Humean Laws for Human Agents

Michael Townsen Hicks is a philosopher focusing on philosophy of science, metaphysics, and philosophy of physics. He has published papers on Humean reductionism about laws of nature, the symmetries of physical laws, locality considerations in physics, the nature of explanation in science and metaphysics, and the logic of conditionals. He continues to be interested in the way science and physics helps us understand the world, and the way in which philosophy can help us understand science and physics.Siegfried Jaag is a philosopher working mainly on themes at the intersection of metaphysics and science, and in particular on the role of modality in science. He has published papers on pragmatic versions of Humean reductionism about laws of nature, dispositionalist accounts of natural modalities, counterfactuals conditionals and scientific and metaphysical explanations.Christian Loew is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Umeå University. His primary research is in metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of action. He has published articles on topics pertaining to the direction of time, causation, counterfactuals, laws of nature, free will, and personal identity.

• Preface Michael T. Hicks, Siegfried Jaag, and Christian Loew: Humeanism and the pragmatic turn 1: Craig Callender: Humean Laws of Nature: The End of the Good Old Days 2: Jenann Ismael: Humean Disillusion 3: Wolfgang Schwarz: Knowing the Powers 4: Alison Fernandes: Naturalism, Functionalism and Chance: Not a Best Fit for the Humean 5: Heather Demarest and Elizabeth Miller: Generalizing the Problem of Humean Undermining 6: Barry Loewer: Are Humean Laws Flukes? 7: Harjit Bhogal: The Package Deal Account of Naturalness 8: Markus Schrenk: Properties for and of Better Best Systems 9: Chris Dorst: Predictive Infelicities and the Instability of Predictive Optimality 10: Thomas Blanchard: Best-System Laws, Explanation, and Unification 11: John T. Roberts: A Discourse on Methods; or, Humean Metaphysics of Science Without Best Systems 12: Ned Hall: Humean Reductionism about Essence

I think this is a tremendous volume, containing some rich and outstanding chapters. It showcases the range of perspectives and approaches that can flourish even within a broadly pragmatic Humean programme, and will certainly be of interest to anyone working on laws-metaphysicians and philosophers of science alike.