Super-Humeanism

Abstract This chapter discusses a Best System Humean account that dispenses with fundamental perfectly natural properties except enduring elementary material particles called “super-Humeanism” invented by Michael Esfeld. Super-Humeanism replaces the Humean mosaic with the totality of particle trajectories throughout space-time. According to it scientifically fundamental properties/relations are not metaphysically fundamental but are introduced to systematize these trajectories. Laws are generalizations entailed by the scientifically optimal systematization. It avoids many of the problems of Lewis’s perfectly natural properties but has problems of its own. The chapter goes on to show that the account fails to be an adequate account of scientific laws mainly because the systematization turns out to be enormously complicated.