Non-Humean Laws and Scientific Practice
- PDF / 891,267 Bytes
- 25 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 11 Downloads / 244 Views
Non‑Humean Laws and Scientific Practice Robert Smithson1 Received: 28 May 2019 / Accepted: 14 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Laws of nature have various roles in scientific practice. It is widely agreed that an adequate theory of lawhood ought to align with the roles that scientists assign to the laws. But philosophers disagree over whether Humean laws or non-Humean laws are better at filling these roles. In this paper, I provide an argument for settling this dispute. I consider (epistemically) possible situations in which scientists receive conclusive evidence that—according to the non-Humean—falsifies their beliefs about the laws, but which—according to the Humean—does not falsify their beliefs about the laws. I argue that, in these possible scenarios, all law-related aspects of scientific practice would remain unchanged. In other words, scientists would treat the regularities “preferred” by the Humean as the laws of nature. On this basis, I conclude that non-Humean laws fail to align with scientific practice.
1 Introduction Laws of nature have various roles in scientific practice. It is widely agreed that an adequate theory of lawhood ought to align with the roles that scientists assign to the laws. But philosophers disagree over whether Humean laws or non-Humean laws are better at filling these roles. It would be straightforward to resolve this question if Humeans and non-Humeans disagreed on which specific regularities count as laws of nature. Then, we could simply consider which regularities scientists treat as laws to settle the issue. But of course, Humeans and non-Humeans agree that (e.g.) Schrödinger’s Equation is a law; they disagree over what makes it so. But while Humeans and non-Humeans agree on which regularities actually count as laws, there are (epistemically) possible scenarios in which they disagree on which regularities count as laws. Now imagine that scientists were to discover that such a scenario obtained. This would provide a “test case” for deciding the debate over * Robert Smithson [email protected] 1
Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Wilmington, NC, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
R. Smithson
Humeanism. By seeing which regularities scientists treat as laws in these cases— those predicted by the Humean vs. those predicted by the non-Humean—we would have clear evidence regarding whether Humean laws or non-Humean laws better align with scientific practice. In this paper, I develop a version of this strategy to challenge non-Humeanism. The argument appeals to certain “Humean Doppelgängers” of the actual world: worlds that agree with the actual world on the Humean base, but which (according to the non-Humean) have different laws. Humeans and non-Humeans disagree on which regularities count as laws in these Doppelgängers; Humeans will say that the laws are what we ordinarily take them to be, while non-Humeans will say that the laws are different. My argument considers (epistemically) possible situations in which scienti
Data Loading...
