Super-Humeanism and free will

Synthese 198 (7):6245-6258 (2019)
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Abstract

Super-Humeanism is an even more parsimonious ontology than Lewisian standard Humean metaphysics in that it rejects intrinsic properties. There are point objects, but all there is to them are their relative positions and the change of them. Everything else supervenes on the Humean mosaic thus conceived. Hence, dynamical parameters come in on a par with the laws through their position in the best system. The paper sets out how Super-Humeanism has the conceptual means to reject van Inwagen’s consequence argument not by taking the laws to depend on us, but by taking the initial values of the dynamical parameters that enter into the laws to be dependent on the motions that actually occur in the universe, including the motions of human bodies. The paper spells out the advantages of this proposal.

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Michael Esfeld
University of Lausanne

Citations of this work

Arguments for incompatibilism.Kadri Vihvelin - 2003/2017 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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Special-science counterfactuals.Christian List - 2022 - The Monist 105 (2):194–213.

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References found in this work

On the Plurality of Worlds.David K. Lewis - 1986 - Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell.
Freedom of the will and the concept of a person.Harry G. Frankfurt - 1971 - Journal of Philosophy 68 (1):5-20.
An Essay on Free Will.Peter Van Inwagen - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Philosophical papers.David Kellogg Lewis - 1983 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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