The law-governed universe
By: John T. Roberts.
Publisher: Oxford University Press; OUP Oxford
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780199557707
Subjects: Law (Philosophy); Philosophy of nature; Natural law
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The law-governed world-picture; title: A remarkable idea about the way the universe is cosmos and compulsion; title: The laws as the cosmic order : the best-system approach; title: The three ways : no-laws, non-governing-laws, governing-laws; title: Work that laws do in science; title: An important difference between the laws of nature and the cosmic order; title: The picture in four theses; title: The strategy of this book; title: The meta-theoretic conception of laws; title: The measurability approach to laws; title: What comes where; title: In defense of some received views; title: Some assumptions that will be in play; title: The laws are propositions; title: The laws are true; title: The logically contingent consequences of the laws are laws themselves; title: At least some laws are metaphysically contingent; title: The meta-theoretic conception of laws; title: Laws of nature, laws of science, laws of theories; title: The first-order conception versus the meta-theoretic conception; title: What is a law of nature?; title: Some examples of meta-theoretic accounts; title: The virtues of the meta-theoretic conception; title: Weighing the virtues and shortcomings of the meta-theoretic conception; title: An epistemological argument for the meta-theoretic conception of laws; title: The discoverability thesis, the governing thesis, and the first-order conception; title: The main argument; title: The objection from bad company; title: The objection from inference to the best explanation; title: The objection from bayesianism; title: The objection from contextualist epistemology; title: The objection from the threat of inductive skepticism; title: Laws, governing, and counterfactuals; title: Where we are now; title: What would things have to be like in order for the laws of nature to govern the universe?; title: Lawhood, inevitability, counterfactuals; title: What is it for a proposition to be inevitably true?; title: What is it for a whole class of propositions to be inevitably true?; title: What is it for lawhood to confer inevitability?; title: NP and supporting counterfactuals; title: The worry about context-variability; title: A solution and a look ahead; title: When would the laws have been different?; title: Where we are now; title: The God cases; title: Other counterexamples to NP; title: A moral-theoretic counterexample to NP; title: Scientific contexts and non-scientific contexts; title: Scientific God cases?; title: Lewisian non-backtracking counterexamples; title: Where things stand now; title: How could science show that the laws govern?; title: Why the law-governed world-picture must include the science-says-so thesis; title: What is extra-scientific?; title: How can the science-says-so thesis be true?; title: NP as a consequence of the presuppositions in any scientific context; title: Np as true in all possible scientific contexts; title: But how could it be so?; title: Attack of the actual-factualists; title: Measurement and counterfactuals; title: Where we are now; title: Measurements, reliability, counterfactuals; title: A general principle that captures the relation between measurement and counterfactuals; title: What we can learn about lawhood from what we have learned about the counterfactual commitments of science; title: A first-order account of laws or a meta-theoretic account of laws?; title: What methods are presupposed to be legitimate measurement procedures?; title: Why we must adopt a meta-theoretic account of laws; title: What lawhood is; title: Where we are now; title: The measurability account of laws; title: Brief review of the case for the mal; title: A note about hedged laws; title: How plausible is the mal?; title: What if we don't care about the law-governed world-picture?; title: Newton's God and Laplace's demon; title: Beyond humean and non-humean; title: Two views of laws; title: Humean supervenience and the meta-theoretic conception; title: Alleged counterexamples to humean supervenience; title: Governing and non-trivial necessity; title: How the mal lets us have it all; title: Humeanism? non-humeanism?; title: What is the significance of the idea of the law-governed universe?; title: Where in the world are the laws of nature?; title: Appendix: The mal in action : a few examples; title: Of scientific theories and their laws; title: Newton's theory as a paradigm example; title: Classical special-force laws; title: Geometrical optics and one of its laws; title: Local deterministic field theories.