In The Context of Laws of Nature Structural Humeanism vs. Classical Humeanism -/- In the context of the laws of nature, philosophers of science have developed some views in order to adopt an attitude towards recurring events in nature. In this respect, it has been discussed whether there is any driving force underlying the regular behaviours and movements we encounter in nature, and two approaches have emerged as a result of the discussion: A view that there are (...) certain driving forces or causal relations in the ground, and an opposing view that claims that there are no causal relations in the ground, but there are regularities in nature. Views such as the latter are generally described as the Humean view. Such views are also called regularity theories. Throughout this article, the statements referred to as regularity are characterised as the Humean view. Since the article will be centred on the Humean view, views such as the first view, such as dispositional essentialism or structural realism, are not the concern of this article. The article favours the Structural Humean approach over the classical Humean approach. The classical Humean approach is centred on the views of David Lewis and is concerned with distinguishing between laws of nature seen as accidental generalisations and regularities. While it tries to make such a distinction by constructing nature through a mosaic, the Structural Humean approach is an approach that develops Lewis’s claims and tries to shape nature with the concept of structure rather than mosaic. Thus, it is seen as an approach that provides more information than the Classical Humean approach in terms of creating a philosophical infrastructure for explaining nature in terms of modern physics. Through Psillos, Structural Humeanism tried to place the concept of natural pattern into the structure in order to gain metaphysical solidity and tried to bring the Structural Humean approach closer to the Structural Realism camp. Thus, the classically epistemologically important Humean approach has made a significant progress in positioning it on the realist wing. As a result of all these studies, the Structural Humean approach has been defended as a philosophical approach that offers useful arguments for modern physics compared to the Classical Humean approach. -/- Keywords: Humeanism, Regularity, Laws of Nature, Best System Account, Structural Humeanism, Natural Patterns. (shrink)

Certain results, most famously in classical statistical mechanics and complex systems, but also in quantum mechanics and high-energy physics, yield a coarse-grained stable statistical pattern in the long run. The explanation of these results shares a common structure: the results hold for a 'typical' dynamics, that is, for most of the underlying dynamics. In this paper I argue that the structure of the explanation of these results might shed some light --a different light-- on philosophical debates on the laws (...) of nature. In the explanation of such patterns, the specific form of the underlying dynamics is almost irrelevant. The conditions required, given a free state-space evolution, suffice to account for the coarse-grained lawful behaviour. An analysis of such conditions might thus provide a different account of how regular behaviour can occur. This paper focuses on drawing attention to this type of explanation, outlining it in the diverse areas of physics in which it appears, and discussing its limitations and significance in the tractable setting of classical statistical mechanics. (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)

It has been argued that the fundamental laws of physics do not face a ‘problem of provisos’ equivalent to that found in other scientific disciplines (Earman, Roberts and Smith 2002) and there is only the appearance of exceptions to physical laws if they are confused with differential equations of evolution type (Smith 2002). In this paper I argue that even if this is true, fundamental laws in physics still pose a major challenge to standard Humean approaches to (...) lawhood, as they are not in any obvious sense about regularities in behaviour. A Humean approach to physical laws with exceptions is possible, however, if we adopt a view of laws that takes them to be the algorithms in the algorithmic compressions of empirical data. When this is supplemented with a distinction between lossy and lossless compression, we can explain exceptions in terms of compression artefacts present in the application of the lossy laws. (shrink)

The Humean best systems account identifies laws of nature with the regularities in a system of truths that, as a whole, best conforms to scientific standards for theory-choice. A principled problem for the BSA is that it returns the wrong verdicts about laws in cases where multiple systems, containing different regularities, satisfy these standards equally well. This problem affects every version of the BSA because it arises regardless of which standards for theory-choice Humeans adopt. In (...) this paper, we propose a Humean response to the problem. We invoke pragmatic aspects of Humean laws to show that the BSA, despite violating some of our intuitive judgements, can capture everything that is relevant for scientific practice. (shrink)

A central question in the philosophy of science is: What is a law of nature? Different answers to this question define an important schism: Humeans, in the wake of David Hume, hold that the laws of nature are nothing over and above what actually happens and reject irreducible facts about natural modality (Lewis, 1983, 1994; cf. Miller, 2015). According to Non-Humeans, by contrast, the laws are metaphysically fundamental (Maudlin, 2007) or grounded in primitive modal structures, such as (...) dispositional essences of powerful properties (Bird, 2007), necessitation relations (Armstrong, 1983), or primitive subjunctive facts (Lange, 2009). This volume focuses on recent developments in the discussion of Humeanism, specifically on pragmatic versions of the view that put the needs of limited agents like us front and center. (shrink)

There is good reason to believe that scientific realism requires a commitment to the objective modal structure of the physical world. Causality, equilibrium, laws of nature, and probability all feature prominently in scientific theory and explanation, and each one is a modal notion. If we are committed to the content of our best scientific theories, we must accept the modal nature of the physical world. But what does the scientific realist’s commitment to physical modality require? We consider whether (...) scientific realism is compatible with Humeanism about the laws of nature, and we conclude that it is not. We specifically identify three major problems for the best-systems account of lawhood: its central concept of strength cannot be formulated non-circularly, it cannot offer a satisfactory account of the laws of the special sciences, and it can offer no explanation of the success of inductive inference. In addition, Humeanism fails to be naturalistically motivated. For these reasons, we conclude that the scientific realist must embrace natural necessity. (shrink)

Contemporary Humeans treat laws of nature as statements of exceptionless regularities that function as the axioms of the best deductive system. Such ‘Best System Accounts’ marry realism about laws with a denial of necessary connections among events. I argue that Hume’s predecessor, George Berkeley, offers a more sophisticated conception of laws, equally consistent with the absence of powers or necessary connections among events in the natural world. On this view, laws are (...) not statements of regularities but the most general rules God follows in producing the world. Pace most commentators, I argue that Berkeley’s view is neither instrumentalist nor reductionist. More important, the Berkeleyan Best System can solve some of the problems afflicting its Humean rivals, including the problems of theory choice and Nancy Cartwright’s ‘facticity’ dilemma. Some of these solutions are available in the contemporary context, without any appeal to God. Berkeley’s account deserves to be taken seriously in its own right. (shrink)

In recent years, an active research program has emerged that aims to develop a Humean best-system account (BSA) of laws of nature that improves on Lewis’s canonical articulation of the view. Its guiding idea is that the laws are cognitive tools tailored to the specific needs and limitations of creatures like us. While current versions of this “pragmatic Humean” research program fare much better than Lewis’s account along many dimensions, I will argue that they have trouble (...) making sense of certain key features of the practice of fundamental physics. Indeed, these features seem to go against the very idea that laws are useful for agents like us. In my view, Humeans can address these issues by paying more attention to the explanatory role of laws. Following this idea, I will propose an account on which what makes a systematization the best is a kind of explanatory power, understood along the lines of the unificationist theory of explanation. The resulting view, I will argue, can make sense of those features of laws that other pragmatic accounts of laws have trouble explaining. (shrink)

Many philosophers sympathetic with a Humean understanding of laws of nature have thought that, in the final analysis, the fundamental laws will include not only the traditional dynamical equations, but also two additional principles: the Past Hypothesis and the Statistical Postulate. The former says that the universe began in a particular very-low-entropy macrostate M(0), and the latter posits a uniform probability distribution over the microstates compatible with M(0). Such a view is arguably vindicated by the orthodox Humean (...) class='Hi'>Best System Account (BSA). However, I argue here that recent developments of the BSA render the Past Hypothesis otiose. In particular, the trend among Humeans toward a more pragmatic view of laws — according to which the best system is the one that is maximally effective at helping creatures like us amplify our information about the world — does not support the idea that the Past Hypothesis is a law of nature. (shrink)

According to the Humean Best Systems Account, laws are generalizations in the best systematization of non-modal matters of fact. Recently, it has become popular to interpret the notion of a best system pragmatically. The _best_ system is sensitive to our interests—that is, to our goals, abilities, and limitations. This account promises a metaphysically minimalistic analysis of laws, but I argue that it is not as minimalistic as it might appear. Some of the concepts (...) it employs are modally robust, leading to a dilemma. (shrink)

If the laws of nature are as the Humean believes, it is an unexplained cosmic coincidence that the actual Humean mosaic is as extremely regular as it is. This is a strong and well-known objection to the Humean account of laws. Yet, as reasonable as this objection may seem, it is nowadays sometimes dismissed. The reason: its unjustified implicit assignment of equiprobability to each possible Humean mosaic; that is, its assumption of the principle of indifference, which has been (...) attacked on many grounds ever since it was first proposed. In place of equiprobability, recent formal models represent the doxastic state of total ignorance as suspension of judgment. In this paper I revisit the cosmic coincidence objection to Humean laws by assessing which doxastic state we should endorse. By focusing on specific features of our scenario I conclude that suspending judgment results in an unnecessarily weak doxastic state. First, I point out that recent literature in epistemology has provided independent justifications of the principle of indifference. Second, given that the argument is framed within a Humean metaphysics, it turns out that we are warranted to appeal to these justifications and assign a uniform and additive credence distribution among Humean mosaics. This leads us to conclude that, contrary to widespread opinion, we should not dismiss the cosmic coincidence objection to the Humean account of laws. (shrink)

Fred Dretske, Michael Tooley, and David Armstrong accept a theory of governing laws of nature according to which laws are atomic states of affairs that necessitate corresponding natural regularities. Some philosophers object to the Dretske/Tooley/Armstrong theory on the grounds that there is no illuminating account of the necessary connection between governing law and natural regularity. In response, Michael Tooley has provided a reductive account of this necessary connection in his book Causation (1987). In this essay, I (...) discuss an improved version of his account and argue that it fails. First, the account cannot be extended to explain the necessary connection between certain sorts of laws—namely, probabilistic laws and laws relating structural universals—and their corresponding regularities. Second, Tooley’s account succeeds only by (very subtly) incorporating primitive necessity elsewhere, so the problem of avoiding primitive necessity is merely relocated. (shrink)

