Humean laws, explanatory circularity, and the aim of scientific explanation

One of the main challenges confronting Humean accounts of natural law is that Humean laws appear to be unable to play the explanatory role of laws in scientific practice. The worry is roughly that if the laws are just regularities in the particular matters of fact (as the Humean would have it), then they cannot also explain the particular matters of fact, on pain of circularity. Loewer (2012) has defended Humeanism, arguing that this worry only arises if we fail to distinguish between scientific and metaphysical explanations. However, Lange (2013, 2018) has argued that scientific and metaphysical explanations are linked by a transitivity principle, which would undercut Loewer's defense and re-ignite the circularity worry for the Humean. I argue here that the Humean has antecedent reasons to doubt that there are any systematic connections between scientific and metaphysical explanations. The reason is that the Humean should think that scientific and metaphysical explanation have disparate aims, and therefore that neither form of explanation is beholden to the other in its pronouncements about what explains what. Consequently, the Humean has every reason to doubt that Lange's transitivity principle obtains

Toward a Best Predictive System Account of Laws of Nature

This paper argues for a revised Best System Account (BSA) of laws of nature. David Lewis's original BSA has two main elements. On the one hand, there is the Humean base, which is the totality of particular matters of fact that obtain in the history of the universe. On the other hand, there is what I call the "Nomic Formula", which is a particular operation that gets applied to the Humean base in order to output the laws of nature. My revised account focuses on this latter element of the view. Lewis conceives of the Nomic Formula as a balance of simplicity and strength, but I argue that this is a mistake. Instead, I motivate and develop a different proposal for the standards that figure into the Nomic Formula, and I suggest a rationale for why these should be the correct standards. Specifically, I argue that the Nomic Formula should be conceived as a collection of desiderata designed to generate principles that are predictively useful to creatures like us. The resulting view, which I call the "Best Predictive System Account" of laws, is thus able to explain why scientists are interested in discovering the laws, and it also gives rise to laws with the sorts of features that we find in actual scientific practice

Fine-Tuning Divine Indifference

Given the laws of our universe, the initial conditions and cosmological constants had to be "fine-tuned" to result in life. Is this evidence for design? We argue that we should be uncertain whether an ideal agent would take it to be so—but that given such uncertainty, we should react to fine-tuning by boosting our confidence in design. The degree to which we should do so depends on our credences in controversial metaphysical issues

Toward a Best Predictive System Account of Laws of Nature

This paper argues for a revised Best System Account (BSA) of laws of nature. David Lewis's original BSA has two main elements. On the one hand, there is the Humean base, which is the totality of particular matters of fact that obtain in the history of the universe. On the other hand, there is what I call the "Nomic Formula", which is a particular operation that gets applied to the Humean base in order to output the laws of nature. My revised account focuses on this latter element of the view. Lewis conceives of the Nomic Formula as a balance of simplicity and strength, but I argue that this is a mistake. Instead, I motivate and develop a different proposal for the standards that figure into the Nomic Formula, and I suggest a rationale for why these should be the correct standards. Specifically, I argue that the Nomic Formula should be conceived as a collection of desiderata designed to generate principles that are predictively useful to creatures like us. The resulting view, which I call the "Best Predictive System Account" of laws, is thus able to explain why scientists are interested in discovering the laws, and it also gives rise to laws with the sorts of features that we find in actual scientific practice

There Is No Measurement Problem for Humeans

The measurement problem concerns an apparent conflict between the two fundamental principles of quantum mechanics, namely the Schrödinger equation and the measurement postulate. These principles describe inconsistent behavior for quantum systems in so-called "measurement contexts." Many theorists have thought that the measurement problem can only be resolved by proposing a mechanistic explanation of (genuine or apparent) wavefunction collapse that avoids explicit reference to "measurement." However, I argue here that the measurement problem dissolves if we accept Humeanism about laws of nature. On a Humean metaphysics, there is no conflict between the two principles, nor is there any inherent problem with the concept of "measurement" figuring into the account of collapse

