Switch to: Citations

Add references

You must login to add references.
  1. On the Plurality of Worlds.David K. Lewis - 1986 - Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
    This book is a defense of modal realism; the thesis that our world is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that the individuals that inhabit our world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds. Lewis argues that the philosophical utility of modal realism is a good reason for believing that it is true.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2374 citations  
  • (1 other version)New work for a theory of universals.David K. Lewis - 1983 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (4):343-377.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1594 citations  
  • Science Without Numbers: A Defence of Nominalism.Hartry H. Field - 1980 - Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press.
    Science Without Numbers caused a stir in 1980, with its bold nominalist approach to the philosophy of mathematics and science. It has been unavailable for twenty years and is now reissued in a revised edition with a substantial new preface presenting the author's current views and responses to the issues raised in subsequent debate.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   577 citations  
  • On the Plurality of Worlds.David Lewis - 1986 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (3):388-390.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2868 citations  
  • Consciousness Explained.Daniel Dennett - 1991 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (4):905-910.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1453 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Foundations of Language 13 (1):145-151.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1298 citations  
  • A Primer on Determinism.John Earman - 1986 - D. Reidel.
    Determinism is a perennial topic of philosophical discussion. Very little acquaintance with the philosophical literature is needed to reveal the Tower of ...
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   326 citations  
  • Humean Supervenience Debugged.David Lewis - 1994 - Mind 103 (412):473--490.
    Tn this paper I explore and to an extent defend HS. The main philosophical challenges to HS come from philosophical views that say that nomic concepts-laws, chance, and causation-denote features of the world that fail to supervene on non-nomic features. Lewis rejects these views and has labored mightily to construct HS accounts of nomic concepts. His account of laws is fundamental to his program, since his accounts of the other nomic notions rely on it. Recently, a number of philosophers have (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   658 citations  
  • (2 other versions)Counterfactuals.David Lewis - 1973 - Philosophy of Science 42 (3):341-344.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1157 citations  
  • (1 other version)New Work For a Theory of Universals.David Lewis - 1997 - In David Hugh Mellor & Alex Oliver (eds.), Properties. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1026 citations  
  • Laws and Lawmakers Science, Metaphysics, and the Laws of Nature.Marc Lange - 2009 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Laws form counterfactually stable sets -- Natural necessity -- Three payoffs of my account -- A world of subjunctives.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   135 citations  
  • What price spacetime substantivalism? The hole story.John Earman & John Norton - 1987 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 38 (4):515-525.
    Spacetime substantivalism leads to a radical form of indeterminism within a very broad class of spacetime theories which include our best spacetime theory, general relativity. Extending an argument from Einstein, we show that spacetime substantivalists are committed to very many more distinct physical states than these theories' equations can determine, even with the most extensive boundary conditions.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   305 citations  
  • Humean Supervenience.Barry Loewer - 1996 - Philosophical Topics 24 (1):101-127.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   305 citations  
  • General Propositions and Causality.Frank Plumpton Ramsey - 1925 - In The Foundations of Mathematics and Other Logical Essays. London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul. pp. 237-255.
    This article rebuts Ramsey's earlier theory, in 'Universals of Law and of Fact', of how laws of nature differ from other true generalisations. It argues that our laws are rules we use in judging 'if I meet an F I shall regard it as a G'. This temporal asymmetry is derived from that of cause and effect and used to distinguish what's past as what we can know about without knowing our present intentions.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   245 citations  
  • A better best system account of lawhood.Jonathan Cohen & Craig Callender - 2009 - Philosophical Studies 145 (1):1 - 34.
    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 (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   178 citations  
  • Quiddistic Knowledge.Jonathan Schaffer - 2005 - Philosophical Studies 123 (1):1-32.
    Is the relation between properties and the causal powers they confer necessary, or contingent? Necessary, says Sydney Shoemaker, on pain of skepticism about the properties. Contingent, says David Lewis, swallowing the skeptical conclusion. I shall argue that Lewis is right about the metaphysics, but that Shoemaker and Lewis are wrong about the epistemology. Properties have intrinsic natures (quiddities), which we can know.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   108 citations  
  • Making best systems best for us.Christian Loew & Siegfried Jaag - 2018 - Synthese 197 (6):2525-2550.