In this paper we apply the popular Best System Account of laws to typical eternal worlds – both classical eternal worlds and eternal worlds of the kind posited by popular contemporary cosmological theories. We show that, according to the Best System Account, such worlds will have no laws that meaningfully constrain boundary conditions. It’s generally thought that lawful constraints on boundary conditions are required to avoid skeptical arguments. Thus the lack of such laws (...) given the Best System Account may seem like a severe problem for the view. We show, however, that at eternal worlds, lawful constraints on boundary conditions do little to help fend off skeptical worries. So with respect to handling these skeptical worries, the proponent of the Best System Account is no worse off than their competitors. (shrink)

Tim Maudlin has influentially argued that Humeanism about laws of nature stands in conflict with quantum mechanics. Specifically Humeanism implies the principle Separability: the complete physical state of a world is determined by the intrinsic physical state of each space-time point. Maudlin argues Separability is violated by the entangled states posited by QM. We argue that Maudlin only establishes that a stronger principle, which we call Strong Separability, is in tension with QM. Separability is not in tension with QM. (...) Moreover, while the Humean requires Separability to capture the core tenets of her view, there's no Humean-specific motivation for accepting Strong Separability. We go on to give a Humean account of entangled states which satisfies Separability. The core idea is that certain quantum states depend upon the Humean mosaic in much the same way as the laws do. In fact, we offer a variant of the Best System account on which the systemization procedure that generates the laws also serves to ground these states. We show how this account works by applying it to the example of Bohmian Mechanics. The 3N-dimensional configuration space, the world particle in it and the wave function on it are part of the best system of the Humean mosaic, which consists of N particles moving in 3-dimensional space. We argue that this account is superior to the Humean account of Bohmian Mechanics defended by Loewer and Albert, which takes the 3N-dimensional space, and its inhabitants, as fundamental. (shrink)

This doctoral dissertation investigates the notion of physical necessity. Specifically, it studies whether it is possible to account for non-accidental regularities without the standard assumption of a pre-existent set of governing laws. Thus, it takes side with the so called deflationist accounts of laws of nature, like the humean or the antirealist. The specific aim is to complement such accounts by providing a missing explanation of the appearance of physical necessity. In order to provide an explanation, I recur (...) to fields that have not been appealed to so far in discussions about the metaphysics of laws. Namely, I recur to complex systems’ theory, and to the foundations of statistical mechanics. The explanation proposed is inspired by how complex systems’ theory has elucidated the way patterns emerge, and by the probabilistic explanations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. More specifically, this thesis studies how some constraints that make no direct reference to the dynamics can be a sufficient condition for obtaining in the long run, with high probability, stable regular behavior. I hope to show how certain metaphysical accounts of laws might benefit from the insights achieved in these other fields. According to the proposal studied in this thesis, some regularities are not accidental not in virtue of an underlying physical necessity. The non-accidental character of certain regular behavior is only due to its overwhelming stability. Thus, from this point of view the goal becomes to explain the stability of temporal patterns without assuming a set of pre-existent guiding laws. It is argued that the stability can be the result of a process of convergence to simpler and stable regularities from a more complex lower level. According to this project, if successful, there would be no need to postulate a (mysterious) intermediate category between logical necessity and pure contingency. Similarly, there would be no need to postulate a (mysterious) set of pre-existent governing laws. Part I of the thesis motivates part II, mostly by arguing why further explanation of the notions of physical necessity and governing laws should be welcomed (chapter 1), and by studying the plausibility of a lawless fundamental level (chapters 2 and 3). Given so, part II develops the explanation of formation of simpler and stable behavior from a more complex underlying level. (shrink)

It is often said that the best system account of laws needs supplementing with a theory of perfectly natural properties. The ‘strength’ and ‘simplicity’ of a system is language-relative and without a fixed vocabulary it is impossible to compare rival systems. Recently a number of philosophers have attempted to reformulate the BSA in an effort to avoid commitment to natural properties. I assess these proposals and argue that they are problematic as they stand. Nonetheless, (...) I agree with their aim, and show that if simplicity is interpreted as ‘compression’, algorithmic information theory provides a framework for system comparison without the need for natural properties. (shrink)

Humean reductionism about laws of nature is the view that the laws reduce to the total distribution of non-modal or categorical properties in spacetime. A worry about Humean reductionism is that it cannot motivate the characteristic modal resilience of laws under counterfactual suppositions and that it thus generates wrong verdicts about certain nested counterfactuals. In this paper, we defend Humean reductionism by motivating an account of the modal resilience of Humean laws that gets nested counterfactuals right.

Humeanism – the idea that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences – and Nomic Essentialism – the idea that properties essentially play the nomic roles that they do – are two of the most important and influential positions in the metaphysics of science. Traditionally, it has been thought that these positions were incompatible competitors. We disagree. We argue that there is an attractive version of Humeanism that captures the idea that, for example, mass essentially plays the role that (...) it actually does in the laws of nature. In this paper we consider the arguments that have lead many to conclude that Humeanism cannot be combined with Nomic Essentialism; we identify the weaknesses in these arguments; and we argue in detail that a version of Humeanism based on a variant of the Best System account of laws captures the key intuitions behind nomic essentialism. (shrink)

Can stable regularities be explained without appealing to governing laws or any other modal notion? In this paper, I consider what I will call a ‘Humean system’—a generic dynamical system without guiding laws—and assess whether it could display stable regularities. First, I present what can be interpreted as an account of the rise of stable regularities, following from Strevens [2003], which has been applied to explain the patterns of complex systems (such as those from meteorology (...) and statistical mechanics). Second, since this account presupposes that the underlying dynamics displays deterministic chaos, I assess whether it can be adapted to cases where the underlying dynamics is not chaotic but truly random—that is, cases where there is no dynamics guiding the time evolution of the system. If this is so, the resulting stable, apparently non-accidental regularities are the fruit of what can be called statistical necessity rather than of a primitive physical necessity. (shrink)

The measurement problem concerns an apparent conflict between the two fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, namely the Schrödinger equation and the measurement postulate. These principles describe inconsistent behavior for quantum systems in so-called "measurement contexts." Many theorists have thought that the measurement problem can only be resolved by proposing a mechanistic explanation of (genuine or apparent) wavefunction collapse that avoids explicit reference to "measurement." However, I argue here that the measurement problem dissolves if we accept Humeanism about laws of (...) nature. On a Humean metaphysics, there is no conflict between the two principles, nor is there any inherent problem with the concept of "measurement" figuring into the account of collapse. (shrink)

Humeanism about laws of nature is, roughly, the view that the laws of nature are just patterns, or ways of describing patterns, in the mosaic of events. In this paper I survey some of the (many!) objections that have been raised to Humeanism, considering how the Humean might respond. And I consider how we might make a positive case for Humeanism. The common thread running through all this is that the viability of the Humean view relies (...) on the Humean having an importantly different conception of explanation to the anti-Humean. (shrink)

I argue that there are at least two concepts of law of nature worthy of philosophical interest: strong law and weak law. Strong laws are the laws investigated by fundamental physics, while weak laws feature prominently in the “special sciences” and in a variety of non-scientific contexts. In the first section, I clarify my methodology, which has to do with arguing about concepts. In the next section, I offer a detailed description of strong laws, which I (...) claim satisfy four criteria: (1) If it is a strong law that L then it also true that L; (2) strong laws would continue to be true, were the world to be different in some physically possible way; (3) strong laws do not depend on context or human interest; (4) strong laws feature in scientific explanations but cannot be scientifically explained. I then spell out some philosophical consequences: (1) is incompatible with Cartwright’s contention that “laws lie” (2) with Lewis’s “best-system” account of laws, and (3) with contextualism about laws. In the final section, I argue that weak laws are distinguished by (approximately) meeting some but not all of these criteria. I provide a preliminary account of the scientific value of weak laws, and argue that they cannot plausibly be understood as ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

Metaphysicians play an important role in our understanding of the universe. In recent years, physicists have focussed on finding accurate mathematical formalisms of the evolution of our physical system - if a metaphysician can uncover the metaphysical underpinnings of these formalisms; that is, why these formalisms seem to consistently map the universe, then our understanding of the world and the things in it is greatly enhanced. Science, then, plays a very important role in our project, as the best (...) scientific formalisms provide us with what we, as metaphysicians, should be trying to interpret. In this thesis I examine existing metaphysical views of what a law is (both from a conceptual and from a metaphysical perspective), to show how closely causation is linked to laws, and to provide a priori arguments for and against each of these positions. Ultimately, I aim to provide an analysis of a number of metaphysics of natural laws and causation, apply these accounts to our best scientific theories, and see how these metaphysics fit in with our concepts of cause and law. Although I do not attempt a definitive metaphysical account myself, I conclude that any successful metaphysic will be a broadly Humean one, and furthermore that given the concepts of cause and law that shall be agreed upon, Humean theories allow for there to be causal sequences and laws (in line with our concepts) in the world. (shrink)

Dispositional Essentialism is a unified anti-Humean account of the metaphysics of low-level physical properties and laws of nature. In this paper, I articulate the view that I label Canonical Dispositional Essentialism, which comprises a structuralist metaphysics of properties and an account of laws as relations in the property structure. I then present an alternative anti-Humean account of properties and laws. This account rejects CDE’s structuralist metaphysics of properties in favour of a view of properties as qualitative grounds (...) of dispositions and it rejects CDE’s view of laws as relations in favour of a view of laws as features of an efficient description of possible property distributions. I then defend this view over CDE on the grounds that it can overcome an explanatory shortcoming of CDE and that it achieves a level of continuity with science that CDE fails to achieve. The upshot of this paper is a significant narrowing of the range of possibilities in which the absolutely best unified account of laws and properties resides. (shrink)

In this paper, I raise a novel objection to David Lewis’s Humean account of laws. The objection is that non-universal laws are metaphysically possible, but Lewis’s account cannot accommodate them. I then propose and defend an extension of Lewis’s view that gives us an account of Humean non-universal laws.

