Abstract

Humeans say that laws depend on their instances. Another way of saying this is that the instances explain the laws. However, laws are often used in science to help explain these same instances. If this is true it appears as though the instances help explain themselves, which would be a serious problem for the Humeans (Miller, 2015, pp. 1314-1317). In this essay I expand on a solution proposed by Miller (2015, pp. 1328-1331) that the laws are not explained by their instances but rather grounded by a set of global facts. I develop this into a new framework in which it would be expected for the laws to not be grounded by their instances. I call this framework conjunction monism since the core idea is a that conjunctions ground their conjuncts. I finish with a discussion about the compatibility of conjunction monism and Humeanism.