    Humean reductionism about laws of nature appears to leave a central aspect of scientific practice unmotivated: If the world’s fundamental structure is exhausted by the actual distribution of non-modal properties and the laws of nature are merely efficient summaries of this distribution, then why does science posit laws that cover a wide range of non-actual circumstances? In this paper, we develop a new version of the Humean best systems account of laws based on the idea that laws need to organize (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   40 citations  
  • Physical relativity: Space–time structure from a dynamical perspective.Harvey Brown - 2005 - Philosophy 82 (321):498-503.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   229 citations  
  • Philosophical Papers.Graeme Forbes & David Lewis - 1985 - Philosophical Review 94 (1):108.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   218 citations  
  • Physical relativity from a functionalist perspective.Eleanor Knox - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 67:118-124.
    This paper looks at the relationship between spacetime functionalism and Harvey Brown’s dynamical relativity. One popular way of reading and extending Brown’s programme in the literature rests on viewing his position as a version of relationism. But a kind of spacetime functionalism extends the project in a different way, by focussing on the account Brown gives of the role of spacetime in relativistic theories. It is then possible to see this as giving a functional account of the concept of spacetime (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   74 citations  
  • The Law Governed Universe.John T. Roberts - 2008 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    The law-governed world-picture -- A remarkable idea about the way the universe is cosmos and compulsion -- The laws as the cosmic order : the best-system approach -- The three ways : no-laws, non-governing-laws, governing-laws -- Work that laws do in science -- An important difference between the laws of nature and the cosmic order -- The picture in four theses -- The strategy of this book -- The meta-theoretic conception of laws -- The measurability approach to laws -- What (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   66 citations  
  • Introduction.D. Lewis - 1986 - Philosophical Papers 2.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   202 citations  
  • The Metaphysics of Space-Time Substantivalism.Carl Hoefer - 1996 - Journal of Philosophy 93 (1):5-27.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   125 citations  
  • Space, time, and spacetime.L. Sklar - 1976 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 172 (3):545-555.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   172 citations  
  • Science without numbers, A Defence of Nominalism.Hartry Field - 1980 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 171 (4):502-503.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   167 citations  
  • Dynamic Humeanism.Michael Townsen Hicks - 2017 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (4):983-1007.
    Humean accounts of laws of nature fail to distinguish between dynamic laws and static initial conditions. But this distinction plays a central role in scientific theorizing and explanation. I motivate the claim that this distinction should matter for the Humean, and show that current views lack the resources to explain it. I then develop a regularity theory that captures this distinction. My view takes empirical accessibility to be one of the primary features of laws, and I identify features laws must (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   49 citations  
  • Absolutism vs Comparativism About Quantity.Shamik Dasgupta - 2013 - Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 8:105-150.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   68 citations  
  • (1 other version)Philosophical Papers: Volume 2.David Lewis - 1987 - New York, US: Oxford University Press USA.
    This is the second volume of philosophical essays by one of the most innovative and influential philosophers now writing in English. Containing thirteen papers in all, the book includes both new essays and previously published papers, some of them with extensive new postscripts reflecting Lewis's current thinking. The papers in Volume II focus on causation and several other closely related topics, including counterfactual and indicative conditionals, the direction of time, subjective and objective probability, causation, explanation, perception, free will, and rational (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   54 citations  
  • Points, particles, and structural realism.Oliver Pooley - 2006 - In Dean Rickles, Steven French & Juha T. Saatsi (eds.), The Structural Foundations of Quantum Gravity. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pp. 83--120.
    In his paper ``What is Structural Realism?'' James Ladyman drew a distinction between epistemological structural realism and metaphysical (or ontic) structural realism. He also drew a suggestive analogy between the perennial debate between substantivalist and relationalist interpretations of spacetime on the one hand, and the debate about whether quantum mechanics treats identical particles as individuals or as `non-individuals' on the other. In both cases, Ladyman's suggestion is that an ontic structural realist interpretation of the physics might be just what is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   97 citations  
  • Substances and space-time: What Aristotle would have said to Einstein.Tim Maudlin - 1990 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 21 (4):531-561.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   78 citations  
  • Calculus as Geometry.Frank Arntzenius & Cian Dorr - 2012 - In Space, time, & stuff. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
    We attempt to extend the nominalistic project initiated in Hartry Field's Science Without Numbers to modern physical theories based in differential geometry.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   58 citations  
  • Empirical Consequences of Symmetries.David Wallace & Hilary Greaves - 2014 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65 (1):59-89.