David Lewis is a natural target for those who believe that findings in quantum physics threaten the tenability of traditional metaphysical reductionism. Such philosophers point to allegedly holistic entities they take both to be the subjects of some claims of quantum mechanics and to be incompatible with Lewisian metaphysics. According to one popular argument, the non-separability argument from quantum entanglement, any realist interpretation of quantum theory is straightforwardly inconsistent with the reductive conviction that the complete physical state of the (...) world supervenes on the intrinsic properties of and spatio-temporal relations between its point-sized constituents. Here I defend Lewis's metaphysical doctrine, and traditional reductionism more generally, against this alleged threat from quantum holism. After presenting the non-separability argument from entanglement, I show that Bohmian mechanics, an interpretation of quantum mechanics explicitly recognized as a realist one by proponents of the non-separability argument, plausibly rejects a key premise of that argument. Another holistic worry for Humeanism persists, however, the trouble being the apparently holistic character of the Bohmian pilot wave. I present a Humean strategy for addressing the holistic threat from the pilot wave by drawing on resources from the Humean best system account of laws. (shrink)

Equal Justice explores the role of the idea of equality in liberal theories of justice. The title indicates the book’s two-part thesis: first, I claim that justice is the central moral category in the socio-political domain; second, I argue for a specific conceptual and normative connection between the ideas of justice and equality. This pertains to the age-old question concerning the normative significance of equality in a theory of justice. The book develops an independent, systematic, and comprehensive theory of equality (...) and egalitarianism. The principal question is about the importance of equality in a theory of justice. More precisely, we should pose questions in four contracting circles: 1. Is justice the supreme value guiding our setup of the basic structure of society, or are there other, equally important values, such as recognition, care, communal belonging? 2. If justice is the highest guiding principle, which competing ideals—especially equality and freedom—ought to have precedence in a policy oriented toward justice? What status does the ideal of equality have in that framework? 3. If equality is a basic ideal of just policy, how should it be practically realized? What sort of equality (equal opportunity, equality of welfare, resource equality) should be demanded? 4. What patterned distribution of which specific goods does the ideal of equality demand? Which principles of distribution can be justified according to our justice ideal? To conclude and summarize: 5. What is the essential core of an egalitarian theory of justice, as opposed to an inegalitarian theory? These five questions structure the work’s order of argumentation. Part A elaborates the conceptual foundations and basic moral principles of justice and equality. Chapter I sets out to install justice as the central moral category in the socio-political domain. At the beginning of the first chapter, the conceptual foundations of justice are clarified. While not eliminating the classical distinctions between different forms of justice, I argue that the distributive paradigm is of primary importance. The primacy of justice in the socio-political domain is developed out of a confrontation with alternative positions, those which maintain either that justice generally, or distributive justice in particular, are subsidiary virtues. At the end of Chapter I, the first of the questions mentioned above is answered in a way that establishes justice as the guiding normative concept for the foundation and evaluation of any social order. To clarify the role of equality in a theory of justice, Chapter II separates the idea of equality into four different principles. They are organized in a way that begins with the most general and uncontroversial principle of equality, and progresses towards increasingly detailed and contested principles. There are two theses that articulate and defend the significance of equality for justice: First there is a conceptual connection between justice and equality, in that principles of formal and proportional equality are necessary in order to explicate the concept of justice. These two principles establish an unbreakable bond between justice and equality. Justice can only be explained—or so I argue—by reference to these and other (normative) principles of equality. The second thesis posits a normative relationship between justice and equality, which is disclosed by three substantive principles of equality: moral equality, the presumption of equality, and the principle of responsibility. I argue that the normative core of an egalitarian theory of justice is expressed by the latter two principles, which are themselves based on the first principle, that of moral equality. When we view one another as persons, what form of equality or equal treatment is normatively demanded? I argue that the answer to this question is given by the procedural principle of the presumption of equality: regardless of their apparent differences, all persons deserve strictly equal treatment, unless certain kinds of differences have whatever particular relevance would justify, on generally acceptable grounds, unequal treatment or unequal distribution. The justification of the presumption of equality is central to this work and has considerable importance. If the presumption principle’s validity can be justified by enlisting the principle of general justification, then the primacy of equality, and the essential argument for an egalitarian theory of justice, is established. This would likewise provide a procedure for the construction of a material theory of justice. The second question is answered thereby at the end of Chapter II: Equality should have primacy over competing ideals within a justice-oriented policy. The presumption of equality establishes this primacy and, at the same time, offers an appropriate metric and guideline for the construction of a material theory of distributive justice. The presumption of equality in Part B offers an elegant procedure for the development of a theory of distributive justice. Chapter III clearly sets out the necessary prerequisites that a theory of distribution must satisfy in order to determine a liberal-egalitarian distributional framework. We need to specify in which situation the distribution takes place; which goods are and are not to be distributed; in which respect the presumptive equality is to be produced; and by and to whom, and for what period, the relevant goods are to be distributed. The distribution is based on resources understood as general-purpose means. It is necessary to divide goods into different categories, since the justification for unequal treatment in one domain will not carry over into another. This makes presumptive equality necessarily complex. To that end, four spheres of justice are distinguished: (1) the political sphere, which involves allocating rights through the distribution of civil liberties; (2) the democratic sphere, in which political power and the rights of political participation are regulated; (3) the economic sphere, in which income and property are distributed; (4) the social sphere, in which social positions and opportunities are distributed. This framework of distributive justice answers the third of our guiding questions, about the nature of equality, in terms of equality of resources. Chapters IV and V set out the egalitarian distributive criteria for each sphere. I argue that the generally accepted, fundamental rights of classical liberalism are more effectively reconstructed by reference to the equal resource distribution presumptively required in those spheres. Chapter IV shows that when it comes to the first two spheres, those involving basic rights and freedoms and entitlement political participation, there can be no justified exceptions to the equal distribution of the relevant goods. That section argues, contrary to what we commonly find in theories of freedom or popular sovereignty, that the value of freedom and self-determination as the political basis of autonomy is best realized through the presumption of equal distribution. Chapter V deals with the other two spheres, those of economic goods and social positions, and argues for justified exceptions to equal distribution. In the economic sphere we find one principal reason favouring unequal distribution of resources, and three restrictions and compensations limiting that inequality. The basic exception to equal economic distribution arises from the unequal consequences of personal responsibility. From a suitably egalitarian standpoint, the principle of responsibility is the normative principle that determines which reasons justify economic inequality. Here the basic idea is that unequal shares of social goods are fair if they result from the choices and deliberate actions of the relevant parties. That individuals have to bear the costs of their own choices is a condition of autonomy. However, benefits or disadvantages arising from arbitrary and unmerited differences in social circumstances or natural endowments is unfair. The unequal consequences of independent decision-making and action must therefore be limited by compensating first for preferences, secondly for disadvantages, and thirdly by redistributing wealth in aid of the worse-off. I situations of emergency, compensating for disadvantages has priority over all other claims, owing to the urgency of the situation. Social inequalities go beyond the permissible limit if it is possible to improve the long-term social or economic situation of the worse-off by redistributing wealth to them. These exceptions lead to a complex system of free economic action within a framework of compensatory tax and transfer mechanisms. Finally, in the social sphere, the distribution of social positions, offices and opportunities must be structured to ensure that equally talented and motivated citizens have roughly equal chances of obtaining those offices or positions, irrespective of their economic or social class backgrounds. This compromise is permissible for reasons of freedom and prudence, and it makes a certain measure of inequality acceptable. The fourth of our guiding questions is answered accordingly. There are five principles of justice for the basic structure of society, and five legal principles that govern the special distribution of goods in the respective spheres—all are ranked according to their most defensible grounds of priority, ensuring that everyone is accorded equal justice. Chapter VI recapitulates the initial question of equality’s value. The conception of equal justice developed in this work postulates five principles of equality and five principles of law; these constitute an egalitarian framework because they support and promote social justice. Equality has value with respect to them, but is not given any independent, intrinsic value. That is why I call the account developed here a form of constitutive egalitarianism: justice is realized through the realization of equality, itself accomplished by applying the five postulates of equality and five distributive principles of law. This is an egalitarianism on two levels. The first level is involves the claim that morality or justice is conceptually connected with equality. The second level gives equality a substantial weight in what is conceptually validated at the first level, namely the presumption of equality, and constructs an appropriate interpretation and conception of distributive justice through principles of distribution for the individual spheres. The weight and importance of equality is shown by the distributive criteria applied to those spheres. This answers our final guiding question about the nature of an egalitarian theory. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to explore Lewis’s best system analysis and how it can accommodate laws with exceptions. The Best System Account has been introduced to provide an alternative view for both minimalist and counterfactual theories of regularities. Simple regularity theory faces problems in which there is some generalization that seems to be a law or some regularities that are established accidentally. It tries to exclude the accidental generalization from the account. However, the (...) class='Hi'>best system analysis can solve the problem of how to distinguish between laws and accidents. (shrink)

According to the Best System Account of lawhood, laws of nature are theorems of the deductive systems that best balance simplicity and strength. In this paper, I advocate a different account of lawhood which is related, in spirit, to the BSA: according to my account, laws are theorems of deductive systems that best balance simplicity, strength, and also calculational tractability. I discuss two problems that the BSA faces, and I show that my account solves (...) them. I also use my account to illuminate the nomological character of special science laws. (shrink)

I argue that the best scientific package is anti-Humean in its ontology, but Humean in its laws. This is because potencies and the best system account of laws complement each other surprisingly well. If there are potencies, then the BSA is the most plausible account of the laws of nature. Conversely, if the BSA is the correct theory of laws, then formulating the laws in terms of potencies rather than categorical properties avoids (...) three serious objections: the mismatch objection, the impoverished worlds objection, and the metaphysical 'oomph' objection. I argue that combining anti-Humean properties with Humean laws into a Potency-Best System Account of Laws is a powerful and science-friendly account---something that people on both sides should be able to appreciate. (shrink)

