Laws of Nature and Theory Choice.
I articulate a Global Best-System Account (GBSA) of laws of nature along broadly Mill–Ramsey–Lewis lines. The guiding idea is that the job of laws is to capture real patterns across time—where a pattern is real if it allows to compress information about matters of particular fact. The GBSA’s key ing...
| Publicado en: | Synthese Vol. 200; no. 6; pp. 1 - 19 |
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| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
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Springer Nature
Dec2022
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=160035341&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 160035341 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00397857 4LI jtl: Synthese issn: 00397857 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2022 vid: 200 iid: 6 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 160035341 10.1007/s11229-022-03950-1 ppf: 1 ppct: 18 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 456KB tig: atl: Laws of Nature and Theory Choice. aug: au: Torza, Alessandro affil: National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico city, Mexico sug: keyword: Best-system account Data compression Humean supervenience Induction Physical necessity Simplicity Theoretical virtues ab: I articulate a Global Best-System Account (GBSA) of laws of nature along broadly Mill–Ramsey–Lewis lines. The guiding idea is that the job of laws is to capture real patterns across time—where a pattern is real if it allows to compress information about matters of particular fact. The GBSA’s key ingredient is a definition of ‘best system’ in terms of a ranking method that meets a number of desiderata: it is rigorously defined; it outputs the ranking based on the candidate systems’ epistemic virtues; it is objective, in that the output does not depend on one’s choice of basic concepts; it avoids two trivialization results (by Lewis and Arrow-Okasha); and it does not appeal to naturalness, or other metaphysical notions in that vicinity. Although the GBSA is independent of the controversial thesis of Humean Supervenience, it satisfies the weaker thesis that laws of nature supervene on the total physical state of the world. Moreover, the resulting notion of lawhood is hyperintensional, unlike the neighboring notion of nomological necessity. Finally, GBSA-laws do not track naturalness, contra the Lewisian orthodoxy. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Synthese is a copyright of Springer, 2022. All Rights Reserved. item: Synthese holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2022 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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