Abstract
How should we account for the extraordinary regularity in the world? Humeans and Non-Humeans sharply disagree. According to Non-Humeans, the world behaves in an extraordinarily regular way because of certain necessary connections in nature. However, Humeans have thought that Non-Humean views are metaphysically objectionable. In particular, there are two general metaphysical principles that Humeans have found attractive that are incompatible with all existing versions of Non-Humeanism. My goal in this paper is to develop a novel version of Non-Humeanism that is consistent with (and even entails) both of these general metaphysical principles. By endorsing such a view, one can have the explanatory benefits of Non-Humeanism while at the same time avoiding two of the major metaphysical objections towards Non-Humeanism.
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Notes
Although the terminology of “Humeanism” and “Non-Humeanism” is now entrenched, it is not at all clear that David Hume himself was a Humean (e.g. see Strawson 2014).
Mumford (2004), Bird (2007), and Shoemaker (1980) defend the view that there are fundamental powers/dispositions. Carroll (1994, 2008) and Maudlin (2007) defend the view that laws are fundamental. Armstrong (1983), Dretske (1977), and Tooley (1977) defend the view that there are necessitation relations between universals.
Although most self-described Humeans use this “best-system” approach to laws to account for other nomic notions, one can accept an underlying Humean metaphysics without adopting the best system approach. For example, van Fraassen (1989) has argued that Humeans should deny that there are any laws at all, and Wilson (2009) has defended an alternative Humean account of causal facts that does not appeal to general laws. See Friend (2021) for further discussion of different versions of Humeanism.
While the distinction between categorical/dispositional properties is commonplace in discussions of natural properties, it is controversial exactly how to understand this distinction (see Taylor 2018 for a discussion of some of these controversies). It is beyond the scope of this paper to enter into the details of these controversies here, but it should be noted that for our purposes the distinction between categorical and dispositional properties is not simply a modal one. For example, Bird (2007: 66-67) defines a categorical property as any property that does not necessitate a corresponding power or disposition. However, such a definition doesn’t allow conceptual room for the “grounding view of powers” that will be introduced in the next section. See Coates (2020) for a hyperintensional characterization of the distinction between qualities and powers in terms of essence and grounding that will be suitable for our purposes.
Of course, upon reflection one might come to think that colors are dispositional properties (e.g. ones that are disposed to cause certain sensations in humans in normal conditions). Chalmers’ (2006) conception of “Edenic” colors are paradigm examples of qualities.
In other contexts, “qualitative” properties are meant to contrast with “haecceitistic” properties, such as the property of being Alice (e.g. see Dasgupta 2017). However, in this sense of “qualitative”, both qualities (e.g. being red) and dispositions (e.g. being fragile) are “qualitative”. For the entirety of this paper, I will be using the phrase “qualitative property” to refer to qualities rather than non-haecceitistic properties.
It is a subtle question how Humeans should formulate HD more precisely. For example, a Humean might wish to reformulate HD in a way that allows there to be a necessary connection between Socrates and his singleton set. For our purposes, these kinds of counterexamples won’t be relevant, but for a wide ranging critical discussion of various different formulations of Hume’s Dictum, see Wilson (2010).
The choice of defining “wholly distinct” in terms of lack of merelogical and spatiotemporal overlap comes from Wilson (2010: 604–607).
For a defense of the claim that a suitably idealized kind of conceivability entails possibility, see Chalmers (2002).
Here I am implicitly making the Non-Humean assumption that Humean explanations of these phenomena are inadequate. For more on the question of whether Humean laws can genuinely explain, see Lange (2013, 2018), Shumener (2019), Dorst (2019), Bhogal (2020), Kovacs (2020), Hicks (2021), and Emery (forthcoming).
For example, Kimpton-Nye (2021) motivates such a view on the grounds that it avoids some of the central objections towards standard versions of “dispositional essentialism”.
The label “the grounding theory of powers” comes from Tugby (2021). A closely related view to GP is the “Powerful Qualities” view, according to which fundamental physical qualities are identical to (rather than ground) dispositional properties (e.g. see Strawson 2008 and Heil 2010). Such a view is similar in spirit to the grounding view, but I will be focusing on the grounding version of the Powerful Qualities view here since it is easier to make sense of. It is interesting to note that the way that Coates (2020) makes sense of the Powerful Qualities view makes it equivalent to GP.
Although Goff (2020) is skeptical that phenomenal properties are capable of grounding dispositions, he defends the possibility of closely related “consciousness + ” properties grounding dispositions.
