What distinguishes laws of nature from ordinary facts? What are the "lawmakers": the facts in virtue of which the laws are laws? How can laws be necessary, yet contingent? Lange provocatively argues that laws are distinguished by their necessity, which is grounded in primitive subjunctive facts, while also providing a non-technical and accessible survey of the field.
What distinguishes laws of nature from ordinary facts? What are the "lawmakers": the facts in virtue of which the laws are laws? How can laws be necessary, yet contingent? Lange provocatively argues that laws are distinguished by their necessity, which is grounded in primitive subjunctive facts, while also providing a non-technical and accessible survey of the field.
Marc Lange is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Inhaltsangabe
* Preface * Chapter 1: Laws Form Counterfactually Stable Sets * 1: Welcome * 2: Their necessity sets the laws apart * 3: The laws's persistence under counterfactuals * 4: Nomic preservation * 5: Beyond nomic preservation * 6: A host of related problems: triviality, circularity, arbitrariness * 7: Sub-nomic stability * 8: No nonmaximal set containing accidents possesses sub-nomic stability * 9: How two sub-nomically stable sets must be related: multiple strata of natural laws * 10: Why the laws would still have been laws * 11: Conclusion: laws form stable sets * Chapter 2: Natural Necessity * 1: What it would take to understand natural necessity * 2: The Euthyphro question * 3: David Lewis's "Best-System Account" * 4: Lewis's account and the laws's supervenience * 5: The Euthyphro question returns * 6: Are all relative necessities created equal? * 7: The modality principle * 8: A proposal for distinguishing genuine from merely relative modalities * 9: Borrowing a strategy from Chapter 1 * 10: Necessity as maximal invariance * 11: The laws form a system * 12: Scientific essentialism squashes the pyramid * 13: Why there is a natural ordering of the genuine modalities * 14: Why there is a natural ordering of the genuine modalities * Chapter 3: Three Payoffs of My Account * 1: The itinerary * 2: Could the laws of nature change? * 3: Why the laws are immutable * 4: Symmetry principles as meta-laws * 5: The symmetry meta-laws form a nomically stable set * 6: The relation between chancy facts and deterministic laws * 7: How to account for the relation * Chapter 4: A World of Subjunctives * 1: What if the lawmakers were subjunctive facts? * 2: The lawmakers's regress * 3: Stability * 4: Avoiding adhocery * 5: Instantaneous rates of change and the causal explanation problem * 6: Et in Arcadia ego * 7: The rule of law * 8: Why the laws must be complete * 9: Envoi: Am I cheating?
* Preface * Chapter 1: Laws Form Counterfactually Stable Sets * 1: Welcome * 2: Their necessity sets the laws apart * 3: The laws's persistence under counterfactuals * 4: Nomic preservation * 5: Beyond nomic preservation * 6: A host of related problems: triviality, circularity, arbitrariness * 7: Sub-nomic stability * 8: No nonmaximal set containing accidents possesses sub-nomic stability * 9: How two sub-nomically stable sets must be related: multiple strata of natural laws * 10: Why the laws would still have been laws * 11: Conclusion: laws form stable sets * Chapter 2: Natural Necessity * 1: What it would take to understand natural necessity * 2: The Euthyphro question * 3: David Lewis's "Best-System Account" * 4: Lewis's account and the laws's supervenience * 5: The Euthyphro question returns * 6: Are all relative necessities created equal? * 7: The modality principle * 8: A proposal for distinguishing genuine from merely relative modalities * 9: Borrowing a strategy from Chapter 1 * 10: Necessity as maximal invariance * 11: The laws form a system * 12: Scientific essentialism squashes the pyramid * 13: Why there is a natural ordering of the genuine modalities * 14: Why there is a natural ordering of the genuine modalities * Chapter 3: Three Payoffs of My Account * 1: The itinerary * 2: Could the laws of nature change? * 3: Why the laws are immutable * 4: Symmetry principles as meta-laws * 5: The symmetry meta-laws form a nomically stable set * 6: The relation between chancy facts and deterministic laws * 7: How to account for the relation * Chapter 4: A World of Subjunctives * 1: What if the lawmakers were subjunctive facts? * 2: The lawmakers's regress * 3: Stability * 4: Avoiding adhocery * 5: Instantaneous rates of change and the causal explanation problem * 6: Et in Arcadia ego * 7: The rule of law * 8: Why the laws must be complete * 9: Envoi: Am I cheating?
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