One of the main challenges confronting Humean accounts of natural law is that Humean laws appear to be unable to play the explanatory role of laws in scientific practice. The worry is roughly that if the laws are just regularities in the particular matters of fact (as the Humean would have it), then they cannot also explain the particular matters of fact, on pain of circularity. Loewer (2012) has defended Humeanism, arguing that this worry only arises (...) if we fail to distinguish between scientific and metaphysical explanations. However, Lange (2013, 2018) has argued that scientific and metaphysical explanations are linked by a transitivity principle, which would undercut Loewer's defense and re-ignite the circularity worry for the Humean. I argue here that the Humean has antecedent reasons to doubt that there are any systematic connections between scientific and metaphysical explanations. The reason is that the Humean should think that scientific and metaphysical explanation have disparate aims, and therefore that neither form of explanation is beholden to the other in its pronouncements about what explains what. Consequently, the Humean has every reason to doubt that Lange's transitivity principle obtains. (shrink)

Arthur Kaufmann is one of the most prominent figures among the contemporary philosophers of law in German speaking countries. For many years he was a director of the Institute of Philosophy of Law and Computer Sciences for Law at the University in Munich. Presently, he is a retired professor of this university. Rare in the contemporary legal thought, Arthur Kaufmann's philosophy of law is one with the highest ambitions — it aspires to pinpoint the ultimate foundations of law by explicitly (...) proposing an ontology, a general theory of knowledge and concept of a person. Kaufmann's work derives, first of all, from the thinking of Gustav Radburch, his teacher, and then from ideas of Karl Engish and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The philosophy undertakes to pursue the ultimate foundation of law, law which is understood by Kaufmann, first of all, as a "concrete judgement" that is, what is right in a concrete situation. Justice belongs to the essence of law and "unjust law" is contradictio in adiectio. Kaufmann opposes all those theories, which as the only foundation for establishing just law (Recht) adopt legal norms (Gesetz). In Kaufmann's opinion , such theories are powerless in the face of all types of distortions of law rendered by political forces. He suggests that the basic phenomenon which needs to be explained and which cannot be disregarded by a philosopher of law is so-called "legal lawlessness" ("Gestzliches Unrecht"). "Legal lawlessness" which forms a part of life experience for the people of twentieth century totalitarian states. It proved "with the accuracy of scientific experiment" that the reality of law consists of something more than bare conformity with legal norms. The existence of lex corrupta indicates that law contains something "non-dispositive" which requires acknowledgment of both law-maker and judge. Kaufmann, accepting the convergent concept of truth and cognition, assumes that "non-dispositive" content, emerging as the conformity of a number of cognitive acts of different subjects (inter-subjective communicativeness and verifiability), indicates the presence of being in this cognition. The questions "What is law?" and "What are the principles of a just solution?" lead straight to the ontology of law, to the question about the ontological foundations of law. Kaufmann discerns the ontological foundations of law in the specifically understood "nature of things" and, ultimately, in a "person". He proposes a procedural theory of justice, founded on a "person". In my work, I undertake to reconstruct the train of thought which led Kaufmann to the recognition of a "person" as the ontological foundation of law. In the first part, the conception of philosophy adopted by Kaufmann, initial characteristics of law — of reality which is the subject of analysis, as well as, the requirements for proper philosophical explanation of law posed by Kaufmann are introduced. In the second, Kaufmann's reconstruction of the process of the realisation of law is presented. Next, the conception of analogy which Kaufmann uses when explaining law is analyzed. In the fourth part, Kaufmann's conception of ontological foundations of law is discussed. A critical analysis is carried out in which I demonstrate that the theory of the ontological foundation of law proposed by Kaufmann and the concept of a person included in it do not allow a satisfac¬tory explanation of the phenomenon of "legal lawlessness" and lead to a number of difficulties in the philosophical explanation of law. Finally, the perspectives of a proper formulation of the issue of the ontological foundations of law are drafted in the context of the analyzed theory. My interest is centered on the conception of philosophy adopted by Kaufmann, according to which the existence of the reality is inferred on the basis of a certain configuration of the content of consciousness, whereas at the point of departure of philosophy of law, the data to be explained is a certain process, which is, basically, a process of cognition, while the reality appears only as a condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process. I wish to argue that the difficulties which appear in the explanation of law are a consequence of the assumed fundamental philosophical solu¬tions, which seem to be characteristic, though usually not assumed explicitly, in philoso¬phy and theory of law dominant at present in continental Europe. Thereby, I wish to show the significance of ontological and epistemological solutions to the possibility of a proper formulation of the problems posed by philosophy and theory of law. Kaufmann proclaims himself in favour of a philosophy which poses questions about the ultimate foundations of understanding of the reality. In epistemology, he assumes that answers to the questions "What is reality like?" and ultimately "What is real?" are inferred on the basis of uniformity of a cognitive acts of different subjects. Cognition of the reality is accomplished exclusively through the content of conceptual material. The two fundamental questions posed by philosophy of law are "What is just law?" and "How is the just law enacted?" The latter is a question about the process of achieving a solution to a concrete case. Since, in Kaufmann's opinion, law does not exist apart from the process of its realisation, an answer to the question about the manner of realisation of law is of fundamental significance to answering the question: "What is law?" and to the explanation of the question about the ontological grounding of law, which is, as well, the foundation of justice. The proper solution has to take into account the moment of "non-dispositive" content of law; its positiveness understood as the reality and, at the same time, it has to point to the principles of the historical transformation of the content. Law, in the primary meaning of the word, always pertains, in Kaufmann's opinion, to a concrete case. A legal norm is solely the "possibility" of law and the entirely real law is ipsa res iusta, that which is just in a given situation. Determination of what is just takes place in a certain type of process performed by a judge (or by man confronted with a choice). Kaufmann aims to reconstruct this process. A question about the ontological foundation of law is a question about the ontological foundations of this process. In the analyzed theory it is formulated as a question about the transcendental conditions, necessary for the possibility of the occurrence of the process: how the reality should be thought to make possible the reconstructed process of the realisation of law. Kaufmann rejects the model for finding a concrete solution based on simple subsump¬tion and proposes a model in which concrete law ensues, based on inference by analogy, through the process of "bringing to conformity" that which is normative with that which is factual. Kaufmann distinguishes three levels in the process of the realisation of law. On the highest level, there are the fundamental legal principles, on the second legal norms, on the third — concrete solutions. The fundamental principles of law are general inasmuch as they cannot be "applied" directly to concrete conditions of life, however, they play an important part in establishing norms. A judge encounters a concrete situation and a system of legal norms. A life situation and norms are situated on inherently different levels of factuality and normativeness. In order to acquire a definite law both a norm (system of norms) and a life situation (Lebenssachverhalt) should undergo a kind of "treatment" which would allow a mutual conformity to be brought to them. Legal norms and definite conditions of life come together in the process of analogical inference in which the "factual state" ("Tatbestand") — which represents a norm, and in the "state of things" ("Sachverhalt") — which represents a specific situation are constructed. A "factual state" is a sense interpreted from a norm with respect to specific conditions of life. The "state of things" is a sense constructed on the basis of concrete conditions of life with respect to norms (system of norms). Legal norms and concrete conditions of life meet in one common sense established during the process of realisation of law. Mutatis mutandis the same refers to the process of composition of legal norms: as the acquisition of concrete law consists in a mutual "synchronization" of norms and concrete conditions of life, so acquisition of legal norms consists of bringing to conformity fundamental principles and possible conditions of life. According to Kaufmann, both of these processes are based on inference through analogy. As this inference is the heart of these processes it is simultaneously a foundation finding just law and justice. How does Kaufmann understand such an inference? As the basis for all justice he assumes a specifically interpreted distributive justice grounded on proportionality. Equality of relations is required between life conditions and their normative qualification. Concrete conditions of life are ascribed normative qualification not through simple application of a general norm. More likely, when we look for a solution we go from one concrete normative qualified case to another, through already known "applications" of norms to a new "application". The relation between life conditions and their normative qualifica¬tion has to be proportional to other, earlier or possible (thought of) assignments of that which is factual to that which is normative. Law as a whole does not consist of a set of norms, but only of a unity of relations. Since law is a, based on proportion, relative unity of a norm and conditions of life, in order to explain law in philosophical manner, the question about ontological base of this unity has to be asked. What is it that makes the relation between a norm and conditions of life "non-dispositive"? What is the basis for such an interpretation of a norm and case which makes it possible to bring a norm and conditions of life into mutual "conformity"? This is a question about a third thing (next to norms and conditions of life), with respect to which the relative identity between a norm and conditions of life occurs, about the intermediary between that which is normative and that which is factual and which provides for the process of establishing of norms, as well as, finding solutions. It is the "sense" in which the idea of law or legal norm and conditions of life have to be identical to be brought to mutual "conformity". In Kaufmann's opinion such a sense is nothing else but the "nature of things" which determines the normative qualification of the reality. Since establishment of this "sense" appears to be "non-dispositive" and controlled inter-subjectively (namely, other subjects will reach a similar result) so, in conformity with the convergent concept of truth, the "nature of things" must be assigned a certain ontological status. According to Kaufmann this is a real relation which occurs between being and obligation, between the conditions of life and normative quality. However, it should be underlined that from the point of view of the analyzed system the "nature of things" is a correlate of constructed sense, a result of a construction which is based on the principle of consistent understanding of senses ("non-normative" and "normative") and is not a reality which is transcendent against the arrangement of senses. In Kaufmann's theory, inference from analogy appears to be a process of reshaping the concepts (senses) governed by tendency to understand the contents appearing in relations between that which is factual and that which is normative in a consistent way. The analogical structure of language (concepts) and recognition of being as composed of an essence and existence is an indispensable requirement for the possibility of the realisation of law, based on specifically understood inference from analogy. It is necessary to assume a moment of existence without content which ensures unity of cognition. Existence emerges thus as a condition of the possibility of cognition. According to Kaufmann, the "nature of things" is the heart of inference through analogy and the basis for establishment of finding of law. Inference from the "state of things" to a norm or from a norm to the "state of things" always means inference through the "nature of things". The "nature of things" is the proper medium of objective legal sense sought in every cognition of law. In Kaufmann's view, the question whether the "nature of things" is ultima ratio of interpretation of law or is only a means of supplement gaps in law or whether it is one of the sources of law, is posed wrongly. The "nature of things" serves neither to supplement the gaps nor is it a source of law as, for example, a legal norm may be. It is a certain kind of "catalyst" necessary in every act of making law and solving a concrete case. Owing to "nature of things" it is possible to bring to a mutual conformity the idea of law and possible conditions of life or legal norms and concrete conditions of life. In Kaufmann's conception the "nature of things" is not yet the ultimate basis for understanding the "non-dispositiveness" of law. The relation between obligation and being is determined in the process of the realisation of law. Both the process itself and that which is transformed in this process are given. A question about the ontological