An important part of the influential Humean doctrine in philosophy is the supervenience principle (sometimes referred to as the principle of separability). This principle asserts that the complete state of the world supervenes on the intrinsic properties of its most fundamental components and their spatiotemporal relations (the so-called Humean mosaic). There are well-known arguments in the literature purporting to show that in quantum mechanics the Humean supervenience principle is violated, due to the existence of entangled states. Recently, however, arguments have (...) been presented to the effect that the supervenience principle can be defended in Bohmian mechanics. The key element of this strategy lies in the observation that according to Bohmian mechanics the fundamental facts about particles are facts about their spatial locations, and moreover, for any proper subsystem of the world its state may non-trivially depend on the spatial configuration of the rest of the universe. Thus quantum-mechanical states of subsystems do not represent their intrinsic properties but rather characterize their relations with the environment. In this paper we point out the worry that this Bohmian strategy --known as Bohumianism-- saves the letter but not the spirit of the Humean doctrine of supervenience, since it prima facie violates another seemingly important Humean principle, which we call Strong Supervenience and whose denial implies the existence of necessary connections among distinct individuals. We argue that the best defense for Bohumians is to question the fundamental existence of complex physical systems and their states by treating any reference to them as a convenient description of the underlying collection of Bohmian particles. We consider several pros and cons of this strategy. (shrink)

In this discussion note I reply to some criticisms that Marc Lange (2022) has directed at my Humean view of scientific laws (Bhogal, 2020) -- about whether Humean views can make sense of the apparent fact that laws are counterfactually invariant. The key idea of my response is that the Humean should think of their reduction of the laws to the Humean mosaic as closely related to other views where we reduce one domain to another but still allow that the (...) higher-level domain can be `autonomous' of the lower-level in some respects -- like, for example, the view that the special sciences reduce to physics but can still can work autonomously of physics. (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 interpretation of the general theory of relativity has need of a causal entity, and causal structure that is not reducible to light cone structure. I suggest that this causal interpretation of GTR helps defeat a key premise in one of the most popular arguments for causal reductionism, viz., the argument from physics.

The dynamics of general relativity is encoded in a set of ten differential equations, the so-called Einstein field equations. It is usually believed that Einstein's equations represent a physical law describing the coupling of spacetime with material fields. However, just six of these equations actually describe the coupling mechanism: the remaining four represent a set of differential relations known as Bianchi identities. The paper discusses the physical role that the Bianchi identities play in general relativity, and investigates whether these identities (...) --qua part of a physical law-- highlight some kind of a posteriori necessity in a Kripkean sense. The inquiry shows that general relativistic physics has an interesting bearing on the debate about the metaphysics of the laws of nature. (shrink)

We present a new metaphysical framework for physics that is conceptually clear, ontologically parsimonious, and empirically adequate. This framework relies on the notion of self-subsisting structure, that is, a set of fundamental physical elements whose individuation and behavior are described in purely relational terms, without any need for a background spacetime. Although the specification of the fundamental elements of the ontology depends on the particular physical domain considered---and is thus susceptible to scientific progress---, the empirically successful structural features of the (...) framework are preserved through theory change. The kinematics and dynamics of these self-subsisting structures are technically implemented using the theoretical framework of Pure Shape Dynamics, which provides a completely relational physical description of a system in terms of the intrinsic geometry of a suitably defined space called shape space. (shrink)

I articulate a Global Best-System Account (GBSA) of laws of nature along broadly Mill–Ramsey–Lewis lines. The guiding idea is that the job of laws is to capture real patterns across time—where a pattern is real if it allows to compress information about matters of particular fact. The GBSA’s key ingredient is a definition of ‘best system’ in terms of a ranking method that meets a number of desiderata: it is rigorously defined; it outputs the ranking based on the candidate systems’ (...) epistemic virtues; it is objective, in that the output does not depend on one’s choice of basic concepts; it avoids two trivialization results (by Lewis, and Arrow-Okasha); and it does not appeal to naturalness, or other metaphysical notions in that vicinity. Although the GBSA is independent of the controversial thesis of Humean Supervenience, it satisfies the weaker thesis that laws of nature supervene on the total physical state of the world. Moreover, the resulting notion of lawhood is hyperintensional, unlike the neighboring notion of nomological necessity. Finally, GBSA-laws do not track naturalness, contra the Lewisian orthodoxy. (shrink)

This paper presents a unified argument against three widely held contemporary analyses of lawhood—Humean reductionism about laws, the dispositionalist view of laws, and the view of laws as relation...

