is no such requirement. On our view, laws govern by constraining the physical possibilities. Our view captures the essence of the governing view without taking on extraneous commitments about the direction of time or dynamic production. Moreover, as a version of primitivism, our view requires no reduction / analysis of laws in terms of universals, powers, or dispositions. Our view accommodates several potential candidates for fundamental laws, including the principle of least action, the Past Hypothesis, the Einstein equation of general relativity, and even controversial examples found in the Wheeler-Feynman theory of electrodynamics and retrocausal theories of quantum mechanics. By understanding governing as constraining, non-Humeans who accept MinP have the same freedom to contemplate a wide variety of candidate fundamental laws as Humeans do. (shrink)

For a long time, regularity accounts of causation have virtually vanished from the scene. Problems encountered within other theoretical frameworks have recently induced authors working on causation, laws of nature, or methodologies of causal reasoning – as e.g. May (Kausales Schliessen. Eine Untersuchung über kausale Erklärungen und Theorienbildung. Ph.D. thesis, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, 1999), Ragin (Fuzzy-set social science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), Graßhoff and May (Causal regularities. In W. Spohn, M. Ledwig, & M. Esfeld (Eds.), Current issues in (...) causation (pp. 85–114). Paderborn: Mentis, 2001), Swartz (The concept of physical law (2nd ed.). http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/physical-law/, 2003), Halpin (Erkenntnis, 58, 137–168, 2003) – to direct their attention back to regularity theoretic analyses. In light of the latest proposals of regularity theories, the paper at hand therefore reassesses the criticism raised against regularity accounts since the INUS theory of causation of Mackie (The cement of the universe. A study of causation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). It is shown that most of these objections target strikingly over-simplified regularity theoretic sketches. By outlining ways to refute these objections it is argued that the prevalent conviction as to the overall failure of regularity theories has been hasty. (shrink)

If the universe and God are identical, as pantheism holds, how can we reconcile the supposed unity of God with the apparent dis-unity of the universe’s elements? I argue that a powers ontology, which generates a form of pantheism under plausible assumptions, is apt to solve the problem of unity. There is reason to think that the directedness of powers is equivalent to the directedness, or intentionality, of mental states. This implies that intentionality is a feature of the physical world (...) at large, not just the mind. As Pfeifer argues, this physical intentionality represents a mild form of panpsychism that is interpretable as a brand of pantheism. I argue that the theory of powers holism explains the unity of the universe’s elements and thus the unity of a pantheistic God, and that powers holism is strengthened by fully recognizing the role of physical intentionality. (shrink)

The majority of the currently flourishing theories of actual causation are located in a broadly counterfactual framework that draws on structural equations. In order to account for cases of symmetric overdeterminiation and preemption, these theories resort to rather intricate analytical tools, most of all, to what Hitchcock has labeled explicitly nonforetracking counterfactuals. This paper introduces a regularity theoretic approach to actual causation that only employs material conditionals, standard Boolean minimization procedures, and a stability condition that regulates the behavior of causal (...) models under model expansions. Notwithstanding its lightweight analytical toolbox, this regularity theory performs at least as well as the structural equations accounts with their heavy appliances. (shrink)

In this paper we aim to disentangle the thesis that the future is open from theses that often get associated or even conflated with it. In particular, we argue that the open future thesis is compatible with both the unrestricted principle of bivalence and determinism with respect to the laws of nature. We also argue that whether or not the future (and indeed the past) is open has no consequences as to the existence of (past and) future ontology.

