Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David LewisIf asked what Humeanism could mean today, there is no other philosopher to turn to whose work covers such a wide range of topics from a unified Humean perspective as that of David Lewis. The core of Lewis's many contributions to philosophy, including his work in philosophical ontology, intensional logic and semantics, probability and decision theory, topics within philosophy of science as well as a distinguished philosophy of mind, can be understood as the development of philosophical position that is centered around his conception of Humean supervenience. If we accept the thesis that it is physical science and not philosophical reasoning that will eventually arrive at the basic constituents of all matter pertaining to our world, then Humean supervenience is the assumption that all truths about our world will supervene on the class of physical truths in the following sense: There are no truths in any compartment of our world that cannot be accounted for in terms of differences and similarities among those properties and external space-time relations that are fundamental to our world according to physical science. |
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Reality and Humean Supervenience: Essays on the Philosophy of David Lewis Gerhard Preyer,Frank Siebelt No preview available - 2001 |
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Ability Hypothesis actual world amended analysis antecedent argue argument asymmetries backward counterfactuals Cambridge UK causal action causal laws causal relations causal role chance closest A-worlds concept counterexamples counterfactual conditionals counterfactual dependence D. M. Armstrong David Lewis distinct edited endurance entities Epistemology example exist experience of red fact fainthearted conditionals false folk psychology four-dimensional Humean supervenience Humphrey identity individuals instantiation intrinsic properties intuition island universes Journal of Philosophy kind Lewis Lewis's theory logical space London UK Lycan mental properties metaphysics modal realism multiply realizable natural properties naturalistic notion objects Occam's razor occur ontological Oxford UK perdurers person person-stage Philosophical physical physicalist plural quantification possibility of island possible worlds predicate principle probabilistic causation problem proposition reason semantics sense singular causation space-time spatialization spatiotemporally related suppose Swampman T₁ temporal temporary intrinsics thesis three-dimensionalist time's arrow tion travel fictions travel stories true truth unified w₂ worldmate