As Kimpton-Nye (2021) points out, however, one might also believe that the relevant grounding relations are “opaque”, in the sense that it is conceivable that the grounding fact obtains without the grounded fact. See Schaffer (2017) for an extended defense of the general view that opaque grounding relations are pervasive.
The relevant version of GP is one that is meant to account for all nomological necessities in terms of the (grounded) dispositions of fundamental objects. Although one could in principle account for some nomological necessities using the resources of GP and account for other nomological necessities in some other way, I will be assuming that GP is a complete theory of nomological necessity throughout this paper. Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this concern.
This combination of Endurantism and Monism is also used by Builes and Teitel (forthcoming) to secure the lawful non-qualitative evolution of the universe.
Such a view is still neutral on whether one should adopt an Eternalist “block universe” metaphysics, according to which the past, present, and future are equally real, or a Presentist metaphysics, according to which only present objects exist. By itself, Endurantism has been developed in both Eternalist and Presentist frameworks.
It should be noted, however, that if the combination of 4-D Monism and GP could be made sense of (perhaps by saying that the 4-D universe as a whole timelessly stands in a causal relation to itself), then 4-D Monism and GP by themselves would be able to account for TSQ and HD. For those who are antecedently inclined to reject Endurantism, this view is certainly worth exploring further.
This observation has also been made by Schaffer (2010b), who argues that failures of free modal recombination among some entities is a sign that those entities are not fundamental.
Langton (2001, 2004) defends an interpretation of Kant in which he argues for a similar conclusion. Contemporary Russellian Monists, following Russell (1927), also endorse the same conclusion. Lastly, many (epistemic) “structural realists” in the philosophy of science argue for a similar conclusion (e.g. see Ladyman 2016).
Another possible reason why Humeans may not be attracted to GP is that GP implies that any possible world with the same properties will be governed by the very same laws. However, as Bhogal and Perry (2021) have argued, the view that properties have their nomic roles necessarily is actually compatible with an underlying Humean metaphysics. Moreover, it is unclear whether Humeans should consider the view that properties can come apart from their nomic roles as a desideratum, or whether they should simply view it as a consequence of other deeper commitments of theirs.
However, it is worth noting that the Priority Monist, who recognizes the existence of non-fundamental macroscopic objects, still faces these problematic cases. Partly for this reason, I believe Existence Monism is more defensible than Priority Monism. However, see Magidor (2016) for a defense of “liberal endurantism”, which is also a precise, principled, and non-anthropocentric account of how objects endure that is compatible with Priority Monism.
Also see Eddon (2010) for a recent treatment of three different arguments from temporary intrinsics. Eddon argues that all three of the arguments fail.
For a sophisticated development of this worry, see Balashov (2010).
For an overview of the fate of absolute simultaneity in quantum mechanics and quantum gravity, see Monton (2006) and Callender (2017: ch. 4 and 5). See Maudlin (2018) for an argument that the Aharonov-Bohm effect in Quantum Mechanics suggests a preferred foliation of space-time. See Barbour (2012) for an introduction to “Shape Dynamics”, which is empirically equivalent to General Relativity (in contexts where space-time is relevantly “well-behaved”), but it (i) comes with a preferred foliation of space-time and (ii) is (Barbour argues) more amenable to quantization and thus to an eventual theory of quantum gravity. Lastly, see Carroll (2022) for an interpretation of quantum mechanics where a reference-frame-independent notion of time (but not space) is fundamental.
For example, perhaps there are good independent reasons to endorse Presentism, which is often taken to require a relation of absolute simultaneity. See Builes and Impagnatiello (forthcoming) for a recent argument in favor of Presentism, which they argue is more powerful than the standard relativity argument against Presentism. Also see Emery (2019) for an argument that considerations from relativity should no more move a Presentist to Eternalism than they should move an Actualist to Modal Realism. Lastly, Builes and Teitel (forthcoming) have argued that philosophers who reject Qualitativism (the thesis that all fundamental facts are qualitative) have good reasons to believe in absolute simultaneity.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for making this point.
Sider’s (2011: ch. 12) discussion suggests an alternative characterization of Humeanism, according to which the world is “fundamentally non-modal”. However, according to GEM, the world is fundamentally non-modal: fundamentally speaking, all there is to the world is an enduring global world-quality. The powers/dispositions that the world-quality grounds are explicitly non-fundamental.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting the following pluralist hypothesis.
Thanks to Mark Balaguer, Andrew Lee, Jack Spencer, Jessica Wilson, and two anonymous referees for their helpful feedback.
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Builes, D. A Humean Non-Humeanism. Philos Stud 180, 1031–1048 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01927-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01927-5