The law-governed universe / John T. Roberts.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Roberts, John T., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Law--Philosophy.

Law.

Philosophy of nature.

Natural law.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 407 pages)

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

John T. Roberts measurability account affirms that there is an important sense in which laws govern the universe, rather than simply describing it economically. In this book he argues that what is essential to laws is that they guarantee the reliability of methods of measuring natural quantities.

Contents:

The law-governed world-picture

A remarkable idea about the way the universe is

Cosmos and compulsion

The laws as the cosmic order : the best-system approach

The three ways : no-laws, non-governing-laws, governing-laws

Work that laws do in science

An important difference between the laws of nature and the cosmic order

The picture in four theses

The strategy of this book

The meta-theoretic conception of laws

The measurability approach to laws

What comes where

In defense of some received views

Some assumptions that will be in play

The laws are propositions

The laws are true

The logically contingent consequences of the laws are laws themselves

At least some laws are metaphysically contingent

Laws of nature, laws of science, laws of theories

The first-order conception versus the meta-theoretic conception

What is a law of nature?

Some examples of meta-theoretic accounts.

The virtues of the meta-theoretic conception

Weighing the virtues and shortcomings of the meta-theoretic conception

An epistemological argument for the meta-theoretic conception of laws

The discoverability thesis, the governing thesis, and the first-order conception

The main argument

The objection from bad company

The objection from inference to the best explanation

The objection from Bayesianism

The objection from contextualist epistemology

The objection from the threat of inductive skepticism

Laws, governing, and counterfactuals

Where we are now

What would things have to be like in order for the laws of nature to govern the universe?

Lawhood, inevitability, counterfactuals

What is it for a proposition to be inevitably true?

What is it for a whole class of propositions to be inevitably true?

What is it for lawhood to confer inevitability?

NP and 'supporting counterfactuals'

The worry about context-variability.

A solution, and a look ahead

When would the laws have been different?

The God cases

Other counterexamples to NP

A moral-theoretic counterexample to NP

Scientific contexts and non-scientific contexts

Scientific God cases?

Lewisian non-backtracking counterexamples

Where things stand now

How could science show that the laws govern?

Why the law-governed world-picture must include the science-says-so thesis

What is 'extra-scientific'?

How can the science-says-so thesis be true?

NP as a consequence of the presuppositions in any scientific context

NP as true in all possible scientific contexts

But how could it be so?

Attack of the actual-factualists

Measurement and counterfactuals

Measurements, reliability, counterfactuals

A general principle that captures the relation between measurement and counterfactuals.

What we can learn about lawhood from what we have learned about the counterfactual commitments of science

A first-order account of laws or a meta-theoretic account of laws?

What methods are presupposed to be legitimate measurement procedures?

Why we must adopt a meta-theoretic account of laws

What lawhood is

The measurability account of laws

Brief review of the case for the MAL

A note about hedged laws

How plausible is the MAL?

What if we don't care about the law-governed world-picture?

Newton's god and Laplace's demon

Beyond Humean and non-Humean

Two views of laws

Humean supervenience and the meta-theoretic conception

Alleged counterexamples to Humean supervenience

Governing and non-trivial necessity

How the MAL lets us have it all

Humeanism? non-Humeanism?

What is the significance of the idea of the law-governed universe?

Where in the world are the laws of nature?

Appendix : the MAL in action : a few examples of scientific theories and their laws

Newton's theory as a paradigm example

Classical special-force laws

Geometrical optics and one of its laws

Local deterministic field theories.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [394]-399) and index.

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-19-965593-6

1-281-97888-4

9786611978884

0-19-156531-8

OCLC:

427823242