Laws and Lawmakers: Science, Metaphysics, and the Laws of Nature

by Marc Lange

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199886906
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/09/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	18 MB
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About the Author

Marc Lange is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Table of Contents

PrefaceChapter 1: Laws Form Counterfactually Stable Sets1. Welcome2. Their necessity sets the laws apart3. The laws's persistence under counterfactuals4. Nomic preservation5. Beyond nomic preservation6. A host of related problems: triviality, circularity, arbitrariness7. Sub-nomic stability8. No nonmaximal set containing accidents possesses sub-nomic stability9. How two sub-nomically stable sets must be related: multiple strata of natural laws10. Why the laws would still have been laws11. Conclusion: laws form stable setsChapter 2: Natural Necessity1. Our goal in this chapter2. The Euthyphro question3. David Lewis's "Best-System Account"4. Lewis's account and the laws's supervenience5. The Euthyphro question returns6. Are all relative necessities created equal? 7. The modality principle8. A proposal for distinguishing genuine from merely relative modalities9. Borrowing a strategy from Chapter 110. Necessity as maximal invariance11. The laws form a system12. Scientific essentialism squashes the pyramid13. Why there is a natural ordering of the genuine modalities14. Conclusion: stability, as maximal invariance, involves necessityChapter 4: A World of Subjunctives1. What if the lawmakers were subjunctive facts? 2. The lawmakers's regress3. Stability4. Avoiding adhocery5. nstantaneous rates of change and the causal explanation problem6. Et in Arcadia ego7. The rule of law8. Why the laws must be complete9. Envoi: Am I cheating?

Editorial Reviews

"This book presents a compact yet thorough exposition and defense of an important position about the metaphysics of natural laws. The level of philosophical argumentation is consistently high, and while the dialectic gets quite intricate at times, Language more than compensates by writing in a lucid and thoroughly engaging manner. I think it's a must read, for anyone interested in the nature of natural laws." —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

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