bases of "material" contents undergoing "treatment" in the process of the realisation of law and about being which is the basis of regularity of the occurrence of the process arises. Only this will allow an explanation that the result of the process is not optional. Thus, a question about reality to which law refers and about the subject realising the law has to be formed. To this, Kaufmann gives the following answer: that which is missing is man but not "empirical man" but man as a "person". A "person" understood as a set of relations between man and other people and things. A "person" is the intermediary between those things which are different — norm and case are brought to conformity. A "person" is that which is given and permanent in the process of the realisation of law. It determines the content of law, is "subject" of law; this aspect is described by Kaufmann as the "what" of the process of realisation of law. A "person" consists of precisely just these relations which undergo "treatment" in the process. On the other hand, a "person" is "a place" in which the processes of realisation of law occur, it is the "how" of normative discourse, a "person" is that which determines the procedure of the process, being "outside" of it. This aspect of a "person" is connected with the formal moment of law. A "person" being, at the same time, the "how" and the "what" of the process of the realisation of law, is also, to put it differently, a structural unity of relation and that which constitutes this relation (unity of relatio and relata). According to this approach a "person" is neither an object nor a subject. It exists only "in between". It is not substance. Law is the relation between being and obligation. That which is obligatory is connected with that which is general. That which is general does not exist on its own, it is not completely real. Accordingly, a "person" as such is also not real. It is relational, dynamic and historical. A "person" is not a state but an event. In Kaufmann's opinion, such a concept of a "person" helps to avoid the difficulties connected with the fungibility of law in classical legal positivism. A "person" is that which is given, which is not at free disposal and secures the moment of "non-dispositiveness" of law. Kaufmann concludes: "The idea (»nature«) of law is either the idea of a personal man or is nothing". Theory points at the structure of realising law and explains the process of adoption of general legal norms for a concrete situation. The analysis has shown however, that in this theory a satisfactory answer to the question about the ultimate foundations of law is not given. It seems that in the analyzed theory the understanding of human being takes place through understanding of law. What is good for man as a "person", what is just, what a "person" deserves may be determined only against the existing system of law. A "per¬son" adopted as a basis of law is the reality postulated in the analysis of the process of the realisation of law. It is a condition of possibility of this process ( explaining, on one hand, its unity and, on the other hand, the non-dispositive moments stated in this process). A "person" in the discussed theory is entirely defined by the structure of law, it can be nothing more than that which is given in law, what law refers to, what law is about. Being, which is a "person", is constituted by relations between people and objects, the relations which are based on fundamental links between norms and conditions of life established in a process of bringing them to conformity. It has to be assumed that man as a "person" is a subject of law only as far as realising law "treats" given senses according to their current configuration. The system of law is a starting point and it describes in content what man is as a "person". Moreover, being a "person" is the condition for entering legal relations. Consistently, Kaufmann writes that "empirical man" is not the subject of law, man is not "out of nature" a "person". People become "persons" due to the fact that they acknowledge each other as "persons" — acknowledging, at the same time, law. This acknowledgement is a con¬dition of existence, of the possibility of the occurrence of process of realisation of law and of constituting legal relations which ultimately constitute a "person". Kaufmann assumes, that law tends towards a moral aim: it may and must create an external freedom, without which the internal freedom to fulfil moral obligations cannot develop. However, this postulate is not based on the necessary structure of human being. From the point of view of his system, it is nothing more than only a condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process of the realisation of law — lack of freedom would destroy the "how" of this process. Thus, the postulate to protect the freedom of personal acts has to be interpreted, in accordance with the analyzed theory, as a postulate, the fulfilment of which aims ultimately at the accomplishment of the very same process of realisation of law itself and not the realisation of a given man. Kaufmann considers a "person" to be an element which unites the system of law as a whole. Law is a structure of relations, which are interdependent and inter-contingent. Consequently, a "person" which is to form the ontological basis of law has to be entity consisting of all relations. Being also the "how" of the process of realisation of law, if a "person" is to warrant its unity, it has to be a common source for all procedures. Hence, a single "person" would constitute a subject of law. Man appears to be only a moment of a certain entirety, realisation of which should be an aim of his actions. Law, creating a "person" as an object and subject of law becomes a primary entity. In the analyzed theory, the basis for determination of aims which law sets to man is not the allocation of man-subject to something which improves him but rather, such relation is only just constituted by law. A question appears, why should aims set in law also be the aims of "empirical man"? Why is this "empirical man" to be punished in the name of a "person" understood in such a way? If, however, it is assumed that what is man is determined by a system which is superior to him, then man has to be understood only as a part of a whole and there are no grounds to prohibit istrumental treatment of man and so the road to all aspects of totalitarianism might be opened. A problem of the application of created theory to the reality arises, the reality which the theory pretends to explain. Ultimately in his theory Kaufmann does not give any systemic grounds for a radical questioning of the validity of any legal norms. Every new norm becomes an equal part of system of norms. It is only its interpretation and application to given conditions of life that may be disputable, however, this refers to all norms without exception. Cohesive inter-pretation of norms and applications is necessary and sufficient for the acquisition of just law. New norms have to be interpreted in the light of others, correspondingly, the other norms require reinterpretation in the light of the new ones. Contradiction in interpretation of a norm does not form a basis for questioning norms but may serve only to question the manner of their interpretation (understanding). Therefore, no grounds exist to assume any legal norm as criminal or unjust, and in consequence, to question any consistently realised system based on formally, properly established norms, as "legal lawlessness". As law and a "person" do not exist without the process of realisation of law, the role of legal safety becomes crucial as the condition for the possibility of the occurrence of the process of realisation of law. Denying legal safety would be tantamount to negation of law in general (also of moral law) as negation of safety takes away, at the same time, the basis for occurrence of the process of realisation of law. Moreover, any lack of legal safety would also mean lack of a basis for the existence of man as a "person". Kaufmann's thesis, that civil disobedience is legalized only when it has a chance to lead to success, consistent with his concept of the foundations of law, seems to point directly to conclusions which deny the facts taken under consideration and doubtlessly Kaufmann's own intentions, since it would have to be assumed that accordingly there are no grounds to question a legal system in force based on violence which secures its operation. Force finally seems to determine which one of the mutually irreconcilable normative systems constitute law and which does not. A legitimate position is one which leads to success, it is the weaker system which is negated. If so, then basically violent imposition of law is not an act directed against the law in force but, to the contrary, realisation of law. In the context of the new system the former system of law may be talked about as unjust solely in the sense of being incapable of being consistently united with the new. However, at the base, ultimately, lies force which reaffirms differences and excludes from the process of realisation of law certain norms and their interpretations. Kaufmann was aiming at grounding of that which is "non-dispositive" in a certain given framework of interpretation. Nevertheless, he does not provide foundations for the understanding of phenomena, which he undertakes to explain at a point of departure. Instead of explaining them the theory negates the possibility of their existence. The reality postulated in regard to "non-dispositive" moments of the reconstructed process of acquiring law consist of a specifically understood "person", which appears in Kaufmann's conceptions as a condition of the possibility of the realisation of law. According to this approach understanding of a "person" may be only a function of law. To understand "legal lawlessness" and foundations of justice it is necessary to look for such theory of law in which understanding of man as a "person" and being is not a function of understanding of law (in which a "person" is not only a condition for possibility of reconstructed process of realisation of law; for possibility of cognition processes). It seems necessary to start from theory of being and a "person" based on broader experience than the one assumed by Kaufmann and reconstruct the ontological foundations of the process of realisation of law only in such perspective. Kaufmann points out that that to which law refers is ipsa res iusta a concrete relation of man to other people and things. This relation, in his theory, appears to be basically only just constituted by law (normative senses "applied" to conditions of life). Therefore, understanding the relation between a given man and other people and things which constitute the aim of his actions, that is understanding of good, is enacted against the background of constitution of senses; constitution which is a result of a process aiming towards consistent understanding of particular contents (of nor¬mative and non-normative senses). "Being" is secondary towards constructed senses it is only their correlate. The primary relation consists of relation of a man to law (system of norms), while the secondary relation is one of man to something which is the aim of his action (relation between man and good). Considering such approach it is difficult to envision a satisfying answer to the fundamental question: why does law put concrete man under any obligation to obey it? The source of this problem can be seen in reduction of the base for understanding good to content of obligation formulated in auto-reflection. Such reduction seems to be a consequence of Kaufmann's adoption of "convergent concept of truth" and in con¬sequence his recognition of indirect, essentialistic grasp of reality formulated in concepts as the basic and only foundation of theory of being and of law. In view of such an approach, analogy of law, concepts and being is the condition for the possibility of the process of transformation of senses which aims at consistent interpretation of all law. Existence is postulated with respect to the possibility of unity of experience and cognition. However, also a different approach to understanding of the problem of being and good is possible. In spontaneous cognition being is affirmed, first of all, not as a certain, non-contradictory, determined content, but as something existing. Together with a cer¬tain content (passed indirectly through notions) existence of being is co-given. The basis for unity of being is not formed by the consistence of content, as it is in the case of the theories departing from the analysis of cognition processes, but by an act of existence realising content (essence). Such an approach makes it also possible to go beyond the convergent concept of truth. It is worth mentioning that allocation of an agent to good is realised not only by the content of duty. A statement that something is good is primary with respect to determination of this good in content. The recognised good always bears some content, however, there are no reasons to base the concept of good exclusively on indirect, formulated in concepts cognition. As primary, can be adopted the relation of man to good and not of man to law. Determination in content appears to be only an articulation of aspectual cognition of being, as an object of action. In such a case the basis for relative unity of norm and conditions of life is not the "nature of things" understood as correlate of sense but it is relation to good based on internal constitution of man as potential, not self-sufficient being. It does not mean, that the moments of the process of realisation of law singled out by Kaufmann are not important to determination of what is just. He, quite rightly, points to significant role played by norms in the evaluation of concrete situations, in man's search for closer specification in content of good innate to him. The structure of process of determining law for a concrete situation, to a great degree corresponds to the processes of determining law which take place not only in the legal sciences. Kaufmann's analyses of the process of realisation of law show the complexity of the structure of these processes and point towards important moments allowing a better understanding of law and man. Nevertheless, these analyses cannot be a basis for construction of philosophical theory of law, theory which hopes to point out the ultimate, ontological foundations for understanding law. Kaufmann's results may become fully valid only in a more general perspective including broader experience at the point of departure. (shrink)

