I describe three extant attempts to identify the global external symmetries within a Humean framework with theorems of some or other deductive systematization of the world, respectively, the best system, a meta-best system and a maximally simple system. Each has merits, but also serious flaws. Instead, I propose a view of global external symmetries as consequences of the structure of Humean-consistent world-making relations.

I provide a new account of what it is for the laws of nature to govern the evolution of events. I locate the source of governance in the content of law propositions. As such, I do not appeal to primitive notions of ground, essence, or production to characterize governance. After introducing the account, I use it to outline previously unrecognized varieties of governance. I also specify that laws must govern to have two theoretical virtues: explanatory power as well as a (...) theoretical virtue I call expansiveness. A theory is expansive, roughly, when it can do more with less. (shrink)

Symmetry principles are a central part of contemporary physics, yet there has been surprisingly little metaphysical work done on them. This article develops the Wignerian treatment of symmetries as higher-order laws—metalaws—within a Humean framework of lawhood. Lange has raised two obstacles to Humean metalaws, and the article shows that the account has the resources available to respond to both. It is argued that this framework for Humean metalaws stands as an example of naturalistic metaphysics, able to bring Humeanism into contact (...) with the practice of actual science without giving up on the central denial of necessary connections. (shrink)

Two approaches to elevating certain laws of nature over others have come to prominence recently. On the one hand, according to the meta-laws approach, there are meta-laws, laws which relate to laws as those laws relate to particular facts. On the other hand, according to the modal, or non-absolutist, approach, some laws are necessary in a stricter sense than others. Both approaches play an important role in current research, questioning the ‘orthodoxy’ represented by the leading philosophical theories of natural laws—Humeanism, (...) the DTA view, dispositional essentialism and primitivism. This paper clarifies the relations between these two emerging approaches, as well as their applicability to physical laws and the status of the challenges they pose for standard theories of laws of nature. We first argue that, despite some significant similarities between the two approaches (especially in the context of Lange’s counterfactual account of laws), they are in general distinct and largely independent of each other. Then, we argue that the support for meta-laws from physical theory and practice is more questionable than usually presented. (shrink)

In this paper, we put forward an alternative interpretation of time-reversal symmetry in philosophy of physics: Humean time-reversal symmetry. According to it, time-reversal symmetry is understood as a heuristic, epistemic virtue of the best system, not as a property of the Humean mosaic. One of the consequences of this view is that one of the main arguments against a primitive direction of time is rendered harmless, which paves the way for primitivism about the direction of time.

This work explores issues with the eliminativist formulation of ontic structural realism. An ontology that totally eliminates objects is found lacking by arguing, first, that the theoretical frameworks used to support the best arguments against an object-oriented ontology (quantum mechanics, relativity theory, quantum field theory) can be seen in every case as physical models of empty worlds, and therefore do not represent all the information that comes from science, and in particular from fundamental physics, which also includes information about local (...) interactions between objects. Secondly, by giving a critical assessment of the role of symmetries in these fundamental physical theories; and, lastly, by warning about unfounded metaphysical assumptions. An argument is made for a moderate form of structural realism instead, one in which objects play the fundamental role of representing symmetries and bearing their conserved charges, and of participating in the network of interactions observed in the world. (shrink)

This work deals with obstacles hindering a metaphysics of laws of nature in terms of dispositions, i.e., of fundamental properties that are causal powers. A recent analysis of the principle of least action has put into question the viability of dispositionalism in the case of classical mechanics, generally seen as the physical theory most easily amenable to a dispositional ontology. Here, a proper consideration of the framework role played by the least action principle within the classical image of the world (...) allows us to build a consistent metaphysics of dispositions as charges of interactions. In doing so we develop a general approach that opens the way towards an ontology of dispositions for fundamental physics also beyond classical mechanics. (shrink)