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Humean Laws in an unHumean World

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Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)129-147
Number of pages36
JournalJournal of the American Philosophical Association
Volume3
Issue number2
Accepted/In press7 Jul 2017
Published2017

Documents

  • Humean Laws unHumean World_KIMPTION-NYE_Accepted7July2017_GREEN AAM

    Humean_Laws_unHumean_World_KIMPTION_NYE_Accepted7July2017_GREEN_AAM.pdf, 240 KB, application/pdf

    Uploaded date:17 Jul 2017

    Version:Accepted author manuscript

    This is the peer-reviewed manuscript of a paper accepted for publication in Journal of the American Philosophical Association, published by Cambridge University Press, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-american-philosophical-association
    © Journal of the American Philosophical Association

King's Authors

Abstract

I argue that an unHumean ontology of irreducibly dispositional properties might be fruitfully combined with what has typically been thought of as a Humean account of laws, namely, the best-system account, made popular by David Lewis (e.g., 1983, 1986, 1994). In this paper I provide the details of what I argue is the most defensible account of Humean laws in an unHumean world. This package of views has the benefits of upholding scientific realism while doing without any suspect metaphysical entities to account for natural law. I conclude by arguing that the Humean laws-unHumean ontology package is well placed to provide an account of objective, nontrivial chances, a famous stumbling block for the Humean laws-Humean ontology package developed by Lewis.

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