Laws form counterfactually stable sets -- Natural necessity -- Three payoffs of my account -- A world of subjunctives.

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 (...) comes where -- In defense of some received views -- Some assumptions that will be in play -- The laws are propositions -- The laws are true -- The logically contingent consequences of the laws are laws themselves -- At least some laws are metaphysically contingent -- The meta-theoretic conception of laws -- Laws of nature, laws of science, laws of theories -- The first-order conception versus the meta-theoretic conception -- What is a law of nature? -- Some examples of meta-theoretic accounts -- The virtues of the meta-theoretic conception -- Weighing the virtues and shortcomings of the meta-theoretic conception -- An epistemological argument for the meta-theoretic conception of laws -- The discoverability thesis, the governing thesis, and the first-order conception -- The main argument -- The objection from bad company -- The objection from inference to the best explanation -- The objection from bayesianism -- The objection from contextualist epistemology -- The objection from the threat of inductive skepticism -- Laws, governing, and counterfactuals -- Where we are now -- What would things have to be like in order for the laws of nature to govern the universe? -- Lawhood, inevitability, counterfactuals -- What is it for a proposition to be inevitably true? -- What is it for a whole class of propositions to be inevitably true? -- What is it for lawhood to confer inevitability? -- NP and supporting counterfactuals -- The worry about context-variability -- A solution and a look ahead -- When would the laws have been different? -- Where we are now -- The God cases -- Other counterexamples to NP -- A moral-theoretic counterexample to NP -- Scientific contexts and non-scientific contexts -- Scientific God cases? -- Lewisian non-backtracking counterexamples -- Where things stand now -- How could science show that the laws govern? -- Why the law-governed world-picture must include the science-says-so thesis -- What is extra-scientific? -- How can the science-says-so thesis be true? -- NP as a consequence of the presuppositions in any scientific context -- Np as true in all possible scientific contexts -- But how could it be so? -- Attack of the actual-factualists -- Measurement and counterfactuals -- Where we are now -- Measurements, reliability, counterfactuals -- A general principle that captures the relation between measurement and counterfactuals -- What we can learn about lawhood from what we have learned about the counterfactual commitments of science -- A first-order account of laws or a meta-theoretic account of laws? -- What methods are presupposed to be legitimate measurement procedures? -- Why we must adopt a meta-theoretic account of laws -- What lawhood is -- Where we are now -- The measurability account of laws -- Brief review of the case for the mal -- A note about hedged laws -- How plausible is the mal? -- What if we don't care about the law-governed world-picture? -- Newton's God and Laplace's demon -- Beyond humean and non-humean -- Two views of laws -- Humean supervenience and the meta-theoretic conception -- Alleged counterexamples to humean supervenience -- Governing and non-trivial necessity -- How the mal lets us have it all -- Humeanism? non-humeanism? -- What is the significance of the idea of the law-governed universe? -- Where in the world are the laws of nature? -- Appendix: The mal in action : a few examples -- Of scientific theories and their laws -- Newton's theory as a paradigm example -- Classical special-force laws -- Geometrical optics and one of its laws -- Local deterministic field theories. (shrink)

A modest proposal concerning laws, counterfactuals, and explanations - - Why be Humean? -- Suggestions from physics for deep metaphysics -- On the passing of time -- Causation, counterfactuals, and the third factor -- The whole ball of wax -- Epilogue : a remark on the method of metaphysics.

In his new foreword to this edition, Hilary Putnam forcefully rejects these nativist claims.

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)

If you wish to learn from the theoretical physicist anything about the methods which he uses, I would give you the following piece of advice: Don't listen to his words, examine his achievements. For to the discoverer in that field, the constructions of his imagination appear so necessary and so natural that he is apt to treat them not as the creations of his thoughts but as given realities.

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.