One of the traditional desiderata for a metaphysical theory of laws of nature is that it be able to explain natural regularities. Some philosophers have postulated governing laws to fill this explanatory role. Recently, however, many have attempted to explain natural regularities without appealing to governing laws. Suppose that some fundamental properties are bare dispositions. In virtue of their dispositional nature, these properties must be (or are likely to be) distributed in regular patterns. Thus (...) it would appear that an ontology including bare dispositions can dispense with governing laws of nature. I believe that there is a problem with this line of reasoning. In this essay, I’ll argue that governing laws are indispensable for the explanation of a special sort of natural regularity: those holding among categorical properties (or, as I’ll call them, categorical regularities). This has the potential to be a serious objection to the denial of governing laws, since there may be good reasons to believe that observed regularities are categorical regularities. (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)

PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN RIGHTS: HUMAN RIGHTS IN LIGHT OF THEIR INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION Summary The book consists of two main parts: in the first, on the basis of an analysis of international law, elements of the contemporary conception of human rights and its positive legal protection are identified; in the second - in light of the first part -a philosophical theory of law based on the tradition leading from Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas is constructed. The conclusion contains an application (...) of the results of the analysis conducted in the second part. The first part comprises four chapters. The first aims at revealing characteristics of human rights on the basis of an analysis of historical conditioning of the inter-national law of human rights and its development. The historical context displays the practical, vindicative, and critical character of the positive legal protection of human rights. Moreover, the process of change of positive human rights law is distinguished from the process of change of human rights as such. In the second chapter the content of human rights - a topic which is only auxiliary to the conducted analysis - is discussed. Basic typology and catalogues of rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and protected in the International Covenants of Human Rights are presented. The review of the content of rights aims at a more precise limitation of the field of research. The examination shows a diversity of rights which poses a serious challenge to the coherence of every philosophical theory of human rights. In the third chapter, central in the first part, international law is analyzed with regard to the characteristics of rights and the foundations of them. The analysis of documents shows a number of solutions referring to the anthropological foundations of rights. The inherent dignity of the human person is the source of all human rights. Each human being is recognized as free, and endowed with both reason and conscience. In the propounded conception of man individuals are not rivals but create a community which is a condition for their development. International law characterizes the rights as universal, inherent, inalienable and inviolable. The reconstructed conception also comprises the following basic elements: on the level of the structure of rights, a recognition of their equality, interdependence, and comprehensiveness; in the grounding of these rights, a recognition of the anthropological foundations of law; in the conception of positive law, a recognition of the secondariness of the positive law of human rights to human rights themselves, and a recognition of human rights and justice as the basis for legal order; in the conception of state, a recognition of the well-being of the individual as the fundamental aim of actions undertaken by political institutions, and recogni¬tion of rights which form an impassable boundary to the power of the state, includ¬ing its legislative actions. The characterization of the international legal paradigm serving for the under¬standing of human rights is supplemented by analyses of the structure of their posi¬tive legal protection. Various meanings of the terms "right" and "freedom" are distinguished. Subjective right, as basic structure of the positive legal protection of human rights, is understood as a complex relation formed by various legal situations of the subject of a right which create a functional whole in respect of the subordi-nation of human person to its good. Subordinating person to a good proper for it, expressed usually in a proclamatory norm, is the central element of particular rights around which further elements aiming at the realization of this good are built. In the second part of the book a philosophical theory is developed which allows for the location of a coherent foundation for the presented characterization of human rights and their positive legal protection. This part consists of two chapters. The first includes a review of some - not entirely satisfactory - means of founding of human rights; the second presents philosophical conceptions of law and man which may form a basis for the constructed theory. The review of arguments contained in the first chapter does not aim at a detailed analysis of various specific ways of argumentation encountered in works on this subject but rather at a concise presentation of the main possible lines of argumentation. These analyses also serve to emphasize the positive solutions which are pro¬posed later and to underscore the explanatory power of the elaborated theory. This theory, retaining accurate intuitions contained in the presented types of argumenta¬tion, helps in avoiding their consequences which are difficult to reconcile with the reconstructed paradigm of human rights. Efforts to base human rights on the norms of international law rightly take into account the necessity of determining the content of the rights and their positive legal protection as a means for the realization of man's good. These attempts, how¬ever, do not properly take into account the inherent character of human rights, which are independent of positive law and provide grounds for applying specific legislative measures and not others. Founding human rights on freedom accurately points at the freedom of an indi¬vidual as a constitutive element of some rights; however, absolutization of freedom leads, to a loss of an important element of the contemporary paradigm of under¬standing human rights. This foundation undermines recognition of the fact that human rights may set limits to both the freedom of others and the freedom of the subject of rights itself. Additionally, attempts at the so-called axiological justification of human rights are discussed. This type of justification has a few variants depending on the as¬sumed conception of value. Subjectivistic conceptions have similar advantages and disadvantages to the conceptions basing human rights on freedom; objectivistic conceptions while providing for the universality of human rights place, the fundamental aim of human rights protection beyond the individual human being - in the idealistically existing world of values; finally, conceptions rooting values and human rights in culture, while accurately noting that human rights are learned through the medium of culture, place the source of human rights beyond a concrete individual - in culture and processes which take place in it - which leads to difficulties in finding a basis for the universality of rights. Furthermore, attempts to ground human rights in specific characteristics of the human being are presented. This type of approach points to an important problem of dependence of the content of rights on what man is. However, recognition of specific characteristics of a human being as an ontic foundation of the existence of rights poses a danger to their universality since one has to accept that it is not enough to be a man to be a subject of rights, but a man possessing specific charac¬teristics. The second chapter aims at outlining solutions worked out by Saint Thomas Aquinas. For a fuller understanding of his propositions selected elements of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy are presented. It was them who formulated the founda¬tions for reflection on law and justice in the ontological context. A qualification is made that Stoicism is not be analysed in depth. Although Thomas' concept of law was undoubtedly developed under the influence of the Stoic doctrine as well, it is not in this that one should look for the tools to understand the ontic foundations of human rights and law in general since the Stoic moral philosophy and philosophy of law were developed in the context of a theory of being which assumed monistic and pantheistic premises as foundations, leading to the recognition of a total subor¬dination of the human individual to a larger unity of which man is only a part. The analysis of Plato's and Aristotle's texts concentrates on problems of justice. Plato seems to be the first philosopher who reflected on the formula basic in the history of European thought: to render to each his due. It appears that justice as both a characteristic of man and his acts is understood in the perspective of that which is just, that which is a good for another man - the recipient of the act. The basis for determining what is just is the relation of correspondence between some¬one and something. While in the case of Plato this relation is based on something beyond its terms, namely on ideas, in the case of Aristotle the relation occurs on account of the elements of the relation itself. Something is just when it contributes to the develop¬ment of the recipient of an act realizing that which is just. At the same time, the realization of that which is just is a good for the agent. In the analysis of the just two types of relation are revealed: the relation of due-to-recipient occurring on account of the compatibility of that which is due, with the recipient of the act; and - a "superstructure" - a relation of obligation-of-subject occurring on account of the compatibility of the acting subject with the thing which should be done. The basis for being that which is due is formed by various potentialities of development of man - the recipient of agency; the basis of being that which is an obligation is the possibility of development of the subject of action. Aristotle distinguishes various types of freedom and points to the necessity of taking them into account in the discussion of justice. Among other things, as the core of man's freedom, he considers life for its own sake, which can be seen as his expression of the basic indices of the autotelic character of man - which is funda¬mental for later conceptions of dignity. The freedom which is described by him is not, however, inherent and inalienable; being free is conditioned by a factual possi¬bility of undertaking actions, which are not solely means to the realization of aims set by others. Thomas Aquinas takes over the Aristotelian research perspective both in his conception of man and of law. At the same time, however, he significantly enriches it. In anthropology he develops a conception of personal being. Drawing upon his distinction between existence ("that something is") and essence ("what something is"), he sees the basis for being a person in the dignity of personal being which is a certain way of existence of a rational being more perfect than that of non-personal beings. The person is a being which, by virtue of its act of existence, is individual¬ized in a specific way. It is an aim in itself. Expressing it in a negative way, one may say that it does not exist as a means for the realization of the aims of others and, in this sense, that it is free. As distinct from Aristotelian conclusions, being a person is not conditioned by the specific actions of a being. Dignity is inherent, based on that which is the foundation of the factual existence of every rational being. Although freedom requires that a being is rational, dignity still encompasses all being, all its properties and potentialities. Thus an act conforming with dignity has to take into account a whole human being. Among different types of that which is just, ius, the first place, from the point of view of understanding law, falls to "the just thing itself ("ipsa res justa"), which is right in the full meaning of the word. On the one hand, it is that which is due; on the other hand, it determines the way of acting in the utmost degree, since the course of every act is determined in the fullest extent by its aim. The content of ius may be determined both by elements independent of free decisions - ius naturale - and by free decisions taking into account the state of things - ius positivum. Recognition of the objective structure of being as the basis of law does not entail that it is possible or desirable to determine unequivocally "the only right" patterns of conduct. This concept is very well justified within the system proposed by Saint Thomas. Individualization of being is a significant element of the develop¬ment of a person as a person. It is attained by the realization of individual aims which are not unequivocally determined by circumstances and the nature common to all people. By virtue of free choices made in the sphere of that which is not by its nature unjust, the object of action becomes ius. Since in the realization of the person the individualization of human being is central, Aquinas clearly sees the need for the protection of the sphere of "dominion of will". This sphere itself constitutes ius naturale, something which is due to man independently of the acts of will. Therefore "law should forbid nothing which is not unjust" ("nihil debet lege prohiberi quod licite fieri potest", In 3 Sent., dist. 40, q. I, a. 1, 3). Besides the relation of due-to-recipient, ius also includes the relation of obligation-of-subject which is superimposed on the relation of due-to-recipient. As far as the ontic foundations of obligation are concerned, in explaining why man is subordinated to realization of the good of others, Aquinas generally follows Aristotle in accepting that this basis is the subordination to moral good - to actions conforming with the learned truth about reality. Aquinas' systemic solutions allow, however, to reach deeper and understand why moral development is also a development of the whole human being. This was difficult within Aristotle's system, since he was reluc¬tant to decide whether precedence should be given to intellectual or moral develop¬ment. The inclination to realise good of another appears to be a transcendental characteristic of being, based on its very existence. Morality understood as rational and free subordination to realize the good of another is a specifically personal way of the realization of this inclination. Thus just actions contribute to the actualization of being in the aspect of its existence and therefore to the actualization of being as a whole. Thomas' conception of natural law (lex naturalis) as participation in eternal law (lex aeterna), offers possibilities for grasping that which is just as something which is basically accessible cognition, independently of Revelation and independently of faith in God, and at the same time as something based in eternal law, understood as a design of God's wisdom. Eternal law, embracing all particular actions, is not, from the human perspective, accessible cognition directly. It is enacted in the struc-ture of the created being and - in case of human beings - in free choices taking this structure into account. In the concluding remarks, the results obtained earlier are applied directly to the contemporary conception of human rights. Human rights are understood in the first place as "just things" - concrete goods of man; as that which is due because of subordination, based on dignity, to the personal development of man. That which is just is understood as a relational - actual or potential - state of things, which exists by virtue of existing relations. Evaluations referring to that which is right are true when respective relations of due-to-recipient take place; norms of conduct are true when respective relations of obligation-of-subject take place. Examples of the application of the sketched theory outside the field of human rights are also presented. Procedural consequences of the developed theory are shown, such as the discrimination of two types of legislative procedures which differ significantly in the structure of argumentation: the first aims at recognition of that which is just independently of the will of the legislator, and the second, at making individual or collective "projects" of development compatible. Finally the possibilities of applying the theory to the increasingly important problems of the protection of the environment and the "rights" of animals are mentioned. The central issue is a philosophical conception of man and his freedom and a conception of law. It is also indispensable to turn to a general theory of being. The search for a comprehensive theory of human rights requires attention to the Abso¬lute Being - God - as well. This is important for at least two reasons. First, a conception of the Absolute Being is integral to philosophy of the systemic type -of which the present book is a piece. A conception of the Absolute Being is signifi¬cant for understanding all being, including, first of all, man as a personal being. Second, every theory of human rights which does not comprise the problem of the Absolute may be questioned as to whether solutions adopted in it do not lead, in consequence, to eliminating God from the perspective of the understanding of law. It is desirable that a philosophical theory should deal with this problem directly. A theory which eliminates God from the perspective of the understanding of rights will be unacceptable for all those who, for philosophical reasons or relying on faith, consider God as the author of inherent rights. Nevertheless, a theoretical approach to rights from the perspective of the Absolute Being should only be a possible extension of a philosophical approach which bases rights on something which is cognizable independently of the acceptance of the existence of God so that the theory is also acceptable for those who reject the existence of God or suspend their judgment on this subject. The pursued theory should therefore contain, on the one hand, reference to natural, faith-independent foundations of human rights, but on the other hand, point to a possible extension accounting for the Absolute Being. The analyses contained in this chapter have undoubtedly some historical value since they are based on source texts. Nevertheless, the use of these texts and not critical works was dictated, first of all, by a conviction that analyses embrace a given theory in the aspect selected by the interests of the researcher. Therefore to find out what past thinkers say on the subject characterized in the first part it is simpler to reach to the sources than to adopt the existing critical works. The pre¬sented reconstruction of Aquinas' views on philosophy of law incorporates proposi¬tions of supplementing and developing some of the ideas undertaken by him. Obligation to act in this and not an other way arises because human actions are subordinated to the conformity, on the one hand, of aims realized by these actions and, on the one hand, the order of being determining that which is favourable to man or destroys him. The content of the order of being is, on the one hand, determined by the structure of being independent from man's will and, on the other, by free decisions of man. (shrink)

