Humeanism and Nonhumeanism about Laws
Edited by Markus Schrenk (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf)
Assistant editor: Florian J. Boge (Bergische Universität Wuppertal)
About this topic
Summary | Anti-Humeans have the feeling that natural laws govern the events in the world: what a law says must happen (or, what a law forbids can’t happen). This intuition might partially originate in our actual day-to-day experiences when we feel resistance against some of our actions. Some goals are not merely difficult to achieve, they are impossible: we cannot, unaided, jump 10m high. In concert with the facts about our current body mass, leg muscles, and the earth’s gravitational field, the laws of nature prohibit this kind of leap. For Humeans, laws have more of a descriptive character: the laws are (merely) accurate reports of what regularly happens or is universally the case. This intuition comes from the observation that nature seems to be uniform. Alleged laws like Boyle's law (which says that for a fixed amount of an ideal gas kept at a fixed temperature, pressure and volume are inversely proportional (pV=k)) or Einstein’s famous mass-energy equivalence (E=mc2) record these universal regularities. Those who hold the anti-Humean, first intuition (that the laws necessitate what happens and prohibit what does not happen) do not think the second intuition is wrong. In fact, if, what the laws say, must happen, then it also does happen and we get the regularities for free. The necessities in nature supposedly produce the regularities and thus explain why they are there. Yet, those who subscribe to some kind of regularity view deny that laws necessitate anything because they usually agree with David Hume that the postulation of necessity in nature is suspect. |
Key works | The most important Humean view comes from David Lewis: Lewis 2001 (esp. pp. 73-77), Lewis 1999 (esp. pp. 8-55 and 224-247). The orthodox anti-Humean accounts are in Armstrong, Tooley, and Dretske: Armstrong 1983, Tooley 1997, Dretske 1977. Modern anti-Humean accounts come, for example, from dispositionalists: Mumford & Anjum 2011, Bird 2007, Ellis 2001 |
Introductions | Psillos 2002 |
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Related categories
Siblings:
- Anti-Realism about Laws (113)
- Best-Systems Analyses (119)
- Ceteris Paribus Laws (194)
- Law Statements (67)
- Laws as Relations between Universals (118)
- Necessitarianism about Laws (187)
- Nomological Necessity (183)
- Probabilistic Laws (62)
- Special Science Laws (187)
- Laws of Nature, Misc (498)
- Explanation and Laws (139)
- Causation and Laws (170)
- Dispositions and Laws (189)
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