Humean Laws for Human Agents

Humean Laws for Human Agents presents cutting-edge research by leading experts on the Humean account of laws, chance, possibility, and necessity. A central question in metaphysics and philosophy of science is: What are laws of nature? Humeans hold that laws are not sui generis metaphysical entities but merely particularly effective summaries of what actually happens. The most discussed recent work on Humeanism emphasizes the laws' usefulness for limited agents and uses pragmatic considerations to address fundamental and long-standing problems. The current volume develops and critically examines pragmatic Humean accounts, with innovative new work on the epistemology of laws and chance, the problem of induction, counterfactuals, special science laws, and a Humean account of essence. Taken together, the papers provide a roadmap for developing pragmatic Humeanism and connate views, setting the agenda for future research.

1 - Humean Laws of Nature: The End of the Good Old Days
2 - Humean Disillusion
3 - Knowing the Powers
4 - Naturalism, Functionalism and Chance: Not a Best Fit for the Humean
5 - Generalizing the Problem of Humean Undermining
6 - Are Humean Laws Flukes?
7 - The Package Deal Account of Naturalness
8 - Properties for and of Better Best Systems
9 - Predictive Infelicities and the Instability of Predictive Optimality
10 - Best-System Laws, Explanation, and Unification
11 - A Discourse on Methods; or, Humean Metaphysics of Science Without Best Systems
12 - Humean Reductionism about Essence

Michael Townsen Hicks is a philosopher focusing on philosophy of science, metaphysics, and philosophy of physics. He has published papers on Humean reductionism about laws of nature, the symmetries of physical laws, locality considerations in physics, the nature of explanation in science and metaphysics, and the logic of conditionals. He continues to be interested in the way science and physics helps us understand the world, and the way in which philosophy can help us understand science and physics. Siegfried Jaag is a philosopher working mainly on themes at the intersection of metaphysics and science, and in particular on the role of modality in science. He has published papers on pragmatic versions of Humean reductionism about laws of nature, dispositionalist accounts of natural modalities, counterfactuals conditionals and scientific and metaphysical explanations. Christian Loew is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Umeå University. His primary research is in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of action. He has published articles on topics pertaining to the direction of time, causation, counterfactuals, laws of nature, free will, and personal identity.