Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 New work for a theory of universals
- 2 Putnam's paradox
- 3 Against structural universals
- 4 A Comment on Armstrong and Forrest
- 5 Extrinsic properties
- 6 Defining ‘intrinsic’ (with Rae Langton)
- 7 Finkish dispositions
- 8 Noneism or allism?
- 9 Many, but almost one
- 10 Casati and Varzi on holes (with Stephanie Lewis)
- 11 Rearrangement of particles: Reply to Lowe
- 12 Armstrong on combinatorial possibility
- 13 A world of truthmakers?
- 14 Maudlin and modal mystery
- 15 Humean Supervenience debugged
- 16 Psychophysical and theoretical identifications
- 17 What experience teaches
- 18 Reduction of mind
- 19 Should a materialist believe in qualia?
- 20 Naming the colours
- 21 Percepts and color mosaics in visual experience
- 22 Individuation by acquaintance and by stipulation
- 23 Why conditionalize?
- 24 What puzzling Pierre does not believe
- 25 Elusive knowledge
- Index
15 - Humean Supervenience debugged
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 New work for a theory of universals
- 2 Putnam's paradox
- 3 Against structural universals
- 4 A Comment on Armstrong and Forrest
- 5 Extrinsic properties
- 6 Defining ‘intrinsic’ (with Rae Langton)
- 7 Finkish dispositions
- 8 Noneism or allism?
- 9 Many, but almost one
- 10 Casati and Varzi on holes (with Stephanie Lewis)
- 11 Rearrangement of particles: Reply to Lowe
- 12 Armstrong on combinatorial possibility
- 13 A world of truthmakers?
- 14 Maudlin and modal mystery
- 15 Humean Supervenience debugged
- 16 Psychophysical and theoretical identifications
- 17 What experience teaches
- 18 Reduction of mind
- 19 Should a materialist believe in qualia?
- 20 Naming the colours
- 21 Percepts and color mosaics in visual experience
- 22 Individuation by acquaintance and by stipulation
- 23 Why conditionalize?
- 24 What puzzling Pierre does not believe
- 25 Elusive knowledge
- Index
Summary
Years ago, I wrote that much of my work could be seen in hindsight as a campaign on behalf of “Humean Supervenience”: the thesis that the whole truth about a world like ours supervens on the spatiotemporal distribution of local qualities (1986, pp. ix-xvi). I thought this campaign had been mostly successful. Despite some unfinished business with causation, especially the problem presented in Menzies (1989), I think so still. But I wrote that “There is one big bad bug: chance. It is here, and here alone, that I fear defeat” (1986, p. xiv). I think I can say at last how to beat the bug. But first I'll have to take a lot of time reviewing old ground. I'll reintroduce Humean Supervenience, with some afterthoughts. I'll say what a Humean analysis of chance might look like. I'll say why Humean analyses of chance are in bad trouble, and why unHumean analyses are not an acceptable refuge. I'll give the beginning of a solution to the problem that plagues Humean analyses, and I'll say why that beginning is not good enough. And then I'll come at last to the good news: thanks to a suggestion by Michael Thau, I think I know how to complete the solution. The resulting rescue of Humean chance won't give us all we might wish, but I think it gives us enough.
So the key idea in this paper is Thau's. I thank him for kindly permitting me to use it here in my own way. But it can be used in other ways as well. Thau himself has not joined my campaign on behalf of Humean Supervenience.
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- Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology , pp. 224 - 247Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999
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