Entrenchment and the Kripke-Wittgenstein paradox

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to Goodman's own entrenchment-based solution to his New Riddle of Induction. Ostensibly, this is because Goodman views the problem presented by the New Riddle differently than most contemporary philosophers; Goodman sees the problem as one of codifying the acceptable inductive inferences rather than justifying why those inferences are acceptable. I argue that if we share his perspective, Goodman's own solution to the New Riddle is undermined: the linguistic facts about the entrenchment of predicates are no more accessible than facts about which classes are relevant to nature. The result is that Goodman's arguments leave us in a predicament very much like that presented by the Kripke-Wittgenstein paradox about meaning.Master of Art

Does the Best System Need the Past Hypothesis?

Many philosophers sympathetic with a Humean understanding of laws of nature have thought that, in the final analysis, the fundamental laws will include not only the traditional dynamical equations, but also two additional principles: the Past Hypothesis and the Statistical Postulate. The former says that the universe began in a particular very-low-entropy macrostate M(0), and the latter posits a uniform probability distribution over the microstates compatible with M(0). Such a view is arguably vindicated by the orthodox Humean Best System Account (BSA). However, I argue here that recent developments of the BSA render the Past Hypothesis otiose. In particular, the trend among Humeans toward a more pragmatic view of laws — according to which the best system is the one that is maximally effective at helping creatures like us amplify our information about the worl — does not support the idea that the Past Hypothesis is a law of nature

Does the Best System Need the Past Hypothesis?

Many philosophers sympathetic with a Humean understanding of laws of nature have thought that, in the final analysis, the fundamental laws will include not only the traditional dynamical equations, but also two additional principles: the Past Hypothesis and the Statistical Postulate. The former says that the universe began in a particular very-low-entropy macrostate M(0), and the latter posits a uniform probability distribution over the microstates compatible with M(0). Such a view is arguably vindicated by the orthodox Humean Best System Account (BSA). However, I argue here that recent developments of the BSA render the Past Hypothesis otiose. In particular, the trend among Humeans toward a more pragmatic view of laws — according to which the best system is the one that is maximally effective at helping creatures like us amplify our information about the worl — does not support the idea that the Past Hypothesis is a law of nature

The Best Predictive System Account of Laws of Nature

This dissertation develops a novel theory of laws of nature in the “Best System” tradition, with the express aim of making sense of why creatures like us are interested in discovering the laws. My theory draws inspiration from David Lewis’s famous Best System Account of laws. Lewis’s account has two basic elements: the “Humean base” and the “Nomic Formula.” The laws, according to Lewis, are the results of applying the Nomic Formula to the Humean base. My account preserves this overall structure of Lewis’s view, but I disagree with him both about what sorts of facts constitute the Humean base, and about the nature of the Nomic Formula itself. In the first two chapters of my dissertation, I develop objections to Lewis’s explications of these elements, and on the basis of these objections, I propose alternative accounts of the Humean base (Chapter 1) and the Nomic Formula (Chapter 2). In short, my view is that the laws of nature are the principles of the most predictively useful systematization of the totality of macroscopic phenomena. I call the resulting view the “Best Predictive System Account” of laws. In Chapter 3, then, I attempt to explain why the laws tend to be held fixed in counterfactual reasoning. I do so by arguing that, if the Best Predictive System Account is correct, creatures like us would naturally hold fixed the laws in counterfactual reasoning for purposes of figuring out facts about the actual world.Doctor of Philosoph

Laws, melodies, and the paradox of predictability

If the laws of nature are deterministic, then it seems possible that a Laplacean intelligence that knows the initial conditions and the laws would be able to accurately predict everything that will ever happen. However, it would be easy to construct a counterpredictive device that falsifies any revealed prediction about its future behavior. What would then occur if a Laplacean intelligence encountered a counterpredictive device? This is the paradox of predictability. A number of philosophers have proposed solutions to it, though part of my aim here is to argue that the paradox is more pernicious than has thus far been appreciated, and therefore that extant solutions are inadequate. My broader aim is to argue that the paradox motivates Humeanism about laws of nature