Non‐Humean theories of natural necessity invoke modally‐laden primitives to explain why nature exhibits lawlike regularities. However, they vary in the primitives they posit and in their subsequent accounts of laws of nature and related phenomena (including natural properties, natural kinds, causation, counterfactuals, and the like). This article provides a taxonomy of non‐Humean theories, discusses influential arguments for and against them, and describes some ways in which differences in goals and methods can motivate different versions of non‐Humeanism (...) (and, for that matter, Humeanism). In short, this article provides an introduction to non‐Humeanism concerning the metaphysics of laws of nature and natural necessity. (shrink)

This paper shows how a niche account of the metaphysics of laws of nature and physical properties—the Powers-BSA—can underpin both a sense in which the laws are metaphysically necessary and a sense in which it is true that the laws could have been different. The ability to reconcile entrenched disagreement should count in favour of a philosophical theory, so this paper constitutes a novel argument for the Powers-BSA by showing how it can reconcile disagreement about the (...) class='Hi'>laws’ modal status. This paper also constitutes a defence of modal necessitarianism, the interesting and controversial view according to which all worlds are nomologically identical, because it shows how the modal necessitarian can appease the orthodox contingentist about laws. (shrink)

Bird reveals an important problem at the heart of Armstrong’s theory of laws of nature: to explain how a law necessitates its corresponding regularity, Armstrong is committed to a vicious regress. In his very brief response, Armstrong gestures towards an argument that, as he admits, is more of a “speculation.” Later, Barker and Smart argue that a very similar problem threatens Bird’s dispositional monist theory of laws of nature and he is committed to a similar vicious regress. In (...) this paper, first, I construct Armstrong’s would-be argument in response to Bird. Second, I argue that his response makes his account of laws and natural properties incompatible with science. Finally, I argue that Armstrong’s strategy to address Bird’s criticism can be used, quite ironically, to defuse Barker and Smart’s argument against Bird. (shrink)

Metaphysics should follow science in postulating laws alongside properties. I defend this claim against the claim that natural properties conceived as powers make laws of nature redundant. Natural properties can be construed in a “thin” or a “thick” way. If one attributes a property in the thin sense to an object, this attribution does not conceptually determine which other properties the object possesses. The thin construal is underlying the scientific strategy for understanding nature piecemeal. Science explains (...) phenomena by cutting reality conceptually in properties attributed to space-time points, where these properties are conceived of independently of each other, to explore then, in a separate step, how the properties are related to each other; those determination relations between properties are laws. This is compatible with the thesis that laws are metaphysically necessary. According to the thick conception, a property contains all its dependency relations to other properties. The dependency relationships between properties (which appear as laws in the thin conception) are parts of the properties they relate. There are several reasons to resist the thick conception of properties. It makes simple properties “holistic”, in the sense that each property contains many other properties as parts. It cannot account for the fact that properties constrain each other’s identity; it can neither explain why natural properties are linked to a unique set of dispositions, nor why and how this set is structured nor why the truth-maker of many disposition attributions is relational although the disposition is grounded on a monadic property. (shrink)

In the period of emergence of early modern science, ‘monsters’ or individuals with physical congenital anomalies were considered as rare events which required special explanations entailing assumptions about the laws of nature. This concern with monsters was shared by representatives of the new science and Late Scholastic authors of university textbooks. This paper will reconstruct the main theses of the treatment of monsters in Late Scholastic textbooks, by focusing on the question as to how their accounts conceived nature’s regularity (...) and teleology. It shows that they developed a naturalistic teratology in which, in contrast to the naturalistic explanations usually offered by the new science, finality was at central stage. This general point does not impede our noticing that some authors were closer to the views emerging in the Scientific Revolution insofar as they conceived nature as relatively autonomous from God and gave a relevant place to efficient secondary causation. In this connection, this paper suggests that the concept of the laws of nature developed by the new science –as exception-less regularities—transferred to nature’s regularity the ‘strong’ character that Late Scholasticism attributed to finality and that the decline of the Late Scholastic view of finality played as an important concomitant factor permitting the transformation of the concept of laws of nature. (shrink)

