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Super-Humeanism and free will

Esfeld, Michael (2019) Super-Humeanism and free will. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Super-Humeanism is an even more parsimonious ontology than Lewisian standard Humean metaphysics in that it rejects intrinsic properties (local qualties). There are point objects, but all there is to them are their relative positions (distance relations) and the change of them. Everything else supervenes on the Humean mosaic thus conceived. Hence, dynamical parameters (such as mass, charge, energy, a wave-function, etc.) come in on a par with the laws through their position in the best system. The paper sets out how Super-Humeanism has the conceptual means to reject van Inwagen’s consequence argument not by taking the laws to depend on us (as on standard Humean metaphysics), but by taking the initial values of the dynamical parameters that enter into the laws to be dependent on the motions that actually occur in the universe, including the motions of human bodies. The paper spells out the advantages of this proposal.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Esfeld, MichaelMichael-Andreas.Esfeld@unil.ch
Keywords: consequence argument; free will; Humean metaphysics; David Lewis; Super-Humeanism; Peter van Inwagen
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
General Issues > Causation
General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism
General Issues > Laws of Nature
Depositing User: Michael Esfeld
Date Deposited: 31 Oct 2019 05:53
Last Modified: 31 Oct 2019 05:53
Item ID: 16595
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
General Issues > Causation
General Issues > Determinism/Indeterminism
General Issues > Laws of Nature
Date: 29 October 2019
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/16595

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