Humean laws and circular explanation

Hicks, Michael Townsen; Elswyk, Peter van

doi:10.1007/s11098-014-0310-3

Cited by 40 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Oddly enough, it was that very paper which seems to have engendered a shift in perspective, encouraging many philosophers not only to believe that there are such things as scientific explanations, but also to view them as an independent goal in their own right. 19 For example, fifteen years after that paper, Nicholas Rescher wrote:…”

Section: Explanation In Science and Metaphysicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Humean laws, explanatory circularity, and the aim of scientific explanation

Dorst

2018

Philos Stud

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Explanation In Science and Metaphysicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(Thanks to Marc Lange and an anonymous referee for raising this point.) 19 For discussion of this shift in perspective, see, e.g., Salmon (1999) and Douglas (2009).…”

Section: Explanation In Science and Metaphysicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humean laws, explanatory circularity, and the aim of scientific explanation

Dorst

2018

Philos Stud

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Thus, the debate is really a debate about what counts as genuine explanation . Marc Lange () presses this objection and Barry Loewer () and Michael Hicks and Peter van Elswyk () respond to it…”

Section: Categorical Properties and Lawsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fundamental Properties and the Laws of Nature

Demarest

2015

Philosophy Compass

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Fundamental properties and the laws of nature go hand in hand: mass and gravitation, charge and electromagnetism, spin and quantum mechanics. So, it is unsurprising that one's account of fundamental properties affects one's view of the laws of nature and vice versa. In this essay, I will survey a variety of recent attempts to provide a joint account of the fundamental properties and the laws of nature. Many of these accounts are new and unexplored. Some of them posit surprising entities, such as counterfacts. Other accounts posit surprising laws of nature, such as instantaneous laws that constrain the initial configuration of particles. These exciting developments challenge our assumptions about our basic ontology and provide fertile ground for further exploration.

show abstract

“…Note that this contrastivity principle can escape some of the counterexamples to transitivity fromHicks and van Elswyk (2015), and that the response here does not require us to distinguish different sorts of explanation as inLoewer (2012).20 Although elsewhere in his 2016 paper Lange responds toHicks and van Elswyk (2015) by accepting that the correct transitivity principle is contrastive, he does not supply the contrasts in this metaexplanation. This is because he takes these objections to his argument to be distinct.…”

mentioning

confidence: 91%

Breaking the explanatory circle

Hicks

2020

Philos Stud

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Humeans are often accused of positing laws which fail to explain or are involved in explanatory circularity. Here, I will argue that these arguments are confused, but not because of anything to do with Humeanism: rather, they rest on false assumptions about causal explanation. I'll show how these arguments can be neatly sidestepped if one takes on two plausible commitments which are motivated independently of Humeanism: first, that laws don't directly feature in scientific explanation (a view defended recently by

show abstract

Humean laws and circular explanation

Cited by 40 publications

References 16 publications

Humean laws, explanatory circularity, and the aim of scientific explanation

Humean laws, explanatory circularity, and the aim of scientific explanation

Fundamental Properties and the Laws of Nature

Breaking the explanatory circle

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About