The aim of this paper is to debunk the assertion that miraculous “conspiracies” between fundamental particles are required to bring about the projectibility of special science generalisations. Albert and Loewer have proposed a theory of lawhood which supplements the Best System of fundamental laws with a statistical postulate over the initial conditions of the universe, thereby rendering special science generalisations highly probable, and dispelling the conspiracy. However, concerns have been raised about its ability to confer typicality upon special science generalisations (...) in the way that is required. In this paper I defend their account against these charges, arguing that they derive from a misunderstanding of the typicality claim. I suggest a way out of the impasse via a naturalised approach which focusses on the genealogy of subsystems and encourages conceptual demonstrations of typicality for special science generalisations. I argue for an account of special science laws that acknowledges the way in which the special sciences reduce to the fundamental physics, thereby dissolving the conspiracy, yet respects the methodological and explanatory autonomy of special science generalisations. (shrink)

Humeans take reality to be devoid of ‘necessary connections’: things just happen. Laws of nature are to be understood in terms of what ‘just happens’, not vice versa. Here the Humean needs some conception of what it is that ‘just happens’ – a conception of the Humean mosaic. Lewis’s Humeanism incorporates such a conception in the form of a Lewis-style metaphysics of objects, properties, and modality. Newer versions of Humeanism about laws of nature, such as the Better Best Systems approach, (...) typically reject such a Lewisian metaphysics, but it remains unclear what they can offer in its place. By exploring different candidate conceptions, this paper sheds light on the limits of Humeanism about laws of nature: not all conceptions of the Humean mosaic form a suitable basis for a Humean theory of laws. In fact, only a metaphysics roughly in line with Lewis’s will do. The paper ends with a tentative generalization of this result, thus pointing to the ‘limit’ of Humeanism in general: taking the Humean way of thinking to its limit results in a rejection of the whole idea of such a mosaic – and hence of Humean mosaic-based accounts of anything. (shrink)

Can the second law of thermodynamics explain our mental experience of the direction of time? According to an influential approach, the past hypothesis of universal low entropy also explains how the psychological arrow comes about. We argue that although this approach has many attractive features, it cannot explain the psychological arrow after all. In particular, we show that the past hypothesis is neither necessary nor sufficient to explain the psychological arrow on the basis of current physics. We propose two necessary (...) conditions on the workings of the brain that any account of the psychological arrow of time must satisfy. And we propose a new reductive physical account of the psychological arrow of time compatible with time-symmetric physics, according to which these two conditions are also sufficient. Our proposal has some radical implications, for example, that the psychological arrow of time is fundamental, whereas the temporal direction of entropy increase in the second law of thermodynamics and the past hypothesis is derived from it, rather than the other way around. 1Introduction2A Physical Account of the Psychological Arrow of Time3Necessary Conditions for the Psychological Arrow of Time4The Psychological Arrow of Time via the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the Past Hypothesis5Why the Past Hypothesis Is Insufficient for the Psychological Arrow of Time5.1Stage 1, Version 1: From the past hypothesis to the psychological arrow via typicality5.2Stage 1, Version 2: From the past hypothesis to the psychological arrow via dynamical or causal considerations5.3Stage 2: From entropy gradient in the brain to the psychological arrow of time6Why the Past Hypothesis Is Unnecessary for the Psychological Arrow of Time7A New Reductive Account of the Psychological Arrow of Time. (shrink)

As is well-known, David Lewis’ counterfactual theory of causation is subject to serious counterexamples in ‘exceptional’ cases. What has not received due attention in the literature so far is that Lewis’ theory fails to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for causation in ‘ordinary’ cases, too. In particular, the theory suffers from the ‘problem of large causes’. It is argued that this problem may be fixed by imposing a minimization constraint, whilst this solution brings along substantial costs as well. In particular, (...) a precise formulation of minimization requires defining an ‘essential part of an event’ and/or an ‘essential subevent’. Although the possibility of such a definition is ultimately left open, some doubts are raised on whether the counterfactualists’ resources are fit for this purpose, and whether the challenge can be met without substantially departing from Lewis’ intention, which was to provide a reductive account of causation. (shrink)

A long-standing charge of circularity against regularity accounts of laws has recently seen a surge of renewed interest. The difficulty is that we appeal to laws to explain their worldly instances, but if these laws are descriptions of regularities in the instances then they are explained by those very instances. By the transitivity of explanation, we reach an absurd conclusion: instances of the laws explain themselves. While drawing a distinction between metaphysical and scientific explanations merely modifies the challenge rather than (...) resolving it, I argue that it does point us towards an attractive solution. According to Humeanism, the most prominent form of the regularity view, laws capture information about important patterns in the phenomena. By invoking laws in scientific explanations, Humeans are showing how a given explanandum is subsumed into a more general pattern. Doing so both undermines a principle of transitivity that plays a crucial role in the circularity argument and draws out a central feature of the Humean approach to scientific explanation. (shrink)