There is a long tradition of preferring local theories to ones that posit lawful or causal influence at a spacetime distance. In this paper, we argue against this preference. We argue that nonlocality is scientifically unobjectionable and that nonlocal theories can be known. Scientists can gather evidence for them and confirm them in much the same way that they do for local theories. We think these observations point to a deeper constraint on scientific theorizing and experimentation: the (quasi‐) isolation of (...) causal or lawful influence. We argue that this requirement ought to replace the locality desideratum in science. We then explore the possibility that the order of explanation has been reversed: perhaps it is isolatable influence that determines what counts as local in the first place. (shrink)

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 (...) information in a way that maximizes their cognitive usefulness for creature like us. We argue that this account motivates scientific practice because the laws’ applicability to non-actual circumstances falls right out of their cognitive usefulness. (shrink)

Recently several thought experiments have been developed (by John Carroll amongst others) which have been alleged to refute the Ramsey-Lewis view of laws of nature. The paper aims to show that two such thought experiments fail to establish that the Ramsey-Lewis view is false, since they presuppose a conception of laws of nature that is radically at odds with the Humean conception of laws embodied by the Ramsey-Lewis view. In particular, the thought experiments presuppose that laws of nature govern the (...) behavior of objects. The paper argues that the claim that laws govern should not be regarded as a conceptual truth, and shows how the governing conception of laws manifests itself in the thought experiments. Hence the thought experiments do not constitute genuine counter-examples to the Ramsey-Lewis view. since the Humean is free to reject the conception of laws which the thought experiments presuppose. (shrink)

The ubiquitous schema ‘All Fs are Gs’ dominates much philosophical discussion on laws but rarely is it shown how actual laws mentioned and used in science are supposed to fit it. After consideration of a variety of laws, including those obviously conditional and those superficially not conditional, I argue that we have good reason to support the traditional interpretation of laws as conditionals of some quantified form with a single object variable. I show how this conclusion impacts on the status (...) of ‘system laws’ and the significance of having only one object variable with regard to the relationship between laws and causal relations. (shrink)

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, (...) symmetries are meta-laws; they are not mere byproducts of the dynamical and force laws. Symmetries then explain conservation laws whereas conservation laws lack the modal status to explain symmetries. I elaborate the variety of natural necessity that meta-laws would possess. Proposed metaphysical accounts of natural law should aim to accommodate the distinction between meta-laws and mere byproducts of the laws just as they must accommodate the distinction between laws and accidents. (shrink)

Several variants of Lewis's Best System Account of Lawhood have been proposed that avoid its commitment to perfectly natural properties. There has been little discussion of the relative merits of these proposals, and little discussion of how one might extend this strategy to provide natural property-free variants of Lewis's other accounts, such as his accounts of duplication, intrinsicality, causation, counterfactuals, and reference. We undertake these projects in this paper. We begin by providing a framework for classifying and assessing the variants (...) of the Best System Account. We then evaluate these proposals, and identify the most promising candidates. We go on to develop a proposal for systematically modifying Lewis's other accounts so that they, too, avoid commitment to perfectly natural properties. We conclude by briefly considering a different route one might take to developing natural property-free versions of Lewis's other accounts, drawing on recent work by Williams. (shrink)

This paper combines two ideas: (1) That the Lewisian best system analysis of lawhood (BSA) can cope with laws that have exceptions (cf. Braddon-Mitchell in Noûs 35(2):260–277, 2001; Schrenk in The metaphysics of ceteris paribus laws. Ontos, Frankfurt, 2007). (2) That a BSA can be executed not only on the mosaic of perfectly natural properties but also on any set of special science properties (cf., inter alia, Schrenk 2007, Selected papers contributed to the sections of GAP.6, 6th international congress of (...) the society for analytical philosophy. Mentis, Paderborn/Münster, 2008; Cohen and Callender in Philos Stud 145:1–34, 2009, Erkenntnis 73:427–447, 2010). Bringing together (1) and (2) results in an analysis of special science ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

The law of gravitation, an example of physical law The relation of mathematics to physics The great conservation principles Symmetry in physical law The distinction of past and future Probability and uncertainty: the quantum mechanical view of nature Seeking new laws.

Determinism is a perennial topic of philosophical discussion. Very little acquaintance with the philosophical literature is needed to reveal the Tower of ...

This article argues for a revised best system account of laws of nature. David Lewis’s original BSA has two main elements. On the one hand, there is the Humean base, which is the totality of particular matters of fact that obtain in the history of the universe. On the other hand, there is what I call the ‘nomic formula’, which is a particular operation that gets applied to the Humean base in order to output the laws of nature. My revised (...) account focuses on this latter element of the view. Lewis conceives of the nomic formula as a balance of simplicity and strength, but I argue that this is a mistake. Instead, I motivate and develop a different proposal for the standards that figure into the nomic formula, and I suggest a rationale for why these should be the correct standards. Specifically, I argue that the nomic formula should be conceived as a collection of desiderata designed to generate principles that are predictively useful to creatures like us. The resulting view—which I call the ‘best predictive system’ account of laws—is thus able to explain why scientists are interested in discovering the laws, and it also gives rise to laws with the sorts of features that we find in actual scientific practice 1Introduction2The LOPP3A Problem with Lewis's Formula4A Pragmatic Account of the Nomic Formula 4.1Informative dynamics4.2Wide applicability4.3Spatial locality4.4Temporal locality4.5Spatial, temporal, and rotational symmetries4.6Predictively useful properties4.7Simplicity4.8Recap5 Conclusion. (shrink)