    It is widely recognized that ‘global’ symmetries, such as the boost invariance of classical mechanics and special relativity, can give rise to direct empirical counterparts such as the Galileo-ship phenomenon. However, conventional wisdom holds that ‘local’ symmetries, such as the diffeomorphism invariance of general relativity and the gauge invariance of classical electromagnetism, have no such direct empirical counterparts. We argue against this conventional wisdom. We develop a framework for analysing the relationship between Galileo-ship empirical phenomena on the one hand, and (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   50 citations  
  • (1 other version)Laws and meta-laws of nature: Conservation laws and symmetries.Marc Lange - 2007 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (3):457-481.
    Symmetry principles are commonly said to explain conservation laws—and were so employed even by Lagrange and Hamilton, long before Noether's theorem. But within a Hamiltonian framework, the conservation laws likewise entail the symmetries. Why, then, are symmetries explanatorily prior to conservation laws? I explain how the relation between ordinary (i.e., first-order) laws and the facts they govern (a relation involving counterfactuals) may be reproduced one level higher: as a relation between symmetries and the ordinary laws they govern. In that event, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   48 citations  
  • The meaning of general covariance.John Stachel - 1993 - In John Earman (ed.), Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External World. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 129--60.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   63 citations  
  • (1 other version)Laws and Meta-Laws of Nature.Marc Lange - 2007 - The Harvard Review of Philosophy 15 (1):21-36.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   39 citations  
  • Lossy laws.David Braddon-Mitchell - 2001 - Noûs 35 (2):260–277.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   47 citations  
  • Introduction.David Lewis - 1986 - In Philosophical Papers, Volume II. New York, US: Oxford University Press.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   43 citations  
  • Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett. [REVIEW]Ned Block - 1993 - Journal of Philosophy 90 (4):181-193.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   479 citations  
  • What Everyone Should Say about Symmetries.Michael Townsen Hicks - 2019 - Philosophy of Science 86 (5):1284-1294.
    The laws of nature have an internal explanatory structure. This leads to interesting questions for metaphysicians of laws. What is the nature of this explanation? Marc Lange has recently argued in favor of metalaws: higher-order laws governing other laws, of which symmetry principles may be an example. Lange argues that his view, unlike its competitors, can make sense of the explanatory power of symmetries. I agree with Lange about the explanatory structure of laws but disagree with him about the nature (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Symmetry Fundamentalism: A Case Study from Classical Physics.David Schroeren - 2020 - Philosophical Quarterly 71 (2):308-333.
    Physicists have suggested what I call symmetry fundamentalism: the view that symmetries are fundamental aspects of physical reality and that these aspects are more fundamental than what one might ordinarily think of as the fundamental building blocks of the world, such as elementary particles. The goal of this paper is to develop an ontology for classical particle mechanics that provides a precise instance of symmetry fundamentalism.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Notes on symmetries.Gordon Belot - 2002 - In Katherine Brading & Elena Castellani (eds.), Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 393--412.
    These notes discuss some aspects of the sort of symmetry considerations that arise in philosophy of physics. They describe and provide illustration of: (i) one common sort of symmetry argument; and (ii) a construction that allows one to eliminate symmetries from a given structure.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Lange’s Challenge: Accounting for Meta-laws.Zanja Yudell - 2013 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (2):347-369.
    Lange issues a novel challenge to philosophical accounts of laws of nature. He notes that the laws of nature seem to be themselves governed by laws analogous to the way that the laws govern particular facts. These higher order laws are the meta-laws of nature. He claims that if a philosophical account of laws aims to accurately characterize the laws, it should be able to account for these meta-laws. To generalize this challenge, I introduce the notion of roles played by (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   9 citations  
  • Meta-laws of nature and the Best System Account.M. Lange - 2011 - Analysis 71 (2):216-222.
    The merits of David Lewis’s Best System Account of natural law are frequently debated. But to my knowledge, the prospects for extending the BSA to cover meta-laws have never been examined. I shall identify two obstacles facing the most natural way of extending the BSA to cover meta-laws. The BSA’s fans should consider how these obstacles are to be overcome. Meta-laws are laws about laws. For example, Einstein’s special theory of relativity incorporates a meta-law: The content of the [special] relativity (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • (1 other version)What is a Law of Nature?Long Kenneth - 2009 - Philosophical Books 26 (2):120-120.
    A discussion of various philosophical approaches to the concept of a law of nature, including the naive regularity approach, the sophisyicated regularity approach, the epistemic mark approach, the web-of-laws approach, and the anti-realist approach.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Review. [REVIEW]Anna Maidens - 1992 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 43 (1):129-136.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Review. [REVIEW]Anna Maidens - 1995 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 46 (2):129-136.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations