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Are Humean Laws Flukes?

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Abstract Most of the recent literature on the metaphysics of laws concerns arguments pro and con Humean and anti-Humean views. This chapter discusses two of the most persistent objections against Humean accounts and especially against Lewis’s Best Systems Account (BSA). The first objection is that Humean laws are too weak to play the explanatory role that laws play in science. The second is that Humean metaphysics makes it surprising that our world contains regularities that are systematizable by a Lewisian best system. In Galen’s words on Humean metaphysics, ‘it would be a fluke’ for the world to be systematizable or for there to be lawful regularities at all. Those who make these objections typically think that they are related, since it is the absence of necessary connections that is responsible both for the alleged explanatory deficiency of Humean laws and for the apparent flukiness of laws on Humeanism.

Oxford University PressOxford

Humean Laws for Human Agents

Title: Are Humean Laws Flukes?

Description:

Abstract Most of the recent literature on the metaphysics of laws concerns arguments pro and con Humean and anti-Humean views.

This chapter discusses two of the most persistent objections against Humean accounts and especially against Lewis’s Best Systems Account (BSA).

The first objection is that Humean laws are too weak to play the explanatory role that laws play in science.

The second is that Humean metaphysics makes it surprising that our world contains regularities that are systematizable by a Lewisian best system.

In Galen’s words on Humean metaphysics, ‘it would be a fluke’ for the world to be systematizable or for there to be lawful regularities at all.

Those who make these objections typically think that they are related, since it is the absence of necessary connections that is responsible both for the alleged explanatory deficiency of Humean laws and for the apparent flukiness of laws on Humeanism.

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