It is commonly thought that that the best system account of lawhood ((Mill (1843), Ramsey (1978)[fp. 1928], Lewis (1973)) makes available a nice explanation for why laws are ‘distinctively appropriate targets of scientific inquiry’ (Hall, 2015). The explanation takes the following general form: laws are especially valuable for agents like us because they efficiently encode a lot of valuable (non-nomic) information in a tractable format. The goal of this paper is to challenge this style of explanation: I argue that the (...) general principle it presupposes is in conflict with our best account of practical rationality. After considering and rejecting a number of proposals for dissolving the tension, I conclude that BSA proponents may need to scale back the explanatory ambitions of their theory; in particular, they may need to give up the hope of non-circular explanations of the value of nomic information. I end by outlining some challenges for the humean world-view that results after this shift. (shrink)

This paper defends an account of the laws of nature in terms of irreducibly modal properties (aka powers) from the threat posed by functional laws, conservation laws and symmetries. It thus shows how powers theorists can avoid ad hoc explanations and resist an inflated ontology of powers and governing laws. The key is to understand laws not as flowing from the essences of powers, as per Bird (2007), but as features of a description of how powers are possibly distributed, as (...) per Demarest (2017), Kimpton-Nye (2017, 2021) and Williams (2019); call this the Powers-BSA. This underappreciated powers-based account of laws is continuous with actual scientific practice and thereby quite naturally accommodates functional laws, conservation laws and symmetries. This paper thus positions the Powers-BSA as the leading anti-Humean account of the relationship between laws and properties. (shrink)

Let Nomological Bound be the thesis that there is nothing objectively possible beyond what is physically possible. Nomological Bound has struck many as a live hypothesis. Nevertheless, in this article I provide a novel argument against it. Yet even though I claim that Nomological Bound is false, I argue that the boundaries of objective possibility can still be characterized intimately in terms of physical necessity. This is philosophically significant, for on a natural understanding it constitutes the powerful anti-sceptical result that (...) those who believe in physical necessity should not harbour any scepticism towards merely metaphysical possibilities. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics allegedly supports a holistic metaphysical moral: it is not the case that the intrinsic characters of all entangled wholes supervene on intrinsic properties and spatiotemporal arrangements of proper parts. According to one influential line of reasoning, such holistic supervenience failure follows more or less directly from quantum theory itself. One advertised consequence is the defeat of a natural, broadly reductive worldview commonly linked to Lewis's philosophical doctrine of Humean supervenience. However, the situation is more complicated, in both this (...) and other respects, than it may first appear. This article is an opinionated overview of some especially interesting complications. (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)

This paper develops an account of the metaphysics of fundamental laws I call “the Package Deal Account ” that is a descendent of Lewis’ BSA but differs from it in a number of significant ways. It also rejects some elements of the metaphysics in which Lewis develops his BSA. First, Lewis proposed a metaphysical thesis about fundamental properties he calls “Humean Supervenience” according to which all fundamental properties are instantiated by points or point sized individuals and the only fundamental relations (...) are geometrical spatial and temporal relations between these. While the BSA does not require HS Lewis seems to hope that it is true. In contrast, the PDA is not committed to HS or even to the fundamental arena in which fundamental properties are instantiated possessing geometrical structure and thus is able to accommodate relations and structures found in contemporary physics that apparently conflict with HS. Second, although Lewis’ BSA doesn’t require HS his Humeanism does require that fundamental properties are categorical. In contrast, the PDA allows for the possibility that fundamental properties are individuated in terms of laws and so are not categorical. Third, the PDA expands and develops the criteria for what counts in favor of a candidate system with more attention to the criteria employed by physicists in evaluating proposed theories. Fourth and most importantly, unlike Lewis’ BSA, the PDA does not presuppose metaphysically primitive elite properties/quantities that Lewis calls “perfectly natural” properties/quantities or presuppose a metaphysically preferred language whose terms denote such properties/quantities. It replaces Lewis’ account with an account on which natural properties are not metaphysically prior to the laws but are elements of a package that includes a fundamental arena that plays the role of space-time as well as fundamental laws and properties. By doing so it responds to some epistemological and metaphysical issues that have been raised regarding natural properties and their role in the BSA. In sum, the PDA goes further in explicating the notion of laws in terms of the aims and practices of science especially fundamental physics rather than in terms of prior metaphysics. I begin by reviewing Lewis’ account of perfectly natural properties and his Humean BSA of laws. (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)

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.

I outline a version of idealism that borrows from Humean Supervenience. The resulting theory is immune to what is often considered to be the most powerful anti-idealist argument, the gist of which is that the idealist can’t supply truthmakers (or an adequate supervenience base) for commonly accepted truths about the physical world. That charge has no purchase on Humean idealism.