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 (...) have to be empirically accessible. I then argue that laws with these features tend to be dynamic. _1_ The Best System _1.1_ Orthodox Humeanism _2_ The Best Is Not Good Enough _2.1_ Laws and boundary conditions _2.2_ Laws and scientific practice _2.3_ An illustrative example _3_ Laws and Epistemic Roles _3.1_ The epistemic criterion _3.2_ The epistemic role account _3.3_ Scientific virtues _3.4_ Applying the epistemic role account _4_ Conclusion. (shrink)

Here the philosopher and physicist David Z Albert argues, among other things, that the difference between past and future can be understood as a mechanical phenomenon of nature and that quantum mechanics makes it impossible to present the entirety of what can be said about the world as a narrative of “befores” and “afters.”.

This article discusses the role of simplicity and the notion of a best balance of simplicity and strength within the best systems account (BSA) of laws of nature. The article explores whether there is anything in scientific practice that corresponds to the notion of simplicity or to the trade-off between simplicity and strength to which the BSA appeals. Various theoretical rationales for simplicity preferences and their bearing on the identification of laws are also explored. It is concluded that there are (...) a number of issues about the role of simplicity within the BSA and its relation to strength that need to be addressed before the BSA can be regarded as an adequate account of laws. 1 Introduction2 The Best Systems Account3 The Trade-Off between Simplicity and Strength: Preliminary Considerations4 Alternative Conceptions of the Relationship between Simplicity and Strength5 Two Roles for Simplicity6 Simplicity in the Best Systems Account: Curve-Fitting7 Simplicity as a Corrective for Overfitting8 Descriptive Simplicity in the Best Systems Account?9 Simplicity as Due to Human Intellectual Limitations10 Summary11 Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

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 (...) theory can … be summarized in one sentence: all natural laws must be so conditioned that they are covariant with respect to Lorentz transformations. [The special theory of relativity] is not a theory in the usual sense but is better regarded as a second-level theory, or a theory of theories that constrains first-level theories. The principle of relativity is an example of a symmetry principle: a principle requiring that the first-order laws be unchanged under a given transformation. Long before Einstein proposed the principle of relativity, other spacetime symmetries were widely believed to be meta-laws: that the first-order laws are covariant under arbitrary spatial displacements, temporal displacements and spatial rotations. These spacetime symmetries require the laws to treat all spatial locations and directions alike and all moments alike. For instance, symmetry under temporal displacements rules out a fundamental force law specifying that a given force declines with the inverse-square of the distance before a given moment but with the inverse-cube of the distance at and after that moment. Wigner characterizes such a symmetry principle as ‘a superprinciple which is in …. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the prospects for an important position that falls under the "mere patterns" approach: what, for reasons that will emerge, the author calls"Humean reductionism" about laws of nature, a view championed perhaps most prominently by David Lewis. He reviews some of the most interesting arguments against this position from the literature, and adds some of his own that, he thinks, are more effective. The chapter considers how the best system account (BSA) would apply to the Newtonian particle world. (...) The BSA has been challenged in a wide variety of ways: it violates certain intuitions; It makes a hash out of the connection between laws on the one hand, and counterfactuals, explanation, and induction on the other. The author thinks that the problem he has raised‐challenging though he hopes it is, is really an occasion for the Humean reductionist to sharpen his position still further. (shrink)

Anomalous Monism is the view that mental entities are identical with physical entities, but that the vocabulary used to describe, predict and explain mental events is neither definitionally nor nomologically reducible to the vocabulary of physics. The argument for Anomalous Monism rests in part on the claim that every true singular causal statement relating two events is backed by a law that covers those events when those events are appropriately described. This paper attempts to clarify and defend this claim by (...) tracing out some conceptual relations among the concepts of event, law, and object. (shrink)