Over the past 50 years, there has been a great deal of philosophical interest in laws of nature, perhaps because of the essential role that laws play in the formulation of, and proposed solutions to, a number of perennial philosophical problems. For example, many have thought that a satisfactory account of laws could be used to resolve thorny issues concerning explanation, causation, free-will, probability, and counterfactual truth. Moreover, interest in laws of nature is not constrained to (...) metaphysics or philosophy of science; claims about laws play essential roles in areas as diverse as the philosophy of religion (e.g., in the argument from design) and the philosophy of mind (e.g., in the formulation of Davidson’s anomalous monism). In my dissertation, I consider and reject the widely-held thesis that the facts concerning laws can be reduced to the facts concerning the particular entities that the laws “govern,” and that the laws thus have no independent existence. I instead defend a version of nomic primitivism, according to which the facts about laws cannot be reduced to facts that are themselves non-nomic – i.e., to facts that do not fundamentally involve laws, counterfactuals, causes, etc. Insofar as the truth or falsity of reductionism about laws has implications for many of the problems mentioned above, I think that this result should be of interest even to those who who do not work in metaphysics or the philosophy of science. My methodology, which I lay out and defend in Chapter One, is a version of Carnapian explication. This method emphasizes the importance of articulating and maintaining clear distinctions between (1) the vague concept (or concepts) law of nature inherent in ordinary language and scientific practice and (2) the precise analyses of “law of nature” that philosophers have proposed as potential replacements for this concept. I argue that metaphysics-as-explication has clear advantages over rival conceptions of metaphysical methodology; in particular, it allows us to formulate evaluative criteria for metaphysical claims. In Chapter Two, I offer an example of how careful attention to concepts already in use can help resolve philosophical debate. Specifically, I argue that much recent literature has mistakenly assumed that there is only one concept of “law of nature” in use, while there are in fact at least two. Strong laws are the principles pursued by fundamental physics: they are true, objective, and bear distinctive relationships to counterfactuals and explanation. Weak laws, by contrast, lack at least one of these distinctive characteristics but play central roles in both the “special sciences” and in everyday life. In Chapters Three and Four, I offer extended arguments against the two most prominent versions of reductionism about laws – Humeanism and law necessitarianism. According to philosophical Humeans, the laws of nature supervene upon the non-modal, non-nomic facts concerning the behavior of particular things at particular times and places. Law necessitarians, by contrast, argue that the laws are in fact metaphysically necessary, and that which laws there are is determined by a class of primitive, modally loaded facts concerning the essences, natures, or dispositions. I argue that both of these views are mistaken insofar as they disagree with well-entrenched scientific practices and those in favor of reductionism have failed to provided sufficient reason for thinking that these practices should be revised. Much of my argument is focused on the role played by a number of supposed methodological principles, including appeals to intuition, parsimony, and methodological naturalism. While the conclusions of this dissertation are explicitly constrained to laws, many of the arguments should be of interest to those who are concerned about philosophical methodology (especially in the role of intuition in philosophical argument) or the appropriate relation between metaphysics, science, and the philosophy of science. (shrink)

I show how the two great Humean ways of understanding laws of nature, projectivism and systems theory, have unwittingly reprised developments in metaethics over the past century. This demonstration helps us explain and understand trends in both literatures. It also allows work on laws to “leap- frog” over the birth of many new positions, the nomic counterparts of new theories in metaethics. However, like leap-frogging from agriculture to the internet age, it’s hardly clear that we’ve landed in a (...) good place. My reactionary advice is to return to Hume and work on the central insights that motivated Humeanism about modality in the first place. When updated with contemporary insights, there we will find an attractive naturalistic theory of laws, or so I’ll argue, and along the way we’ll see how projectivism and systems theory both get something right about this overall theory. (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)

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)

The problem of knowledge has been centred around the study of the content of our consciousness, seeing the world through internal representation, without any satisfactory account of the operations of nature that would be a pre-condition for our own performances in terms of concept efficiency in organizing action externally. If we want to better understand where and how meaning fits in nature, we have to find the proper way to decipher its organization, and account for the fact that we have (...) found codes and replicators operating at a deep levels of analysis. Informational analysis deals with units of organizational stability but it takes them for granted and leaves open the question of their origin. Patterns are used when we recognize the same configurations at different places and try to explain through their recurrence, yet to make sense of the presence of signals and counter-balancing mechanisms disseminated in nature, a hypothesis is offered to the effect that feedback signals would have a role to play in the coming about of a world that is open to new configurations and submitted to a form of stability that is more attuned to system laws than overarching unrevisable ones. (shrink)

The common view that Hume is a regularity theorist about laws of nature isn’t textually well grounded. The texts show that he thinks of them as objective governing principles that could conceivably be violated while still counting as a law of nature. This is a standard view at the time, and Hume borrows it from others. He implies that the best evidence for rational religion is the exceptionless workings of the laws of nature, he argues that suicide (...) isn’t incompatible with the will of God by identifying his will with the laws of nature, and he has Philo argue for the existence of God from the simplicity of the laws governing the world. He sheds some of the theological baggage that laws of nature carry at the time, but not all of it. (shrink)

Introduction. The book is a study in Adam Smith's system of ideas; its aim is to reconstruct the peculiar framework that Adam Smith’s work provided for the shaping of a semi-autonomous new discipline, political economy; the approach adopted lies somewhere in-between the history of ideas and the history of economic analysis. My two claims are: i) The Wealth of Nations has a twofold structure, including a `natural history' of opulence and an `imaginary machine' of wealth. The imaginary machine (...) is a kind of Newtonian theory, whose connecting links are principles; provided either by `partial' characteristics of human nature or by analoga of physical mechanisms transferred to the social world; ii) a domain of the economic, understood as a self-standing social sub-system, was discovered first by Adam Smith. His `discovery' of the new continent of the economic was an `unintended result' of a deviation in his voyage to the never-found archipelago of natural jurisprudence. -/- 1. Imaginary machines and invisible chains: natural philosophy and method. The first chapter reconstructs Smith's views on the method in natural philosophy, presented primarily in the History of Astronomy (HA). The peculiar kind of semi-sceptical Newtonianism which permeates the essay is highlighted. Its reconstruction of the history of one natural science is shown to be based on the assumptions of Hume’s epistemology, and to lead to a self-aware deadlock. Smith's dilemma is between an essentialist realism and sceptical instrumentalism; the Cartesian presuppositions he shares with Hume and with the 18th century as a whole make it impossible for him to overcome his dilemma. The following chapters will show how, on the one hand, Smith's skeptical methodology encourages him in the enterprise to `carve off' a new self-contained discipline and how, on the other hand, his epistemological dilemma is reflected in the inner tensions of his moral and political theory as well as in a number of basic oscillations concerning the status of the new discipline. -/- 2. Chessboards and clocks: moral philosophy and method. -/- The second chapter reconstructs Smith's views on the method in the parallel field of moral philosophy, including the theory of moral sentiments and natural jurisprudence. I argue that The Theory of Moral Sentiments, when considered together with with the Lectures on Jurisprudence, where Smith's peculiar version of a `weaker' form of natural law is presented, wins special interest, not only for the history of ethics but even more for the history of political theory and the social sciences. The two most striking features of Smith's work in this area are highlighted. First, his effort at reformulating the `practical science' is a methodologically self-aware attempt at applying the Newtonian method to moral subjects. Secondly, this attempt ends in a stalemate as two distinguished kinds of normative order are introduced: one ultimate order of Reason, ultimately justifiable but inaccessible, and one weaker order of our `natural sentiments', to which we have empirical access, but which is so variable as to lack any ultimate value as a basis for grounding our normative claims. These two parallel conundrums may arguably account for the author's inability to publish during his lifetime both The History of Astronomy and the projected history and theory of law and government. -/- 3. Wheels, dams, and gravitation: the structure of scientific argument in The Wealth of Nations. -/- The third chapter provides the core of the book, dealing with the structure of the argument in WN. I argue that the main presupposition that makes the shift possible from a `natural history' to a `system' approach is the Newtonian contrast of `mathematical' with `physical' explanation; that is, Smith drops any discussion of the "original qualities" of human nature that could account for economic behaviour, while introducing, as `principles' for the system, a set of `hypothetical' statements of `observed' regularities in human behaviour and of `observed' super-individual self-regulating mechanisms. In bringing this presupposition to light, the coexistence of a teleological with a mechanistic approach is clarified; fresh light is shed on the notion of the invisible hand by a comparison of its occurrence in Smith with the occurrence of the same expression (until now overlooked) in the correspondence between Newton and Cotes. Finally, the peculiar semi-prescriptive and semi-descriptive character of political economy are highlighted, and the consistency of Smith's `impure' semi-prescriptive social science, when understood in his own terms, is defended against familiar charges with inconsistency and against even more familiar strained modernizations. -/- 4. Apples, deer, and frivolous trinkets: the construction of the economic. -/- The fourth chapter draws consequences from the third, examining how Smith's achievement in political economy, marking its transition to scientific status, carried a re-description of the phenomena, creating the comparatively independent and unified field of the economic. Smith's achievement is interpreted not as the `discovery' of an autonomous character already possessed by the economy out there, so much as a Gestalt-switch by which our perception of social phenomena is modified making us `see' the partial order of the economy as an isolated system. To sum up, the autonomy of the economic in social reality and the autonomy of the economic in social consciousness are shown to be two sides of one process. -/- 5. Concluding considerations: Political economy and the Enlightenment halved. -/- A few suggestions on the status of economic theory two centuries after The Wealth of Nations in its relationship to ‘practical philosophy’ are illustrated. (shrink)

State of art paper on the topic laws of nature, around the problem of identification what is to be a law of nature. The most prominent theories of contemporary philosophical literature are discussed and analysed, such as: the simple regularity theory, from Hume; the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis best systems theory; the Dretske-Tooley-Armstrong theory of laws as relations among universals; Ellis’s essentialist theory; Cartwright’s theory of laws as ceteris paribus laws; the anti-reductionist theories of Lange, Maudlin and Carroll, (...) the anti-realist theories of Mumford, van Fraassen and Giere; etc. (shrink)

This paper considers three possible ways of understanding the claim that the American criminal justice system is racist: individualist, “patterns”-based, and ideology-based theories of institutional racism. It rejects an individualist explanation of institutional racism because such an explanation fails to explain the widespread prevalence of anti-black racism in this system or indeed in the United States. It considers a “patterns” account of institutional racism, where consistent patterns of disparate racial effect mimic the structure of intentional (...) projects of racial subjugation like slavery or Jim Crow. While a “patterns” account helpfully directs attention to the effects of policies and practices that make up an institution, it does not fully explain the deep roots of anti-blackness in the criminal justice system in the United States. The paper concludes by defending an ideology-based theory of institutional racism for understanding the criminal justice system because the stereotype of the black criminal has a mutually reinforcing relationship with the patterns of disparate outcome for black people in the criminal justice system. This relationship creates a looping effect where the stereotype of the black criminal fuels the disproportionate involvement of black people in the criminal justice system, and the disproportionate representation of black people with felony records, in prisons, brutalized in police encounters, and so on reinforces the idea that black people are especially prone to criminality. Ideological approaches to racism that integrate attention to the patterns of disparate effect best explain what it means to say that the criminal justice system is racist. (shrink)