Humeanism about Laws of Nature
Harjit Bhogal,
PhilPapers, Philosophy Compass,
Jun 29, 2020
My approach to theory and explanation is what could roughly be called 'humean' (as in, following David Hume). This is the "the idea is that laws of nature reduce to the patterns of occurrent, non-modal, events that occur in the world. The laws of nature are just patterns, or ways of describing patterns, in the mosaic of events." A 'law of nature' is to me not a necessary connection and does not 'govern' relations between entities. This article (23 page PDF) looks at the (many) objections to this view, and concludes with an outline of how to understand the concept of explanation so that it makes sense. Specifically, we ask, what is added to explanation by theory? What does it even mean to say a law of nature 'governs' a regularity? What explanatory force does a 'theoretical lens' offer?
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