Persisting Despite the Relativistic Odds

Australasian Journal of Philosophy · 2025-08-19

How (not) to be a pragmatic Humean

Synthese · 2025-04-10

Abstract Recently, philosophers have argued that the laws of Lewis’s Best System Analysis (BSA) are not pragmatically useful. In this paper, I argue that these criticisms are substantive only because the BSA laws are characterized independently of their pragmatic roles. It is important to maintain the distinction between what the laws are and what the laws should do if we are to engage in the traditional, metaphysical debates found in the laws literature. While it is plausible that usefulness is an important criterion by which we judge the success of a Humean best system, I argue that we should not take usefulness to constitute a Humean best system. In response to the shortcomings of Lewis’s BSA, many authors have developed new “pragmatic” Humean best system accounts. I argue that these accounts are not characterized independently of the useful roles they are supposed to play for us. This leaves them vulnerable to objections that they may be stipulating the virtues they claim to explain, or they may fail to be Humean best system accounts at all.

Reply to Root-Bernstein: Increasing complexity allows for the pervasiveness of low-complexity entities and is not anthropocentric

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-08-12

Large volumes of liquid water transiently existed on the surface of Mars more than 3 billion years ago. Much of this water is hypothesized to have been sequestered in the subsurface or lost to space. We use rock physics models and Bayesian inversion to ...

On the roles of function and selection in evolving systems

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2023 · 135 citations

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science

Physical laws-such as the laws of motion, gravity, electromagnetism, and thermodynamics-codify the general behavior of varied macroscopic natural systems across space and time. We propose that an additional, hitherto-unarticulated law is required to characterize familiar macroscopic phenomena of our complex, evolving universe. An important feature of the classical laws of physics is the conceptual equivalence of specific characteristics shared by an extensive, seemingly diverse body of natural phenomena. Identifying potential equivalencies among disparate phenomena-for example, falling apples and orbiting moons or hot objects and compressed springs-has been instrumental in advancing the scientific understanding of our world through the articulation of laws of nature. A pervasive wonder of the natural world is the evolution of varied systems, including stars, minerals, atmospheres, and life. These evolving systems appear to be conceptually equivalent in that they display three notable attributes: 1) They form from numerous components that have the potential to adopt combinatorially vast numbers of different configurations; 2) processes exist that generate numerous different configurations; and 3) configurations are preferentially selected based on function. We identify universal concepts of selection-static persistence, dynamic persistence, and novelty generation-that underpin function and drive systems to evolve through the exchange of information between the environment and the system. Accordingly, we propose a "law of increasing functional information": The functional information of a system will increase (i.e., the system will evolve) if many different configurations of the system undergo selection for one or more functions.

Generalizing the Problem of Humean Undermining

Oxford University Press eBooks · 2023

• Computer Science
• Epistemology
• Philosophy

Abstract For Humeans, many facts—even ones intuitively ‘about’ particular, localized macroscopic parts of the world—turn out to depend on surprisingly global fundamental bases. This chapter investigates some counterintuitive consequences of this picture. Many counterfactuals whose antecedents describe intuitively localized, non-actual states of affairs nevertheless end up involving wide-ranging implications for the global, embedding Humean mosaic. The case of self-undermining chances is a familiar example of this. The chapter examines that example in detail and argues that popular existing strategies such as ‘holding the laws fixed as laws’ or ‘holding the laws fixed as true’ are of no help. Interestingly, it shows how a new proposal that draws on the resources of the Mentaculus can yield the right results—but only on the assumption that the Humean can make cross-world identifications. The chapter goes on to argue that the Humean cannot make such identifications, and concludes that the root of this trouble is deeper, and its reach broader, than the familiar cases suggest. It is very much an open question whether the Humean has sufficient resources to properly conceptualize macroscopic objects or to analyze these ‘local’ counterfactuals.

MINERAL EVOLUTION: A CASE STUDY OF A NEW NATURAL LAW

Abstracts with programs - Geological Society of America · 2023-01-01

Isolation, not locality

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research · 2020 · 2 citations

• Epistemology
• Philosophy
• Theoretical physics

Abstract There is a long tradition of preferring local theories to ones that posit lawful or causal influence at a spacetime distance. In this paper, we argue against this preference. We argue that nonlocality is scientifically unobjectionable and that nonlocal theories can be known. Scientists can gather evidence for them and confirm them in much the same way that they do for local theories. We think these observations point to a deeper constraint on scientific theorizing and experimentation: the (quasi‐) isolation of causal or lawful influence. We argue that this requirement ought to replace the locality desideratum in science. We then explore the possibility that the order of explanation has been reversed: perhaps it is isolatable influence that determines what counts as local in the first place.

Mentaculus Laws and Metaphysics

Principia an international journal of epistemology · 2019-12-31 · 8 citations

The laws of nature are central to our understanding of the world. And while there is often broad agreement about the technical formulations of the laws, there can be sharp disagreement about the metaphysical nature of the laws. For instance, the Newtonian laws of nature can be stated and analyzed by appealing to a set of possible worlds. Yet, some philosophers argue the worlds are mere notational devices, while others take them to be robust, concrete entities in their own right. In this paper, I use a recent view of laws called the Mentaculus as a case study to illustrate the wide variety of metaphysical pictures that can accompany such a view. I conclude that the technical features of the laws -- typically (though not always) given to us by practicing scientists -- are compatible with many different metaphysical foundations.

Review of Laws of Nature

Notre Dame philosophical reviews · 2018-01-01