Priority monism (hereafter, ‘monism’) is the view that there exists one fundamental entity—the world—and that all other objects that exist (a set of objects typically taken to include tables, chairs, and the whole menagerie of everyday items) are merely derivative. Jonathan Schaffer has defended monism in its current guise, across a range of papers. Each paper looks to add something to the monistic picture of the world. In this paper we argue that monism—as Schaffer describes it—is false. To do so (...) we develop an ‘island universe’ argument against Schaffer's monistic theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I will defend the thesis that fundamental natural laws are distinguished from accidental empirical generalizations neither by metaphysical necessity, 147–155, 2005, 2007) nor by contingent necessitation. The only sort of modal force that distinguishes natural laws, I will argue, arises from the peculiar physical property of mutual independence of elementary interactions exemplifying the laws. Mutual independence of elementary interactions means that their existence and their nature do not depend in any way on which other interactions presently occur. (...) It is exactly this general physical property of elementary interactions in the actual world that provides natural laws with their specific modal force and grounds the experience of nature’s ‘recalcitrance’. Thus, the modal force of natural laws is explained by contingent non-modal properties of nature. In the second part of the paper, I deal with some alleged counterexamples to my approach: constraint laws, compositional laws, symmetry principles and conservation laws. These sorts of laws turn out to be compatible with my approach: constraint laws and compositional laws do not represent the dynamics of interaction-types by themselves, but only as constitutive parts of a complete set of equations, whereas symmetry principles and conservation laws do not represent any specific dynamics, but only impose general constraints on possible interactions. (shrink)

I argue that the contemporary interplay of cosmology and particle physics in their joint effort to understand the processes at work during the first moments of the big bang has important implications for understanding the nature of lawhood. I focus on the phenomenon of spontaneous symmetry breaking responsible for generating the masses of certain particles. This phenomenon presents problems for the currently fashionable Dretske-Tooley-Armstrong theory and strongly favors a rival nomic ontology of causal powers.

According to Fine (among others), a nonbasic factual proposition must be grounded in facts involving those of its constituents that are both real and fundamental. But the principle is vulnerable to several dialectically significant counterexamples. It entails, for example, that a logical Platonist cannot accept that true disjunctions are grounded in the truth of their disjuncts; that a Platonist about mathematical objects cannot accept that sets are grounded in their members; and that a color primitivist cannot accept that an object’s (...) being scarlet grounds its not being chartreuse. The Finean might try to defend these implications, but it generates further problems. Instead, the principle should be rejected. An important upshot is that the principle cannot be relied on, as it has been, to distinguish robust realists from anti-realists about a propositional domain—the principle obscures ways of taking features to be both real and fundamental. (shrink)

In this paper I put forward what I think is a new approach to the problem of induction. I sketched the approach in brief sections of a book published in 1983. The same idea had occurred to the English philosopher John Foster and he presented it in a paper at about the same time.

It is common to appeal to governing laws of nature in order to explain the existence of natural regularities. Classical theism, however, maintains the sovereignty thesis: everything distinct from God is created by him and is under his guidance and control. It follows from this that God must somehow be responsible for natural laws and regularities. Therefore, theists need an account of the relation between regularities, laws, and God. I examine competing accounts of laws of nature and conclude that dispositional (...) essentialism provides the most satisfactory explanation of the relation between, and. (shrink)

This paper is a conceptual analysis of the theory debate in psychology, as carried out by cognitivists and radical behaviorists. The debate has focused on the necessity of theories in psychology. However, the logically primary issue is the nature of theories, or what theories are. This claim stems from the fact that cognitivists and radical behaviorists adopt disparate accounts of the nature of theories. The cognitivists' account is closely akin to the received view from logical positivism, where theories are collections (...) of statements and theoretical terms are restricted to designate unobservable entities. Radical behaviorists also conceive theories as collections of statements, but restrict theoretical terms in psychology to designate observable entities. If each side approaches the necessity issue with its preferred account, both agree that theories are necessary in psychology. Hence, there is no disagreement over the necessity of theories in psychology per se, only over the nature of theories. The received view, however, has been shown to suffer from irreparable difficulties that have led to its total rejection in post-positivistic philosophy of science. Alternative accounts, like the structuralist and semantic views, do not raise the issue of whether theories are necessary in psychology. (shrink)