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)

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 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)

In a deterministically evolving world, the usefulness of nontrivial probabilities can seem mysterious. I use the ‘Mentaculus’ machinery developed by David Albert and Barry Loewer to show how all probabilities in such a world can be derived from a single, initial chance event. I go on to argue that this is the only genuine chance event. Perhaps surprisingly, we have good evidence of its existence and nature. I argue that the existence of this chance event justifies our epistemic reliance on (...) nontrivial probabilities. (shrink)

Lewis’s original Best Systems Account of laws was not motivated much by pragmatics. But recent commentary on his general approach to laws has taken a ‘pragmatic turn’. This was initiated by Hall’s defence against the charge of ‘ratbag idealism’ which maintained that best systems accounts should be admired rather than criticised for the inherent pragmatism behind their choice of desiderata for what counts as ‘best’. Emboldened by Hall’s pragmatic turn, recent commentators have proposed the addition of pragmatically motivated desiderata to (...) complement or replace the canonical desiderata of strength and simplicity. This, they hope, will allow their revisionary BSAs to respond better to various counterexamples against the original account. While the pragmatic turn itself is well taken, here I problematise these revisionary approaches. First, there are reasonable responses to the counterexamples from within the canonical BSA. Second, while actual laws may satisfy the newly proposed desiderata, there are reasons to think these desiderata cannot be constitutive of laws. By comparison, the canonical desiderata appear to be relevant to explaining why and when the revisionary desiderata will reflect pragmatic features of the laws and better reflect the motives behind practitioners of fundamental physics. (shrink)

Can the desire for efficiently systematised theories in science be explained from within a powers metaphysics? It is plausible that the traditional ‘Powers Theory of Laws’, endorsed by many friends of powers, does not alone provide such an explanation. This has led a number of recent authors to argue that a ‘Powers Best System Account’ of laws would be a preferable alternative. This account borrows a method for determining laws from the Humean and applies it to a reality of powers. (...) Here I claim, to the contrary, that this account is both internally unworkable and, anyway, completely undermotivated when compared with the traditional view. Apart from some brief suggestions for alternative accounts, I’ll conclude that the powers theorist still has their work cut out to explain systematising in science. (shrink)

Current analytic metaphysics has been claimed to be, at best, out of touch with modern physics, at worst, actually in conflict with the latter The continuum companion to the philosophy of science, Continuum, London, 2011; Ladyman and Ross Every thing must go: metaphysics naturalized, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007). While agreeing with some of these claims, it has been suggested that metaphysics may still be of service by providing a kind of ‘toolbox’ of devices that philosophers of science can access (...) in order to help provide an interpretation of theories in fundamental physics Metaphysics in contemporary physics, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 2015). In this context it has been argued that ‘standard’ forms of dispositionalism simply cannot be sustained in the context of modern physics but that certain ‘non-standard’ views may provide the resources to help explicate the sense in which physics may be regarded as ‘modally informed’. Here that suggestion will be further extended in order to consider the implications both with regard to the overall relevance of metaphysics given advances in science and for the prospects of a naturalised metaphysics more generally. In particular, this paper will focus on three concerns: that the particular tools identified are not, in fact, ‘scientifically disinterested’ and thus that the distinction between ‘naturalised’ and ‘non-naturalised’ metaphysics is at best vague or poorly drawn; that the usefulness of such tools depends on their being shaped to fit the relevant physics and thus the latter ‘guts’ metaphysics; that if metaphysics does prove to be useful in this sense then we have no reason to scorn non-naturalised metaphysics to begin with. (shrink)

In recent literature, it has become clear that quantum physics does not refute Humeanism: Lewis’s thesis of Humean supervenience can be literally true even in the light of quantum entanglement. This point has so far been made with respect to Bohm’s quantum theory. Against this background, this paper seeks to achieve the following four results: to generalize the option of quantum Humeanism from Bohmian mechanics to primitive ontology theories in general; to show that this option applies also to classical mechanics; (...) to establish that it requires a commitment to matter as primitive stuff, but no commitment to natural properties ; to point out that by removing the commitment to properties, the stock metaphysical objections against Humeanism from quidditism and humility no longer apply. In that way, quantum physics strengthens Humeanism instead of refuting it. (shrink)

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

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

Scientific properties come in degrees: elephants are more massive than mice. Are facts like these fundamental or can they be explained in other terms? This article argues that the structure of physical quantities like mass reduces to facts about the role that mass plays in the laws of nature. On this view elephants are more massive than mice partly in virtue of the fact that elephants are harder to throw around.

Regularity theories of causation assert that causal or nomic notions are to be reduced into “mere” frequencies of particular, non-nomic, co-located qualities and matters of fact. In this essay, I present a critical exploration of Armstrong and Strawson’s explanatory arguments against regularity theories. The shortcomings of these older arguments for nomic realism are identified and a revamped version which is immune to such problems is outlined and defended. I argue that anti-realism suffers substantial disconfirmation due to its comparative inability to (...) unify empirical regularities in the absence of any probabilistic counterweights. I also show that realist theories are much more probable than their anti-realist competitors both individually and in aggregate. This is shown to be the case with even the most humble of observational data. This revamped argument is Bayesian in character; it is immune to the criticisms of Beebee, Everitt, Loewer, and van Fraassen ; and it is empiricist friendly to boot. (shrink)

I argue that it is metaphysically necessary that: (i) every fundamental entity is conscious, and (ii) every fundamental property is a phenomenal property.

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 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)

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)