The laws of nature are central to our understanding of the world. And while there is often broad agreement about the technical formulations of the laws, there can be sharp disagreement about the metaphysical nature of the laws. For instance, the Newtonian laws of nature can be stated and analyzed by appealing to a set of possible worlds. Yet, some philosophers argue the worlds are mere notational devices, while others take them to be robust, concrete entities in their own right. (...) In this paper, I use a recent view of laws called the Mentaculus as a case study to illustrate the wide variety of metaphysical pictures that can accompany such a view. I conclude that the technical features of the laws -- typically (though not always) given to us by practicing scientists -- are compatible with many different metaphysical foundations. (shrink)

Lewis’ Best System Analysis of laws of nature is often criticized on the grounds that what it means to be the “best” system is too subjective for an analysis of lawhood. Recent proponents of the BSA have embraced the view’s close connection to the particulars of scientific practice despite the objection. I distinguish two compatible versions of the objection: one opposed to mind or subject dependence and the other opposed to relativity. The BSA can answer both. Answering the anti-relative version (...) of Armstrong’s objection requires that the BSA be no more or less relative than is required by scientific practice. A spectrum of relativity is introduced with extremes of minimally and maximally relative variants of the BSA, and extant variants of the BSA are located on it. Lastly, I sketch what work remains to be done with respect to Armstrong’s objection by BSA proponents depending on where in the spectrum of relativity they hope to locate their view. (shrink)

Many moral debunking arguments are driven by the idea that the correlation between our moral beliefs and the moral truths is a big coincidence, given a robustly realist conception of morality.One influential response is that the correlation is not a coincidence because there is a common explainer of our moral beliefs and the moral truths. For example, the reason that I believe that I should feed my child is because feeding my child helps them to survive, and natural selection instills (...) in me beliefs and dispositions that help my children survive since that is conductive to my genes continuing through the generations. Similarly, the reason that it's morally good to feed my child is because it helps them to survive, and survival is morally valuable.But if we look at some cases from scientific practice, and from everyday life, we can see, I argue, why this response fails. A correlation can be coincidental even if there is a common explainer. I give an account of the nature of coincidence that draws upon recent literature on scientific explanation and argue that the correlation between moral belief and moral truth is a coincidence, even given such common explainers. And I use this to defend a certain form of debunking argument. (shrink)

The most promising accounts of ontic probability include the Spielraum conception of probabilities, which can be traced back to J. von Kries and H. Poincaré, and the best system account by D. Lewis. This paper aims at comparing both accounts and at combining them to obtain the best of both worlds. The extensions of both Spielraum and best system probabilities do not coincide because the former only apply to systems with a special dynamics. Conversely, Spielraum probabilities may not be part (...) of the best system, e.g. if a broad class of random devices is not often used. Spielraum probabilities have the potential to provide illuminating explanations of frequencies with which outcomes of trials on gambling devices arise. They ultimately fail to account for such frequencies though because they are compatible with frequencies that grossly differ from the values of the respective probabilities. I thus follow recent proposals by M. Strevens and M. Abrams and strengthen the definition of Spielraum probabilities by adding a further condition that restricts some actual frequencies. The resulting account remains limited in scope, but stands objections raised against it in the recent literature: it is neither circular nor based upon arbitrary choices of a measure or of physical variables. Nor does it lack any explanatory power. (shrink)

Much recent philosophical attention has been devoted to variants on the Best System Analysis of laws and chance. In particular, philosophers have been interested in the prospects of such Best System Analyses for yielding *high-level* laws and chances. Nevertheless, a foundational worry about BSAs lurks: there do not appear to be uniquely appropriate measures of the degree to which a system exhibits theoretical virtues, such as simplicity and strength. Nor does there appear to be a uniquely correct exchange rate at (...) which the theoretical virtues of simplicity, strength, and likelihood trade off against one another in the determination of a best system. Moreover, it may be that there is no *robustly* best system: no system that comes out best under *any* reasonable measures of the theoretical virtues and exchange rate between them. This worry has been noted by several philosophers, with some arguing that there is indeed plausibly a set of tied-for-best systems for our world. Some have even argued that this entails that there are no Best System laws or chances in our world. I argue that, while it *is* plausible that there is a set of tied-for-best systems for our world, it doesn't follow from this that there are no Best System chances. Rather, it follows that the Best System chances for our world are *unsharp*. (shrink)

In this contribution, I comment on Raffaella Campaner’s defense of explanatory pluralism in psychiatry (in this volume). In her paper, Campaner focuses primarily on explanatory pluralism in contrast to explanatory reductionism. Furthermore, she distinguishes between pluralists who consider pluralism to be a temporary state on the one hand and pluralists who consider it to be a persisting state on the other hand. I suggest that it would be helpful to distinguish more than those two versions of pluralism – different understandings (...) of explanatory pluralism both within philosophy of science and psychiatry – namely moderate/temporary pluralism, anything goes pluralism, isolationist pluralism, integrative pluralism and interactive pluralism. Next, I discuss the pros and cons of these different understandings of explanatory pluralism. Finally, I raise the question of how to implement or operationalize explanatory pluralism in scientific practice; how to structure the “genuine dialogue” or shape “the pluralistic attitude” Campaner is referring to. As tentative answers, I explore a question-based framework for explanatory pluralism as well as social-epistemological procedures for interaction among competing approaches and explanations. (shrink)