Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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Daily Overview |
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S22: Metaphysics/Ontology 1 Location: 23.21 U1.95 Session Chair: Andreas Hüttemann | |
| Presentation 2 | |
2:15pm - 3:00pm
How should Humeans deal with tied best systems? 1: University of Geneva, Switzerland; 2: University of Lisbon, Portugal According to Humeanism, the laws of nature are the theorems of a ‘best’ system, i.e. a theory which correctly captures the non-modal facts about our universe and which offers the best trade-off between theoretical virtues such as strength and simplicity (Lewis 1973). Humeans commonly assume that there can only be one best system and accordingly only one set of laws of nature (Lewis 1994, Hicks 2018, Loewer 2007). In recent years, however, it has been argued that the possibility of cases of tied best systems—in which multiple systems score equally well in terms of the tradeoff—should be taken seriously (cf. Hall 2015, Loew and Jaag 2020, Linnemann and Michels ms.). The aim of our talk is to discuss how Humeans should best deal with such tied cases. We critically evaluate five different options, and ultimately argue that adherents of the BSA will likely have to accept the existence of indeterminate laws, whereas a kind of contextualist account looks like the best option for pragmatic Humeans (cf. Hicks et al. 2023). | |

