Humeanism, Modality, and the Governing Conception of Natural Laws.

A common objection against Humean reductionism about laws is an argument from governing: It is natural to think that laws of nature govern. But in order to govern the laws need to be independent of the phenomena they govern. Hence, Humean laws, which reduce to patterns in the phenomena and so lack t...

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Publicado en:Australasian Journal of Philosophy Vol. 104; no. 2; pp. 557 - 575
Autores principales: Jaag, Siegfried, Loew, Christian
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Taylor & Francis Ltd Jun2026
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Humeanism, Modality, and the Governing Conception of Natural Laws.
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          Jaag, Siegfried
          Loew, Christian
        affil:
          Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf
          Umeå Universitet
      su:
        Physical laws
        Scientific models
        Reductionism
        Theory (Philosophy)
        Necessity (Philosophy)
        Philosophy of science
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        subj:
          Physical laws
          Scientific models
          Reductionism
          Theory (Philosophy)
          Necessity (Philosophy)
          Philosophy of science
      keyword:
        Best Systems Account
        Governing
        Humeanism about Laws
        Laws of Nature
        Modality
        Scientific Modelling
      ab: A common objection against Humean reductionism about laws is an argument from governing: It is natural to think that laws of nature govern. But in order to govern the laws need to be independent of the phenomena they govern. Hence, Humean laws, which reduce to patterns in the phenomena and so lack this independence, cannot govern. A standard Humean response to this argument is that we should not place much weight on the intuition that laws govern. Non-Humeans, however, reply that the argument does not merely rest on intuitions but that scientific practice presupposes governing. In this paper, we offer a response to this revised challenge to Humeanism by giving a detailed account of the laws' role in scientific modelling. We argue that while Humean theories indeed cannot capture certain governing-intuitions, they still can make sense of those aspects of science that allegedly motivate governing.
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