Humean Laws and (Nested) Counterfactuals.

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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 70; no. 278; pp. 93 - 114
Autores principales: Loew, Christian, Jaag, Siegfried
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Oxford University Press / USA Jan2020
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario: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.