The violation of Bell inequalities seems to establish an important fact about the world: that it is non-local. However, this result relies on the assumption of the statistical independence of the measurement settings with respect to potential past events that might have determined them. Superdeterminism refers to the view that a local, and determinist, account of Bell inequalities violations is possible, by rejecting this assumption of statistical independence. We examine and clarify various problems with superdeterminism, looking in particular at its (...) consequences on the nature of scientific laws and scientific reasoning. We argue that the view requires a neo-Humean account of at least some laws, and creates a significant problem for the use of statistical independence in other parts of physics and science more generally. (shrink)

A regularity theory of causation analyses type-level causation in terms of Boolean difference-making. The essential ingredient that helps this theoretical framework overcome the problems of Hume’s and Mill’s classical accounts is a principle of non-redundancy: only Boolean dependency structures from which no elements can be eliminated track causation. The first part of this paper argues that the recent regularity theoretic literature has not consistently implemented this principle, for it disregarded an important type of redundancies: structural redundancies. Moreover, it is shown (...) that a regularity theory needs to be underwritten by a hitherto neglected metaphysical background assumption stipulating that the world's causal makeup is not ambiguous. Against that background, the second part then develops a new regularity theory that does justice to all types of redundancies and, thereby, provides the first all-inclusive notion of Boolean difference-making. (shrink)

Scientists often communicate using generic generalizations, which are unquantified generalizations such as ‘Americans overestimate social class mobility’ or ‘sound waves carry gravitational mass’. In this paper, I explain the role of such generic generalizations in science, based on a novel theory about their characteristic meaning. According to this theory, a scientific generalization of the form ‘Ks are F’ says that F is one property based on which category K qualifies as a scientific kind. Because what it takes to qualify as (...) a scientific kind varies depending on the discipline, what a generic sentence entails also varies. Based on this semantic theory, I discuss the benefits and drawbacks of using generic language in science. (shrink)