Laws of Nature, Causation, and Supervenience PDF Download

Author: Michael Tooley
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780815330646
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Author: John W. Carroll
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521433341
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
John Carroll undertakes a careful philosophical examination of laws of nature, causation, and other related topics. He argues that laws of nature are not susceptible to the sort of philosophical treatment preferred by empiricists. Indeed he shows that empirically pure matters of fact need not even determine what the laws are. Similar, even stronger, conclusions are drawn about causation. Replacing the traditional view of laws and causation requiring some kind of foundational legitimacy, the author argues that these phenomena are inextricably intertwined with everything else.

Author: Nancy Cartwright
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474244084
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
This book presents a radical new picture of natural order. The Newtonian idea of a cosmos ruled by universal and exceptionless laws has been superseded; replaced by a conception of nature as a realm of diverse powers, potencies, and dispositions, a 'dappled world'. There is order in nature, but it is more local, diverse, piecemeal, open, and emergent than Newton imagined. In each chapter expert authors expound the historical context of the idea of laws of nature, and explore the diverse sorts of order actually presupposed by work in physics, biology, and the social sciences. They consider how human freedom might be understood, and explore how Newton's idea of a 'universal designer' might be revised, in this new context. They argue that there is not one unified totalizing program of science, aiming at the completion of one closed causal system. We live in an ordered universe, but we need to rethink the classical idea of the 'laws of nature' in a more dynamic and creatively diverse way.

Author: Bernard Berofsky
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199640017
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This book offers a defense of humean compatibilism, which bases the belief in the compatibility of free will and determinism on David Hume's idea that laws do not uphold the existence of necessary connections in nature.

Author: Thomas Kroedel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108487149
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Presents a comprehensive account of how the mind causes things to happen in the physical world. This book is also available as Open Access.

Author: Alexander Bird
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199227012
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Bird, a world-leader in the field, offers an original approach to key issues in philosophy. He discusses hot topics in metaphysics and the philosophy of science.

Author: Jaegwon Kim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521439961
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
This collection of essays presents the core of the work of influential philosopher Jaegwon Kim.

Author: Tim Maudlin
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199218218
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
What does physics tell us about metaphysics? Tim Maudlin's philosophical examination of the fundamental structure of the world as presented by physics challenges the most widely accepted philosophical accounts of laws of nature, universals, the direction of time and causation.

Author: H. Sankey
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780792359142
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Causation and Laws of Nature is a collection of articles which represents current research on the metaphysics of causation and laws of nature, mostly by authors working in or active in the Australasian region. The book provides an overview of current work on the theory of causation, including counterfactual, singularist, nomological and causal process approaches. It also covers work on the nature of laws of nature, with special emphasis on the scientific essentialist theory that laws of nature are, at base, the fundamental dispositions or capacities of natural kinds of things. Because the book represents a good cross-section of authors currently working on these themes in the Australasian region, it conveys something of the interest and excitement of an active philosophical debate between advocates of several different research programmes in the area.

Author: Michele Paolini Paoletti
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317271440
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Downward causation plays a fundamental role in many theories of metaphysics and philosophy of mind. It is strictly connected with many topics in philosophy, including but not limited to: emergence, mental causation, the nature of causation, the nature of causal powers and dispositions, laws of nature, and the possibility of ontological and epistemic reductions. Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives on Downward Causation brings together experts from different fields—including William Bechtel, Stewart Clark and Tom Lancaster, Carl Gillett, John Heil, Robin F. Hendry, Max Kistler, Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum —who delve into classic and unexplored lines of philosophical inquiry related to downward causation. It critically assesses the possibility of downward causation given different ontological assumptions and explores the connection between downward causation and the metaphysics of causation and dispositions. Finally, it presents different cases of downward causation in empirical fields such as physics, chemistry, biology and the neurosciences. This volume is both a useful introduction and a collection of original contributions on this fascinating and hotly debated philosophical topic.